To call such an emission of graceful poppycock a literature,
of course, is to mouth an absurdity, and yet, if the college professors
who write treatises on letters are to be believed, it is the best we
have to show. Turn, for example, to "A History of American Literature
Since 1870," by Prof. Fred Lewis Pattee, one of the latest and
undoubtedly one of the least unintelligent of these books. In it the
gifted pedagogue gives extended notice to no less than six of the nine
writers I have mentioned, and upon all of them his verdicts are
flattering. He bestows high praises, direct and indirect, upon Mrs.
Freeman's "grim and austere" manner, her "repression," her entire lack
of poetical illumination. He compares Miss Jewett to both Howells and
Hawthorne, not to mention Mrs. Gaskell--and Addison! He grows
enthusiastic over a hollow piece of fine writing by Miss Brown. And he
forgets altogether to mention Dreiser, or Sinclair, or Medill Patterson,
or Harry Leon Wilson, or George Ade!...
So much for the best. The worst is beyond description.
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