Search Results

“... Nine years ago Herbert Tucker wrote an excellent first book, Browning’s Beginnings; like many first books it gave the impression of being a labour of love. Tucker’s second is a tremendous disappointment. It has all the inflated idea of itself that the title suggests. Browning’s Beginnings was short, keen and suggestive ...”

“... the same creature as before. The ‘Whig Interpretation of History’ is a case in point. Herbert Butterfield slew it in 1931, and here come John Pocock and Jonathan Clark to slay it again. There is next to nothing in common between them, save their opposition to the Whig Interpretation and its offspring: but it is that opposition which provides both ...”

“... another, without any straining for effect. At the funeral of a brother-in-law some months later, Herbert and Raleigh – in opposite registers, disinflationary and grandiloquent – come to mind with equally natural ease. The erudition informs, but never clutters the action; distinct from the intellectuality of A Dance but related to it, another stumbling ...”