Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/460

 456 Alden literature), and it is extraordinary that he should have chosen to take his texts of Dryden, Addison, Coleridge, and Hazlitt from the ''Everyman's Library," when standard critical texts of these authors are so readily accessible. Fortunately, these are just the authors for which the trained reader will not need his book. The choice of critical specimens in the minor field is almost a matter de gustibus: but in general, as I have intimated, it seems to be as acceptable as could be hoped for. A few omissions might be agreed upon as regrettable. The general plan of the volume making no provision for criticism in the Scandinavian or Slavic literatures, one misses what would otherwise have certainly demanded a place; for example, significant extracts from the letters of Ibsen and from both letters and other writ- ings of Tolstoy, Strindberg's exceedingly significant Preface to Miss Julia, and Sologub's discussion of "The Theatre of One Will." Again, if we are to have such comparatively trifling material as the fragment of Donatus and the passage from 'Sebilet, it should seem that we ought to have something from Heinsius' influential work on tragedy (which Mr. Clark duly notices in his general survey). For the 17th century we should have a specimen from Rapin, who furnishes some individually interesting passages, and whose influence on Dryden makes him of special significance to English readers. If Rymer is represented for his "View of Tragedy," John Dennis might well have a page or so for his. One would like to see the solemnity of Addison and Johnson relieved by Fielding's Preface to Tom Thumb the Great, with its suggestive burlesque of conventional dramatic criticism; and it is a pity to include Johnson without the best general passages from the Preface to Shakespeare. To Lamb's brief account of Restoration comedy should certainly be added a part of his remarkable essay on the Tragedies of Shakespeare, with its profound if paradoxical analysis of the relation of drama as read to drama on the stage. Of Shake- speare criticism one cannot insist on any full representation, since that would be a subject for a book by itself; yet if Coleridge is to be allowed place for specific interpretations of The Tempest and Othello, there should also be room for a selection from A. C. Bradley's Shakespearean Tragedy, the finest work in its field since Coleridge's day. Mr. Clark found no Italian criticism since Goldoni which demanded representation, but he would have done well to include a passage from (or, more certainly, to mention) Mazzini's interesting essay on "Fatality as an Element of Dramatic Art. " Another page would have allowed room for the significant portion of Schiller's Preface to The Bride of Messina, with its important account of the function of the tragic chorus. Finally, and perhaps most important, the omission of any selection from HebbePs epochal prefaces