SOURCE: A review of Heart of Man by George Edward Woodberry, in Poet-Lore, Vol. XII, No. 4, 1900, pp. 586-96.

In the following excerpt, the critic praises Heart of Man.

One of the most encouraging signs of the literary times is the coming into increased favor of the thoughtful essay among both writers and readers. There are enchanted realms of intellectual activity—who will deny it?—that cannot reach adequate expression in any form but that of the essay; neither in poetry nor in the novel, and most certainly not in so-called literature of knowledge. The essay is, indeed, pre-eminently the medium for the unfolding of the intricate mazes of creative thought, fitting itself to every whim of the fancy, to every profoundest feeling of the soul, as a silken glove to the delicate traceries or the deep lines of the human hand.

Is it not this intimacy of the...