Contents:

Page No 1

Page No 2

Page No 3

Page No 4

Fashions in Literature........................................................................................................................................1

Charles Dudley Warner ............................................................................................................................1

INTRODUCTION...................................................................................................................................1

FASHIONS IN LITERATURE...............................................................................................................3

Thirty years ago and more those who read and valued good books in this country made the acquaintance of

Mr. Warner, and since the publication of "My Summer In a Garden" no work of his has needed any other

introduction than the presence of his name on the titlepage; and now that reputation has mellowed into

memory, even the word of interpretation seems superfluous. Mr. Warner wrote out of a clear, as well as a full

mind, and lucidity of style was part of that harmonious charm of sincerity and urbanity which made him one

It is a pleasure, however, to recall him as, not long ago, we saw him move and heard him speak in the

ripeness of years which brought him the full flavor of maturity without any loss of freshness from his humor

or serenity from his thought. He shared with Lowell, Longfellow, and Curtis a harmony of nature and art, a

unity of ideal and achievement, which make him a welcome figure, not only for what he said, but for what he

was; one of those friends whose coming is hailed with joy because they seem always at their best, and

Mr. Warner was the most undogmatic of idealists, the most winning of teachers. He had always some thing to

say to the ethical sense, a word for the conscience; but his approach was always through the mind, and his

enforcement of the moral lesson was by suggestion rather than by commandment. There was nothing ascetic

about him, no easy solution of the difficulties of life by ignoring or evading them; nor, on the other hand, was

there any confusion of moral standards as the result of a confusion of ideas touching the nature and functions

of art. He saw clearly, he felt deeply, and he thought straight; hence the rectitude of his mind, the sanity of his

spirit, the justice of his dealings with the things which make for life and art. He used the essay as Addison

used it, not for sermonic effect, but as a form of art which permitted a man to deal with serious things in a

spirit of gayety, and with that lightness of touch which conveys influence without employing force. He was as

deeply enamored as George William Curtis with the highest ideals of life for America, and, like Curtis, his

It is a pleasure to hear his voice once more, because its very accents suggest the most interesting,

highminded, and captivating ideals of living; he brings with him that air of fine breeding which is diffused

by the men who, in mind as in manners, have been, in a distinctive sense, gentlemen; who have lived so

constantly and habitually on intimate terms with the highest things in thought and character that the tone of

this really best society has become theirs. Among men of talent there are plebeians as well as patricians; even

genius, which is never vulgar, is sometimes unable to hide the vulgarity of the aims and ideas which it clothes

with beauty without concealing their essential nature. Mr. Warner was a patrician; the most democratic of

men, he was one of the most fastidious in his intellectual companionships and affiliations. The subjects about

which he speaks with his oldtime directness and charm in this volume make us aware of the serious temper of

his mind, of his deep interest in the life of his time and people, and of the easy and natural grace with which

he insisted on facing the fact and bringing it to the test of the highest standards. In his discussion of "Fashions

in Literature" he deftly brings before us the significance of literature and the signs which it always wears,

while he seems bent upon considering some interesting aspects of contemporary writing.

And how admirably he has described his own work in his definition of qualities which are common to all

literature of a high order: simplicity, knowledge of human nature, agreeable personality. It would be

impossible in briefer or more comprehensive phrase to sum up and express the secret of his influence and of

the pleasure he gives us. It is to suggest this application of his words to himself that this preparatory comment

When "My Summer In a Garden" appeared, it won a host of friends who did not stop to ask whether it was a

piece of excellent journalism or a bit of real literature. It was so natural, so informal, so intimate that readers

accepted it as matter of course, as they accepted the blooming of flowers and the flitting of birds. It was

simply a report of certain things which had happened out of doors, made by an observing neighbor, whose

talk seemed to be of a piece with the diffused fragrance and light and life of the oldfashioned garden. This

easy approach, along natural lines of interest, by quietly putting himself on common ground with his reader,

Mr. Warner never abandoned; he was so delightful a companion that until he ceased to walk beside them,

many of his friends of the mind did not realize how much he had enriched them by the way. This charming

simplicity, which made it possible for him to put himself on intimate terms with his readers, was the result of

his sincerity, his clearness of thought, and his ripe culture: that knowledge of the best which rids a man

forever of faith in devices, dexterities, obscurities, and all other substitutes for the lucid realities of thinking

To his love of reality and his sincere interest in men, Mr. Warner added natural shrewdness and long

observation of the psychology of men and women under the stress and strain of experience. His knowledge of

human nature did not lessen his geniality, but it kept the edge of his mind keen, and gave his work the variety

not only of humor but of satire. He cared deeply for people, but they did not impose on him; he loved his

country with a passion which was the more genuine because it was exacting and, at times, sharply critical.

