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Although the so-called urbane classical formalism of T. S. Eliot was continued and more developed as an abstract formalism of the New Critics, they were not originated from the same idea. While the New Critics gave emphasis on the individual formal elements and poetic structure itself, Eliot had in mind not so much particular formal qualities as something close to the notion of a genre. He thought of this as “a system of conventions,” which is to be construed as an aesthetic limitation or circle beyond which an artist should not trespass. Eliot kept this notion quintessentially in his poetry and criticism. Accordingly, he criticized the English drama for its unlimited realism and lack of a convention, and insisted “a conventional scheme,” or “form to arrest” not to make it expand and end in the desert of futile realism. He also severely rebuked Matthew Arnold and his neo-Humanist followers for contending that poetry is at bottom a criticism of life and the best poetry supersedes both religion and philosophy. Eliot thought they had confused literary criticism with something else, because, for him, everything in this world or next has a convention of its own.