Volume 42, Number 17 · November 2, 1995
Keeping the Hard Gemlike Flame
By John Gross
Walter Pater: Lover of Strange Souls
by Denis Donoghue
Knopf, 364 pp., $27.50
Walter Pater published his first book, Studies in the History of the Renaissance, in March 1873, when he was thirty-three. As one of his early reviewers, Emilia Francis Pattison, pointed out, the title created a misleading impression, since there was little in the book that could properly be called history: 'Mr. Pater writes of the Renaissance as if it were a kind of sentimental revolution having no relation to the conditions of the actual world.' Four years later, when the second edition appeared, Pater tacitly acknowledged that she was right by changing the title to The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry, which is what it has remained ever since—although countless readers must have been disappointed, even so, to discover how little guidance Pater offers to his ostensible subject, how far more concerned he was with his own feelings.
Review, 4472 words
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