There runs through all his work, as a critic of manners and men, as well as of art, a wisdom of life born of

wide and keen observation; put not into the form of aphorisms, but of shrewd comment, of keen criticism, of

nice discrimination between the manifold shadings of insincerity, of insight into the action and reaction of

conditions, surroundings, social and ethical aims on men and women. The stories written in his later years are

full of the evidences of a knowledge of human nature which was singularly trustworthy and penetrating.

When all has been said, however, it remains true of him, as of so many of the writers whom we read and love

and love as we read, that the secret of his charm lay in an agreeable personality. At the end of the analysis, if

the work is worth while, there is always a man, and the man is the explanation of the work. This is

preeminently true of those writers whose charm lies less in distinctively intellectual qualities than in

temperament, atmosphere, humorwriters of the quality of Steele, Goldsmith, Lamb, Irving. It is not only,

therefore, a pleasure to recall Mr. Warner; it is a necessity if one would discover the secret of his charm, the

He was a New Englander by birth and by long residence, but he was also a man of the world in the true sense

of the phrase; one whose ethical judgment had been broadened without being lowered; who had learned that

truth, though often strenuously enforced, is never so convincing as when stated in terms of beauty; and to

whom it had been revealed that to live naturally, sanely, and productively one must live humanly, with due

regard to the earthly as well as to heavenly, with ease as well as earnestness of spirit, through play no less

than through work, in the large resources of art, society, and humor, as well as with the ancient and

The harmonious play of his whole nature, the breadth of his interests and the sanity of his spirit made Mr.

Warner a delightful companion, and kept to the very end the freshness of his mind and the spontaneity of his

humor; life never lost its savor for him, nor did his style part with its diffused but thoroughly individual

humor. This latest collection of his papers, dealing with a wide range of subjects from the "Education of the

Negro" to "Literature and the Stage," with characteristic comments on "Truthfulness" and "The Pursuit of

Happiness," shows him at the end of his long and tireless career as a writer still deeply interested in

contemporary events, responsive to the appeal of the questions of the hour, and sensitive to all things which

affected the dignity and authority of literature. In his interests, his bearing, his relations to the public life of

the country, no less than in his work, he held fast to the best traditions of literature, and he has taken his place

If you examine a collection of prints of costumes of different generations, you are commonly amused by the

ludicrous appearance of most of them, especially of those that are not familiar to you in your own decade.

They are not only inappropriate and inconvenient to your eye, but they offend your taste. You cannot believe

that they were ever thought beautiful and becoming. If your memory does not fail you, however, and you

retain a little honesty of mind, you can recall the fact that a costume which seems to you ridiculous today had

your warm approval ten years ago. You wonder, indeed, how you could ever have tolerated a costume which

has not one graceful line, and has no more relation to the human figure than Mambrino's helmet had to a

crown of glory. You cannot imagine how you ever approved the vast balloon skirt that gave your sweetheart

the appearance of the great bell of Moscow, or that you yourself could have been complacent in a coat the

tails of which reached your heels, and the buttons of which, a rudimentary survival, were between your

shoulderbladesyou who are now devoted to a female figure that resembles an oldfashioned churn

These vagaries of taste, which disfigure or destroy correct proportions or hide deformities, are nowhere more

evident than in the illustrations of works of fiction. The artist who collaborates with the contemporary

novelist has a hard fate. If he is faithful to the fashions of the day, he earns the repute of artistic depravity in

the eyes of the next generation. The novel may become a classic, because it represents human nature, or even

the whimsicalities of a period; but the illustrations of the artist only provoke a smile, because he has

represented merely the unessential and the fleeting. The interest in his work is archaeological, not artistic.

