Under the Sun. Philip Stewart Robinson
Holmes’s ‘Kindred Musings,’ and not far removed from the fresh country atmosphere of Gilbert White’s ‘Selborne.’ Mr. Robinson plants himself in the verandah of a bungalow, it is true, and surveys nature as it presents itself upon the sweltering banks of the Jumna; but he sees it with an eye trained on the shores of Cam or Isis, and describes it with a hand evidently skilled in the composition of classical lore. Mr. Robinson’s humor is too tender not to have a pathetic side; little children come in for no small share of pitiful, kindly notice and the love for dumb creatures shines out in every page.”—London.
“Mr. Edwin Arnold’s praise is valuable, for it is the praise of one who knows; and Mr. Robinson fully deserves all that is said of him. His style is delightful. He has read much and observed much; and there is a racy flavor of Charles Lamb about him. A book which once begun is sure to be read through, and then read aloud to any to whom the reader wishes to give pleasure.”—The Echo.
“Bright and fanciful—the author has done for the common objects of India something which Gilbert White did for Selborne—graceful and animated sketches, sometimes full of an intense reality, in other places of a quaint and delicate humor which has a flavor as of the ‘Essays of Elia.’ ”—The Guardian.
“This dainty volume is one of those rare books that come upon the critic from time to time as a surprise and a refreshment—a book to be put in the favorite corner of the library, and to be taken up often again with renewed pleasure. Mr. Robinson’s brief picturesque vignettes of every-day life in India—always goodnatured, often humorous—are real little idylls of exquisite taste and delicacy. Mr. Robinson’s style is exuberant with life, overflowing too with reminiscences of Western literature, even the most modern. In his longer and more ambitious descriptions he displays rare graphic power; and his sketches of the three seasons—especially those of the rainy and hot seasons—remind one forcibly of the wonderful realism of Kalidasa himself.”—Dublin Review.
“The author is one of the quaintest and most charming of our modern writers in an almost forgotten kind. Mr. Robinson belongs to that school of pure literary essayists whose types are to be found in Lamb and Christopher North and Oliver Wendell Holmes, but who seem to have died out for the most part with the prescientific age. One or two of the pieces remind one not a little of Poe in his mood of pure terror with a tinge of mystery; the story of the ‘Man-Eating Tree,’ for example, is told with all Poe’s minute realism. It is good sterling light literature of a sort that we do not often get in England.”—Pall Mall Gazette.
“ ‘The Hunting of the Soko’ is a traveller’s tale of a very exciting kind; and the first of all, ‘The Man-Eating Tree,’ is quite a master- piece of that kind. But the best and also the longest contribution to the volume is the sketch of an Indian tour called ‘Sight-Seeing.’ His pictures of India are certainly very vivid.”—St. James’s Gazette.
“Tenderness and pathos; delicate and humorously quaint.”—Pan.
“In ‘The Hunting of the Soko’ there is much cleverness in the way in which the human attributes of the quarry are insinuated and worked out, clouding the successful chase with a taint of manslaughter and uncomfortable remorse. The account of the ‘Man-Eating Tree,’ too, a giant development of our droseras and dionæas, is a very good traveller’s story. But the best as well as the most considerable of these essays, occupying in fact, two-fifths of the volume, is one entitled ‘Sight-Seeing.’ Here we have the benefit of the author’s famiharity, not merely with the places in India worth seeing, but with the customs and character of the people. With such a ‘sight-seer’ as guide, the reader sees many things the ordinary traveller would miss, and much information and not a little food for reflection are compressed into a relatively small space in a style which is not only pleasant but eloquent.”—The Athenæum.
“A deftly-mixed olla-podrida of essays, travel, and stories. ‘Sight-Seeing’ is one of those happy efforts which hit off the real points of interest in a journey. ‘My Wife’s Birds’ is an essay, genial and humorous; the ‘Daughter of Mercy,’ an allegory, tender and suggestive. But the tales of adventure carry off the palm. These stories are marvellous and fanciful, yet imaginative in the highest sense. ‘The Man-Eating Tree’ and the ‘Hunting of the Soko,’ blend thrilling horror and weird superstition with a close imitation of popular stories of actual adventure.”—The World.
“In a series of powerfully drawn sketches, Mr. Robinson shows that he belongs to the happy few in whom intimate acquaintance with Indian objects has created no indifference. The vignettes which he paints are by turns humorous and pathetic, serious and powerful, charming and artistic. From them we gain a vivid impression of the every-day world of India. They show us in really admirable descriptions, bright and quaint, what a wealth of material for Art, Literature, and Descriptive Painting lies latent even in the daily experiences of an Englishman in India The author writes about butterflies and insects, things furred and feathered, flowers and trees, with a keen eye for the life and instincts of Indian scenery, and with a delightful sympathy for the East. … His exquisite sketches remind one of the classical work—‘White’s Natural History of Selborne.’ In Mr. Robinson’s book there is to be found the same patience in observation united to the charm of a highly-cultured mind. … Where everything is so good it would be idle to show a preference by quotation.”—Magazin für die Literatur des Auslandes.
“Mr. Phil. Robinson has his own way of looking at Nature, and a very pleasant way it is. His love of his subject is as genuine, perhaps more so, than that of the solemn naturalist who writes with a pen of lead: he can be at once lively and serious; and his knowledge, which resembles in variety the contents of an ostrich’s stomach, is exhibited without effort. Indeed, it would be incorrect to say that it is exhibited at all. His style is, no doubt, achieved with art, but the art is not seen, and his easy method of expressing what he knows may deceive the unwary reader. … This delightful volume! A book which deserves the attention both of old and young readers.”—The Spectator.
“When Mr. Robinson sent out those delightful chapters entitled ‘In My Indian Garden,’ it was evident that a new genius had appeared on the horizon of English literature. In that exquisite little book, the original and accurate observations of animal life which charmed the naturalist were conveyed with a humor so entirely new and clothed with a diction so perfect as to give a very high literary value to the work as well as a signal promise of further performance on a yet larger scale. … His purely literary quality reminds us of the old masters of humor; but it has the unique advantage of alliance with a range of exact knowledge of the animal world of which none of Mr. Robinson’s predecessors can boast. And yet our author, with all his knowledge and love of animals, is preeminently a classic humorist. His rare and distinctive faculty is seen in his way of inverting our method of studying animals. In his scheme of investigating nature, man does not play his usually proud part of discoverer and exponent of his fellow animals in fur and feathers; rather he is discovered and expounded by them. When the Unicorn in Mr. Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-glass first saw Alice, he remarked that he had always thought little girls were fabulous creatures. Mr. Robinson possesses in perfection this power of presenting man from what may be supposed to be an animal’s point of view. And the view that every animal exists for itself and that all barriers to its self-interest are so many accidents and interferences with the scheme of nature, finds in our author’s hands the most startling and amusing expression. … Mr. Robinson possesses grace, felicity, and literary wealth which no mere culture could ever attain; he is a genius of a rare and classic kind. A ‘Morning in the Zoo’ with such. a companion will be found to have the charm of Thoreau without his vanity; the humor of Lamb, never labored or attenuated into wire-drawn conceits.”—London Standard.
“Mr. Phil. Robinson is an entertaining writer: he is genial and humorous, with a knack of saying things in the manner of (Charles Lamb. … He has undoubtedly a great liking for animals, special knowledge of their works and ways, of their homes and haunts, and writes about them not in the style of a natural history, but with the freedom and gracefulness of a novelist or humorist. This book is well fitted to wile away the hours which can be stolen from absorbing work. The author chats pleasantly and charmingly about animals, with