+ Dial 69:666 D ’20 120w
“In spite of a treatise as heavy-handed as any ever inflicted by pretentious and empty shoptalk the illustrations of the sculptor’s art still interest and entrance. It is characteristically absurd that a public which does not buy a sculptor’s work should purchase a comparatively expensive book about him in which none of his spirit lives and which, while it contains his apotheosis as a divinity, contains still more the apotheosis of up-to-date studio and café commonplace.”
− + N Y Evening Post p7 D 4 ’20 1200w N Y Times p9 D 26 ’20 340w
“If we gather anything from it all, it is a general impression that most people who interest themselves in the arts are fools, and that Mr Van Dieren has tried to say so in a hundred and thirty pages with a persistent implication that he is not one of them. As for Mr Epstein, if we wish to add to our knowledge of him, we must look at the fifty plates considerately separated from the text at the end of the book.”
− + The Times [London] Lit Sup p349 Je 3 ’20 1550w
VAN DOREN, MARK. Poetry of John Dryden. *$3 Harcourt 821
20–19675
“This is an effort to brighten the most neglected side of the greatest neglected English poet. There is some novelty, I hope, in a treatment on an extended and more or less enthusiastic scale of Dryden’s non-dramatic verse as a body, with attention to the celebrator, the satirist, the journalist, the singer, and the story-teller all together.” (Preface) The contents are: The making of the poet; False lights; The true fire; The occasional poet; The journalist in verse; The lyric poet; The narrative poet; Reputation; conclusion; Appendix; Index.
“His study of a great poet and a great dramatist is a singular mingling of contradictions and it is hardly necessary as an introduction to a poet who needs no introduction.” E. F. Edgett