The genius of the great portraitpainter may to some extent overcome the disadvantages of contemporary

costume, but if the costume of his period is hideous and lacks the essential lines of beauty, his work is liable

to need the apology of quaintness. The Greek artist and the Mediaeval painter, when the costumes were really

picturesque and made us forget the lack of simplicity in a noble sumptuousness, had never this posthumous

In the examination of costumes of different races and different ages, we are also struck by the fact that with

primitive or isolated peoples costumes vary little from age to age, and fashion and the fashions are

unrecognized, and a habit of dress which is dictated by climate, or has been proved to be comfortable, is

adhered to from one generation to another; while nations that we call highly civilized, meaning commonly

not only Occidental peoples, but peoples called progressive, are subject to the most frequent and violent

changes of fashions, not in generations only, but in decades and years of a generation, as if the mass had no

mind or taste of its own, but submitted to the irresponsible ukase of tailors and modistes, who are in alliance

with enterprising manufacturers of novelties. In this higher civilization a costume which is artistic and

becoming has no more chance of permanence than one which is ugly and inconvenient. It might be inferred

that this higher civilization produces no better taste and discrimination, no more independent judgment, in

dress than it does in literature. The vagaries in dress of the Western nations for a thousand years past, to go

back no further, are certainly highly amusing, and would be humiliating to people who regarded taste and art

as essentials of civilization. But when we speak of civilization, we cannot but notice that some of the great

civilizations; the longest permanent and most notable for highest achievement in learning, science, art, or in

the graces or comforts of life, the Egyptian, the Saracenic, the Chinese, were subject to no such vagaries in

costume, but adhered to that which taste, climate, experience had determined to be the most useful and

appropriate. And it is a singular comment upon our modern conceit that we make our own vagaries and

changeableness, and not any fixed principles of art or of utility, the criterion of judgment, on other races and

The more important result of the study of past fashions, in engravings and paintings, remains to be spoken of.

It is that in all the illustrations, from the simplicity of Athens, through the artificiality of Louis XIV and the

monstrosities of Elizabeth, down to the undescribed modistic inventions of the first McKinley, there is

discoverable a radical and primitive law of beauty. We acknowledge it among the Greeks, we encounter it in

one age and another. I mean a style of dress that is artistic as well as picturesque, that satisfies our love of

beauty, that accords with the grace of the perfect human figure, and that gives as perfect satisfaction to the

cultivated taste as a drawing by Raphael. While all the other illustrations of the human ingenuity in making

the human race appear fantastic or ridiculous amuse us or offend our taste, except the tailor fashionplates

of the week that is now,these few exceptions, classic or modern, give us permanent delight, and are

recognized as following the eternal law of beauty and utility. And we know, notwithstanding the temporary

triumph of bad taste and the public lack of any taste, that there is a standard, artistic and imperishable.

The student of manners might find an interesting field in noting how, in our Occidental civilizations,

fluctuations of opinions, of morals, and of literary style have been accompanied by more or less significant

exhibitions of costumes. He will note in the Precieux of France and the Euphuist of England a corresponding

effeminacy in dress; in the frank paganism of the French Revolution the affectation of Greek and Roman

apparel, passing into the Directoire style in the Citizen and the Citizeness; in the Calvinistic cut of the Puritan

of Geneva and of New England the grim severity of their theology and morals. These examples are

interesting as showing an inclination to express an inner condition by the outward apparel, as the Quakers

indicate an inward peace by an external drabness, and the American Indian a bellicose disposition by red and

yellow paint; just as we express by red stripes our desire to kill men with artillery, or by yellow stripes to kill

them with cavalry. It is not possible to say whether these external displays are relics of barbarism or are

The fickleness of men in costume in a manner burlesques their shifty and uncertain taste in literature. A book

or a certain fashion in letters will have a run like a garment, and, like that, will pass away before it waxes old.

It seems incredible, as we look back over the literary history of the past three centuries only, what prevailing

styles and moods of expression, affectations, and prettinesses, each in turn, have pleased reasonably

cultivated people. What tedious and vapid things they read and liked to read! Think of the French, who had

once had a Villon, intoxicating themselves with somnolent draughts of Richardson. But, then, the French

could match the paste euphuisms of Lyly with the novels of Scudery. Every modern literature has been

subject to these epidemics and diseases. It is needless to dwell upon them in detail. Since the great diffusion

of printing, these literary crazes have been more frequent and of shorter duration. We need go back no further

than a generation to find abundant examples of eccentricities of style and expression, of crazes over some

author or some book, as unaccountable on principles of art as many of the fashions in social life. The more

violent the attack, the sooner it is over. Readers of middle age can recall the furor over Tupper, the

extravagant expectations as to the brilliant essayist Gilfillan, the soonextinguished hopes of the poet

Alexander Smith. For the moment the world waited in the belief of the rising of new stars, and as suddenly

realized that it had been deceived. Sometimes we like ruggedness, and again we like things made easy.

