“The object of this book is to measure the repercussion of the French revolution on the mind of Germany. It is a study of the intellectual ferment in Germany following the fall of the Bastille, of the effect produced by the revolution on the minds of thinkers and men of letters such as Goethe, Schiller, Wieland, Herder, Klopstock, Humboldt, Fichte and Hegel, and of statesmen such as Hardenberg and Stein. Secondarily it outlines the influence of French revolutionary ideas on German institutions.”—Sat R
+ Ath p605 My 7 ’20 1200w + N Y Times p16 Ag 1 ’20 2400w
“The book will enormously enhance the already high esteem in which Mr Gooch is held among historians. Ability in synthetic treatment is allied to entire impartiality and exact knowledge, so that the generalisation necessary to the making of a coherent story neither outweighs nor is sacrificed to completeness and accuracy of detail.”
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“He has produced a work of erudition, which because of the wealth of materials investigated and summarized, as well as the objectivity and clarity of his presentation, becomes the standard book of reference on the subject. No one should lightly undertake the task of reading it, for it is closely packed and assumes much information on political and cultural conditions of the day. Nor has the author succeeded beyond cavil in his synthesis.” C: Seymour
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GOOCH, GEORGE PEABODY. Life of Lord Courtney. il *$7 Macmillan
(Eng ed 20–13567)
“With Lord Courtney there passed away, in the spring of 1918, almost the last survivor of a great tradition. It was the tradition of John Stuart Mill, of Fawcett, of Leslie Stephen, of Henry Sidgwick, the tradition of reason, conscience and liberty.... From this service to reason and conscience it followed that Lord Courtney was a liberal, in that proper sense of the term which is independent of political party. Of imperialism of every kind, economic or other, Lord Courtney was an uncompromising opponent. When the war broke out, Lord Courtney was eighty-one years old. He might well have thought, as others, younger than he, did, that he was exempt from taking part in the battle of opinion at home. But he was driven by his sleepless conscience, even at the height of the storm of violence and hate, to put in his plea for reason and reconciliation.” (Ath) “Mr Gooch allows Courtney to do most of the presentation for himself, by extracts from his correspondence or his speeches or, what comes to very much the same thing, by numerous quotations from the journal kept by Lady Courtney throughout their married life. The book opens with one of its most attractive features, a memoir of his own early days in Cornwall dictated by Courtney in 1901.” (The Times [London] Lit Sup)