SIR EDMUND Gossn is a master in the art of
inserting into his criticism what is journalistically known as "the human note." A judicious selection, therefore, from his little weekly sermons (his own happy term) in the Sunday Times makes pleasant reading. Sir Edmund himself would be the last to claim that they are searching essays in criticism. Lightly and attractively they treat of such varied subjects as Lyly's Euphues I," perhaps the later style of Henry James is nearer to it than any other modern example " I) and Mrs. Humphry Ward, the Savile Club and Sir Frederick Treves's essay on the Elephant Man (" the medical man gains an insight into human character which the dramatist might envy. and perhaps this is why doctors have been so maligned by Moliere and Bernard Shaw "). Yet Sir Edmund's style is • curiously heavy and sometimes strangely mixed in its metaphors : " he was the flower of the flock ; but before we crown him, let us consider the evidence."
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