Jeffrey Wallen - Alive in the Grave: Walter Pater's Renaissance - ELH 66:4 ELH 66.4 (1999) 1033-1051 Alive in the Grave: Walter Pater's Renaissance Jeffrey Wallen The historical training of our critics prevents their having an influence in the true sense -- an influence on life and action. --Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life In 1873, when Walter Pater's first book was published, it bore the title Studies in the History of the Renaissance. When the second edition was published four years later, the title was changed to The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry. It is not surprising that the word "History" drops out, since there is so little conventional history in this book. One of the book's earliest reviewers, a friend of Pater's, Mrs. Pattison (Emilia Frances Strong), remarked: The title is misleading. The historical element is precisely that which is most wanting, and its absence makes the weak place of the whole book. . . . the work is in no wise a contribution to the history of the Renaissance. For instead of approaching the subject, whether Art or Literature, by the true scientific method, through the life of the time of which it was an outcome, Mr. Pater prefers in each instance to detach it wholly from its surroundings, to suspend it isolated before him, as if it were a kind of air-plant independent of ordinary sources of nourishment. The consequence is that he loses a great deal of the meaning of the very...