New-York tribune., 1922-04-30
ASPECTS AND IMPRESSIONS Nv Ed t
inUnu GOsSe. SCribuor

mund Gosse. Scribncr
A LTHOUGH his first book, pub
IN lishcd in the high and far
Il "a off days OF 1873, was volume
of verse, Edmund Gossc signi-
lied his intention Of becoming a critic
at the outset of his career. for once he
had given that hostage to the firm of
King, then tho inevitable sponsor Of
youthful poets. he produced his now
classical Studies in the Literature Of
Northern Europc.'
That excellent work is fortv-three
years old, and since its appearance the
author has built up body of critical
studies and editorial achievement which
Justities the claim that he is the one
critic Of literature in England to-day
whose practice of that art has absorbed
his whole energies and established his
fame. His poetry, Of course, is entitled
to honorable mention, and his "Father
and Som is a human and social docu-
ment of the first Importance, but it is
not on either Of these that his reputa-
ton rests, though he himself may
possibly share that perversc weakness
Of so many of his greater predecessors
and lesser contemporaries for the work
he has written outside his true vein
Literary criticism in England during
The last three or four decades has be
come largely the minor occupation of
novelists and poets Of varying degrees
Of obscurity, or the inevitable toll of
professors. Of Gosse's venerable gen
Grafton there is George Santsbury
who has been a professor most of his
life, though a surprisingly human one,
in spite Of the depressing lapses in his
ESSAYS on French Novclsts,' a school
master piece. But what makes the case
Of Edmund Gosse remarkable is that
he set out as critic and remained one
without ever descending into the limbo
of the college classroom, the academic
quartcrlics and the students manuals.
His critical writings in the main
are addressed to adult and sophisti
Gated readers; they are not the sweep
ings of a semcster's lectures. Gossc
in fine, belongs rather to the race OF
Sainte- Beuve, Lemaitre and Brandes,
whose alertness at the age of eighty
is even more amazing than that Of
George Saintsbury at seventy seven
and Edmund Gosse at seventy three.
He represents an age and type Of
criticism which seems to be threatened
with extinction in England, though the
tradition hourishes on the Continent Of
Europe and is establishing itself in
this country While solemn young men
in London write ponderous papers on
Cowper and Thomas Moore, New York
is producing critics who are intelli-
gently aware of modern literature.
EDMUND GoSSE has always been the
~ champion Of orthodoxy and deco
rum His ingenious biography Of Swim
burne was veritable tour de force Of
this kind for it presented Swinburne
whose triumphs seemed to have been
won on the playing field of Eton or
thercabouts, so respectable and clean
lmbed a young Englishman does he ap-
pear 1t Is a curious irony Of friend
ship that George Moore, who contrib
uted the only hint Of carnality in that
biography, should be the crony Of
Gosse, whose only allusion to the Irish
indiscretionist is the dedication Of
Books on the Table
The alliance of these two men has
always filed me with amused specula-
ton, and turned eagerly to this new
volume of "Aspects and Impressions"
in the hope Of finding there some men
tion Of the friend to whom the previous
volume was dedicated. But that cpl
graph, "To George Moore, My Friend
, for Forty Years." still remains the only
reference in all the essays of Gosse to
that embarrassing, perhaps, but GER
tainly distinguished, figure in contem-
porary English ltera ture. The omis-
sion was all the more noticeable be
cause Books on the Table" contained
III ore comment upon current literary
matters than the present work, which
is more substantial, but as readable as
the authors scholarly writings always
are.
The book has definitely historical
interest because Of its testimony of a
survivor to events and people of an
irrevocable past; his picture of George
Eliot in the early '70s, driving with
the "hrsute, rugged, satyr-lke" George
Henry Lewes. His companion was a
large, thick-set sybil, dreamy and i'm
+ mobile, whose ma ssive features, some
what grim when seen in profile, were
anonymously bordered by a hat, al
ways in the height Of the Paris fash
ion, which in those days commonly in
W gssgs,