The New York herald., 1921-05-15
WOodberry prose
informal ESSAYS
Reviewed by ELIZABETH HoUGHToN.

Noodberfy Harcourt. Brace a Co
Reviewed by ELIZABETH HOUCHTON.
~ this fifth volume in the series of
css. US on life and letters by George
Edward woodberry poet-critic even
the title Literary Memoirs of the Nine
teenth Century" Is more informal more in
umate than the others. Here Mr.. Wood
berry's approach is most often through the
correspondence of one author with another
or by means of glimpses into great mans
diary. Earlier years notably those of Rus
kin, and little known incidents of famous
lives are uncovered With a profundity of
scholarship rare in our time, and above all
eagerness for truth born of his affection
for the masters. he delights in smashing by
actual quotation and fresh Interpretation,
popular notions of literary men. The last
thing we need be anxious about is prop
.erty" reads of the quotations-for
Lowell indeed new note. And always Mr..
Woodberry succeeds in avoiding the out
worn word the abstract term of criticism.
The effect of the book is not that of being
escorted. tremendously up high marble
steps into the castles of the great, but
quietly of entering through the little
postern door, led by one VINO has lived all
his life within, as a familiar of the house
Matthew Arnold says: 1T is the business
of the critical power in all branches of
knowledge, theology philosophy, history,
art. science to see the object as in itself it
really is" 1t is "a disinterested endeavor
to learn and propagate the best that is
known and thought in the world" Both
these things Mr.. Woodberry in the highest
sense achieves and by the very approach
ableness of his rich criticism he becomes
spokesman to an astonishngly wide circle
In sense he does for literature what Mr..
Wells attempts in history, making II avail
able for those whose outlook and grasp are
far less than his own.
The lions of yesterday, Darwin, Carlyle
and Rus1in. become approachabe as
modern science has made the dinosaurs and
trachodons of the Mesozoic period. at once
familiar and noble Human situations in
the lives of the poets are touched or de-
yeloped in a way that only the more
cndear them to us. The Wordsworths. IL
seems were at one time totally unap-
preciated as neghbors. At Stowey where, to
he near Coleridge, they had rented house
for year. they were misjudged and hated
because OF the profound seclusion in which
they lived, the incomprehensible nature of
their occupations, their strange way of fire.
quenting out of the way and untrodden
spots" Finally the neighbor complex came
% a head with the sending by the lady
who owned the estates of a Government
spy to watch their actions, and Thomas
Poole. farmer friend of both the poets.
obliged to give certificate Of character
ISee essay on Thomas Poole and His
FrieDds," page 45.l
Again in dealing with the strange family
life of the De Quinceys. Woodberry humanity
interprets the causes, now of Richard De
ouinceys running away to sea, now of his
brothers addiction to the drug opium Mrs.
De Quincey." he says. was a woman OF
much formal proprety, attached to the
C,apham sect in religious and moral sym
pathy-she was self-distrustful and sought
asyice from her friends the Clapham people
So that the children felt this interference
of strangers as a bar between them and
their mother" The problems of Shelley, too.
his liberal provision for his first wife, his
wisdom in refusing further to be victimized
bv William Goodwin father of Mary Wolfe
stonecraft Goodwin, his second wife, are sym
pathetically told. The august friendship of
CARLYLE and Emerson becomes, in the essay
"carlyle and His Friends" full of heart the
natural association Of two lonely men. Taken
cut of its distorted setting in Froudes
biography and the temperamental auto
biography this historic relation Is set forth
n original documents. by means of Prof.
Norton's collection Of letters. Woodberry
presents a new and kindly Carlyle Assum
inc that interest no longer is confined to
The question of whether the dyspeptic
philosopher did or did not beat his wife.
yvoodberry is able to find another side.
We are reminded that Carlyle had the
habit Of reading aloud from Homer. 10 an
infirm acquaintance, that he did much for
youths struggling to make a living I'm the
C;ty. that whenever he writes to his aged
mother "the page Is brighter for the beauty
and tenderness of the relation" tp. 1S4A. In
the magnificent summary of this essay Mr.
Woodberrys reason for praising the Norton
selection of letters is significant: 1T lowers
the relief of hardness and shows more fully
the kindlncss, fidelity and true-heartedness
cf Carlyle. in which his manhood lay quite
indignation at feebeness and folly and his
uncharitableness when his affections were
not concerned"
This keen sense of value is nowhere more
strongly felt than in the judgment Of Long
fellow: Had he been in closer contact with
the poetic motives in life itself he might
have been touched with passion; but he
felt them at second hand. as II were, he
could not lift his mood higher than the
region Of sentiment. lie was a poet de-
veloped by books and not by experience.
even when he draws from life itself his
cunning Is bool1ish." or this on Coleridge
"Tt is plain to any one who reads the topics
Of Coleridges dscourses that his mind
ranged through vast circuit Of knowledge
habitually, but that II touched the facts
only al single points and specifically: In
other words he displays compass rather
than grasp" The nice distinction Is further
carried out: Persons found in Coleridge's
mind the rare and curious coexistcnce Of
fixed dogma with inceSsant speculation: he
afforded the sense of untrammclcd invest-