+ − Dial 69:321 S ’20 80w
“Mr Mordell has brought together a surprising number of uncollected essays and reviews by Lowell. What is even more surprising in a collection of this kind is that it reveals its author at his best. If Lowell has little to offer a generation which, like ours, expects from literature the very bread of life, he has virtues our contemporary criticism singularly lacks. He has the judgment we gladly dispense with and the verbal felicity we despise, for the lack of which the future will despise and dispense with most of us.”
+ − Freeman 1:357 Je 23 ’20 1050w
“Throughout the book, as generally in Lowell, are paragraphs, sometimes pages, notable for their beauty, vision, wit, and eminently quotable.”
+ Nation 111:191 Ag 14 ’20 470w
Reviewed by Brander Matthews
+ N Y Times 25:319 Je 20 ’20 2450w
“Lowell’s abstract reasoning on literature is highly abstract and highly succinct, and its promises for the eye or the palate are not always redeemed in the intellectual stomach. The reviews of contemporaries are very urbane, very judicious, rather measured, rather distant, a little formal.”
+ − Review 3:111 Ag 4 ’20 300w
“The mingled wisdom and humor of Lowell are apparent everywhere.”