Painter and Poet by Chauncey Brewster TinkerReview by: Robert ShaferModern Language Notes, Vol. 56, No. 3 (Mar., 1941), pp. 236-237Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2910567 .

Accessed: 25/06/2014 09:59

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toModern Language Notes.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.111 on Wed, 25 Jun 2014 09:59:04 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

236 MODERN LANGUAGE NOTES, MVARCH, 1941

is a distinct weakness in a number of places where he seeks ultimate causes in fields where his sources are not only secondary but inade- quate. Thus, his account of the courtly love tradition, which is based mainly on Dodd's Courtly Love in Chaucer and Gower (Boston, 1913), and his application of it to the devotion of Eliza- beth's courtiers to her, are extremely weak.

It is an unpleasant task to criticize a book for weakness in the use of secondary sources when it contains so much rare and original material. The liberal use of quotations and a number of facsimiles carry out the Elizabethan spirit, and the appendix con- tains a valuable short-title list of works dedicated, inscribed, or presented to the Queen. With certain reservations, this book will remain the definitive treatment of the part Elizabeth played in firing the imaginations of her poets to celebrate her reign and the glory of their Queen.

KERBY NEILL The Catholic University of America

Painter and Poet, Studies in the Literary Relations of English Painting. The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures for 1937-1938. By CHAUNCEY BREWSTER TINKER. Cambridge: Harvard Uni- versity Press, 1938. Pp. xiv + 195. $3.50.

This book, outside and in, is a source of pleasure to the eye; and the Harvard Press deserves praise for its designing and presswork. There were difficulties for the designer, in that Painter and Poet contains 89 illustrations filling 66 pages, whereas the amount of text is relatively small (barely 130 pages). The problem was solved by use of the same paper for both text and illustrations, and by the inclusion of the pictures in the pagination. These pictures, by Romney, Hogarth, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Blake, Richard Wilson, Turner, and Constable, deserve the integral position they are thus given in the book. Some, of course, are familiar; but as a whole they form a surprisingly fresh, attractive, and valuable exhibition of the poetic strain in English pictorial art of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. They are the fruit of careful search, and of much knowledge, and virtually they are the book.

Of the accompanying lectures it is not easy to speak justly. When the lectures were delivered, the pictures were projected on a screen and Professor Tinker's words formed the commentary. Hence the lectures are actually, in large part, a series of apprecia- tive and descriptive captions. As such, they probably served their immediate purpose well; but this is a method of presentation that cannot be transferred into a printed book. There, the relation be- tween picture and text is inevitably reversed; and, in addition, we

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.111 on Wed, 25 Jun 2014 09:59:04 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

REVIEWS 237

lose the living voice and something of the living personality. Pro- fessor Tinker's taste, urbanity, and freedom from pedantry remain, but these qualities are not in themselves enough to make the lectures fit for print.

We are informed by the publisher that "Professor Tinker con- siders his book a vindication of the layman's right to look at pictures for the subject matter they represent, particularly as illus- trations of characters and events." The words arouse a mild surprise, because they encourage a suspicion that Professor Tinker may have been at a loss how to consider his book. In the Preface he says that his treatment of his subject "was from the beginning meant to be suggestive rather than closely defined "; and in some of the lectures the treatment certainly suggests the author's complete sympathy with the eighteenth-century painters' revolt against this layman's view. The truth is, that though " suggestive " treatment may be engaging, a writer must at least, if only privately and for himself, define closely his subject, and even the subjects within his subject. To take an isolated instance, the chapter on Richard Wilson, which opens better than most with a useful discussion of the word " landscape," ends by giving Professor Tinker away. Throughout the chapter he is at pains to characterize Wilson as " a serene spirit "-" the gentle Wilson," " cool and austere," " troubled by no turbulent passions," "incapable of satire." But Professor Tinker also had in his notes an anecdote, too good to omit, which proves that "Wilson had a sharp wit and a gift of repartee" (p. 134), and was capable of a quick fit of derisive anger. These traits are not reconcilable with the rest of the characterization, but the author is unconscious of a problem. Readers, however, will conclude that desultory chat about Romanticism and Thomson and painting makes an insubstantial meal. And in fact, were it not for the long series of plates, Painter and Poet would be only one more piece of evidence to show why Professor Tinker's services to eighteenth-century studies have been so closely confined to the personal help he has given university students and fellow scholars.

ROBERT SHAFER University of Cincinnati

The Rise of Romantic Hellenism in English Literature, 1732-1786. By BERNARD HERBERT STERN. MIenasha, Wisconsin: George Banta Publishing Company, 1940. Pp. x + 182. $2.25.

Wealthy young noblemen drink " To Grecian Taste and Roman Spirit," sponsor archaeological expeditions, and publish the find- ings in sumptuous folios; travellers record the adventures of their

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.111 on Wed, 25 Jun 2014 09:59:04 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions