initial commit of ebook 3109HEADmain

9 files changed, 3062 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/3109.txt b/3109.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..81adf1e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/3109.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,1029 @@
+Project Gutenberg's Fashions in Literature, by Charles Dudley Warner
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Fashions in Literature
+
+Author: Charles Dudley Warner
+
+Release Date: December 5, 2004 [EBook #3109]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FASHIONS IN LITERATURE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+FASHIONS IN LITERATURE
+
+By Charles Dudley Warner
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+Thirty years ago and more those who read and valued good books in this
+country made the acquaintance of Mr. Warner, and since the publication of
+"My Summer In a Garden" no work of his has needed any other introduction
+than the presence of his name on the title-page; and now that reputation
+has mellowed into memory, even the word of interpretation seems
+superfluous. Mr. Warner wrote out of a clear, as well as a full mind, and
+lucidity of style was part of that harmonious charm of sincerity and
+urbanity which made him one of the most intelligible and companionable of
+our writers.
+
+It is a pleasure, however, to recall him as, not long ago, we saw him
+move and heard him speak in the ripeness of years which brought him the
+full flavor of maturity without any loss of freshness from his humor or
+serenity from his thought. He shared with Lowell, Longfellow, and Curtis
+a harmony of nature and art, a unity of ideal and achievement, which make
+him a welcome figure, not only for what he said, but for what he was; one
+of those friends whose coming is hailed with joy because they seem always
+at their best, and minister to rather than draw upon our own capital of
+moral vitality.
+
+Mr. Warner was the most undogmatic of idealists, the most winning of
+teachers. He had always some thing to say to the ethical sense, a word
+for the conscience; but his approach was always through the mind, and his
+enforcement of the moral lesson was by suggestion rather than by
+commandment. There was nothing ascetic about him, no easy solution of the
+difficulties of life by ignoring or evading them; nor, on the other hand,
+was there any confusion of moral standards as the result of a confusion
+of ideas touching the nature and functions of art. He saw clearly, he
+felt deeply, and he thought straight; hence the rectitude of his mind,
+the sanity of his spirit, the justice of his dealings with the things
+which make for life and art. He used the essay as Addison used it, not
+for sermonic effect, but as a form of art which permitted a man to deal
+with serious things in a spirit of gayety, and with that lightness of
+touch which conveys influence without employing force. He was as deeply
+enamored as George William Curtis with the highest ideals of life for
+America, and, like Curtis, his expression caught the grace and
+distinction of those ideals.
+
+It is a pleasure to hear his voice once more, because its very accents
+suggest the most interesting, high-minded, and captivating ideals of
+living; he brings with him that air of fine breeding which is diffused by
+the men who, in mind as in manners, have been, in a distinctive sense,
+gentlemen; who have lived so constantly and habitually on intimate terms
+with the highest things in thought and character that the tone of this
+really best society has become theirs. Among men of talent there are
+plebeians as well as patricians; even genius, which is never vulgar, is
+sometimes unable to hide the vulgarity of the aims and ideas which it
+clothes with beauty without concealing their essential nature. Mr. Warner
+was a patrician; the most democratic of men, he was one of the most
+fastidious in his intellectual companionships and affiliations. The
+subjects about which he speaks with his oldtime directness and charm in
+this volume make us aware of the serious temper of his mind, of his deep
+interest in the life of his time and people, and of the easy and natural
+grace with which he insisted on facing the fact and bringing it to the
+test of the highest standards. In his discussion of "Fashions in
+Literature" he deftly brings before us the significance of literature and
+the signs which it always wears, while he seems bent upon considering
+some interesting aspects of contemporary writing.
+
+And how admirably he has described his own work in his definition of
+qualities which are common to all literature of a high order: simplicity,
+knowledge of human nature, agreeable personality. It would be impossible
+in briefer or more comprehensive phrase to sum up and express the secret
+of his influence and of the pleasure he gives us. It is to suggest this
+application of his words to himself that this preparatory comment is
+written.
+
+When "My Summer In a Garden" appeared, it won a host of friends who did
+not stop to ask whether it was a piece of excellent journalism or a bit
+of real literature. It was so natural, so informal, so intimate that
+readers accepted it as matter of course, as they accepted the blooming of
+flowers and the flitting of birds. It was simply a report of certain
+things which had happened out of doors, made by an observing neighbor,
+whose talk seemed to be of a piece with the diffused fragrance and light
+and life of the old-fashioned garden. This easy approach, along natural
+lines of interest, by quietly putting himself on common ground with his
+reader, Mr. Warner never abandoned; he was so delightful a companion that
+until he ceased to walk beside them, many of his friends of the mind did
+not realize how much he had enriched them by the way. This charming
+simplicity, which made it possible for him to put himself on intimate
+terms with his readers, was the result of his sincerity, his clearness of
+thought, and his ripe culture: that knowledge of the best which rids a
+man forever of faith in devices, dexterities, obscurities, and all other
+substitutes for the lucid realities of thinking and of character.
+
+To his love of reality and his sincere interest in men, Mr. Warner added
+natural shrewdness and long observation of the psychology of men and
+women under the stress and strain of experience. His knowledge of human
+nature did not lessen his geniality, but it kept the edge of his mind
+keen, and gave his work the variety not only of humor but of satire. He
+cared deeply for people, but they did not impose on him; he loved his
+country with a passion which was the more genuine because it was exacting
+and, at times, sharply critical. There runs through all his work, as a
+critic of manners and men, as well as of art, a wisdom of life born of
+wide and keen observation; put not into the form of aphorisms, but of
+shrewd comment, of keen criticism, of nice discrimination between the
+manifold shadings of insincerity, of insight into the action and reaction
+of conditions, surroundings, social and ethical aims on men and women.
+The stories written in his later years are full of the evidences of a
+knowledge of human nature which was singularly trustworthy and
+penetrating.
+
+When all has been said, however, it remains true of him, as of so many of
+the writers whom we read and love and love as we read, that the secret of
+his charm lay in an agreeable personality. At the end of the analysis, if
+the work is worth while, there is always a man, and the man is the
+explanation of the work. This is pre-eminently true of those writers
+whose charm lies less in distinctively intellectual qualities than in
+temperament, atmosphere, humor-writers of the quality of Steele,
+Goldsmith, Lamb, Irving. It is not only, therefore, a pleasure to recall
+Mr. Warner; it is a necessity if one would discover the secret of his
+charm, the source of his authority.
+
+He was a New Englander by birth and by long residence, but he was also a
+man of the world in the true sense of the phrase; one whose ethical
+judgment had been broadened without being lowered; who had learned that
+truth, though often strenuously enforced, is never so convincing as when
+stated in terms of beauty; and to whom it had been revealed that to live
+naturally, sanely, and productively one must live humanly, with due
+regard to the earthly as well as to heavenly, with ease as well as
+earnestness of spirit, through play no less than through work, in the
+large resources of art, society, and humor, as well as with the ancient
+and well-tested rectitudes of the fathers.
+
+The harmonious play of his whole nature, the breadth of his interests and
+the sanity of his spirit made Mr. Warner a delightful companion, and kept
+to the very end the freshness of his mind and the spontaneity of his
+humor; life never lost its savor for him, nor did his style part with its
+diffused but thoroughly individual humor. This latest collection of his
+papers, dealing with a wide range of subjects from the "Education of the
+Negro" to "Literature and the Stage," with characteristic comments on
+"Truthfulness" and "The Pursuit of Happiness," shows him at the end of
+his long and tireless career as a writer still deeply interested in
+contemporary events, responsive to the appeal of the questions of the
+hour, and sensitive to all things which affected the dignity and
+authority of literature. In his interests, his bearing, his relations to
+the public life of the country, no less than in his work, he held fast to
+the best traditions of literature, and he has taken his place among the
+representative American men of Letters.
