The New York herald. [volume] (New York, N.Y.) 1920-1924, 1920-12-19

Woodberr
subjects of Mr.. Woodberry's critical genius,
three are English, Milton, Shakespeare and
Swinburne; one is French, Montaigne; ono
Italian, Virgil while Cervantes speaks for
Spain and Walter Scott represents Scotland.
Five nations thus come into our view, ana
we question whether any critic OF modern
times is so qualified Mr. Woodberry to
body forth in his studies of the writer's OF
different nations that national or epochal
spirit which is so great an element of power
in their writings Not only a master of
comparative literature. critic whose knowl-
edge, including the sympathetic. appercep-
ton Of lyric and individual life, passes into
the wider wisdom that has as its germinai
thought the continuity of the race life Is
here revealed, but also the critic whose class
ical culture is so inwoven with the sense OF
modernity that the typical qualities of vary
ing nations and times are clear to him. rms
is why Rome and the ancient world; France
after the massacre of St Bartholomew; Spain,
the days of it's greatest glory gone; England
of Puritan times; all Europe. as all OF life
in Shakespeare, are depicted with the con-
vincing strokes of painter who can dip ms
brush with that precision which is the
scholars faculty and that vitality which IS
the poets into the colors of the days OF the
Crusades of the Renaissance and of all lands
toricaI knowledge familiarity with the life
and the literature of specific nations as Wen
as with the race as whole.
His Essays Deal With Principle
Rather Than With Personality
The fountain heads in the stream of essay
writing in modern times are, of course,
Bacon and Montaigne. Mr. Woodberrys ap-
probation of the greatness and the charH
of the French master who, with himself as
the centre of his works, so wisely ana Ias-
cinatingly reveals the practical life OF man,
Is shown in such a penetrating sentence as
this: There are neither heights nor depths
of the soul in the book; but human nature In
the norm of its range; or again: He was
that marvel of the moral life, man of in
tegrity who is n master of compromise or
Vet again: "Montaigne had that secret which
has so often developed the highest literary
faculty, the power to absorb life into himself
directly, to let life have its way with him as
an experience, and yet to maintain in the
midst Of II complete possession OF himselt,
10 lead his own life" In this sentence, as in
one further on where Mr.. Woodbury. writes:
federation was in him a human instinct
strongly supported by his knowledge and ex-
perience and approved by his Judgment, and
not merely the conclusion of philosophy or
principle OF judgment" Mr.. Woodberry hifn-
self seems nearest to Montaigne. But even
so. IL is of Lord Bacon, and not of the lighter
and the more delightful Frenchman, that Mr.
Woodbury. is, in his essays. the literary fe-
scendant. However subjective Mr. Wood
berry Is in his poetry (and we are not think
ing so much of his lyrics, a form necessarily
self-revelatory. as of his sonnets and his
noble epical piece entitled 1.-THE Roamer') the
great essays before us will not disclose, save
here and there TO the eye of old acquaint-
ance, any light on the personal life of their
author. Mr.. Woodbury. addresses himself
with restraint and with high seriousness to
the subjects of his pen, and refrains even
from that delicious wit and often brilliant
irony which are his in conversation. The
only exception that we have been able to find
Is where, with an intention very near the
surface Of his words he writes of Ger
vantes: 'Once he was sold to the Dey Has
san, for 500 ducats, an interesting fact, the
price of a world genius as slave not be-
ing often quoted"
In his brief paper on don Quixote," Lowell
Mr. woodberry's friend and teacher, phrased
some of his noblest thoughts as a critic, sug-
costing what underlies and gives the living
spirit to all really great imaginative work
but Mr. woodberry's essay is even finer than
Iowell's In that he more richly brings out
the greatness, individual. national and cos
mic, Of Cervantes. He shares Lowells own
thought as to the essence of a great book, Its
potentialities far beyond the ken of the
aulnOT minister, III SuC0 Il seHlellCe as ihe
great book greatens with time and the seed
vessels which IL contains Time rifles and
scatters its germinal forces throughout the
world and rIpens them in the bosom Of broad
humanity: but the vitality OF these belongs
10 the human spirit. and is q thing apart
from the individuality OF the original au-
thor" But he goes beyond Lowell In an
analysis of the various ways whereby the
double nature of life is put to the FORE In
Cervantes's masterpiece. 1.-THE antithesis of
the imagination with the senses and the life
of thought with the life of fact, of Illusion
with reality. Of the eloquent discourse with
tho proverb, OF the poetry with the prose OF
lifc," this opposition becomes so real to US
that we understand with almost equal sym
pathy the mind of Don Quixote with the
Characteristic defect of the soul. imasina-
tive Illusion" and the mind of Sancho, with
the characteristic defect Of the material
man. self-interest."
~ If remarkable how in all these essays,