[The Apothecary's Shop] is an extremely lively, sensitive and sensible collection of critical essays, varying greatly in subject matter and in quantity. Some of the material—"On Not Teaching The Cocktail Party" and "The Use of Poetry" for example—was not really worth reprinting, but what remains reflects a vigorous and wide-ranging mind, and one which detests the vast amount of nonsense in much modern criticism….

Mr. Enright's forthrightness and commonsense approach to literature and criticism come out nicely in the opening essay "Criticism for Criticism's Sake" and in "The Brain-washed Muse: Some Second Thoughts on Tradition" but, engaging as he is here, he is still better, because more positive, in such essays as those on Coriolanus, Wilhelm Meister and "To the Lighthouse or to India?". Personally, I find it refreshing to read a critic who refuses to elevate Coriolanus to the first rank of Shakespearean tragedies, who...