+
+HAMILTON W. MABIE.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+FASHIONS IN LITERATURE
+
+If you examine a collection of prints of costumes of different
+generations, you are commonly amused by the ludicrous appearance of most
+of them, especially of those that are not familiar to you in your own
+decade. They are not only inappropriate and inconvenient to your eye, but
+they offend your taste. You cannot believe that they were ever thought
+beautiful and becoming. If your memory does not fail you, however, and
+you retain a little honesty of mind, you can recall the fact that a
+costume which seems to you ridiculous today had your warm approval ten
+years ago. You wonder, indeed, how you could ever have tolerated a
+costume which has not one graceful line, and has no more relation to the
+human figure than Mambrino's helmet had to a crown of glory. You cannot
+imagine how you ever approved the vast balloon skirt that gave your
+sweetheart the appearance of the great bell of Moscow, or that you
+yourself could have been complacent in a coat the tails of which reached
+your heels, and the buttons of which, a rudimentary survival, were
+between your shoulder-blades--you who are now devoted to a female figure
+that resembles an old-fashioned churn surmounted by an isosceles
+triangle.
+
+These vagaries of taste, which disfigure or destroy correct proportions
+or hide deformities, are nowhere more evident than in the illustrations
+of works of fiction. The artist who collaborates with the contemporary
+novelist has a hard fate. If he is faithful to the fashions of the day,
+he earns the repute of artistic depravity in the eyes of the next
+generation. The novel may become a classic, because it represents human
+nature, or even the whimsicalities of a period; but the illustrations of
+the artist only provoke a smile, because he has represented merely the
+unessential and the fleeting. The interest in his work is archaeological,
+not artistic. The genius of the great portrait-painter may to some extent
+overcome the disadvantages of contemporary costume, but if the costume of
+his period is hideous and lacks the essential lines of beauty, his work
+is liable to need the apology of quaintness. The Greek artist and the
+Mediaeval painter, when the costumes were really picturesque and made us
+forget the lack of simplicity in a noble sumptuousness, had never this
+posthumous difficulty to contend with.
+
+In the examination of costumes of different races and different ages, we
+are also struck by the fact that with primitive or isolated peoples
+costumes vary little from age to age, and fashion and the fashions are
+unrecognized, and a habit of dress which is dictated by climate, or has
+been proved to be comfortable, is adhered to from one generation to
+another; while nations that we call highly civilized, meaning commonly
+not only Occidental peoples, but peoples called progressive, are subject
+to the most frequent and violent changes of fashions, not in generations
+only, but in decades and years of a generation, as if the mass had no
+mind or taste of its own, but submitted to the irresponsible ukase of
+tailors and modistes, who are in alliance with enterprising manufacturers
+of novelties. In this higher civilization a costume which is artistic and
+becoming has no more chance of permanence than one which is ugly and
+inconvenient. It might be inferred that this higher civilization produces
+no better taste and discrimination, no more independent judgment, in
+dress than it does in literature. The vagaries in dress of the Western
+nations for a thousand years past, to go back no further, are certainly
+highly amusing, and would be humiliating to people who regarded taste and
+art as essentials of civilization. But when we speak of civilization, we
+cannot but notice that some of the great civilizations; the longest
+permanent and most notable for highest achievement in learning, science,
+art, or in the graces or comforts of life, the Egyptian, the Saracenic,
+the Chinese, were subject to no such vagaries in costume, but adhered to
+that which taste, climate, experience had determined to be the most
+useful and appropriate. And it is a singular comment upon our modern
+conceit that we make our own vagaries and changeableness, and not any
+fixed principles of art or of utility, the criterion of judgment, on
+other races and other times.
+
+The more important result of the study of past fashions, in engravings
+and paintings, remains to be spoken of. It is that in all the
+illustrations, from the simplicity of Athens, through the artificiality
+of Louis XIV and the monstrosities of Elizabeth, down to the undescribed
+modistic inventions of the first McKinley, there is discoverable a
+radical and primitive law of beauty. We acknowledge it among the Greeks,
+we encounter it in one age and another. I mean a style of dress that is
+artistic as well as picturesque, that satisfies our love of beauty, that
+accords with the grace of the perfect human figure, and that gives as
+perfect satisfaction to the cultivated taste as a drawing by Raphael.
+While all the other illustrations of the human ingenuity in making the
+human race appear fantastic or ridiculous amuse us or offend our taste,
+--except the tailor fashion-plates of the week that is now,--these few
+exceptions, classic or modern, give us permanent delight, and are
+recognized as following the eternal law of beauty and utility. And we
+know, notwithstanding the temporary triumph of bad taste and the public
+lack of any taste, that there is a standard, artistic and imperishable.
+
+The student of manners might find an interesting field in noting how, in
+our Occidental civilizations, fluctuations of opinions, of morals, and of
+literary style have been accompanied by more or less significant
+exhibitions of costumes. He will note in the Precieux of France and the
+Euphuist of England a corresponding effeminacy in dress; in the frank
+paganism of the French Revolution the affectation of Greek and Roman
+apparel, passing into the Directoire style in the Citizen and the
+Citizeness; in the Calvinistic cut of the Puritan of Geneva and of New
+England the grim severity of their theology and morals. These examples
+are interesting as showing an inclination to express an inner condition
+by the outward apparel, as the Quakers indicate an inward peace by an
+external drabness, and the American Indian a bellicose disposition by red
+and yellow paint; just as we express by red stripes our desire to kill
+men with artillery, or by yellow stripes to kill them with cavalry. It is
+not possible to say whether these external displays are relics of
+barbarism or are enduring necessities of human nature.
+
+The fickleness of men in costume in a manner burlesques their shifty and
+uncertain taste in literature. A book or a certain fashion in letters
+will have a run like a garment, and, like that, will pass away before it
+waxes old. It seems incredible, as we look back over the literary history
+of the past three centuries only, what prevailing styles and moods of
+expression, affectations, and prettinesses, each in turn, have pleased
+reasonably cultivated people. What tedious and vapid things they read and
+liked to read! Think of the French, who had once had a Villon,
+intoxicating themselves with somnolent draughts of Richardson. But, then,
+the French could match the paste euphuisms of Lyly with the novels of
+Scudery. Every modern literature has been subject to these epidemics and
+diseases. It is needless to dwell upon them in detail. Since the great
+diffusion of printing, these literary crazes have been more frequent and
+of shorter duration. We need go back no further than a generation to find
+abundant examples of eccentricities of style and expression, of crazes
+over some author or some book, as unaccountable on principles of art as
+many of the fashions in social life.--The more violent the attack, the
+sooner it is over. Readers of middle age can recall the furor over
+Tupper, the extravagant expectations as to the brilliant essayist
+Gilfillan, the soon-extinguished hopes of the poet Alexander Smith. For
+the moment the world waited in the belief of the rising of new stars, and
+as suddenly realized that it had been deceived. Sometimes we like
+ruggedness, and again we like things made easy. Within a few years a
+distinguished Scotch clergyman made a fortune by diluting a paragraph
+written by Saint Paul. It is in our memory how at one time all the boys
+tried to write like Macaulay, and then like Carlyle, and then like
+Ruskin, and we have lived to see the day when all the girls would like to
+write like Heine.
+
+In less than twenty years we have seen wonderful changes in public taste
+and in the efforts of writers to meet it or to create it. We saw the
+everlastingly revived conflict between realism and romanticism. We saw
+the realist run into the naturalist, the naturalist into the animalist,
+the psychologist into the sexualist, and the sudden reaction to romance,
+in the form of what is called the historic novel, the receipt for which
+can be prescribed by any competent pharmacist. The one essential in the
+ingredients is that the hero shall be mainly got out of one hole by
+dropping him into a deeper one, until--the proper serial length being
+attained--he is miraculously dropped out into daylight, and stands to
+receive the plaudits of a tenderhearted world, that is fond of nothing so
+much as of fighting.
