Page:A history of Sanskrit literature (1900), Macdonell, Arthur Anthony.djvu/486



LITERATURES OF THE WORLD.

MODERN ENGLISH LITERATURE. By, Hon. M. A. of Trinity College, Cambridge. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.

"Mr. Gosse has been remarkably successful in bringing into focus and proportion the salient features of this vast and varied theme. We have read the book, not only with pleasure but with a singular emotion. . . . His criticism is generally sympathetic, but at the same time it is always sober."—London Daily Chronicle.

"Mr. Gosse's most ambitious book and probably his best. It bears on every page the traces of a genuine love for his subject and of a lively critical intelligence. Moreover, it is extremely readable more readable, in fact, than any other single volume dealing with this same vast subject that we can call to mind. . . . Really a remarkable performance."—London Times.

"A really useful account of the whole process of evolution in English letters—an account based upon a keen sense at once of the unity of his subject and of the rhythm of its ebb and flow, and illumined by an unexampled felicity in hitting off the leading characteristics of individual writers."—London Athenæum.

"Probably no living man is more competent than Mr. Gosse to write a popular and yet scholarly history of English literature. . . . The greater part of his life has been given up to the study and criticism of English literature of the past, and he has a learned and balanced enthusiasm for every writer who has written excellently in English."—London Saturday Review.

"The bibliographical list is of extreme value, as is the bibliographical work generally. It is just one of these books which every reader will want to place among his working books."—New York Times.

"To have given in a moderate volume the main points in a literature almost continuous for five centuries is to have done a marvelous thing. But he might have done it dryly; he has made every sentence crisp and sparkling."—Chicago Times-Herald.

"A book which in soundness of learning, sanity of judgment, and attractiveness of manner has not been equaled by the work of any other author who has sought to analyze the elements of English literature in a concise and authoritative way."—Boston Beacon.

"Thoroughly enjoyable from first to last. It traces the growth of a literature so clearly and simply, that one is apt to underrate the magnitude of the undertaking. Mr. Gosse's charming personality pervades it all, and his happy manner illuminates matter that has been worked over and over until one might imagine all its freshness gone."—Chicago Evening Post.

"This is not a mere collection of brief essays on the merits of authors, but a continuous story of the growth of literature, of which the authors and their works are only incidents. The book is lucid, readable, and interesting, and a marvel of condensed information, without its seeming to be so. It can be read by nine out of ten intelligent people, not only without fatigue, but with pleasure; and when it is finished the reader will have a comprehensive and intelligent view of the subject which will not only enable him to talk with some ease and confidence upon the merits of the principal creators of English literature, but will also point the way to the right sources if he wishes to supplement the knowledge which he has derived from this book." —Pittsburg Times.

"That he has been a careful student, however, in many departments, the most unrelated and recondite, is evident on every page, in the orderly arrangement of his multitudinous materials, in the accuracy of his statements, in the acuteness of his critical observations, and in the large originality of most of his verdicts. He says things that many before him may have thought, though they failed to express them, capturing their fugitive expressions in his curt, inevitable phrases."—N. Y. Mail and Express.