Too frequently the professional historian is not a good scholar because he wholly ignores esthetic considerations. Mr. C. S. Lewis, in his study of allegory and courtly love ["The Allegory of Love"], shows himself to be even more a man of letters than a literary historian. But as a literary historian he suffers from the defect of his qualities. Time and again he deserts his real subject, the history of allegory as a form and courtly love as a sentiment, for long excursions into pure esthetic criticism. He feels it incumbent upon him to indicate all the scattered felicities in even such a poet as William Nevill. Mr. Lewis has tried to rescue something from the dust of each of the long allegories he examines.

Thus "The Allegory of Love" is in reality two books—both excellent, but each vitiating the other. The purely historical study of the...