7–38237.
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Children and birds are brought into close sympathy here. The author does not give detailed descriptions and tabulated facts, but a record “of the doings of some children who were eager to know; together with a few hints upon the migrations, winter feeding, and protection of some of our common birds and the stories of their lives, that may lead both teacher and pupil to more detailed study when opportunity offers.”
Wright, Thomas.Life of Walter Pater. 2v. *$6.50. Putnam.
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“In the main, it avoids the proportion of literary exposition, criticism, and general biography already so thoroughly dealt with in the biographies of Pater written by A. C. Benson and Ferris Greenslet and strives to be familiarly subjective rather than personally and intimately objective. Much of the material employed has been derived from school-fellows, pupils, and colleagues, some of whom speak with questionable freedom.”—N. Y. Times.
“What evil angel—what bat—inspired him to choose a man whose mind and character he was totally incapable of understanding, and then to patronise him?”
“The book contains a good deal of new material, especially in the account given of the literary relations between Pater and Oscar Wilde. Mr. Benson’s ‘Walter Pater’ ... was more satisfactory to Pater’s friends than is the present venture.”
“This is the most absurd of his absurdities; the chief, and let us hope, the last of his biographical ineptitudes.” H. W. Boynton.
“If his workmanlike methods are not exactly those of previous writers who have rhapsodized on the life and genius of Pater, the difference is not altogether one to be regretted. The richness of illustrative and sometimes not too closely relevant matter more than once comes very near to being padding. The footnotes are superfluously and tiresomely numerous.” Percy F. Bicknell.
“It is equally distinguished for failure to penetrate the character of the man and pitiful in capacity to appreciate the excellence of his work.” Edward Clark Marsh.
“This is pretty nearly everything a self-respecting biography ought not to be.”
“Mr. Benson and Mr. Greenslet are at any rate critics of taste and culture: and not all the mass of new facts accumulated by Mr. Wright can make up for his entire lack which he here displays of the interpretative gift and of any distinction either in thought or in style.”
“It is, in short the failure of the ‘Boswellian’ method in biography when applied by a man who is not a Boswell to a subject not a Johnson.”
“Mr. Wright’s book is, in all respects, for the multitude of readers, a straightforward, unimaginative narrative of facts, big and little, and chronicle of gossip concerning a remarkable man about whom the multitude of readers has, hitherto, known very little.”
“The biographer places too great a reliance upon the cumulative effect of unimportant conversations and recollections, and his anxiety to see Pater through the eyes of certain of his early friends promotes a sense of uneasiness in the reader lest there should be another side to many of these stories.” Thomas Walsh.
“Some services he has undoubtedly rendered.” A. I. du P. Coleman.
“If we took his work seriously at all, we should have to say much harder things about it. As it is, he is just an irritation. We want him out of the way.”
Wright, Wilmer Cave.Short history of Greek literature from Homer to Julian. *$1.50. Am. bk.
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A book for the reader who believes that he cannot appreciate literature unless he can relate the masterpieces to the types set, once for all, by the Greeks; and also for the student who in the second or third year at college desires a rapid survey of the whole field of Greek literature.
Wrixon, Sir Henry John.Pattern nation. *$1. Macmillan.
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The factors in the problem which Sir Henry Wrixon discusses are stated in the following: “The problem [of the day] is, What will the poor do with the rich? It arises when on the political side of life, lawful government of the majority of the people becomes an established fact in vindication of the principle that men are equal; while the industrial and social side of life is still left to be controlled by methods that have for their foundation the fact that men are unequal and that their rewards in life are to be unequal also.” His book answers the question raised in this statement.
“The facts and arguments adduced by Sir Henry Wrixon are weighty. They are presented with an earnestness which commands attention.”
“The true merit of a volume which in its 172 pages contains more thought and more wisdom than is often to be found in books of tenfold its size, is that it suggests ideas which ought to arrest the attention of the whole English people, whether living in the United Kingdom, or in the United States.”
“The essay is valuable as a reflection of a phase of opinion in England, if not very convincing as an argument.”
“Is a little book of great merit.”
Wyld, Henry Cecil Kennedy.Historical study of the mother tongue: an introduction to philological method. *$2. Dutton.
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A purely technical work designed as a textbook for students of philology. “It contains a large amount of information on the history of the language, the facts of comparative grammar bearing on its external relations, and the nature of the causes that operate in the development of language in general.” (Ath.)
