initely. There is a lull that may indicate the approach of a new wind of inspiration. Poetry seems New almost dead. New poets, however, are experi- Tendencies menting along much the same lines as the new writers of England (see page 529). Fiction is vast in quantity, declining in quality. At present (1918) too many writers who have literary merit lack force and a sense of reality. There is, on the other hand, a desire to "give the public what it wants" and to take for granted that the public wants merely to be amused. The greatest fault of the average American novel of the first part of the twentieth century is clever superficiality. One finds no equivalent to the English novels of Galsworthy, Wells, De Morgan, or Conrad. Much the same is true of the short story. Never has the art of story-writing attained such technical perfection. Never has it been possible to read so many perfectly composed short stories. They are modern America's chief contribution to letters.

A most significant development is the essay, the magazine article or editorial. Here there has been a gain in simplicity, in directness, in fitting of means to end. In America, as in England, prose style has taken up practically and efficiently the task of telling what one thinks and feels. This particular gain is less of the individual than of the mass, a general uplifting of the efficiency of written expression.

With such uplifting of the general level, there is a lack of elevated peaks. This may come from democratic equality. It may result from the spirit that prevails in our day. Materialism, selfishness, cynical in- America's difference are the real enemies of great litera- Need

ture. America, as a home of great literature in English,

must go deeper into life and human feeling and care more about what it finds there. America is not a young country. The America of 1850 was young, for she was cut off from the wisdom of the past and from the inspiration of contemporary Europe. Modern America is a modern part of the modern world, just as old in wisdom and culture, just as young in possibilities. It has no limitation but its own indifference to the things that are worth while. The future of America in literature depends entirely upon one thing, its ability to take life seriously, to care about something besides money-making and money-spending, to learn that things are not gods, that material success is not happiness. All the world must learn this, but America more than all, for of all the world, America has suffered most from superficiality. If she has not taken her proper place as a home of great poetry, it has not been because she is "young," but because she has been sleeping the sleep of contented indifference. Yet there are signs that she is awakening to the ideals of a new era, ideals of a world united and uplifted. In such ideals lies the hope of poetry.

QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

Why are English and American literature naturally alike?
Why and in what respects are they different ?

Why does American literature, as distinct from English, begin only after the American Revolution?

Trace among American writers the results of the eighteenth century spirit, of the Romantic Revival, of modern tendencies. Why is it not strictly accurate to speak of the literature of modern America as young," as that of a new country?" What attitude toward the past restrained originality in American literature of the nineteenth century?

What has been the effect of material and commercial standards? In what lies the hope of American literature in the future?

RECOMMENDED READING

(General works are listed on pages xi-xiv. The asterisks indicate those best suited to the student.)

HISTORY:

* Ashton, Dawn of the Nineteenth Century in England.

McCarthy, History of Our Own Time.

Hassal, Making of the British Empire.
Graham, Victorian Era.

Bryce, Studies in Contemporary Biography.

O. Browning, Modern England.

LITERATURE:

* Elton, O., A Survey of English Literature (1780-1830 advanced). * Beers, English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century.

Symons, The Romantic Movement in English Poetry.
Saintsbury, History of Nineteenth Century Literature.

* Oliphant, Literary History of England in the Nineteenth Century. Herford, Age of Wordsworth.

Brooke, Four Victorian Poets (Rossetti, Arnold, Morris, Clough).
Mitton, Jane Austen and Her Times.

Page, British Poets of the Nineteenth Century.

Stephens, Hours in a Library (chief poets).

Payne, The Greater English Poets of the Nineteenth Century.

Harrison, Early Victorian Literature.

Brownell, Victorian Prose Writers.

Dowden, Victorian Literature in Transcripts and Studies.

Stedman, Victorian Poets.

Walker, The Greater Victorian Poets.

Walker, The Age of Tennyson.

Luce, A Handbook to Tennyson.

Van Dyke, The Poetry of Tennyson.

Corson, Introduction to Browning (with selections).

Brooke, The Poetry of Robert Browning.

Orr, Handbook to Browning.

Scudder, Life of the Spirit in Modern English Poets.

Dickinson and Roe, Nineteenth Century English Prose.
Dawson, Makers of Fiction.

* Phelps, Essays on Modern Novelists (de Morgan, Hardy,

Stevenson, Kipling, Blackmore).

Melville, Victorian Novelists.

Le Gallienne, R. Kipling, a Criticism.

Chesterton, G. B. Shaw.

Huneker, Iconoclasts (on modern dramatists).

FICTION DEALING WITH THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY:

* Eliot, Silas Marner.

Doyle, Rodney Stone (1803).

Blackmore, Springhaven.

Marryat, Peter Simple, and other novels, based on experience.
Mrs. Gaskell, Cranford.

*Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, and other novels.

Lever, Charles O'Malley, and other novels.

Craik, John Halifax, Gentleman (1780).

Brontë, Shirley (labor problems).

* Stevenson, St. Ives.

* Dickens, Pickwick, Old Curiosity Shop, Bleak House, David Copperfield, and other novels.

* Thackeray, Vanity Fair.

Banks, The Manchester Man (study of conditions, early century). * Eliot, Felix Holt, the Radical.

Trollope, Barchester Towers, and other novels (which give a rather uninteresting but remarkably accurate picture of the England of his own day).

(The number of standard novels dealing with conditions during the middle and latter part of the century is so great that it would be useless to list them.)

BIOGRAPHY. [The average student will find sufficient for his purpose in encyclopedias and similar works. For those wishing more, full biographies of all writers of importance will be found in the English Men of Letters Series or in Great Writers. See also encyclopedias, etc. The following biographical works (not in the series named) are