Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/373

 POETS OF AMERICA.

With full Notes in margin, and careful Analytical Index. By EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN, author of "Victorian Poets," etc. Eleventh Edition. 12mo, $2.25; half calf, $3.50.

CONTENTS : Early and Recent Conditions ; Growth of the American School ; William Cullen Bryant; John Greenleaf Whittier; Ralph Waldo Emerson; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; Edgar Allan Poe ; Oliver Wendell Holmes; James Russell Lowell ; Walt Whitman ; Bayard Taylor ; The Outlook. AMERICAN CRITICISMS. The appearance of this book is a notable event in American letters. No such thorough and conscientious study of the tendencies and qualities of our poetry has been attempted before, nor has any volume of purely literary criti- cism been written in this country upon so broad and noble a plan and with such ample power. . . . Mr. Stedman's work stands quite alone ; it has had no predecessor, and it leaves room for no rival. New York Tribune. It is indeed refreshing to come upon a volume so devoid of the limitations of current criticism, so wholesome, so sane, so perceptive, so just, and so vivi- fying as we find in this collection of essays on the "Poets of America." . . . The volume may indeed be regarded as epoch-making. Its influence on our na- tional literature is likely to be both deep and lasting. The Literary World (Boston). Mr. Stedman's temperament, training, and experience eminently fit him for the execution of a critical work on the poets of America, or, indeed, the poets of any land. He has ingrained honesty, breadth of apprehension, versatile sympathies, exact knowledge, and withal he is a poet with a poet's passion for beauty and love of sOng ; and so he is a wise critic, a candid and luminous inter- preter of the many-voiced muse. . . . The candor, sincerity, and sympathetic spirit in which Mr. Stedman treats the many themes that come under review in connection with the poets included in his scheme are apparent all through the treatise. The Dial (Chicago). Such a work involves many kinds of talent, great patience, and am-ple schol- arship; above all, it involves genius, and if the quality of this book were to be summed up in a single word, this one pregnant word comes first to mind, and remains after fullest reflection. ... As a body of criticism this volume stands alone in our literature, and is not likely soon to have a companion ; it justifies and permanently establishes a reputation in this field already deeply grounded. It gives our criticism a standard at once exacting and catholic, and it restates, by way of commentary on our own poetry, the great underlying laws of verse. It is criticism of a kind which only poetic minds produce. Christian Union (New York). Mr. Stedman brings to the task an unusual familiarity with the whole of our literature, unusual acquaintance with the tools of the poetical p;uild, and a very keen notion as to how those tools have been used abroad as well as at home. . . . The studies themselves are admirable. They show a conscience which takes in good work, and, at the same time, considers the humanities, which remembers what is due to art, and what must be granted to human frailty. The Critic (New York). The book is one which the student and lover of poetry cannot deny himself. Christian Register (Boston).