MASSINGHAM, HAROLD JOHN, ed. Treasury of seventeenth century English verse, from the death of Shakespeare to the Restoration (1616–1660). (Golden treasury ser.) il *$1.50 Macmillan 821.08
(Eng ed 20–10754)
“Mr Massingham has marked out as his claim the most characteristic part of the century in time, and has not excluded any kind except the dramatic. Most of his selections are naturally lyrical, but by no means all; and he has thus been able to find room for at least specimen fruits from the half-wilderness gardens of ‘Pharonnida’ and ‘Cupid and Psyche.’ He has also cast his gathering net unusually wide, and his readers will make acquaintance with authors who will pretty certainly be new to them, such as Thomas Fettiplace and Robert Gomersal. In giving uniform modern spelling throughout Mr Massingham may invite censure from some purists, but certainly not in this place. Whatever may be the case earlier, the printers’ spelling of the mid-seventeenth century is, as he justly says, ‘only externally archaic.’ Half its differences from present use are not uniform and are evidently haphazard. One may not perhaps approve quite so heartily his practice of excluding some beautiful things as ‘too well known.’ The authors are alphabetically arranged.”—Ath
Reviewed by G: Saintsbury
+ Ath p40 Ja 9 ’20 1400w
“A fresh, provocative, beautiful little book. Palgrave’s volume was not a bit better gauged for Palgrave’s time than Mr Massingham’s is for ours. The purest twentieth-century principles are in operation here. Mr Massingham’s notes are lively to the end, though often they are cleverly irrelevant and gloriously slap-dash. It is as if Mr Saintsbury were twenty again.”
+ Nation 110:151 Ja 31 ’20 370w
“The completeness of the book makes it an excellent compendium for any one studying that era, although it is to be feared that many a general reader will be frightfully bored by the stiff artificiality that marks many of the poems, especially after they get past the Elizabethan era.” H. S. Gorman
+ − N Y Times 25:21 Jl 25 ’20 170w