SOURCE: A review of Pope Jacynth and Other Fantastic Tales, in Anthenaeum, Vol. 2, No. 4027, December 31, 1904, p. 903.

In the following essay, the critic offers a negative assessment of the stories in Pope Jacynth and Other Fantastic Tales.

The lady who writes under the pen-name of Vernon Lee has a well-defined literary personality; and these tales are much what those familiar with her work might have expected from her. They belong to that order of tale which has affinities with the literary hybrid called prose-poetry—a form which betrays its hybrid nature by its sterility, its inability to beget vital literary offspring. The poetic affinities of that order of tale are specially evident in this—that instead of the treatment being a vehicle for the tale, the tale is a vehicle for the treatment. We are all familiar with such poems as the 'Isabella,' where Boccaccio's tale is retold...