Wakefield_, and, like him, Mr.
Cockburn probably had strong views on the Whistonian doctrine." Altogether
the essay on Catherine Trotter is an admirable example of Mr. Gosse in a
playful mood.

The study of Joseph and Thomas Warton as "two pioneers of romanticism" is
more serious in purpose, and is a scholarly attempt to discover the first
symptoms of romanticism in eighteenth-century literature. Mr. Gosse finds
in _The Enthusiast_, written by Joseph Warton at the age of eighteen, "the
earliest expression of full revolt against the classical attitude which
had been sovereign in all European literature for nearly a century." He
does not pretend that it is a good poem, but "here, for the first time, we
find unwaveringly emphasized and repeated what was entirely new in
literature, the essence of romantic hysteria." It is in Joseph Warton,
according to Mr. Gosse, that we first meet with "the individualist
attitude to nature." Readers of Horace Walpole's letters, however, will
remember still earlier examples of the romantic attitude to nature. But
these were not published for many years afterwards.

The other essays in the book range from the charm of Sterne to the
vivacity of Lady Dorothy Nevill, from a eulogy of Poe to a discussion of
Disraeli as a novelist. The variety, the scholarship, the portraiture of
the book make it a pleasure to read; and, even when Mr. Gosse flatters in
his portraits, his sense of truth impels him to draw the features
correctly, so that the facts break through the praise. The truth is Mr.
Gosse is always doing his best to balance the pleasure of saying the best
with the pleasure of saying the worst. His books are all the more vital
because they bear the stamp of an appreciative and mildly cruel
personality.

XIX.--AN AMERICAN CRITIC: PROFESSOR IRVING BABBITT

It is rather odd that two of the ablest American critics should also be
two of the most unsparing enemies of romanticism in literature. Professor
Babbitt and Mr. Paul Elmer More cannot get over the French Revolution.
They seem to think that the rights of man have poisoned literature. One
suspects that they have their doubts even about the American Revolution;
for there, too, the rights of man were asserted against the lust of power.
It is only fair to Professor Babbitt to say that he does not defend the
lust of power. On the contrary, he damns it, and explains it as the
logical and almost inevitable outcome of the rights of man! Th