+
+The extraordinary vogue of certain recent stories is not so much to be
+wondered at when we consider the millions that have been added to the
+readers of English during the past twenty-five years. The wonder is that
+a new book does not sell more largely, or it would be a wonder if the
+ability to buy kept pace with the ability to read, and if discrimination
+had accompanied the appetite for reading. The critics term these
+successes of some recent fictions "crazes," but they are really sustained
+by some desirable qualities--they are cleverly written, and they are for
+the moment undoubtedly entertaining. Some of them as undoubtedly appeal
+to innate vulgarity or to cultivated depravity. I will call no names,
+because that would be to indict the public taste. This recent phenomenon
+of sales of stories by the hundred thousand is not, however, wholly due
+to quality. Another element has come in since the publishers have
+awakened to the fact that literature can be treated like merchandise. To
+use their own phrase, they "handle" books as they would "handle" patent
+medicines, that is, the popular patent medicines that are desired because
+of the amount of alcohol they contain; indeed, they are sold along with
+dry-goods and fancy notions. I am not objecting to this great and wide
+distribution any more than I am to the haste of fruit-dealers to market
+their products before they decay. The wary critic will be very careful
+about dogmatizing over the nature and distribution of literary products.
+It is no certain sign that a book is good because it is popular, nor is
+it any more certain that it is good because it has a very limited sale.
+Yet we cannot help seeing that many of the books that are the subject of
+crazes utterly disappear in a very short time, while many others,
+approved by only a judicious few, continue in the market and slowly
+become standards, considered as good stock by the booksellers and
+continually in a limited demand.
+
+The English essayists have spent a good deal of time lately in discussing
+the question whether it is possible to tell a good contemporary book from
+a bad one. Their hesitation is justified by a study of English criticism
+of new books in the quarterly, monthly, and weekly periodicals from the
+latter part of the eighteenth century to the last quarter of the
+nineteenth; or, to name a definite period, from the verse of the Lake
+poets, from Shelley and Byron, down to Tennyson, there is scarcely a poet
+who has attained world-wide assent to his position in the first or second
+rank who was not at the hands of the reviewers the subject of mockery and
+bitter detraction. To be original in any degree was to be damned. And
+there is scarcely one who was at first ranked as a great light during
+this period who is now known out of the biographical dictionary. Nothing
+in modern literature is more amazing than the bulk of English criticism
+in the last three-quarters of a century, so far as it concerned
+individual writers, both in poetry and prose. The literary rancor shown
+rose to the dignity almost of theological vituperation.
+
+Is there any way to tell a good book from a bad one? Yes. As certainly as
+you can tell a good picture from a bad one, or a good egg from a bad one.
+Because there are hosts who do not discriminate as to the eggs or the
+butter they eat, it does not follow that a normal taste should not know
+the difference.
+
+Because there is a highly artistic nation that welcomes the flavor of
+garlic in everything, and another which claims to be the most civilized
+in the world that cannot tell coffee from chicory, or because the ancient
+Chinese love rancid sesame oil, or the Esquimaux like spoiled blubber and
+tainted fish, it does not follow that there is not in the world a
+wholesome taste for things natural and pure.
+
+It is clear that the critic of contemporary literature is quite as likely
+to be wrong as right. He is, for one thing, inevitably affected by the
+prevailing fashion of his little day. And, worse still, he is apt to make
+his own tastes and prejudices the standard of his judgment. His view is
+commonly provincial instead of cosmopolitan. In the English period just
+referred to it is easy to see that most of the critical opinion was
+determined by political or theological animosity and prejudice. The rule
+was for a Tory to hit a Whig or a Whig to hit a Tory, under whatever
+literary guise he appeared. If the new writer was not orthodox in the
+view of his political or theological critic, he was not to be tolerated
+as poet or historian, Dr. Johnson had said everything he could say
+against an author when he declared that he was a vile Whig. Macaulay, a
+Whig, always consulted his prejudices for his judgment, equally when he
+was reviewing Croker's Boswell or the impeachment of Warren Hastings. He
+hated Croker,--a hateful man, to be sure,--and when the latter published
+his edition of Boswell, Macaulay saw his opportunity, and exclaimed
+before he had looked at the book, as you will remember, "Now I will dust
+his jacket." The standard of criticism does not lie with the individual
+in literature any more than it does in different periods as to fashions
+and manners. The world is pretty well agreed, and always has been, as to
+the qualities that make a gentleman. And yet there was a time when the
+vilest and perhaps the most contemptible man who ever occupied the
+English throne,--and that is saying a great deal,--George IV, was
+universally called the "First Gentleman of Europe." The reproach might be
+somewhat lightened by the fact that George was a foreigner, but for the
+wider fact that no person of English stock has been on the throne since
+Saxon Harold, the chosen and imposed rulers of England having been
+French, Welsh, Scotch, and Dutch, many of them being guiltless of the
+English language, and many of them also of the English middle-class
+morality. The impartial old Wraxall, the memorialist of the times of
+George III, having described a noble as a gambler, a drunkard, a
+smuggler, an appropriator of public money, who always cheated his
+tradesmen, who was one and sometimes all of them together, and a
+profligate generally, commonly adds, "But he was a perfect gentleman."
+And yet there has always been a standard that excludes George IV from the
+rank of gentleman, as it excludes Tupper from the rank of poet.
+
+The standard of literary judgment, then, is not in the individual,--that
+is, in the taste and prejudice of the individual,--any more than it is in
+the immediate contemporary opinion, which is always in flux and reflux
+from one extreme to another; but it is in certain immutable principles
+and qualities which have been slowly evolved during the long historic
+periods of literary criticism. But how shall we ascertain what these
+principles are, so as to apply them to new circumstances and new
+creations, holding on to the essentials and disregarding contemporary
+tastes; prejudices, and appearances? We all admit that certain pieces of
+literature have become classic; by general consent there is no dispute
+about them. How they have become so we cannot exactly explain. Some say
+by a mysterious settling of universal opinion, the operation of which
+cannot be exactly defined. Others say that the highly developed critical
+judgment of a few persons, from time to time, has established forever
+what we agree to call masterpieces. But this discussion is immaterial,
+since these supreme examples of literary excellence exist in all kinds of
+composition,--poetry, fable, romance, ethical teaching, prophecy,
+interpretation, history, humor, satire, devotional flight into the
+spiritual and supernatural, everything in which the human mind has
+exercised itself,--from the days of the Egyptian moralist and the Old
+Testament annalist and poet down to our scientific age. These
+masterpieces exist from many periods and in many languages, and they all
+have qualities in common which have insured their persistence. To
+discover what these qualities are that have insured permanence and
+promise indefinite continuance is to have a means of judging with an
+approach to scientific accuracy our contemporary literature. There is no
+thing of beauty that does not conform to a law of order and beauty--poem,
+story, costume, picture, statue, all fall into an ascertainable law of
+art. Nothing of man's making is perfect, but any creation approximates
+perfection in the measure that it conforms to inevitable law.
+
+To ascertain this law, and apply it, in art or in literature, to the
+changing conditions of our progressive life, is the business of the
+artist. It is the business of the critic to mark how the performance
+conforms to or departs from the law evolved and transmitted in the
+long-experience of the race. True criticism, then, is not a matter of
+caprice or of individual liking or disliking, nor of conformity to a
+prevailing and generally temporary popular judgment. Individual judgment
+may be very interesting and have its value, depending upon the capacity
+of the judge. It was my good fortune once to fall in with a person who
+had been moved, by I know not what inspiration, to project himself out of
+his safe local conditions into France, Greece, Italy, Cairo, and
+Jerusalem. He assured me that he had seen nothing anywhere in the wide
+world of nature and art to compare with the beauty of Nebraska.
