“Mr Massingham’s essays are delivered ex-cathedra and in a style both heavy and dense. He is a lover of dust covered books, but he seems widely read rather than discriminating, and though he ranges all the way from Richard de Bury’s ‘Philobiblon’ to John Gould Fletcher, he hardly does much to illuminate the names which he mentions. He declares many enthusiasms but lacks the gift of differentiation.”
− + Nation 111:162 Ag 7 ’20 180w
“It is a pity that Mr Massingham has chosen to hide this wise, witty, companionably learned and most comforting book under the bushel of a title which not only gives no hint of its quality, but is actually dry and forbidding. Of the value of good literature, of the qualities which constitute it and of the laws of its making, he says some of the wisest, most pertinent, things written in a long day.” R: Le Gallienne
+ N Y Times p7 Ag 8 ’20 2650w
“The word which fits his style exactly is one of the best adjectives in our language which the language is guilty of criminal negligence in permitting itself gradually to lose—the word ‘lusty.’ If it were dead instead of merely decaying, it might be recalled to life by the easy, careless, rushing vigor of Mr Massingham’s undaunted prose.”
+ − Review 3:172 Ag 25 ’20 360w
“Mr Massingham’s attacks on his own age, sharp, dipped in bitterness, aimed with truth though they are, do not really touch the monster. Bad though the age may be, he is too impatient and petulant with it; and he is divided in his desires.”
+ − Sat R 129:232 Mr 6 ’20 1050w Springf’d Republican p8 Jl 10 ’20 40w
“Treating his work as art, susceptible to form, even in the rather strained sense of that word which he adopts, we find it deficient in that very quality, and especially in that element of form, tranquillity, upon which he so insists.”
+ − The Times [London] Lit Sup p30 Ja 15 ’20 1300w