arena sine calce. a collection of snippets from various 19c authors very, very, very loosely arranged around the theme of horror, sadism, etc. its basic shortcoming is that if you already know the works you won't learn anything new and if you don't you won't learn anything at all as Praz's style is ellyptical to the extreme. A pity, as Praz can also be very infomative and perceptive as he shows in his book on conversation pieces. This is one of those books I forced myself to finish reading against my better judgement. ( )