| + − | Sat. R. 102: 304. S. 8, ’06. 1460w. |
“Mr. Davidson’s fault is that he is inclined at times to torture his fancy into conceits. He can draw wonderful little vignettes of landscape; but he can also describe nature in a way so painfully ‘literary’ that our teeth are set on edge. Colour, imagination, and fire are rarely absent from his lines, and above all he has the singer’s supreme gift of the infallible ear.”
| + − | Spec. 97: 296. S. 1, ’06. 340w. |
Davidson, Thomas. Philosophy of Goethe’s Faust; ed. by Charles M. Bakewell. *60c. Ginn.
6–45070.
Mr. Davidson tells in these six lectures what the poem has come to mean to him, and has sought to lay bare its “philosophical or ethical skeleton.” Speaking of the poem, he says: “Its content, I believe, is the entire spiritual movement toward individual emancipation, composed of the Teutonic reformation and the Italian Renaissance in all their history, scope, and consequences.”
“The merit of the book is that it presents an individual point of view, and is not merely a gathering from the opinions of previous critics and commentators; while its defects arise, to some extent at least, from this very quality of independence. However, many of Mr. Davidson’s ideas are interesting, and some of his remarks on single passages are really thoughtful and illuminating, although his work, taken in its entirety, is, we think more acceptable as an exposition of his own philosophy than of Goethe’s.”
| + − | Ath. 1907, 2: 153. Ag. 10. 390w. |
“The book is too slight to deal thoroughly with ‘Faust’ or its philosophy, and many a reader will be more interested in what Mr. Davidson betrays of his own opinions than in what he says about Goethe’s.” G. Santayana.