Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/371

 VICTORIAN POETS. With Topical Analysis in margin, and full Analytical Index. Twenty-first Edition. Revised and extended, by a Supplementary Chapter, to the Fiftieth Year of the Period under Review. Crown 8vo, $2.25 ; half calf, The leading poets included in Mr. Stedman's survey are Tennyson, Landor, the Brownings, Hood, Arnold, " Barry Cornwall," Buchanan, Morris, Swinburne, and Rossetti. It also embraces very fully the minor poets and schools of the period, and with its copious notes and index forms a complete guide-book to the poetry of the Victorian era. AMERICAN CRITICISMS. The new chapter which Mr. Stedman has added to his " Victorian Poets " reviews the product of the past twelve years, thus bringing the English record down to even date with the " Poets of America," and making the two books more exactly the companions and complements of each other. The fresh ma- terial, which comprises about seventy pages, is devoted in a large measure to the examination of present poetical tendencies, and this is necessarily illus- trated with mention of a great number of minor poets, so many that we have a nearly exhaustive record of those entitled even to passing attention. Such a catalogue, pointed by quick touches of criticism, is of high value in defining the literary movement, and has no relation to any excessive estimate of the real value of the current poetical work. . . . We close the book with re- newed admiration of the masterly handling of a fascinating but difficult sub- ject, and with the gratification of knowing that America has produced the best book yet written on the English poetry of th'is age. New York Tribune. This delightful book. . . . Among the best examples of criticism in our lit- erature. . . . We ought, in justice to its encyclopedic character, to state that it contains notices, more or less extended, of every poet of any pretension* who has flourished in England since 1835; and that these notices are not simply critical, but al*o biographical, those incidents and influences in the lives of the subjects which may be supposed to have had a moulding influence upon them being made prominent. The book is thus a handbook to the poets and poetry of the period. Hartford Courant. The work is as admirable in form as it is skillful in method. Biography, analysis, and criticism constitute the threefold direction in which Mr. Stedman has expended his thought. In all the field he shows himself thoroughly at home, a familiar friend as it were of the men and women of whose characters and lives he writes, an intelligent student of their writings, and an apprecia- tive though discriminating critic of their qualities. The Congtegationalist (Boston).