The gravest and most ubiquitous fault of [The Mask of Apollo] is that stylistic embarrassment which comes from trying to combine a weighty and archaizing tone with the kind of modern colloquialisms which are meant to bring the long-dead to life again. It is easy enough to see how the fault came to be committed, but less easy to excuse it. If all the language used were to be modern—including, presumably, such anachronistic monstrosities as the use of Freudian terminology—then it becomes difficult to excuse the choice of a remote historical period….

But if, on the other hand, the narrator and all the protagonists of a historical novel speak an unmitigated gadzookery how will the reader ever be able to lend them his credulity? They will remain pasteboard figures, in whose fustian conversation and behavior no modern man can be expected to take an interest.

Another...