The author has converted his lectures, delivered in the famous Lowell course in Boston, into book form with slight revision. His aim is “to show that Italy from the ‘trecento’ down to the end of the eighteenth century gave forth a literature which is great without the contributions of Dante, but which is often neglected and thought of lightly owing to the transcendent genius of that one man. Petrarca, Pulci, Boiardo, Berni, Ariosto, Vittoria Colonna, Michelangelo, Tasso, Marino, and the dramatists Goldoni and Alfieri are among the writers concerning whom Dr. Everett discourses with fine academic appreciation and a charming disregard of modern criticism.” (N. Y. Times).
“His attitude towards his subjects is sympathetic, his appreciation is sincere, his criticisms are just and moderate. It is therefore all the more regrettable that he should have allowed his work to stand disfigured by so many slip-shod, loosely constructed and even absolutely ungrammatical sentences.”
| + + + | Acad. 68: 646. Je. 17, ‘05. 300w. | |
| + + — | Am. J. of Theol. 9: 379. Ap. ‘05. 260w. |
“Dr. Everett’s survey, indeed, embraces only about a dozen names, and treats those for the most part rather sketchily.”
| + — | Ath. 1905, 1: 719. Je. 10. 660w. | |
| + + | Critic. 46: 380. Ap. ‘05. 60w. |
“The work is luminous and vivid in style, and a delight to the instinct of every lover of literature. Eloquent panegyric upon Milton, and many another purple patch revealed in these pages. From the point of view of the scholar, little exception is to be taken to this work. To say that the book is readable is to do it much less than justice.”
| + + | Dial. 38: 49. Ja. 16, ‘05. 700w. |
“A carelessness in the use of language which is often slovenly and sometimes ungrammatical. The most vexatious quality of the book, however, is due to Dr. Everett’s scorn of all methods and opinions save his own. We admit that his views are sometimes refreshingly independent. But his egoism, which is piquant when it wanders away from his subject, is disastrous when he attempts a serious comparison of the Italian poets. Dr. Everett’s short biographies of the poets are generally interesting and clever. His criticisms are erratic, but the copious extracts from Italian poetry with which he illustrates them are very valuable to the general reader.”
| + — — | Ind. 58: 210. Ja. 26, ‘05. 450w. |
“His textual illustrations show him to be not only a translator in the finest sense, but also a poet of broad and subtle imagination and of a most delicate harmonic sensibility. The torch of classical effulgence dropped from the hand of Ticknor, of Longfellow, and of Lowell, he has caught up and illuminates anew what once passed for history. On one point, however, we think the doctor might have made a concession to the moderns as a gentle hint for his own permanency. He might have furnished an index. He is also cruel to kill off the poet Carducci, who at this writing is very much alive.”