Shorter Notices
The Concise Cambridge History of English Literature. By George Sampson. (Cambridge University Press. iss.)
MR. SAMPSON has potted the famous Cambridge history which was in 14 volumes into one. Without elaborate comparisons it would be impossible to see exactly how many of the sometimes odd views are Mr. Sampson's own, how many his predecessors'. This, for example; of Shakespeare is strangely naive : " He is so thoroughly wholesome that the appropriate remarks of the less cleanly characters seem natural and need no defence." It is a pity, indeed, that Mr. Sampson did not confine himself to history (thus producing an invaluable reference book), for as a critic he is seldom very happy, and when he reaches modern times he becomes hopelessly lost in a maze of minor writers. It needs a sharper discrimination between the imitative and the original talent than Mr. Sampson possesses to find a way through. He refers to Mrs. Woolf's " novels of limited renown " as " the attempts of an essayist not instinctively a novelist to use fiction as a means of expression " ; writes of Mary Webb that her books " have poetic and emotional qualities . . . that raise her far above the numerous contemporary women-writers," and describes The Golden Bowl as "a fascinatingly elaborate fantasia upon an intrinsically worthless theme." It is a pity that these, to say the least, eccentric opinions should be attached to a useful reference book.
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