English Literary Criticism. By C. E. Vaughan. (Blackie and Son.)—Mr.
Vaughan states in his preface that his aim has been to sketch the development of criticism, and particularly of critical method, in England, and to illustrate each phase of its growth by one or two samples taken from the most typical writers." Of these samples there are eleven and the nine critics
selected are Sir Philip Sidney, Dryden, Johnson, S. T. Coleridge, Hazlitt, Lamb, Shelley, Carlyle, and Walter Pater. Mr. Vaughan's essay, which fills more than one hundred pages, is weighty and thoughtful, and the reader, who may differ, as we are comrelle& to do, from some of the author's remarks, will find much in them to interest. It is very doubtful whether, as he considers, Carlyle's influence in changing the current of critical ideas was greater than that of any other writer of the century. If any single Eng- lishman can be said to have changed a current due to many causes Coleridge, we think, unquestionably deserves pre-eminence for suggestiveness and clearness of vision. This may be said without in any way disparaging the exquisite art of Hazlitt and of Lamb, who with Carlyle are classed as the typical critics of the age, and it may be said with the more certainty if, as Mr. Vaughan.
asserts, a comparison of qualities is the essence of criticism. His appreciative estimate of Sidney and of Dryden will satisfy most students, and all that he says of the latter is eminently happy. Forcible, too, although in our judgment too severe, are hie remarks on Johnson, who, if confined within narrow bounds as a critic of poetry, was great in his own field. "Is it a. harsh judgment," he asks, "to say that no critic so narrow, so mechanical, so hostile to originality as Johnson has ever achieved the dictatorship of English letters ? " We think it is ; for if Johnson's faults are now obvious to every reader, the greatness which belonged to the man is reflected in his criticism. This is why the "Lives of the Poets" is a work of lasting value.
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