Laudator Temporis Acti

Derek Brewer (1923-2008), in James T. Como, ed., C.S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table and Other Reminiscences (New York: Macmillan, 1979), p. 45:

At each of these [weekly tutorials] he also gave one the reading for the following week, sometimes pointing out the most important texts. Rarely did he suggest any critical books, and in those days there were indeed few that were much good. Neither he nor anyone else ever mentioned to me such names as I.A. Richards or F.R. Leavis. Nor did Lewis ever mention his own work. When in a discussion of Addison I quoted some published opinion of his own at him, he said, "Ah, if you ever become a tutor, never publish anything!"—advice that a number of Oxford dons must have taken and given.

Lewis's method was not unfamiliar to me. I had been taught by brilliant men at my grammar school, the Crypt School, Gloucester, on my own, and in the Oxford way of concentrating on actual texts and their historical meaning, rather than on modern critical books. Lewis's education had been similar. In 1959 he said to me that he had read few critics and been little influenced by them, though some very bad literary historians had influenced him greatly when young. I wish I had asked him for their names.