Adventures in Criticism

The short papers which follow have been reprinted, with a few alterations, from _The Speaker_. Possibly you knew this without my telling you. Possibly, too, you have sat in a th...

Now, as fate would have it, in the year 1888 Dr. Furnivall invited Mr. Alfred W. Pollard to collaborate with him in an edition of Chaucer which he had for many years promised to...

Almost as wide of the mark is Mr. Swinburne's description of the volume as "worthless." It contains twenty-one numbers, besides that lofty dirge, so unapproachably solemn, _The...

It has been objected to the author of _Britannia's Pastorals_ that their perusal sends you to sleep. It had been subtler criticism, as well as more amiable, to observe that you...

"I have heard of a man that, upon some extraordinary disgust which he took at the unsuitable conversation of some of his nearest relations, whose society he could not avoid, sud...

Still, on the whole Mr. Whibley has justice. Sterne _is_ a sentimentalist. Sterne _is_ indecent by reason of his reticence--more indecent than Rabelais, because he uses a hint w...

After casting about for some time, I suggested that Burns--though in so many respects immeasurably inferior to Scott--frequently wrote with a depth of feeling which Scott could...

"To us children," writes Mr. Maurice Kingsley, "Uncle Henry's settling in Eversley was a great event.... At times he fairly bubbled over with humour; while his knowledge of slan...

Two or three reviewers have already given utterance upon this volume; and they seem strangely unable to determine which is the best of its three tales. I vote for _The Bottle Im...

"To live indeed, is to be again ourselves, which being not only a hope, but an evidence in noble believers, it is all one to lie in St. Innocent's Churchyard, as in the sands of...

"we can think of this or that, lightly or laughingly, as a child thinks, or as we think in a morning doze; we can make puns or puzzle out acrostics, and trifle in a thousand way...

Let us get back (I hear you implore) to the historical point of view, if possible: anywhere, anywhere, out of the _Poetics!_ And I admit that a portion of the preceding paragrap...

"Airy, fairy Lilian, Flitting fairy Lilian, When I ask her if she love me, Claps her tiny hands above me, Laughing all she can; She'll not tell me if she love me, Cruel little L...

(2) "The custodian of a Free Library in a southern city informs me that 'hardly once in a month' does a volume of verse pass over his counter; that the exceptional applicant (se...

Let us for a moment turn our attention from the Penny Dreadful to the boy--from the _éponge á laver les cabriolets_ to _notre pauvre humanité_. Now--to speak quite seriously--it...

"The dark dumb godhead innate in the fair world's life Imbues the rapture of dawn and of noon with dread, Infects the peace of the star-shod night with strife, Informs with terr...

Mr. Davidson has never allowed us to doubt to which of these two classes he belongs. "For him the nets hang long and low." But though it may satisfy the Pumblechook within us to...

Also Esther's story seems to me informed with a saner philosophy of life. There is gloom in her story; and many of the circumstances are sordid enough; but throughout I see the...

But in bringing her Vagabonds into relation with ordinary English life, Mrs. Woods loses all, or nearly all, of that esoteric professional interest which, at first sight, would...

A number of people--and I am one--cannot "abide" hypnotism in fiction. In my own case the dislike has been merely instinctive, and I have never yet found time to examine the ins...

But to speak of the Letter Press. For the Sea you will use Clark Russell; for the East, Rudyard Kipling; for _Blood_, Haggard; for neat pastorall Subjects, Thomas Hardy, so he b...