132 LITEEAEY VALUES 



Howells. What the disinterested observer demands 

 is the best possible work of each after its kind. Or, 

 if he is to compare and appraise the two kinds, then 

 I thiak that without doubt his conclusion will be 

 that the realistic novel is the later, maturer growth, 

 more in keeping with the modern demand for real- 

 ity in all fields, and that the romantic belongs more 

 to the world of childish things, which we are fast 

 leaving behind us. 



Our particular predilections in literature must, no 

 doubt, be carefully watched. There is danger in 

 personal absorption in an author, — danger to our 

 intellectual freedom. One would not feel for a poet 

 the absorbing and exclusive love that the lover feels 

 for his mistress, because one would rather have the 

 whole of literature for his domain. One would 

 rather admire Rabelais with Sainte-Beuve, as a Ho- 

 meric buffoon, than be a real " Pantagruelist devo- 

 tee," who finds a flavor even in " the dregs of Mas- 

 ter Frangois's cask " that he prefers to all others. 

 No doubt some of ns, goaded on by the opposite 

 vice in readers and critics, have been guilty of an 

 intemperate enthusiasm toward Whitman and Brown- 

 ing. To make a ctilt of either of these authors, or 

 of any other, is to shut one's self up in a part when 

 the whole is open to him. The opposite vice, that of 

 violent personal antipathy, is equally to be avoided 

 in criticism. Probably Sainte-Beuve was guilty of 

 this vice in his attitude toward Balzac ; Scherer in 

 his criticism of B^ranger, and Landor in his dislike 

 of Dante. One might also cite Emerson's distaste 