“To many teachers of the classics it will be a matter of great regret that an introduction as clear, accurate, scientific, and complete as this has not yet been written for the young student of the classical languages.” A. L. Mayhew.
“One great merit of the work consists in the fullness and lucidity with which it explains the reasons for conclusions that are too often presented dogmatically. Although on some points we consider Prof. Wyld’s views rather one-sided, we have no hesitation in cordially recommending his book.”
“A book such as has long been needed by teachers both in Great Britain and in America. The indexes, prepared by Miss Irene Williams, are admirably thorough and full.”
“It is full of specific fact and observation, drawn from the stores of a wide and sound scholarship. It is, however, in the theories and principles set forth in the book ... that its main interest lies. The reader will not always agree with the author, but his own opinions are pretty certain to undergo some modifications before he has heard him thru.” George Philip Krapp.
“This is an excellent work for post-graduate students in the Germanic languages—especially, of course, English—to supplement the usual courses in historical grammar.”
“Mr. Wyld has added an excellent bibliography and an equally good index.”
Wyllarde, Dolf.As ye have sown. †$1.50. Lane.
The author’s thesis “seems to be that the British aristocracy has been bred in idleness and nursed in vice for generations until its men are gamblers and roués by instinct, its women unspeakable things clad in scale-like sequins and triply armed with brazen conceit, lewdness and loudness. In contrast, she draws a flattering portrait of the ‘Great middle class’ of England.... A beautiful young woman, Patricia Mornington, wanders into the story and into the fast society, where she finds herself about as much at home as an angel in Tophet or an ascension lily in a foundry furnace.” (Ind.)
“This is a brilliant and convincing picture of society life among the members of the British aristocracy.”
“She shows a less sure touch, in depicting the routine of English suburban homes than in her former vivid sketches of military and colonial life; and she has not succeeded in the task—a difficult one, admittedly—of endowing virtue in the person of her heroine with fascinations exceeding those proper to vice.”
“We must confess to a doubt concerning the open indecency of the talk at the dinner tables in ‘As ye have sown.’”
“The intention of the novel is no doubt good, but why does the author forget this wholesome tenet, and insist that her reader shall ‘know of the bad?’”
Wyllie, M. A.Norway and its fjords. *$2. Pott.
A “thirty-day scheduled, beaten-track survey of the Norwegian coast” described by Mrs. Wyllie and pictured by W. L. Wyllie.
“As a monthly tourists’ log, the book is good enough to make the reader disappointed that it is not better.”
“It is a pity that the book has not been revised—and abridged—by a competent hand; for when its author steps down from the lecturer’s chair, she relates the incidents of travel with spirit, and shows excellent taste in her description of scenery.”
“This is one of the literary guide-books which in recent years have been prepared by persons of culture and observative powers to supplement the mechanical information contained in the Baedeker series and their like.”
“What with the chatty intimate style, the excellent descriptions, and the numerous illustrations of this book, one feels on reading it almost as though he had been to Norway.”
Wymore, Mary Isabel.Adrienne, and other poems. $1. Badger, R. G.
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“Adrienne,” a tale of the sea, is the first of a group of poems which are arranged in the order in which they were written, “thus making,” the author says, “an unbroken chain in the development of an idea.”
Wyndham, George.Ronsard and La Pleiade: with selections from their poetry and some translations in original metres. $2. Macmillan.
An introductory essay tells the story of Ronsard and the Pleiad and shows how French and English literature were influenced by the school; then come the “selections,” which contain the best of Ronsard, Du Bellay and lesser folk; the volume concludes with sixty pages of translations of lyric poetry and sonnets in original metres.
“Mr. Wyndham is well fitted for the task. He has caught the spirit of Elizabethan England, and written admirably and with insight of its greatest poetry. The necessary compression of treatment leaves us in some hesitation as to whether the author has not assumed a great many things on very questionable authority.”
“Mr. Wyndham has felt, not only the importance but especially the grace of Ronsard and his school; and he shows, with delicacy of sentiment, how that grace pervaded their lives no less than their works.”
“His translations are faithful.”
“He shows us the astonishing fact that it is possible to be a politician and yet to have the instinct, much even of the craft, of the poet. Mr. Wyndham writes sharply and emphatically, not lingering by the way, and often flashing a rapid illumination as he goes. Here and there his lines creak or cloud.” Arthur Symons.
“The selection is admirably done; the introduction is adequate, though we are always a little uneasy in reading Mr. Wyndham’s prose. He is apt to be too luscious for human nature’s daily food, and he has a wearing habit of using no substantive without several epithets attached.”