John Drinkwater Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Charles Lewis Hind

Critical Essay by Charles Lewis Hind

SOURCE: "John Drinkwater," in Authors and I, John Lane Company, 1921, pp. 86-90.

In the following excerpt, Hind praises Drinkwater's poetry and his play Abraham Lincoln.

There must be many dramatic authors who, in face of the success of Abraham Lincoln: a Play, are saying to themselves, "Why did I not think of this as a subject, why did not I write a play on Abraham Lincoln, why should an Englishman do it?" These be mysteries. Yet are they? Did not an Englishman, Lord Bryce, write "The American Commonwealth," which eminent Americans have called "the best treatise on American government?" Is it not because distance and aloofness from a subject give clearness and simplicity of vision? The man on a hilltop looking down upon a wood can write a better account of it than the man who is plodding through the undergrowth. The walker sees the trees; the man on...
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