+
+What are the qualities common to all the masterpieces of literature, or,
+let us say, to those that have endured in spite of imperfections and
+local provincialisms?
+
+First of all I should name simplicity, which includes lucidity of
+expression, the clear thought in fitting, luminous words. And this is
+true when the thought is profound and the subject is as complex as life
+itself. This quality is strikingly exhibited for us in Jowett's
+translation of Plato--which is as modern in feeling and phrase as
+anything done in Boston--in the naif and direct Herodotus, and, above
+all, in the King James vernacular translation of the Bible, which is the
+great text-book of all modern literature.
+
+The second quality is knowledge of human nature. We can put up with the
+improbable in invention, because the improbable is always happening in
+life, but we cannot tolerate the so-called psychological juggling with
+the human mind, the perversion of the laws of the mind, the forcing of
+character to fit the eccentricities of plot. Whatever excursions the
+writer makes in fancy, we require fundamental consistency with human
+nature. And this is the reason why psychological studies of the abnormal,
+or biographies of criminal lunatics, are only interesting to pathologists
+and never become classics in literature.
+
+A third quality common to all masterpieces is what we call charm, a
+matter more or less of style, and which may be defined as the agreeable
+personality of the writer. This is indispensable. It is this personality
+which gives the final value to every work of art as well as of
+literature. It is not enough to copy nature or to copy, even accurately,
+the incidents of life. Only by digestion and transmutation through
+personality does any work attain the dignity of art. The great works of
+architecture, even, which are somewhat determined by mathematical rule,
+owe their charm to the personal genius of their creators. For this reason
+our imitations of Greek architecture are commonly failures. To speak
+technically, the masterpiece of literature is characterized by the same
+knowledge of proportion and perspective as the masterpiece in art.
+
+If there is a standard of literary excellence, as there is a law of
+beauty--and it seems to me that to doubt this in the intellectual world
+is to doubt the prevalence of order that exists in the natural--it is
+certainly possible to ascertain whether a new production conforms, and
+how far it conforms, to the universally accepted canons of art. To work
+by this rule in literary criticism is to substitute something definite
+for the individual tastes, moods, and local bias of the critic. It is
+true that the vast body of that which we read is ephemeral, and justifies
+its existence by its obvious use for information, recreation, and
+entertainment. But to permit the impression to prevail that an
+unenlightened popular preference for a book, however many may hold it, is
+to be taken as a measure of its excellence, is like claiming that a
+debased Austrian coin, because it circulates, is as good as a gold stater
+of Alexander. The case is infinitely worse than this; for a slovenly
+literature, unrebuked and uncorrected, begets slovenly thought and
+debases our entire intellectual life.
+
+It should be remembered, however, that the creative faculty in man has
+not ceased, nor has puny man drawn all there is to be drawn out of the
+eternal wisdom. We are probably only in the beginning of our evolution,
+and something new may always be expected, that is, new and fresh
+applications of universal law. The critic of literature needs to be in an
+expectant and receptive frame of mind. Many critics approach a book with
+hostile intent, and seem to fancy that their business is to look for what
+is bad in it, and not for what is good. It seems to me that the first
+duty of the critic is to try to understand the author, to give him a fair
+chance by coming to his perusal with an open mind. Whatever book you
+read, or sermon or lecture you hear, give yourself for the time
+absolutely to its influence. This is just to the author, fair to the
+public, and, above all, valuable to the intellectual sanity of the critic
+himself. It is a very bad thing for the memory and the judgment to get
+into a habit of reading carelessly or listening with distracted
+attention. I know of nothing so harmful to the strength of the mind as
+this habit. There is a valuable mental training in closely following a
+discourse that is valueless in itself. After the reader has unreservedly
+surrendered himself to the influence of the book, and let his mind
+settle, as we say, and resume its own judgment, he is in a position to
+look at it objectively and to compare it with other facts of life and of
+literature dispassionately. He can then compare it as to form, substance,
+tone, with the enduring literature that has come down to us from all the
+ages. It is a phenomenon known to all of us that we may for the moment be
+carried away by a book which upon cool reflection we find is false in
+ethics and weak in construction. We find this because we have standards
+outside ourselves.
+
+I am not concerned to define here what is meant by literature. A great
+mass of it has been accumulated in the progress of mankind, and,
+fortunately for different wants and temperaments, it is as varied as the
+various minds that produced it. The main thing to be considered is that
+this great stream of thought is the highest achievement and the most
+valuable possession of mankind. It is not only that literature is the
+source of inspiration to youth and the solace of age, but it is what a
+national language is to a nation, the highest expression of its being.
+Whatever we acquire of science, of art, in discovery, in the application
+of natural laws in industries, is an enlargement of our horizon, and a
+contribution to the highest needs of man, his intellectual life. The
+controversy between the claims of the practical life and the intellectual
+is as idle as the so-called conflict between science and religion. And
+the highest and final expression of this life of man, his thought, his
+emotion, his feeling, his aspiration, whatever you choose to call it, is
+in the enduring literature he creates. He certainly misses half his
+opportunity on this planet who considers only the physical or what is
+called the practical. He is a man only half developed. I can conceive no
+more dreary existence than that of a man who is past the period of
+business activity, and who cannot, for his entertainment, his happiness,
+draw upon the great reservoir of literature. For what did I come into
+this world if I am to be like a stake planted in a fence, and not like a
+tree visited by all the winds of heaven and the birds of the air?
+
+Those who concern themselves with the printed matter in books and
+periodicals are often in despair over the volume of it, and their actual
+inability to keep up with current literature. They need not worry. If all
+that appears in books, under the pressure of publishers and the ambition
+of experimenters in writing, were uniformly excellent, no reader would be
+under any more obligation to read it than he is to see every individual
+flower and blossoming shrub. Specimens of the varieties would suffice.
+But a vast proportion of it is the product of immature minds, and of a
+yearning for experience rather than a knowledge of life. There is no more
+obligation on the part of the person who would be well informed and
+cultivated to read all this than there is to read all the colored
+incidents, personal gossip, accidents, and crimes repeated daily, with
+sameness of effect, in the newspapers, some of the most widely circulated
+of which are a composite of the police gazette and the comic almanac. A
+great deal of the reading done is mere contagion, one form or another of
+communicated grippe, and it is consoling and even surprising to know that
+if you escape the run of it for a season, you have lost nothing
+appreciable. Some people, it has been often said, make it a rule never to
+read a book until it is from one to five years old, By this simple device
+they escape the necessity of reading most of them, but this is only a
+part of their gain. Considering the fact that the world is full of books
+of the highest value for cultivation, entertainment, and information,
+which the utmost leisure we can spare from other pressing avocations does
+not suffice to give us knowledge of, it does seem to be little less than
+a moral and intellectual sin to flounder about blindly in the flood of
+new publications. I am speaking, of course, of the general mass of
+readers, and not of the specialists who must follow their subjects with
+ceaseless inquisition. But for most of us who belong to the still
+comparatively few who, really read books, the main object of life is not
+to keep up with the printing-press, any more than it is the main object
+of sensible people to follow all the extremes and whims of fashion in
+dress. When a fashion in literature has passed, we are surprised that it
+should ever have seemed worth the trouble of studying or imitating. When
+the special craze has passed, we notice another thing, and that is that
+the author, not being of the first rank or of the second, has generally
+contributed to the world all that he has to give in one book, and our
+time has been wasted on his other books; and also that in a special kind
+of writing in a given period--let us say, for example, the
+historico-romantic--we perceive that it all has a common character, is
+constructed on the same lines of adventure and with a prevailing type of
+hero and heroine, according to the pattern set by the first one or two
+stories of the sort which became popular, and we see its more or less
+mechanical construction, and how easily it degenerates into commercial
+book-making. Now while some of this writing has an individual flavor that
+makes it entertaining and profitable in this way, we may be excused from
+attempting to follow it all merely because it happens to be talked about
+for the moment, and generally talked about in a very undiscriminating
+manner. We need not in any company be ashamed if we have not read it all,
+especially if we are ashamed that, considering the time at our disposal,
+we have not made the acquaintance of the great and small masterpieces of
+literature. It is said that the fashion of this world passeth away, and
+so does the mere fashion in literature, the fashion that does not follow
+the eternal law of beauty and symmetry, and contribute to the
+intellectual and spiritual part of man. Otherwise it is only a waiting in
+a material existence, like the lovers, in the words of the Arabian
+story-teller, "till there came to them the Destroyer of Delights and the
+Sunderer of Companies, he who layeth waste the palaces and peopleth the
+tombs."
