“Mr. Benson thus formulates his object in the present volume: “(1) I have given a simple narrative of the life of Tennyson, with a sketch of his temperament, character, ideals, and beliefs; (2) I have tried from his own words and writings to indicate what I believe to have been his view of the poetical life and character; (3) I have attempted to touch the chief characteristics of his art from the technical point of view, here again as far as possible using his own recorded words.””
“A quiet sympathy, a genial appreciation, pervades the book and makes it most enjoyable, even inspiring, reading.”
“Few readers, indeed, one would say, can read the volume without deriving from it both a clearer and a higher estimate of its subject than they had before.”
+ =N. Y. Times.= 12: 726. N. 16, ’07. 650w.
* =Benson, Arthur C.= Altar fire. **$1.50. Putnam.
Wholly reflective “this volume contains, in the form of a friend’s diary, Mr. Benson’s conclusions upon many things, from the doctrine of the atonement to the Browning letters, but chiefly on the processes of personal religious life.” (Ind.)
“One feels there is a message, but hardly formed and loosely articulated and lacking the virile note. One cannot but wish the book a larger reading than its somber monotony will invite.”
“To his usual characteristics, with which the public is well acquainted by this time, his new volumes add a rather unexpected extension of scope.”
“This generation can hardly have too many books of this temper put into its hands.”
“As an artistic whole ‘The altar fire’ suffers from the use of too ambitious a scene. The book is sure of a large and respectful public; but the remnant of reactionaries, the classical people whose eyes have been dazzled by gazing upon the sun, will still see patent blots in Mr. Benson’s work—if indeed it is Mr. Benson and not the mask which comes between.”
+ − =Sat. R.= 104: sup. 5. N. 16, ’07. 980w.
=Benson, Arthur C.= Beside still waters. **$1.25. Putnam.
“Meditations and recollections of a man who, after a busy life, settles down into a kind of epicurean seclusion from the world. ‘He found a small, picturesque, irregularly-built house crushed in between the road and the river, which, in fact, dipped its very feet in the stream.’... Could a better lodge be found for a recluse who likes to season his days of solitude with an occasional dinner in Hall with his old college friends! And presently the college takes him back into its fold, while the house by the waters is kept as a place of retreat and quiet work.”—Nation.