The general structure of the poem is then clear, writes Tolkien. "It is essentially a balance, an opposition of ends and beginnings. In its simplest terms it is a contrasted description of two moments in a great life, rising and setting; an elaboration of the ancient and intensely moving contrast between youth and age, first achievement and final death." Part A (youth) is lines 1 to 2199; part B (age) is lines 2200 to 3182 (the end). A secondary division of the poem occurs, Tolkien writes, at line 1887, after which all the earlier story is summarized, so a complete account of Beowulf's tragedy is given between 1888 and the end, but without the account of the gloomy court of Heorot, or of the contrast between the young Beowulf and the old Hrothgar. The poem's metre, too, is founded on a balance of two halves to each line, "more like masonry than music". Tolkien argues that the poem is not meant to be an exciting narrative, nor a romantic story, but a word-picture, "a method and structure that ... approaches rather to sculpture or painting. It is a composition not a tune." Far from being weakly structured, it "is curiously strong". A singular effect Tolkien takes a moment to dismiss another criticism, that monsters should not have been made to appear in both halves. He replies he can see the point of no monsters, but not in complaining about their mere numbers; the poet could not, he argues, have balanced Beowulf's rise to fame through a war in Frisia, against death by dragon. Similarly, he dismisses notions that the poem is primitive: it is instead a late poem, using materials left over from a vanished age: Tolkien finishes by arguing that Beowulf "has its own individual character, and peculiar solemnity;" and would still be powerful even if it came from some unknown time and place; but that in fact its language, Old English, Reception Scholars Scholars and critics agree on the work's wide influence. Tom Shippey wrote that the essay "was seized upon eagerly, even gratefully, by generations of critics". Alvin A. Lee wrote that "Tolkien's manifesto and interpretation have had more influence on readers than any other single study, even though it has been challenged on just about every one of its major points." Seth Lerer wrote that the essay "may well be the originary piece of modern Beowulf