The balance of private good and general welfare is at the bottom of civilized morals; but the morals of the Heroic Age are founded on individuality, and on nothing else.

He wrote a series of works on the nature of poetry including The Idea of Great Poetry (1925) and Romanticism (1926). In 1929 he moved on to the University of London and in 1935 to a prestigious readership at Oxford University. He also publiLascelles Abercrombied several volumes of original verse largely metaphysical poems in dramatic form and a number of verse plays.