DEAN INGE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 149, 26 June 1934, Page 6

DEAN INGE.

PHILOSOPHER AND ESSAYIST. (To the Editor.) Although your correspondent Herbert Mulvihill expresses a belief that Dean Inge is "a shallow reasoner," may I hope that your courtesy will allow me, a person of no importance, ■to say that in. my humble opinion the judgment of William Ralph Inge is usually clear and balanced. Apart from iiis former work with regard to theology and ancient philosophy, he has become since the war our most accomplished essayist, the successor of MacauLay and Matthew Arnold. He is free from the dogmatism of Macaulay, and chooses more interesting subjects for his. essays than Froude. His writing has a richness that MatthewArnold failed to attain. Jn atmosphere and background he far surpasses nearly all contemporary writers. Mr. G. M. Trevelyan makes the following- pregnant comment on our age: "It is significant of much that in the seventeenth century members of Parliament quoted from the Bible; in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries from the classics; in the twentieth century from nothing at all." Dean Inge is steeped in the classics, and well read in history; so that his range of literary and [historical allusion is very wide. He will long remain a figure in our literature as one who arouses theconscience and compels reflection. S. GLADING.