t GREATNESS IN LITERATURE.
Greatness in Literature, and other Papers. By W. P. Trent. (George G. Harrap and Co. 5s.)—Professor Trent, of Columbia University, the author of a useful history of American literature, hero presents the many readers he has made with a volume of literary papers—or, rather, papers on literature—which, being neither too superficial nor too profound, stand in spirit and temper midway between the essays of Matthew Arnold and the " thoughts " of "A. K. H. B." On the one hand, Professor Trent makes few mistakes, in the sense of deviations from the judgments of common-sense. On the other hand, he occasionally falls into a rather exasperating "thinness," as when he comes to such a "conclusion" as this :—" He who loves books truly is by that fact enfranchised ; he becomes a full citizen of the most ideal of all republics, the republic of thought and feeling." As a critic he is not to be compared, we shall not say with such American writers of the past as Emerson, Lowell, and Thoreau—Thoreau, that is to say, at his best—but with a contemporary writer like Mr. W. C. Brownell. Professor Trent's essays may best be described as good and brief popular lectures of the comfortable, comforting, and not too subtle kind on such subjects as " Greatness in Literature," "The Love of Poetry," "Literature and Science," and "Criticism and Faith." They are transparently sincere, and more than ordinarily suggestive.
Previous page
