+ =N. Y. Times.= 11: 850. D. 8, ’06. 260w.
“It is because these sketches contain so much good matter that their failings are worthy of note. The faults are mainly faults of manner, and it must be admitted that as the excellencies seem for the most part due to French influences, the badnesses are solidly Britannic.”
“He has none of the serious and brooding passion of Mr. Conrad. He sneers at all that he does not understand, whereas the other writer is reverently silent. He postures and swaggers, and, for all his hatred of imperialism, betrays much of the boastful ‘mafficking’ spirit which he repudiates. He falls into mannerisms and catch-words which weary us from their repetition. And yet he has the charm against which all criticism is powerless.”
=Belloc, Hilaire.= Historic Thames. *$6. Dutton.
“Mr. Belloc ... severely avoids the Thames of the pleasure seeker, and deals almost exclusively with the place of the river in the topographical and commercial system of early England, as well as incidentally, but at great length, with the dissolution of the Thames-side monasteries. From this branch of his subject he is lead, by digressions worthy of Victor Hugo, to the family history of the Cromwells. Mr. Belloc writes as an anti-Protestant, and even gives some slight colour to the popular belief that a curse follows the possessors of abbey lands.”—Ath.
“With all its faults of omission ‘The historic Thames’ is a thoughtful and stimulating essay—in the strict usage of the word. The publishers have made a bad mistake in sending out this volume without maps or plans. No good word can be said of the illustrations; many of them are very badly drawn.” W. T. S.
“Mr. Belloc’s letter-press may disturb the ordinary Thames public, and is perhaps too good for its place. The drawings have little or nothing to do with it, and are chiefly of scenes attractive to the artist, without special connexion in his mind with history.”
“In spite of the evident efforts to the contrary he becomes involved in the tangle of the Thames’s history with that of England and ends in a tedious recital of the destruction of the monasteries, which has little to do with his subject.” May Estelle Cook.
“Naturally his book will call down reprobation from certain high quarters, but it can not by any one be denied the qualities of interest and vivacity.”