Within a few years a distinguished Scotch clergyman made a fortune by diluting a paragraph written by Saint

Paul. It is in our memory how at one time all the boys tried to write like Macaulay, and then like Carlyle, and

then like Ruskin, and we have lived to see the day when all the girls would like to write like Heine.

In less than twenty years we have seen wonderful changes in public taste and in the efforts of writers to meet

it or to create it. We saw the everlastingly revived conflict between realism and romanticism. We saw the

realist run into the naturalist, the naturalist into the animalist, the psychologist into the sexualist, and the

sudden reaction to romance, in the form of what is called the historic novel, the receipt for which can be

prescribed by any competent pharmacist. The one essential in the ingredients is that the hero shall be mainly

got out of one hole by dropping him into a deeper one, untilthe proper serial length being attainedhe is

miraculously dropped out into daylight, and stands to receive the plaudits of a tenderhearted world, that is

The extraordinary vogue of certain recent stories is not so much to be wondered at when we consider the

millions that have been added to the readers of English during the past twentyfive years. The wonder is that

a new book does not sell more largely, or it would be a wonder if the ability to buy kept pace with the ability

to read, and if discrimination had accompanied the appetite for reading. The critics term these successes of

some recent fictions "crazes," but they are really sustained by some desirable qualitiesthey are cleverly

written, and they are for the moment undoubtedly entertaining. Some of them as undoubtedly appeal to innate

vulgarity or to cultivated depravity. I will call no names, because that would be to indict the public taste. This

recent phenomenon of sales of stories by the hundred thousand is not, however, wholly due to quality.

Another element has come in since the publishers have awakened to the fact that literature can be treated like

merchandise. To use their own phrase, they "handle" books as they would "handle" patent medicines, that is,

the popular patent medicines that are desired because of the amount of alcohol they contain; indeed, they are

sold along with drygoods and fancy notions. I am not objecting to this great and wide distribution any more

than I am to the haste of fruitdealers to market their products before they decay. The wary critic will be very

careful about dogmatizing over the nature and distribution of literary products. It is no certain sign that a

book is good because it is popular, nor is it any more certain that it is good because it has a very limited sale.

Yet we cannot help seeing that many of the books that are the subject of crazes utterly disappear in a very

short time, while many others, approved by only a judicious few, continue in the market and slowly become

standards, considered as good stock by the booksellers and continually in a limited demand.

The English essayists have spent a good deal of time lately in discussing the question whether it is possible to

tell a good contemporary book from a bad one. Their hesitation is justified by a study of English criticism of

new books in the quarterly, monthly, and weekly periodicals from the latter part of the eighteenth century to

the last quarter of the nineteenth; or, to name a definite period, from the verse of the Lake poets, from Shelley

and Byron, down to Tennyson, there is scarcely a poet who has attained worldwide assent to his position in

the first or second rank who was not at the hands of the reviewers the subject of mockery and bitter

detraction. To be original in any degree was to be damned. And there is scarcely one who was at first ranked

as a great light during this period who is now known out of the biographical dictionary. Nothing in modern

literature is more amazing than the bulk of English criticism in the last threequarters of a century, so far as it

concerned individual writers, both in poetry and prose. The literary rancor shown rose to the dignity almost of

Is there any way to tell a good book from a bad one? Yes. As certainly as you can tell a good picture from a

bad one, or a good egg from a bad one. Because there are hosts who do not discriminate as to the eggs or the

butter they eat, it does not follow that a normal taste should not know the difference.

