By Miss Repplier.
BOOKS AND MEN. 16mo, gilt top, $1.25.
POINTS OF VIEW. 16mo, gilt top, $1.25.
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.
Boston and New York.
POINTS OF VIEW
BY
AGNES REPPLIER
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1891
Copyright, 1891,
By AGNES REPPLIER.
All rights reserved.
The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.
CONTENTS.
| PAGE | |
| A Plea for Humor | 1 |
| English Love-Songs | 30 |
| Books that have Hindered Me | 64 |
| Literary Shibboleths | 78 |
| Fiction in the Pulpit | 105 |
| Pleasure: a Heresy | 136 |
| Esoteric Economy | 166 |
| Scanderbeg | 189 |
| English Railway Fiction | 209 |
“Scanderbeg” is reprinted from “The Catholic World”by permission of the publishers.
1
POINTS OF VIEW.
A PLEA FOR HUMOR.
More than half a dozen years have passedsince Mr. Andrew Lang, startled for once outof his customary light-heartedness, asked himself,and his readers, and the ghost of CharlesDickens—all three powerless to answer—whetherthe dismal seriousness of the presentday was going to last forever; or whether,when the great wave of earnestness had rippledover our heads, we would pluck up heart to bemerry and, if needs be, foolish once again.Not that mirth and folly are in any degreesynonymous, as of old; for the merry fool,too scarce, alas, even in the times when Jackeof Dover hunted for him in the highways, hassince then grown t