Literary Criticises in . the Renaissance. By Joel Elias Sprin-
garn. (Macmillan and Co. 6s.) — This scholarly, carefully written, and admirably condensed volume belongs to a series known as the "Columbia University Studies in Literature," which speaks well for both the present and the future of the American Universities as the centres and seed-plots of culture. Mr. Springarn takes Italy and Italian criticism as his starting points. He shows how by the middle of the sixteenth century there had grown up in Italy an almost complete body of poetic rules and theories. This passed into France, England, Spain, Germany, Portugal, and Holland ; so that by the beginning of the seventeenth century there was a common body of Renaissance doctrine throughout Western Europe. "Each country gave this system a national cast of its own ; but the form which it received in France ultimately triumphed, and modern classicism therefore represents the supremacy of the French phase or version of Renaissance Aristotelianism." The Italian portion of the book is the most elaborate ; but the sections dealing with both France and England are of great value and interest,—more especially such chapters as "The Evolution of English Criticism from Ascham to Milton," "The General Theory of Poetry in the Elizabethan Age," and "Classical Elements in Elizabethan Critieisra" Mr. Springarn shows in every page of his work the almost enormous extent of his erudition. But he writes lucidly and simply ; his learning never appears tedious. His volume is the handbook of the subject of which it treats.
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