Because there is a highly artistic nation that welcomes the flavor of garlic in everything, and another which

claims to be the most civilized in the world that cannot tell coffee from chicory, or because the ancient

Chinese love rancid sesame oil, or the Esquimaux like spoiled blubber and tainted fish, it does not follow that

It is clear that the critic of contemporary literature is quite as likely to be wrong as right. He is, for one thing,

inevitably affected by the prevailing fashion of his little day. And, worse still, he is apt to make his own tastes

and prejudices the standard of his judgment. His view is commonly provincial instead of cosmopolitan. In the

English period just referred to it is easy to see that most of the critical opinion was determined by political or

theological animosity and prejudice. The rule was for a Tory to hit a Whig or a Whig to hit a Tory, under

whatever literary guise he appeared. If the new writer was not orthodox in the view of his political or

theological critic, he was not to be tolerated as poet or historian, Dr. Johnson had said everything he could

say against an author when he declared that he was a vile Whig. Macaulay, a Whig, always consulted his

prejudices for his judgment, equally when he was reviewing Croker's Boswell or the impeachment of Warren

Hastings. He hated Croker,a hateful man, to be sure,and when the latter published his edition of

Boswell, Macaulay saw his opportunity, and exclaimed before he had looked at the book, as you will

remember, "Now I will dust his jacket." The standard of criticism does not lie with the individual in literature

any more than it does in different periods as to fashions and manners. The world is pretty well agreed, and

always has been, as to the qualities that make a gentleman. And yet there was a time when the vilest and

perhaps the most contemptible man who ever occupied the English throne,and that is saying a great

deal,George IV, was universally called the "First Gentleman of Europe." The reproach might be somewhat

lightened by the fact that George was a foreigner, but for the wider fact that no person of English stock has

been on the throne since Saxon Harold, the chosen and imposed rulers of England having been French,

Welsh, Scotch, and Dutch, many of them being guiltless of the English language, and many of them also of

the English middleclass morality. The impartial old Wraxall, the memorialist of the times of George III,

having described a noble as a gambler, a drunkard, a smuggler, an appropriator of public money, who always

cheated his tradesmen, who was one and sometimes all of them together, and a profligate generally,

commonly adds, "But he was a perfect gentleman." And yet there has always been a standard that excludes

George IV from the rank of gentleman, as it excludes Tupper from the rank of poet.

The standard of literary judgment, then, is not in the individual,that is, in the taste and prejudice of the

individual,any more than it is in the immediate contemporary opinion, which is always in flux and reflux

from one extreme to another; but it is in certain immutable principles and qualities which have been slowly

evolved during the long historic periods of literary criticism. But how shall we ascertain what these principles

are, so as to apply them to new circumstances and new creations, holding on to the essentials and

disregarding contemporary tastes; prejudices, and appearances? We all admit that certain pieces of literature

have become classic; by general consent there is no dispute about them. How they have become so we cannot

exactly explain. Some say by a mysterious settling of universal opinion, the operation of which cannot be

exactly defined. Others say that the highly developed critical judgment of a few persons, from time to time,

has established forever what we agree to call masterpieces. But this discussion is immaterial, since these

supreme examples of literary excellence exist in all kinds of composition,poetry, fable, romance, ethical

teaching, prophecy, interpretation, history, humor, satire, devotional flight into the spiritual and supernatural,

everything in which the human mind has exercised itself,from the days of the Egyptian moralist and the

Old Testament annalist and poet down to our scientific age. These masterpieces exist from many periods and

in many languages, and they all have qualities in common which have insured their persistence. To discover

what these qualities are that have insured permanence and promise indefinite continuance is to have a means

of judging with an approach to scientific accuracy our contemporary literature. There is no thing of beauty

that does not conform to a law of order and beautypoem, story, costume, picture, statue, all fall into an

ascertainable law of art. Nothing of man's making is perfect, but any creation approximates perfection in the

To ascertain this law, and apply it, in art or in literature, to the changing conditions of our progressive life, is

the business of the artist. It is the business of the critic to mark how the performance conforms to or departs

from the law evolved and transmitted in the long experience of the race. True criticism, then, is not a matter

of caprice or of individual liking or disliking, nor of conformity to a prevailing and generally temporary

popular judgment. Individual judgment may be very interesting and have its value, depending upon the

capacity of the judge. It was my good fortune once to fall in with a person who had been moved, by I know

not what inspiration, to project himself out of his safe local conditions into France, Greece, Italy, Cairo, and

Jerusalem. He assured me that he had seen nothing anywhere in the wide world of nature and art to compare

What are the qualities common to all the masterpieces of literature, or, let us say, to those that have endured

First of all I should name simplicity, which includes lucidity of expression, the clear thought in fitting,

luminous words. And this is true when the thought is profound and the subject is as complex as life itself.

This quality is strikingly exhibited for us in Jowett's translation of Platowhich is as modern in feeling and

phrase as anything done in Bostonin the naif and direct Herodotus, and, above all, in the King James

vernacular translation of the Bible, which is the great textbook of all modern literature.

