Word: herford
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...Beatrice Herford, the English monologuist, will give a performance Wednesday evening, March 21, at 8.15 o'clock, in Paine Hall of the Music Building for the benefit of the Cambridge chapter of the MacDowell Colony League. The program will include satires on English and American types such as "An English Train Sketch," and "An American Shop Girl...
...prosaic life is as unconventional as "poetic rapture" would be in the pecadilloes of George Babbitt. In an attempt of fit Wordsworth into the poetic niche of the normally abnormal. Professor Read finds in the key to the true Wordsworth, the well of his poetic emotion. Professor Herford, on the other hand, looks upon the life of the poet with the cold, green eye of pedantic scholarship. He manages to maintain his equilibrium as far as Wordsworth's sex life is concerned, but his contributions as a critic are as negligible as they are traditional...
Fortunately, neither one of these books is a Ludwigogram, so it is quite possible to read either with some profit Professor Herford, true to the traditions of scholarship, bases his work chiefly on Professor de Selincourt's edition of "The Prelude". His criticism of Wordsworth as a poet rests on the changes that the poet made at various times on his text. He willingly admits that the efforts of Professors Harper and Legouis in exposing Wordsworth's relations with Annette make it necessary for a new "explanation." Keenly aware of the sensational tendencies of his own century, Professor Herford makes...
...position of Professor Read that the association with Annette was the one incident in the life of Wordsworth in which he showed his real nature seems less than probable. "The Prelude", which Professor Herford takes as his source of information for the life of the poet is, according to Mr. Read, "a deliberate mask. It is an idealisation of the poet's life, not the reality. To show what the reality was--that is my fist purpose...
Both of these books fall short of making any contribution to the appreciation of the poetry of Wordsworth. Professor Herford is frequently dull, and never says anything that has not been said many times before. The work of Professor Read studies the subject from a new angle, but in the final analysis, his study has magnified one small aspect of Wordswroth's life so far beyond its correct proportion that his conclusions are meaningless. It is not so important to dissect. Wordsworth under the eyes of modern psychology as it is to attempt a tolerant and cogent understanding...