With its companion volume, " Poets of America," it is an example of a very high if not the highest kind of criticism. While giving the best studies of individuals and schools, it yet goes beyond the individual and school, and treats the art of poetry in the most comprehensive way. It suggests to us that as modern historians have made a vast improvement in the writing of State history, in a somewhat similar way Mr. Stedman has improved on former methods of criticism.—The New Englander.
Like all really good work of the sort, it cannot be made known to the reader except in the author's ipstssima verba. We can only counsel our friends to read for themselves, and tell them that they will find store of delights in the matured and thoughtful exposition of a scholar and man of letters, who understands his business thoroughly, and is constrained neither by fear nor favor to say the thing he does not feel.—The Churchman (New York).
One of the most thorough, workman-like, and artistic pieces of real critical writing that we have in English. For the period covered by it, it is the most comprehensive, profound, and lucid literary exposition that has appeared in this country or elsewhere.—Prof. Moses Coit Tyler,—Cornell University.
Mr. Stedman's volume is not merely good, but it presents the best view of the poets of the present generation in England that is anywhere to be bad. Arthur Gilman.
ENGLISH CRITICISMS.
We ought to be thankful to those who write with competent skill and understanding, with honesty of purpose, and with diligence and thoroughness of execution. And Mr. Stedman, having chosen to work in this line, deserves the thanks of English scholars by these qualities and by something more. He is faithful, studious, and discerning ; of a sane and reasonable temper, and in the main a judicial one ; his judgment is disciplined and exercised, and his decisions, even when we cannot agree with them, are based on intelligent grounds.—The Saturday Review (London).
There is none among ourselves who equals him in breadth of sympathy, or in ability to resist allurement by the will-o'-the-wisp of mere form. ... It is because Mr. Stedman strenuously endeavors to maintain his position on a truer foundation that his history of poetry in the Victorian epoch is so valua- ble. . . . Not only the best book of its kind, but worth (say) fifty reams of ordinary anonymous criticism of home production.—William Sharp, in The Academy (London).
He has undertaken a wide subject, and has treated it with great ability and competent knowledge.—The Spectator (London).
The book is generous and enlightened, and bears the stamp of unfailing honesty.—The Academy (London).
