2. Literary and Critical Studies

LEITERS IN CANADA: 1950 297 the prairie homesteads (Crystal City, Man., the author, Box 175, 134 pp., ill., $1.50). MARTIN (H. D. ), The rise of Cbiogis Khan and bis conquest of North China; introduction by *OWEN LATTIMORE, ed. by *ELEANOR LATTIMORE (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Press, xviii, 360 pp., $4.75). MARWICK (ALICE), The Honourable Frank Cochrane: a tribute; with a word of appreciation from G. W. YATES (Cochrane, the author, P.O. Box 489,23 pp.). SCOTT (B. A.), Skate with me; drawings by PRANAS LAPE (New York and Toronto, Doubleday, 159 pp., ill., $4.95). URQ.UHART (H. M.), Arthur Currie: the biography of a great Canadian; with a foreword by *Field Marshal JAN CHRISTIAN SMUTS, C.H. (Toronto, Dent, xx, 363 pp., $5). 2. Literary and Critical Studies THE EDITOR AND OTHERS Two volumes which belong in this sub-section are to be reviewed in a later number of the QUARTERLY; they are Rhythm in the Novel by E. K. Brown and The Thought of C. S. Peirce by Thomas A. Goudge. I am indebted to Professor Clarence Tracy of the University of Saskatchewan for the review which follows, of The Infinite Moment and Other Essays in Robert Browning. In The Infinite Moment, Dr. William Raymond, our most active Browning scholar, and formerly Professor of English at Bishop's University, has republished a number of his essays on the work of that poet, along with a survey of Browning scholarship since 1910 which he prepared especially for the volume. The collection is a summingup of a life's work. It includes three of his papers on The Ring and the Book, by means of which he upset received opinion on the genesis of that poem, and announced the discovery of a contemporary Italian manuscript containing an account of the Roman murder which, though not a source, is of great value to the student. His findings in these articles have been generally accepted by scholars. Other essays have possibly not met with the same general agreement; nevertheless , whenever Professor Raymond argues a controversial point, he does so with such clarity and skill that his case cannot be ignored. Through his essays on "Browning and Higher Criticism" and "Browning 's Casuists" he had added much to our knowledge of Browning's intellectual and religious development and of its repercussions on his poetry. Though one may question his wisdom in reprinting essays that have already lived useful lives in the journals, fortunately not all of Professor Raymond's belong to this class. It is a tribute to the vitality of his mind that the best of them are also the most recent. "Our Lady of Bellosguardo," for example, is a charming sketch of Isa Blagden, an American lady who was at the centre of the circle to which the 298 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY Brownings belonged in Florence, and with whom the bereaved poet corresponded regularly for years after his return to England. A great deal of research went into this essay, without marring the serene, pastel-like quality of its style. The volume takes its title from the opening essay, which is also one of the more recent. It too has a freshness of style and outlook that testifies to the vigour of the writer's mind. Fittingly it deals with Browning as a whole and attempts some assessment of his achievement as a poet. Recognizing that the time for a definitive estimate has not yet come, and that his must be tentative, Professor Raymond concerns himself mainly with answering the notorious attacks made on Browning by Santayana and other more recent critics, such as Babbitt, Eliot, and Lucas. He contends that Browning's excellence is precisely that "verve and dash" which his antagonists despised as barbaric. He argues that the supreme passages in the poetry all derive from Browning's intuitive insights and from the latent powers within him that constantly, at least in his great period, broke through the forms and conventions of his own time. But, as aesthetic criticism, the essay is slightly disappointing, perhaps because Professor Raymond has deliberately, but rather strangely, left out of the reckoning certain elements essential for any satisfactory estimate...