The second quality is knowledge of human nature. We can put up with the improbable in invention, because

the improbable is always happening in life, but we cannot tolerate the socalled psychological juggling with

the human mind, the perversion of the laws of the mind, the forcing of character to fit the eccentricities of

plot. Whatever excursions the writer makes in fancy, we require fundamental consistency with human nature.

And this is the reason why psychological studies of the abnormal, or biographies of criminal lunatics, are

A third quality common to all masterpieces is what we call charm, a matter more or less of style, and which

may be defined as the agreeable personality of the writer. This is indispensable. It is this personality which

gives the final value to every work of art as well as of literature. It is not enough to copy nature or to copy,

even accurately, the incidents of life. Only by digestion and transmutation through personality does any work

attain the dignity of art. The great works of architecture, even, which are somewhat determined by

mathematical rule, owe their charm to the personal genius of their creators. For this reason our imitations of

Greek architecture are commonly failures. To speak technically, the masterpiece of literature is characterized

If there is a standard of literary excellence, as there is a law of beautyand it seems to me that to doubt this

in the intellectual world is to doubt the prevalence of order that exists in the naturalit is certainly possible

to ascertain whether a new production conforms, and how far it conforms, to the universally accepted canons

of art. To work by this rule in literary criticism is to substitute something definite for the individual tastes,

moods, and local bias of the critic. It is true that the vast body of that which we read is ephemeral, and

justifies its existence by its obvious use for information, recreation, and entertainment. But to permit the

impression to prevail that an unenlightened popular preference for a book, however many may hold it, is to

be taken as a measure of its excellence, is like claiming that a debased Austrian coin, because it circulates, is

as good as a gold stater of Alexander. The case is infinitely worse than this; for a slovenly literature,

unrebuked and uncorrected, begets slovenly thought and debases our entire intellectual life.

It should be remembered, however, that the creative faculty in man has not ceased, nor has puny man drawn

all there is to be drawn out of the eternal wisdom. We are probably only in the beginning of our evolution,

and something new may always be expected, that is, new and fresh applications of universal law. The critic of

literature needs to be in an expectant and receptive frame of mind. Many critics approach a book with hostile

intent, and seem to fancy that their business is to look for what is bad in it, and not for what is good. It seems

to me that the first duty of the critic is to try to understand the author, to give him a fair chance by coming to

his perusal with an open mind. Whatever book you read, or sermon or lecture you hear, give yourself for the

time absolutely to its influence. This is just to the author, fair to the public, and, above all, valuable to the

intellectual sanity of the critic himself. It is a very bad thing for the memory and the judgment to get into a

habit of reading carelessly or listening with distracted attention. I know of nothing so harmful to the strength

of the mind as this habit. There is a valuable mental training in closely following a discourse that is valueless

in itself. After the reader has unreservedly surrendered himself to the influence of the book, and let his mind

settle, as we say, and resume its own judgment, he is in a position to look at it objectively and to compare it

with other facts of life and of literature dispassionately. He can then compare it as to form, substance, tone,

with the enduring literature that has come down to us from all the ages. It is a phenomenon known to all of us

that we may for the moment be carried away by a book which upon cool reflection we find is false in ethics

and weak in construction. We find this because we have standards outside ourselves.

I am not concerned to define here what is meant by literature. A great mass of it has been accumulated in the

progress of mankind, and, fortunately for different wants and temperaments, it is as varied as the various

minds that produced it. The main thing to be considered is that this great stream of thought is the highest

achievement and the most valuable possession of mankind. It is not only that literature is the source of

inspiration to youth and the solace of age, but it is what a national language is to a nation, the highest

expression of its being. Whatever we acquire of science, of art, in discovery, in the application of natural laws

in industries, is an enlargement of our horizon, and a contribution to the highest needs of man, his intellectual

life. The controversy between the claims of the practical life and the intellectual is as idle as the socalled

conflict between science and religion. And the highest and final expression of this life of man, his thought,

his emotion, his feeling, his aspiration, whatever you choose to call it, is in the enduring literature he creates.