+
+Without special anxiety, then, to keep pace with all the ephemeral in
+literature, lest we should miss for the moment something that is
+permanent, we can rest content in the vast accumulation of the tried and
+genuine that the ages have given us. Anything that really belongs to
+literature today we shall certainly find awaiting us tomorrow.
+
+The better part of the life of man is in and by the imagination. This is
+not generally believed, because it is not generally believed that the
+chief end of man is the accumulation of intellectual and spiritual
+material. Hence it is that what is called a practical education is set
+above the mere enlargement and enrichment of the mind; and the possession
+of the material is valued, and the intellectual life is undervalued. But
+it should be remembered that the best preparation for a practical and
+useful life is in the high development of the powers of the mind, and
+that, commonly, by a culture that is not considered practical. The
+notable fact about the group of great parliamentary orators in the days
+of George III is the exhibition of their intellectual resources in the
+entire world of letters, the classics, and ancient and modern history.
+Yet all of them owed their development to a strictly classical training
+in the schools. And most of them had not only the gift of the imagination
+necessary to great eloquence, but also were so mentally disciplined by
+the classics that they handled the practical questions upon which they
+legislated with clearness and precision. The great masters of finance
+were the classically trained orators William Pitt and Charles James Fox.
+
+In fine, to return to our knowledge of the short life of fashions that
+are for the moment striking, why should we waste precious time in chasing
+meteoric appearances, when we can be warmed and invigorated in the
+sunshine of the great literatures?
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Fashions in Literature, by Charles Dudley Warner
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FASHIONS IN LITERATURE ***
+
+***** This file should be named 3109.txt or 3109.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/3/1/0/3109/
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/3109.zip b/3109.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..005eb51
--- /dev/null
+++ b/3109.zip
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1cc265
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #3109 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3109)
diff --git a/old/cwflt10.txt b/old/cwflt10.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5eb72b6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/cwflt10.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,996 @@
+Project Gutenberg Etext Fashions in Literature, by C. D. Warner
+(#13 in our series by Charles Dudley Warner)
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check
+the laws for your country before redistributing these files!!!
+
+Please take a look at the important information in this header.
+We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an
+electronic path open for the next readers.
+
+Please do not remove this.
+
+This should be the first thing seen when anyone opens the book.
+Do not change or edit it without written permission.  The words
+are carefully chosen to provide users with the information they
+need about what they can legally do with the texts.
+
+
+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations*
+
+Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and
+further information is included below.  We need your donations.
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a 501(c)(3).
+
+As of 12/12/00 contributions are only being solicited from people in:
+Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa,
+Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Montana,
+Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota,
+Texas, Vermont, and Wyoming.
+
+As the requirements for other states are met,
+additions to this list will be made and fund raising
+will begin in the additional states.  Please feel
+free to ask to check the status of your state.
+
+These donations should be made to:
+
+Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+PMB 113
+1739 University Ave.
+Oxford, MS 38655
+
+
+Title: Fashions in Literature
+
+Author: Charles Dudley Warner
+
+Release Date: March, 2002  [Etext #3109]
+[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule]
+[The actual date this file first posted = 01/10/01]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Project Gutenberg Etext Fashions in Literature, by C. D. Warner
+*****This file should be named cwflt10.txt or cwflt10.zip******
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, cwflt11.txt
+VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, cwflt10a.txt
+
+This etext was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created from multiple editions,
+all of which are in the Public Domain in the United States, unless a
+copyright notice is included.  Therefore, we usually do NOT keep any
+of these books in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+We are now trying to release all our books one year in advance
+of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
+Please be encouraged to send us error messages even years after
+the official publication date.
+
+Please note:  neither this list nor its contents are final till
+midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
+The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at
+Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
+preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
+and editing by those who wish to do so.
+
+Most people start at our sites at:
+http://gutenberg.net
+http://promo.net/pg
+
+
+Those of you who want to download any Etext before announcement
+can surf to them as follows, and just download by date; this is
+also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the
+indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an
+announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.
+
+http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext02
+or
+ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext02
+
+Or /etext01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90
+
+Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want,
+as it appears in our Newsletters.
+
+
+Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
+
+We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
+time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
+to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
+searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.  This
+projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If our value
+per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
+million dollars per hour this year as we release fifty new Etext
+files per month, or 500 more Etexts in 2000 for a total of 3000+
+If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total
+should reach over 300 billion Etexts given away by year's end.
+
+The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext
+Files by December 31, 2001.  [10,000 x 100,000,000 = 1 Trillion]
+This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
+which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.
+
+At our revised rates of production, we will reach only one-third
+of that goal by the end of 2001, or about 3,333 Etexts unless we
+manage to get some real funding.
+
+Something is needed to create a future for Project Gutenberg for
+the next 100 years.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+Presently, contributions are only being solicited from people in:
+Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa,
+Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Nevada,
+Montana, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina,
+South Dakota, Texas, Vermont, and Wyoming.
+
+As the requirements for other states are met,
+additions to this list will be made and fund raising
+will begin in the additional states.
+
+These donations should be made to:
+
+Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+PMB 113
+1739 University Ave.
+Oxford, MS 38655
+
+
+Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+has been approved as a 501(c)(3) organization by the US Internal
+Revenue Service (IRS).  Donations are tax-deductible to the extent
+permitted by law.  As the requirements for other states are met,
+additions to this list will be made and fund raising will begin in the
+additional states.
+
+All donations should be made to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation.  Mail to:
+
+Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+PMB 113
+1739 University Avenue
+Oxford, MS 38655  [USA]
+
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+You can get up to date donation information at:
+
+http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html
+
+
+***
+
+You can always email directly to:
+
+Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
+
+hart@pobox.com forwards to hart@prairienet.org and archive.org
+if your mail bounces from archive.org, I will still see it, if
+it bounces from prairienet.org, better resend later on. . . .
+
+We would prefer to send you this information by email.
+
+
+Example command-line FTP session:
+
+ftp ftp.ibiblio.org
+login: anonymous
+password: your@login
+cd pub/docs/books/gutenberg
+cd etext90 through etext99 or etext00 through etext02, etc.
+dir [to see files]
+get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files]
+GET GUTINDEX.??  [to get a year's listing of books, e.g., GUTINDEX.99]
+GET GUTINDEX.ALL [to get a listing of ALL books]
+
+
+**The Legal Small Print**
+
+
+(Three Pages)
+
+***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START***
+Why is this "Small Print!" statement here?  You know: lawyers.
