THE WALTER SCOTT PRESS, NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE.
PRESS OPINIONS ON “THE NEW SPIRIT.”
“It is easy to dislike his book, it is possible to dislike it furiously; but the book is so honest, so earnest, so stimulating in its tolerant but convinced unconventionality, that it claims for itself a like sincerity and seriousness in the reader.... Mr. Ellis has produced a book which will be hotly discussed, no doubt, for it is nothing if not initiative, we might almost say revolutionary; but it is not a book to be disregarded.... It has sincerity and it has power; and sincerity and power compel at least attention.”—Speaker.
“Mr. Havelock Ellis has discovered a ‘New Spirit.’ We have read him with care and patience, and we should be sorry to describe it; we only know that it is not intoxicating.”—Scots Observer.
“Welcome is warmly due to this fresh, buoyant, and sincere volume of essays by Mr. Havelock Ellis.... There are parts of the study of Heine which are not unworthy to be named—it is high praise—with Matthew Arnold’s inimitable paper upon that writer, a paper almost as classic as Heine himself.... The last word upon so suggestive and finished a piece of work ought to be one of ungrudging praise.”—Academy.
“Mr. Carlyle described, it seems to us, Mr. Havelock Ellis himself with great exactness in the person of a certain biographer of Voltaire, ‘an inquiring, honest-hearted character, many of whose statements must have begun to astonish even himself.’ Mr. Ellis must be very ‘inquiring,’ for we have seldom met with one who knows so many things that other people do not know.”—Athenæum.
“Each of these essays is a thorough and well-considered piece of work, admirable in information, firm in grasp, stimulating in style, appreciative in matter, and the survey afforded is broad.... It is an altogether unusual work, both for its ambition and for its matter; it brings the reader near to some of the marked ideas of the time.”—Nation.
“The points of the New Spirit are its passion for getting things right in the matter of property and in the matter of true human worth.”—Daily News.