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Rating: 
Summary: I hope they aren't still using this as a teaching aid
Review: Confession: when I was a wee boy, I used Sampson's History as a sort of Rough Guide to Literature, mainly by virtue of its dizzying completeness. If Sampson really read all this stuff - and we're talking about thousands of writers from the Anglo-Saxons to 1941 - it's a wonder he ever had time to write anything. Although the book was written at a time when FR Leavis was starting to shift into top gear, you wouldn't know it. Sampson is an almost perfect example of old-style, Quiller-Couchian, terminally liberal-ideological blather. Although he appears to be making judgments about the writers he discusses, he's not really; he's just presenting them all in the happiest possible light. So Shakespeare is praised for his human variety and largeness of temper, and Milton is praised for being sure of himself and a strong critic. Tennyson is good because he's so swoony and mellifluous, Browning is good because he's so energetic and chatty. And so on. He only starts to bristle when the writing gets more self-consciously Modern; Joyce is rapped for being funny without being "genial", Lawrence is damned because he was a good writer spoiled by having so many ideas. With women he's never less than a perfect gentleman, although don't expect him to be elevating Aphra Behn to quite the top of the tree. Likewise with anyone Scottish, Irish, Welsh or otherwise Colonial. In general, Sampson has one rule: if it's famous it must be good. He's willing to write off the once enormously popular Victorian poet Martin Farquhar Tupper (who lent his name to the main character in the sitcom "Dream On", trivia fans) because Tupper is long since forgotten. He lacks the nerve to write off recently dead writers of comparable mediocrity, because they were still respected at the time of writing. Sampson's dogged adherence to sweetness and light eventually cloud the reader's brain like a scented fog. His energy was formidable; his erudition is undeniable; his courage and intelligence are featherweight. If you ever wondered why literary criticism had to start getting spiky and radical, here's the reason. Don't get me wrong. It's quite a nice book to curl up with if you have a migraine. But then, you're probably better off flat on your back in a dark room.
Rating:
Summary: I hope they aren't still using this as a teaching aid
Review: Confession: when I was a wee boy, I used Sampson's History as a sort of Rough Guide to Literature, mainly by virtue of its dizzying completeness. If Sampson really read all this stuff - and we're talking about thousands of writers from the Anglo-Saxons to 1941 - it's a wonder he ever had time to write anything. Although the book was written at a time when FR Leavis was starting to shift into top gear, you wouldn't know it. Sampson is an almost perfect example of old-style, Quiller-Couchian, terminally liberal-ideological blather. Although he appears to be making judgments about the writers he discusses, he's not really; he's just presenting them all in the happiest possible light. So Shakespeare is praised for his human variety and largeness of temper, and Milton is praised for being sure of himself and a strong critic. Tennyson is good because he's so swoony and mellifluous, Browning is good because he's so energetic and chatty. And so on. He only starts to bristle when the writing gets more self-consciously Modern; Joyce is rapped for being funny without being "genial", Lawrence is damned because he was a good writer spoiled by having so many ideas. With women he's never less than a perfect gentleman, although don't expect him to be elevating Aphra Behn to quite the top of the tree. Likewise with anyone Scottish, Irish, Welsh or otherwise Colonial. In general, Sampson has one rule: if it's famous it must be good. He's willing to write off the once enormously popular Victorian poet Martin Farquhar Tupper (who lent his name to the main character in the sitcom "Dream On", trivia fans) because Tupper is long since forgotten. He lacks the nerve to write off recently dead writers of comparable mediocrity, because they were still respected at the time of writing. Sampson's dogged adherence to sweetness and light eventually cloud the reader's brain like a scented fog. His energy was formidable; his erudition is undeniable; his courage and intelligence are featherweight. If you ever wondered why literary criticism had to start getting spiky and radical, here's the reason. Don't get me wrong. It's quite a nice book to curl up with if you have a migraine. But then, you're probably better off flat on your back in a dark room.
Rating: 
Summary: a comic masterpiece
Review: The previous reviewer was I think a touch hard on George, so I feel compelled to defend the great man's honor, even though nobody is ever likely to read this review (judging from the book's current Amazon.com ranking -- 700,000 or so). Lets get a few things right out in the open. This book, though originally conceived as a serious attempt to provide a concise history of English letters, no longer remains viable as literary criticism. It is ceaselessly crotchety, absolutely conventional, consistently moralistic in its tone, and unwaveringly English in manner and style. It is also fantastically old-fashioned in every way imaginable. Sampson is scandalized by TS Eliot's nihilism. Joyce, to Sampson, is a flash in the pan and, moreover, unreadable. Ok, then, if Sampson's opinions are ridiculously out of date and his tastes conservative by Victorian standards, why go out of your way to hunt down this tome? One reason is because George Sampson has read everything ever written in the English language up to 1935 or so. This, if you think about it, is extremely funny. He has read the complete works of, for instance, George Wither (1588-1677). (His biographical sketch of Wither is hilariously condensed: "He had a stormy life"). He has an intimate knowledge of the educational reforms advocated by Richard Mulcaster in his two legendary tracts "Positions" (1589) and "The First Part of The Elementarie" (1582). Also, Sampson can dismiss a minor author (or a minor work of a major author) with an abruptness which is laugh-out-loud funny. Here some poor nobleman, probably a person extremely proud of his literary gifts in his own lifetime, is mentioned in passing as being "intrinsically unimportant", there a lifetime's exertions are described as "infinitely mediocore". Thomas D'urfey is summoned from the dusty shelves of Cambridge's libraries only to be accounted "a man of very slender talent"; John Crowne (died 1680) is revived from darkest obscurity to be treated thus: "very little is known [about him] or need be known", and there was Thomas Rhymer (1641-1713) "whose criticism of Shakespeare ... achieves the depths of ineptitude". Colley Cibber's laureate odes "no longer trouble us", just as Thomas Southerne's "numerous unimportant comedies ... need not be named". Richard Glover's (1712-85) "'great' Miltonic performances" will "never be read again, save by the hardier students of poetry", and as for Aphra Behn "it is idle to pretend that [her] plays have great merit". (Oh it's not all gloomy -- here's high praise for John Parkinson an "ardent botanist and lover of flowers" whose masterpiece "Paradisi in sole Paradisus terrestris, or a garden of all sorts of pleasant flowers which our English ayre will permitt to be noursed up: with a kitchen garden ... and an orchard" deserves to live for the "excellent pun" made upon his name in the title page: " 'Paradisius-in-Sole' being 'Park-in-sun'". A fine pun indeed!) So many men of letters are dealt with in this manner that one begins to wonder (around the 16th century or so, with over 500 pages to read) whether Sampson is going to run dry of dismissive phrases. He doesn't! He is endlessly creative in this respect and that -- THAT -- is what secures Sampson's reputation, his intrinsic importance, in the history of literary crticism. That is also why the previous (and clearly minor) reviewer was so completely off-base, painting savage Sampson as some sort of literary polyanna, which is absurd. Sampson is nothing if not consisently prickly with the "great" ones and downright brutal with lesser authors. Oh, and I'd be curious to know if anyone ever stumbles upon this review.
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