+They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
+your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from
+someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
+fault.  So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
+disclaims most of our liability to you.  It also tells you how
+you can distribute copies of this etext if you want to.
+
+*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT
+By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
+this "Small Print!" statement.  If you do not, you can receive
+a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by
+sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
+you got it from.  If you received this etext on a physical
+medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
+
+ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS
+This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etexts,
+is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart
+through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project").
+Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
+on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
+distribute it in the United States without permission and
+without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules, set forth
+below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext
+under the Project's "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
+
+Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market
+any commercial products without permission.
+
+To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable
+efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
+works.  Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any
+medium they may be on may contain "Defects".  Among other
+things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
+disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer
+codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
+But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
+[1] the Project (and any other party you may receive this
+etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
+legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
+UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
+INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
+OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
+POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
+
+If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of
+receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
+you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
+time to the person you received it from.  If you received it
+on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
+such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
+copy.  If you received it electronically, such person may
+choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
+receive it electronically.
+
+THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS".  NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
+TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
+PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+
+Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
+the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
+above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
+may have other legal rights.
+
+INDEMNITY
+You will indemnify and hold the Project, its directors,
+officers, members and agents harmless from all liability, cost
+and expense, including legal fees, that arise directly or
+indirectly from any of the following that you do or cause:
+[1] distribution of this etext, [2] alteration, modification,
+or addition to the etext, or [3] any Defect.
+
+DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
+You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by
+disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
+"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
+or:
+
+[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
+     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
+     etext or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
+     if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable
+     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
+     including any form resulting from conversion by word
+     processing or hypertext software, but only so long as
+     *EITHER*:
+
+     [*]  The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
+          does *not* contain characters other than those
+          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
+          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
+          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
+          author, and additional characters may be used to
+          indicate hypertext links; OR
+
+     [*]  The etext may be readily converted by the reader at
+          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
+          form by the program that displays the etext (as is
+          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
+          OR
+
+     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
+          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
+          etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
+          or other equivalent proprietary form).
+
+[2]  Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this
+     "Small Print!" statement.
+
+[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the
+     gross profits you derive calculated using the method you
+     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
+     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
+     payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation"
+     the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were
+     legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
+     periodic) tax return.  Please contact us beforehand to
+     let us know your plans and to work out the details.
+
+WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
+The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time,
+public domain etexts, and royalty free copyright licenses.
+If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or
+software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at:
+hart@pobox.com
+
+*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.12.12.00*END*
+
+
+
+
+
+This etext was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+
+
+
+
+Fashions in Literature
+
+by Charles Dudley Warner
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+Thirty years ago and more those who read and valued good books in this
+country made the acquaintance of Mr. Warner, and since the publication of
+"My Summer In a Garden" no work of his has needed any other introduction
+than the presence of his name on the title-page; and now that reputation
+has mellowed into memory, even the word of interpretation seems
+superfluous.  Mr. Warner wrote out of a clear, as well as a full mind,
+and lucidity of style was part of that harmonious charm of sincerity and
+urbanity which made him one of the most intelligible and companionable of
+our writers.
+
+It is a pleasure, however, to recall him as, not long ago, we saw him
+move and heard him speak in the ripeness of years which brought him the
+full flavor of maturity without any loss of freshness from his humor or
+serenity from his thought.  He shared with Lowell, Longfellow, and Curtis
+a harmony of nature and art, a unity of ideal and achievement, which make
+him a welcome figure, not only for what he said, but for what he was; one
+of those friends whose coming is hailed with joy because they seem always
+at their best, and minister to rather than draw upon our own capital of
+moral vitality.
+
+Mr. Warner was the most undogmatic of idealists, the most winning of
+teachers.  He had always some thing to say to the ethical sense, a word
+for the conscience; but his approach was always through the mind, and his
+enforcement of the moral lesson was by suggestion rather than by
+commandment.  There was nothing ascetic about him, no easy solution of
+the difficulties of life by ignoring or evading them; nor, on the other
+hand, was there any confusion of moral standards as the result of a
+confusion of ideas touching the nature and functions of art.  He saw
+clearly, he felt deeply, and he thought straight; hence the rectitude of
+his mind, the sanity of his spirit, the justice of his dealings with the
+things which make for life and art.  He used the essay as Addison used
+it, not for sermonic effect, but as a form of art which permitted a man
+to deal with serious things in a spirit of gayety, and with that
+lightness of touch which conveys influence without employing force.  He
+was as deeply enamored as George William Curtis with the highest ideals
+of life for America, and, like Curtis, his expression caught the grace
+and distinction of those ideals.
+
+It is a pleasure to hear his voice once more, because its very accents
+suggest the most interesting, high-minded, and captivating ideals of
+living; he brings with him that air of fine breeding which is diffused by
+the men who, in mind as in manners, have been, in a distinctive sense,
+gentlemen; who have lived so constantly and habitually on intimate terms
+with the highest things in thought and character that the tone of this
+really best society has become theirs.  Among men of talent there are
+plebeians as well as patricians; even genius, which is never vulgar, is
+sometimes unable to hide the vulgarity of the aims and ideas which it
+clothes with beauty without concealing their essential nature.  Mr.
+Warner was a patrician; the most democratic of men, he was one of the
+most fastidious in his intellectual companionships and affiliations.
+The subjects about which he speaks with his oldtime directness and charm
+in this volume make us aware of the serious temper of his mind, of his
+deep interest in the life of his time and people, and of the easy and
+natural grace with which he insisted on facing the fact and bringing it
+to the test of the highest standards.  In his discussion of "Fashions in
+Literature" he deftly brings before us the significance of literature and
+the signs which it always wears, while he seems bent upon considering
+some interesting aspects of contemporary writing.
+
+And how admirably he has described his own work in his definition of
+qualities which are common to all literature of a high order: simplicity,
+knowledge of human nature, agreeable personality.  It would be impossible
+in briefer or more comprehensive phrase to sum up and express the secret
+of his influence and of the pleasure he gives us.  It is to suggest this
+application of his words to himself that this preparatory comment is
+written.
+
+When "My Summer In a Garden" appeared, it won a host of friends who did
+not stop to ask whether it was a piece of excellent journalism or a bit
+of real literature.  It was so natural, so informal, so intimate that
+readers accepted it as matter of course, as they accepted the blooming of
+flowers and the flitting of birds.  It was simply a report of certain
+things which had happened out of doors, made by an observing neighbor,
+whose talk seemed to be of a piece with the diffused fragrance and light
+and life of the old-fashioned garden.  This easy approach, along natural
+lines of interest, by quietly putting himself on common ground with his
+reader, Mr. Warner never abandoned; he was so delightful a companion that
+until he ceased to walk beside them, many of his friends of the mind did
+not realize how much he had enriched them by the way.  This charming
+simplicity, which made it possible for him to put himself on intimate
+terms with his readers, was the result of his sincerity, his clearness of
+thought, and his ripe culture: that knowledge of the best which rids a
+man forever of faith in devices, dexterities, obscurities, and all other
+substitutes for the lucid realities of thinking and of character.
+
+To his love of reality and his sincere interest in men, Mr. Warner added
+natural shrewdness and long observation of the psychology of men and
+women under the stress and strain of experience.  His knowledge of human
+nature did not lessen his geniality, but it kept the edge of his mind
+keen, and gave his work the variety not only of humor but of satire.  He
+cared deeply for people, but they did not impose on him; he loved his
+country with a passion which was the more genuine because it was exacting
+and, at times, sharply critical.  There runs through all his work, as a
+critic of manners and men, as well as of art, a wisdom of life born of
+wide and keen observation; put not into the form of aphorisms, but of
+shrewd comment, of keen criticism, of nice discrimination between the
+manifold shadings of insincerity, of insight into the action and reaction
+of conditions, surroundings, social and ethical aims on men and women.
