Essays In Little

The book: It surely must be a delight to Mr. Andrew Lang to write off-hand essays like these. Suggestive rather than profound, dainty, and exhibiting subtle skill in the use of words, they seem more like the pastime than the serious employment of a literary man. There is a kind of joyousness and spontaneity about them that is not in accord with our ideas of work. It seems so easy a thing for Mr. Lang to have written them that we are ready to imagine them the result of spare-minute occupation, of " between whiles." Nothing could be more engaging than the pages about certain authors and subjects dear to the essayist.
Conspicuous both for their charm and their ardent appreciation are the papers on Alexandre Dumas, Thackeray, Dickens, the poems of Sir Walter Scott, Homer and the study of Greek, and the Sagas. Whether Mr. Lang is a judicial critic of writers with whom he is not in sympathy may be questionable. Probably he would find it difficult to put himself in an attitude to do full justice to the kind of story not to his own personal taste.
In the present volume he tries to be severe with Charles Kingsley, but relents, and takes off the edge of disapproval, ending with the generous admission, that " we should read Kingsley; we must not criticise him." So of Mr. Lang; we must enjoy his grace of expression, his almost boyish enthusiasm and freshness, his geniality, and the sweet and wholesome atmosphere we are always conscious of. He has a way with words that is alluring; and the personality of which we have so many glimpses adds the finishing charm.
This book is annotated with a rare extensive biographical sketch of the author, Andrew Lang, written by Sir Edmund Gosse, CB, a contemporary poet and writer. Contents: Preface Alexandre Dumas Mr.