Juveniles; Educational, Classical, and Philological treatises; Law and Jurisprudence; Medicine and Surgery; Arts, Sciences, and Illustrated Works; Political and Social Economy, Trade, Commerce; Voyages and Travels; History and Biography; Year Books; Belles-Lettres, including Poetry, Drama, Novels, and Tales; and miscellaneous books not classified. It is apparent at once that a large part of these books are technical in character, and not literature in any proper sense of the term. Nor would any individual reader have the qualifications or the desire to read along all these lines. In other words, readers fall into more or less distinct classes with special interests and needs. For the adult reader, the Juveniles may, for the most part, be left out of the account. Technical books naturally distribute themselves under the various professions and trades. We find also a great variety in degrees of cultivation and in natural aptitude and tastes among readers, all of which gives rise to varying demands. A recent writer laments that "thousands have read The Heavenly Twins' who are ignorant of 'The Waverley Novels,' and that other thousands are smilingly familiar with 'David Harum,' who know not Landor's name." This simply means, when we look at it closely, that not all readers are fitted either by nature or education to appreciate Scott or Landor. Landor especially appeals to a cult. Fine as he is, he has no message for nine out of ten who find delight in "David Harum." Again, even among highly cultivated readers there are wide differences in intellectual, moral, and spiritual aptitudes. One man cares little or nothing for poetry; another finds in it, as Bryant found in Wordsworth, "The voice of his own soul." One prefers a story; another a discussion or some reasoned dissertation; and so on. It thus appears that there is a wide diversity of literary standards, and that some of these divergences have a permanent foundation in human nature, and will therefore continue to the end.

For instance, the Story,368 either in prose or verse, is the simplest, most elemental, most generally acceptable of all forms of literature. It is capable of the greatest range, from

SOME LITERARY ASPECTS OF TO-DAY.

PROF. ISAAC N. DEMMON, MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY.

It is a common saying that we are living in a period of literary decadence. On every hand we hear the regret expressed that no great books in pure literature are appearing in our day; that on the contrary we are weltering in a sea of literary mediocrity. This is accounted for by the cheapness of printing, the spread of popular education, and the consequent enormous increase in the number of partially educated readers, and by the haste with which books are written under the stimulus of the popular demand. It is quite the fashion to say these things nowadays; and whether they are altogether true or not, and there seems to be good reason for qualifying them, there is enough truth in them to justify our making them a subject of discussion.

When the total number of new books now issuing annually from the presses of the world is contrasted with the time of reading them at the disposal of any single individual reader, the prospect is certainly appalling. The word Deluge is a mild term for it. Carefully collected statistics show that upwards of ten thousand new books were published in the English language last year. At least six times as many more were printed in the languages of Western Europe, languages read by many English-speaking people. A per

son who should undertake to keep up with the new books in the English, German, French, and Italian languages, would have to read about two hundred books every day in the year! But when we come to analyze our statistical tables, we find that this impossible ratio can be largely reduced, for the individual reader, at a single stroke. The tables cover Theological and Religious books; the whole range of

Juveniles; Educational, Classical, and Philological treatises; Law and Jurisprudence; Medicine and Surgery; Arts, Sciences, and Illustrated Works; Political and Social Economy, Trade, Commerce; Voyages and Travels; History and Biography; Year Books; Belles-Lettres, including Poetry, Drama, Novels, and Tales; and miscellaneous books not classified. It is apparent at once that a large part of these books are technical in character, and not literature in any proper sense of the term. Nor would any individual reader have the qualifications or the desire to read along all these lines. In other words, readers fall into more or less distinct classes with special interests and needs. For the adult reader, the Juveniles may, for the most part, be left out of the account. Technical books naturally distribute themselves under the various professions and trades. We find also a great variety in degrees of cultivation and in natural aptitude and tastes among readers, all of which gives rise to varying demands. A recent writer laments that "thousands have read The Heavenly Twins' who are ignorant of The Waverley Novels,' and that other thousands are smilingly familiar with 'David Harum,' who know not Landor's name." This simply means, when we look at it closely, that not all readers are fitted either by nature or education to appreciate Scott or Landor. Landor especially appeals to a cult. Fine as he is, he has no message for nine out of ten who find delight in "David Harum." Again, even among highly cultivated readers there are wide differences in intellectual, moral, and spiritual aptitudes. One man cares little or nothing for poetry; another finds in it, as Bryant found in Wordsworth, "The voice of his own soul." One prefers a story; another a discussion or some reasoned dissertation; and so on. It thus appears that there is a wide diversity of literary standards, and that some of these divergences have a permanent foundation in human nature, and will therefore continue to the end.

