Whatever Housman thought, the Leslie Stephen Lecture had heightened his public profile and enhanced his public reputation.

Reviews and comment were almost wholly congratulatory, although he was used by some to support their personal agendas. For its September 1933 issue, Scrutiny had asked one Gorley Putt to review The Name & Nature of Poetry with two other books under the ironic caption ‘Go to the Professors’. He wrote:

Housman would be used as a stick to beat the moderns and as an object of scorn by the defenders of the moderns, even though his lecture had made no specific attack on the quality of any contemporary poet.

T.S. Eliot speaks

In great contrast was T.S. Eliot's review in The Criterion, an influential literary magazine founded in 1922. With his background in foreign exchange and his business experience as a director of the publishing house Faber and Faber, his review displayed a worldly, fair-minded and analytical assessment of Housman's lecture. He was prepared to make his points quietly and diplomatically. He had understood perfectly where Housman was coming from and seems to have appreciated how Housman had cleverly positioned himself on the unassailable ground of personal opinion.

He opened with a compliment. Housman was a master of prose because of what Eliot identified as ‘a certain emotional intensity’ – which would please Housman. He cleverly positioned Housman both as a romantic poet and an eighteenth-century wit – which would also please Housman. He acknowledged the inherent limitations of the public lecture which calls for selection and not ‘connected profundity’, thereby outlawing blame for what Housman had not said.