New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1902-11-16

Mr. Dobson gives us pages and pages Oh JUST
this sort of thing. He gives US portraiture. too.
and some criticism, but not in SUFFICIENT measure
or with enough of freshness and vitality. for
us TO feel when we get to the end Of the
last ehapter that we have been in the COM
,anv of Richardson and his works. and pos
sess a clearer idea Of them both than that
with which we started. We have beens instead
turning the leaves OF Mr.. DobsOn's note book,
and much as we appreciate the industry shown
i'm them we could spare much or their tr1viA
data for the sake of firm and instructive lrn-
preston the one thing which the author con-
trives to withhold.
| Turning to Sir Alfred LyaIl on Tennyson. In
the hope of better things. we meet with chilli
| ing disappointment. He, too. is familiar Win
his subject but apparently he finds in it nothing
| to kindIe his imagination, nothing TO wake In
him warm emotion and new thought Like MI.
Dobson, he fails to bring ideas enough, and a
keen enough personal feeling. TO the execution
of his task 1t is all very well to say that the
biographer must think first of HIS subject and
let his own part in the business take care OF IT,
SELF but Just as. in ByrOn's view, certain pref
| udice was good thing in historian, so
healthy individuality is good thing in a bios-
| rapher Your modern biOgrapher is too apt to
be so anxious about his impartiality that he be-
comes colorless; he stands up so straight thar
| he falls backward. A good specimen OF the
way in which the thing is done, when it is prop
erIy done is supplied in of FitzGerald's let
| ters to Tennyson. written after reading tho
Holy Grail" and quoted by Sir Alfred Lyan:
The whole myth of Arthur's Round Table
/ Dynasty in Britain presents itself before me
with sort of cloudy. StOnehenge grandeur. i
am not if the old Knights adventures do
not tell upon me better, touched in some lyrlcA
way Qike your own Lady of ShalOtt'), than
| when elaborated into epic FORM Anyhow,
Alfred. when / feel how pure, noble and
holy your work is, and whole phrases
/ lines and sentences OF it Will abide with
/ me- and / am sure with men after me,
/ I read till the Lincolnshire Farmer
| drew tears TO my eyes. l was got back 70
| the substantial rough spun Nature knew; and
| the old brute. invested by you with the solemn
humour Of Humanity. like Shakespeares Shall
i low, became a more pathetlc phenomenon tndn
| the knights who revisit the world in your ether
| verse.
/ There is more light thrown Tennyson by
this fragment than by whole pages of Sir Alfred
Lyall's text. OF course. he would be the first
| to point out that FftzGerald a man of
| genius and that he himself is nothing Of the
sort. but we need not underestimate his ca
| pacity. He has. sure, the intellectual
| power which would have made this biography
stimulating. the sensitive taste and the enthusi-
| asm which would have heightened it's interest,"
IL he had given those qualities free play. But
he has insisted upon telling the story of his
/
| fused to let himself go in the criticism and in
| depreciation Of the work. and the result is that
he leaves us cold. with absolutely nothing added
to our conception of Tennyson.
| With Mr.. stephen we have somewhat better
luck. Strangely. he does not seem to be alto
gether himself in his book on George Eliot. The
| felicity he has shown in so many briefer bio
graphical studies has almost. if not quite. for
saken him. But he could not write bad book
if he tried. and in this case though he has not
given us an uncommOnly good book. he has not
| given us a bad one. George Eliot provides a
rather grave theme Gravity is not unfamiliar
/ 10 Mr.. stephen. and so he writes an altogether
staid and not always interesting volume. But
here and there he does what his colleagues in
the present enterprise are too often indispOsed
to do he speaks with forcible candOr. Witness
/ this admirable passage: She was too thor
oushly feminine to be quite at home in the
psychology OF the male animal Her women
| are-so far as man judge-unerrinSIy
| drawn We are convinced at every point OF the
insight and fidelity of the analysis: but when
she draws a man. she has not the same certain
| ty of touch" Elsewhere the critic is equally
! frank He does not hesitate to characterize Mr.
stephen Guest as a mere hairdresser's block.
ne cites that parsonage as another instance
OF her lncapacity for pOrtraying the opposite