“We have been so well supplied with the treatises of publicists on the Balkan question that we can afford to be grateful to a writer with so keen an eye and so modest an intention.”
+ Spec. 97: 401. S. 22, ’06. 1350w.
Moore, George. [Lake.] †$1.50. Appleton.
“A dreamlike study of spiritual development.... The priest who in this story lives by the shore of the lake, has, in a moment of religious zeal, driven from his parish a schoolmistress who has fallen into the deadliest sin that a woman can commit in Ireland; he finds when she has gone that her personality has stamped itself upon his heart irrevocably; and the story told is the story of the gradual development of his nature through love of her, and the learning of the lesson that if he is to find the true life that exists somewhere for each of us, he must strip himself of his priestly office and find his soul in the world of men.... Finally ... it becomes inevitable that in order to leave his parish without scandal and hurt to the simple souls dwelling there, he should swim across the lake and allow it to be supposed that he is drowned.... In the moon light of a warm September night he leaves his priestly clothes and his priestly office upon one shore of the lake and swims across it to the other, where he assumes the habit and destiny of a man. This crossing of the Lake, of course, is at once the spirit and allegory of the book.”—Sat. R.
“He has never shown himself a more finished artist in words than in this book.”
+ + Acad. 69: 1200. N. 18, ’05. 380w.
“It is such a theme as was wont to appeal to him, but it is not satisfactory; it is all too cloudy. The form of the book is also difficult; and, indeed, the natural descriptions and the sensitive and vivid style are the only things that can be praised without reserve.”
– + Ath. 1905, 2: 758. D. 2. 610w.
“Mr. Moore, however, has not risen to the level of his opportunities. Compare ‘The lake’ for instance, with Mr. Temple Thurston’s ‘Apple of Eden,’ of which the subject is essentially the same, and you will see at once how far Mr. Moore has fallen from his former high estate.” H. T. P.