+The stories written in his later years are full of the evidences of a
+knowledge of human nature which was singularly trustworthy and
+penetrating.
+
+When all has been said, however, it remains true of him, as of so many of
+the writers whom we read and love and love as we read, that the secret of
+his charm lay in an agreeable personality.  At the end of the analysis,
+if the work is worth while, there is always a man, and the man is the
+explanation of the work.  This is pre-eminently true of those writers
+whose charm lies less in distinctively intellectual qualities than in
+temperament, atmosphere, humor-writers of the quality of Steele,
+Goldsmith, Lamb, Irving.  It is not only, therefore, a pleasure to recall
+Mr. Warner; it is a necessity if one would discover the secret of his
+charm, the source of his authority.
+
+He was a New Englander by birth and by long residence, but he was also a
+man of the world in the true sense of the phrase; one whose ethical
+judgment had been broadened without being lowered; who had learned that
+truth, though often strenuously enforced, is never so convincing as when
+stated in terms of beauty; and to whom it had been revealed that to live
+naturally, sanely, and productively one must live humanly, with due
+regard to the earthly as well as to heavenly, with ease as well as
+earnestness of spirit, through play no less than through work, in the
+large resources of art, society, and humor, as well as with the ancient
+and well-tested rectitudes of the fathers.
+
+The harmonious play of his whole nature, the breadth of his interests and
+the sanity of his spirit made Mr. Warner a delightful companion, and kept
+to the very end the freshness of his mind and the spontaneity of his
+humor; life never lost its savor for him, nor did his style part with its
+diffused but thoroughly individual humor.  This latest collection of his
+papers, dealing with a wide range of subjects from the "Education of the
+Negro" to "Literature and the Stage," with characteristic comments on
+"Truthfulness" and "The Pursuit of Happiness," shows him at the end of
+his long and tireless career as a writer still deeply interested in
+contemporary events, responsive to the appeal of the questions of the
+hour, and sensitive to all things which affected the dignity and
+authority of literature.  In his interests, his bearing, his relations to
+the public life of the country, no less than in his work, he held fast to
+the best traditions of literature, and he has taken his place among the
+representative American men of Letters.
+
+HAMILTON W.  MABIE.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+FASHIONS IN LITERATURE
+
+If you examine a collection of prints of costumes of different
+generations, you are commonly amused by the ludicrous appearance of most
+of them, especially of those that are not familiar to you in your own
+decade.  They are not only inappropriate and inconvenient to your eye,
+but they offend your taste.  You cannot believe that they were ever
+thought beautiful and becoming.  If your memory does not fail you,
+however, and you retain a little honesty of mind, you can recall the fact
+that a costume which seems to you ridiculous today had your warm approval
+ten years ago.  You wonder, indeed, how you could ever have tolerated a
+costume which has not one graceful line, and has no more relation to the
+human figure than Mambrino's helmet had to a crown of glory.  You cannot
+imagine how you ever approved the vast balloon skirt that gave your
+sweetheart the appearance of the great bell of Moscow, or that you
+yourself could have been complacent in a coat the tails of which reached
+your heels, and the buttons of which, a rudimentary survival, were
+between your shoulder-blades--you who are now devoted to a female figure
+that resembles an old-fashioned churn surmounted by an isosceles
+triangle.
+
+These vagaries of taste, which disfigure or destroy correct proportions
+or hide deformities, are nowhere more evident than in the illustrations
+of works of fiction.  The artist who collaborates with the contemporary
+novelist has a hard fate.  If he is faithful to the fashions of the day,
+he earns the repute of artistic depravity in the eyes of the next
+generation.  The novel may become a classic, because it represents human
+nature, or even the whimsicalities of a period; but the illustrations of
+the artist only provoke a smile, because he has represented merely the
+unessential and the fleeting.  The interest in his work is
+archaeological, not artistic.  The genius of the great portrait-painter
+may to some extent overcome the disadvantages of contemporary costume,
+but if the costume of his period is hideous and lacks the essential lines
+of beauty, his work is liable to need the apology of quaintness.  The
+Greek artist and the Mediaeval painter, when the costumes were really
+picturesque and made us forget the lack of simplicity in a noble
+sumptuousness, had never this posthumous difficulty to contend with.
+
+In the examination of costumes of different races and different ages, we
+are also struck by the fact that with primitive or isolated peoples
+costumes vary little from age to age, and fashion and the fashions are
+unrecognized, and a habit of dress which is dictated by climate, or has
+been proved to be comfortable, is adhered to from one generation to
+another; while nations that we call highly civilized, meaning commonly
+not only Occidental peoples, but peoples called progressive, are subject
+to the most frequent and violent changes of fashions, not in generations
+only, but in decades and years of a generation, as if the mass had no
+mind or taste of its own, but submitted to the irresponsible ukase of
+tailors and modistes, who are in alliance with enterprising manufacturers
+of novelties.  In this higher civilization a costume which is artistic
+and becoming has no more chance of permanence than one which is ugly and
+inconvenient. It might be inferred that this higher civilization produces
+no better taste and discrimination, no more independent judgment, in
+dress than it does in literature.  The vagaries in dress of the Western
+nations for a thousand years past, to go back no further, are certainly
+highly amusing, and would be humiliating to people who regarded taste and
+art as essentials of civilization.  But when we speak of civilization, we
+cannot but notice that some of the great civilizations; the longest
+permanent and most notable for highest achievement in learning, science,
+art, or in the graces or comforts of life, the Egyptian, the Saracenic,
+the Chinese, were subject to no such vagaries in costume, but adhered to
+that which taste, climate, experience had determined to be the most
+useful and appropriate.  And it is a singular comment upon our modern
+conceit that we make our own vagaries and changeableness, and not any
+fixed principles of art or of utility, the criterion of judgment, on
+other races and other times.
+
+The more important result of the study of past fashions, in engravings
+and paintings, remains to be spoken of.  It is that in all the
+illustrations, from the simplicity of Athens, through the artificiality
+of Louis XIV and the monstrosities of Elizabeth, down to the undescribed
+modistic inventions of the first McKinley, there is discoverable a
+radical and primitive law of beauty.  We acknowledge it among the Greeks,
+we encounter it in one age and another.  I mean a style of dress that is
+artistic as well as picturesque, that satisfies our love of beauty, that
+accords with the grace of the perfect human figure, and that gives as
+perfect satisfaction to the cultivated taste as a drawing by Raphael.
+While all the other illustrations of the human ingenuity in making the
+human race appear fantastic or ridiculous amuse us or offend our taste,
+--except the tailor fashion-plates of the week that is now,--these few
+exceptions, classic or modern, give us permanent delight, and are
+recognized as following the eternal law of beauty and utility.  And we
+know, notwithstanding the temporary triumph of bad taste and the public
+lack of any taste, that there is a standard, artistic and imperishable.
+
+The student of manners might find an interesting field in noting how, in
+our Occidental civilizations, fluctuations of opinions, of morals, and of
+literary style have been accompanied by more or less significant
+exhibitions of costumes.  He will note in the Precieux of France and the
+Euphuist of England a corresponding effeminacy in dress; in the frank
+paganism of the French Revolution the affectation of Greek and Roman
+apparel, passing into the Directoire style in the Citizen and the
+Citizeness; in the Calvinistic cut of the Puritan of Geneva and of New
+England the grim severity of their theology and morals.  These examples
+are interesting as showing an inclination to express an inner condition
+by the outward apparel, as the Quakers indicate an inward peace by an
+external drabness, and the American Indian a bellicose disposition by red
+and yellow paint; just as we express by red stripes our desire to kill
+men with artillery, or by yellow stripes to kill them with cavalry.  It
+is not possible to say whether these external displays are relics of
+barbarism or are enduring necessities of human nature.
