The Portland daily press., 1895-03-14
NEW PUBLICATIONS.

by William Mimic, Professor OF English
Literature and Logic in the University
of berdesn. Edited with Biographi-
cal Introduction by William Knight,
al. D., Professor OF Moral Philosophy in
the University of ST. A ndrews. We have
here very interesting and suggestive
volume, one to which either the student
or the general reader will sit down with
awakened anticipations of pleasure and
profit and will finish with no sense of
disappointment. 1t is one of those books
where we realize that the writer has
been nourished at the fountain head and
does not bring merely a contribution
from accessible sources.
William Mimic, of Scotch family and Of
sterling stock, was born in 1916 and died
in 1893. He was editor of the Examiner
from 1874 to 1878, and Professor in the
University of Aberdeen from 1880 until
his death. He published English Prose
Writers and English Poets, besides sew
erai novels and many articles in the
Britannica and other cyclopaedia. What
this skeleton of fact so meagerly indi-
Gates will be filled in by the apprecia-
lions at the beginning Of the volume
before, where DR.. Knight has given his
own summary of the authors life writing
and personal traits and has also gathered
just, as well as affectionate, tributes from
colleagues, friends, editors, students and
men of letters, including Mr.. CUTLER
Crouch and Mr.. L. Gallieune. The chap
tiers here put together composed some
twenty lectures on the literature of the
18th century, and are followed by three
supplementary chapters on Courthope's
Biography Of Pope, The Supposed
Tyranny of Pope, and The Historical
Relations of Burns. A general index is
also added for which intelligent readers
always return thanks. Professor Mimic
pens his subject by giving his reasons
for dealing with the literature of historic
period occupied by the reign of the
Georges since they themselves "did little
or nothing for literature" This leads
him into very acute ana novel theories.
put forth with the greatest clearness and
groupings of old truths and new in
ferences from early events:
"The serious expression in new forms
of intense and generous personal emotion
is broad Characteristic of the nine
tenth century revival Now we can
understand why the pets of the eigh-
teenth century failed in the artistic ex-
preston of serious and generous feeling.
The main defects of their poetry can he
traced to one source-rhe character of the
audience for whose Judgment they had
respect, by whose ideals they were con-
trolled, who were to them the arbiters
of taste. The standard of taste in the
time of Queen Anne, and till near the end
of the century, was a self-coDscious ar
istocratic and refined society self-con-
scious of their superior manners and
superior culture, and disposed to treat
the ways of the vulgar with amused con-
tempt. This, think, can be shown tc
be at the root of the striving after vii
and the respect for established models,
and the false theory of poetic diction in
serious poetry. Fear of being vulgar,
fear of being singular--these were the
real Nightmares that sat upon eighteenth
century poetry"
Pastoral poetry with its leading ex-
ponents; Pope in various attitudes and
seen with unprecedented view. Thorn
son, Glover, Collins, Gray, Richardson
ana Fielding; Horace Walpole's Castle
of Otranto, the lady novelists-M Mrs. Rad
cliffe, Miss Burney, Miss Edgeworth and
Miss Austen; Cowper; Scottish poetry
Ramsay and Burns; Wordsworth, the
Lake Poets; Campbell and Moore; Scott;
Byron; the novelists again, down to
Bulwer Ly tton lastly, Shelley and Keats.
An excellent volume and one which will
be rightly valued by all who read dis.
criminately of literature and its leaders.
New York. Harper & Brothers; Loring,
Short & Harmon. Price $780,