" The "locks of chastity" rust in the Cluny
Museum; in place of them we have comstockery....
But, as I have said in hymning Huneker, there is yet the munyonic
consolation. Time is a great legalizer, even in the field of morals. We
have yet no delivery, but we have at least the beginnings of a revolt,
or, at all events, of a protest. We have already reached, in Howells,
our Hannah More; in Clemens, our Swift; in Henry James, our Horace
Walpole; in Woodberry, Robinson _et al._, our Cowpers, Southeys and
Crabbes; perhaps we might even make a composite and call it our Johnson.
We are sweating through our Eighteenth Century, our era of sentiment,
our spiritual measles. Maybe a new day is not quite so far off as it
seems to be, and with it we may get our Hardy, our Conrad, our
Swinburne, our Thomas, our Moore, our Meredith and our Synge.
THE END
FOOTNOTES:
[38] American Literature, tr. by Julia Franklin; New York, Doubleday,
Page & Co., 1915.
[39] New York, Dodd, Mead & Co., 1916.
[40] The first edition for public sale did not appear until June, 1917,
and in it the preface was suppressed.
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