For instance, the Story,368 either in prose or verse, is the simplest, most elemental, most generally acceptable of all forms of literature. It is capable of the greatest range, from

the fireside tale to the novel or romance in several volumes. It was the first form to be cultivated, and it still holds the first place in popular favor. Everybody has learned to read in our day, and everybody wants stories. And so we have the Flood of Fiction so much complained of.49 This is inevitable. The Story holds first place and cannot be dislodged, even if it were desirable to do so, which may be doubted. No doubt there are glaring evils connected with the passion for stories as with every other good thing. The ease with which work in this kind can be produced, coupled with the insatiate demand for it and the cheapness of printing, naturally leads to a great amount of inferior work. The two factors of increased demand and cheapness of production, however, tend to promote inferior work in all kinds of books in our day; but for reasons above given the novel is perhaps the greatest sufferer.

Still, much that is now printed and embalmed in libraries under the name of scholarship, is the merest rubbish. Our own countryman, Mr. John Burroughs, in his latest collection of essays entitled "Literary Values," has a paragraph on this subject which is pertinent.133 "Most of the Dantean, and Homeric, and Shakespearean scholarship," says he, "is the mere dust of time that has accumulated upon these names. In the course of years it will accumulate upon Tennyson, and then we shall have Tennysonian scholars and learned dissertations upon some insignificant detail of his work. Think of the Shakespeareana with which literature is burdened! It is mostly mere shop litter and dust. In certain moods I think one may be pardoned for feeling that Shakespeare is fast becoming a curse to the human race. Of mere talk about him. He has been the host of

it seems that there is to be no end. more literary parasites probably than any other name in history. He is edited and re-edited, as if a cubit could be added to his stature by marginal notes and comments. On the contrary, the result is, for the most part, like a mere growth of underbrush that obscures the forest trees. The reader's attention is being constantly diverted from the main matter he is being whipped in the face by insignificant twigs.”

"The

great Dantean and Shakesperean scholar is usually the outcome of a mental habit that would make Dante and Shakespeare impossible."

We are often urged to buy and read Histories instead of Novels. So-called histories in several volumes, written in as many months by some facile writer, and fully illustrated, are put forward by skillful advertising, and are sold by the thousands, on the plea that here you have something meaty instead of frivolous fiction. We add them to our shelves from which the ephemeral novel is excluded; or, if we are not too virtuous, we put the two side by side. But it may be doubted which deserves the shorter life. Put the historical literature of the past ages beside the imaginative, and see which fares best. Which commands readers, and consequent commercial value to-day? It is well known, that with a few notable exceptions, the histories are so much lumber. Aristotle noted that poetry is truer than history, and time bears out his thesis in a most striking manner.

The excessive reading of Fiction is only one form of mental dissipation. There are others, and perhaps more serious ones. One is the fondness for minute and petty scholarship before referred to, which has been greatly fostered in recent years by the Germans in the study of the ancient classics. This method has been widely adopted in English and American schools, not only for the study of the ancient classics, but of the modern classics as well. It affords such a beautiful basis for term examinations and is so easy to work! Men who could not write a page of English that any person could be induced to read, can play the role of editor! And so we have all our English masters edited. Most of this work is a huge impertinence, foisted upon the attention of innocent school children and students everywhere. A young English instructor in a western university recently edited George Eliot's "Silas Marner," for schools. In a somewhat elaborate introduction he took up George Eliot's English, pointing out numerous places wherein it was faulty. The natural inference. from this introduction was that if George Eliot could only have