The Modern Language Quarterly Volume 6 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1903 Excerpt: ...and the whole resolves itself into an elaborate ex parte pleading. The treatment of Voltaire is equally unconvincing in the opposite direction. We are not prepared to argue that Voltaire deserves a higher place among critics than that here assigned to him, but Professor Saintsbury fails to convince us either that that place is the right place, or that his judgment is based upon the really critical utterances of the critic, any more than in the case of Johnson. Nevertheless, we repeat that even though we should ourselves take a far less enthusiastic view of Johnson's contribution to criticism, and might possibly be inclined to take a more favourable one of Voltaire's, this does not affect the general proposition regarding English and foreign criticism with which we started, and in which we unhesitatingly concur. A certain number of minor points, in which Professor Saintsbury's treatment of his subject appears to us open to criticism, may be mentioned. The tendency to talk round a subject without coming to close quarters with the actual points in dispute, which showed itself here and there in the first volume, again reappears in the treatment of the Gerusahmme controversy. The famous committee of revision, for instance, and the criticism, of a sort, implied thereby, is not so much as mentioned. Something more too might have been said concerning Guarini and the critical warfare to which his work gave rise. The Venaii and the Compendio della poesia tragicornica founded on them are passed over in silence, though Giasone de Nores and Faustino Summo, two of the chief assailants of the Pastor Fido, receive mention. Guarini's writings, nevertheless, are not confined like many to the usual consideration of kinds, but contain historical arguments of some interest. Sev...