He certainly misses half his opportunity on this planet who considers only the physical or what is called the

practical. He is a man only half developed. I can conceive no more dreary existence than that of a man who is

past the period of business activity, and who cannot, for his entertainment, his happiness, draw upon the great

reservoir of literature. For what did I come into this world if I am to be like a stake planted in a fence, and not

Those who concern themselves with the printed matter in books and periodicals are often in despair over the

volume of it, and their actual inability to keep up with current literature. They need not worry. If all that

appears in books, under the pressure of publishers and the ambition of experimenters in writing, were

uniformly excellent, no reader would be under any more obligation to read it than he is to see every

individual flower and blossoming shrub. Specimens of the varieties would suffice. But a vast proportion of it

is the product of immature minds, and of a yearning for experience rather than a knowledge of life. There is

no more obligation on the part of the person who would be well informed and cultivated to read all this than

there is to read all the colored incidents, personal gossip, accidents, and crimes repeated daily, with sameness

of effect, in the newspapers, some of the most widely circulated of which are a composite of the police

gazette and the comic almanac. A great deal of the reading done is mere contagion, one form or another of

communicated grippe, and it is consoling and even surprising to know that if you escape the run of it for a

season, you have lost nothing appreciable. Some people, it has been often said, make it a rule never to read a

book until it is from one to five years old, By this simple device they escape the necessity of reading most of

them, but this is only a part of their gain. Considering the fact that the world is full of books of the highest

value for cultivation, entertainment, and information, which the utmost leisure we can spare from other

pressing avocations does not suffice to give us knowledge of, it does seem to be little less than a moral and

intellectual sin to flounder about blindly in the flood of new publications. I am speaking, of course, of the

general mass of readers, and not of the specialists who must follow their subjects with ceaseless inquisition.

But for most of us who belong to the still comparatively few who, really read books, the main object of life is

not to keep up with the printingpress, any more than it is the main object of sensible people to follow all the

extremes and whims of fashion in dress. When a fashion in literature has passed, we are surprised that it

should ever have seemed worth the trouble of studying or imitating. When the special craze has passed, we

notice another thing, and that is that the author, not being of the first rank or of the second, has generally

contributed to the world all that he has to give in one book, and our time has been wasted on his other books;

and also that in a special kind of writing in a given periodlet us say, for example, the

historicoromanticwe perceive that it all has a common character, is constructed on the same lines of

adventure and with a prevailing type of hero and heroine, according to the pattern set by the first one or two

stories of the sort which became popular, and we see its more or less mechanical construction, and how easily

it degenerates into commercial bookmaking. Now while some of this writing has an individual flavor that

makes it entertaining and profitable in this way, we may be excused from attempting to follow it all merely

because it happens to be talked about for the moment, and generally talked about in a very undiscriminating

manner. We need not in any company be ashamed if we have not read it all, especially if we are ashamed

that, considering the time at our disposal, we have not made the acquaintance of the great and small

masterpieces of literature. It is said that the fashion of this world passeth away, and so does the mere fashion

in literature, the fashion that does not follow the eternal law of beauty and symmetry, and contribute to the

intellectual and spiritual part of man. Otherwise it is only a waiting in a material existence, like the lovers, in

the words of the Arabian storyteller, "till there came to them the Destroyer of Delights and the Sunderer of

Without special anxiety, then, to keep pace with all the ephemeral in literature, lest we should miss for the

moment something that is permanent, we can rest content in the vast accumulation of the tried and genuine

that the ages have given us. Anything that really belongs to literature today we shall certainly find awaiting us

The better part of the life of man is in and by the imagination. This is not generally believed, because it is not

generally believed that the chief end of man is the accumulation of intellectual and spiritual material. Hence it

is that what is called a practical education is set above the mere enlargement and enrichment of the mind; and

the possession of the material is valued, and the intellectual life is undervalued. But it should be remembered

that the best preparation for a practical and useful life is in the high development of the powers of the mind,

and that, commonly, by a culture that is not considered practical. The notable fact about the group of great

parliamentary orators in the days of George III is the exhibition of their intellectual resources in the entire

world of letters, the classics, and ancient and modern history. Yet all of them owed their development to a

strictly classical training in the schools. And most of them had not only the gift of the imagination necessary

to great eloquence, but also were so mentally disciplined by the classics that they handled the practical

questions upon which they legislated with clearness and precision. The great masters of finance were the

In fine, to return to our knowledge of the short life of fashions that are for the moment striking, why should

we waste precious time in chasing meteoric appearances, when we can be warmed and invigorated in the