+
+The fickleness of men in costume in a manner burlesques their shifty and
+uncertain taste in literature.  A book or a certain fashion in letters
+will have a run like a garment, and, like that, will pass away before it
+waxes old.  It seems incredible, as we look back over the literary
+history of the past three centuries only, what prevailing styles and
+moods of expression, affectations, and prettinesses, each in turn, have
+pleased reasonably cultivated people.  What tedious and vapid things they
+read and liked to read!  Think of the French, who had once had a Villon,
+intoxicating themselves with somnolent draughts of Richardson.  But,
+then, the French could match the paste euphuisms of Lyly with the novels
+of Scudery.  Every modern literature has been subject to these epidemics
+and diseases.  It is needless to dwell upon them in detail.  Since the
+great diffusion of printing, these literary crazes have been more
+frequent and of shorter duration.  We need go back no further than a
+generation to find abundant examples of eccentricities of style and
+expression, of crazes over some author or some book, as unaccountable on
+principles of art as many of the fashions in social life. --The more
+violent the attack, the sooner it is over.  Readers of middle age can
+recall the furor over Tupper, the extravagant expectations as to the
+brilliant essayist Gilfillan, the soon-extinguished hopes of the poet
+Alexander Smith.  For the moment the world waited in the belief of the
+rising of new stars, and as suddenly realized that it had been deceived.
+Sometimes we like ruggedness, and again we like things made easy.  Within
+a few years a distinguished Scotch clergyman made a fortune by diluting a
+paragraph written by Saint Paul.  It is in our memory how at one time all
+the boys tried to write like Macaulay, and then like Carlyle, and then
+like Ruskin, and we have lived to see the day when all the girls would
+like to write like Heine.
+
+In less than twenty years we have seen wonderful changes in public taste
+and in the efforts of writers to meet it or to create it.  We saw the
+everlastingly revived conflict between realism and romanticism.  We saw
+the realist run into the naturalist, the naturalist into the animalist,
+the psychologist into the sexualist, and the sudden reaction to romance,
+in the form of what is called the historic novel, the receipt for which
+can be prescribed by any competent pharmacist.  The one essential in the
+ingredients is that the hero shall be mainly got out of one hole by
+dropping him into a deeper one, until--the proper serial length being
+attained--he is miraculously dropped out into daylight, and stands to
+receive the plaudits of a tenderhearted world, that is fond of nothing so
+much as of fighting.
+
+The extraordinary vogue of certain recent stories is not so much to be
+wondered at when we consider the millions that have been added to the
+readers of English during the past twenty-five years.  The wonder is that
+a new book does not sell more largely, or it would be a wonder if the
+ability to buy kept pace with the ability to read, and if discrimination
+had accompanied the appetite for reading.  The critics term these
+successes of some recent fictions "crazes," but they are really sustained
+by some desirable qualities--they are cleverly written, and they are for
+the moment undoubtedly entertaining.  Some of them as undoubtedly appeal
+to innate vulgarity or to cultivated depravity.  I will call no names,
+because that would be to indict the public taste.  This recent phenomenon
+of sales of stories by the hundred thousand is not, however, wholly due
+to quality.  Another element has come in since the publishers have
+awakened to the fact that literature can be treated like merchandise.
+To use their own phrase, they "handle" books as they would "handle"
+patent medicines, that is, the popular patent medicines that are desired
+because of the amount of alcohol they contain; indeed, they are sold
+along with dry-goods and fancy notions.  I am not objecting to this great
+and wide distribution any more than I am to the haste of fruit-dealers to
+market their products before they decay.  The wary critic will be very
+careful about dogmatizing over the nature and distribution of literary
+products.  It is no certain sign that a book is good because it is
+popular, nor is it any more certain that it is good because it has a very
+limited sale.  Yet we cannot help seeing that many of the books that are
+the subject of crazes utterly disappear in a very short time, while many
+others, approved by only a judicious few, continue in the market and
+slowly become standards, considered as good stock by the booksellers and
+continually in a limited demand.
+
+The English essayists have spent a good deal of time lately in discussing
+the question whether it is possible to tell a good contemporary book from
+a bad one.  Their hesitation is justified by a study of English criticism
+of new books in the quarterly, monthly, and weekly periodicals from the
+latter part of the eighteenth century to the last quarter of the
+nineteenth; or, to name a definite period, from the verse of the Lake
+poets, from Shelley and Byron, down to Tennyson, there is scarcely a poet
+who has attained world-wide assent to his position in the first or second
+rank who was not at the hands of the reviewers the subject of mockery and
+bitter detraction.  To be original in any degree was to be damned.  And
+there is scarcely one who was at first ranked as a great light during
+this period who is now known out of the biographical dictionary.  Nothing
+in modern literature is more amazing than the bulk of English criticism
+in the last three-quarters of a century, so far as it concerned
+individual writers, both in poetry and prose.  The literary rancor shown
+rose to the dignity almost of theological vituperation.
+
+Is there any way to tell a good book from a bad one?  Yes.  As certainly
+as you can tell a good picture from a bad one, or a good egg from a bad
+one.  Because there are hosts who do not discriminate as to the eggs or
+the butter they eat, it does not follow that a normal taste should not
+know the difference.
+
+Because there is a highly artistic nation that welcomes the flavor of
+garlic in everything, and another which claims to be the most civilized
+in the world that cannot tell coffee from chicory, or because the ancient
+Chinese love rancid sesame oil, or the Esquimaux like spoiled blubber and
+tainted fish, it does not follow that there is not in the world a
+wholesome taste for things natural and pure.
+
+It is clear that the critic of contemporary literature is quite as likely
+to be wrong as right.  He is, for one thing, inevitably affected by the
+prevailing fashion of his little day.  And, worse still, he is apt to
+make his own tastes and prejudices the standard of his judgment.  His
+view is commonly provincial instead of cosmopolitan.  In the English
+period just referred to it is easy to see that most of the critical
+opinion was determined by political or theological animosity and
+prejudice.  The rule was for a Tory to hit a Whig or a Whig to hit a
+Tory, under whatever literary guise he appeared.  If the new writer was
+not orthodox in the view of his political or theological critic, he was
+not to be tolerated as poet or historian, Dr.  Johnson had said
+everything he could say against an author when he declared that he was a
+vile Whig.  Macaulay, a Whig, always consulted his prejudices for his
+judgment, equally when he was reviewing Croker's Boswell or the
+impeachment of Warren Hastings.  He hated Croker,--a hateful man, to be
+sure,--and when the latter published his edition of Boswell, Macaulay saw
+his opportunity, and exclaimed before he had looked at the book, as you
+will remember, "Now I will dust his jacket."  The standard of criticism
+does not lie with the individual in literature any more than it does in
+different periods as to fashions and manners.  The world is pretty well
+agreed, and always has been, as to the qualities that make a gentleman.
+And yet there was a time when the vilest and perhaps the most
+contemptible man who ever occupied the English throne,--and that is
+saying a great deal,--George IV, was universally called the "First
+Gentleman of Europe."  The reproach might be somewhat lightened by the
+fact that George was a foreigner, but for the wider fact that no person
+of English stock has been on the throne since Saxon Harold, the chosen
+and imposed rulers of England having been French, Welsh, Scotch, and
+Dutch, many of them being guiltless of the English language, and many of
+them also of the English middle-class morality.  The impartial old
+Wraxall, the memorialist of the times of George III, having described a
+noble as a gambler, a drunkard, a smuggler, an appropriator of public
+money, who always cheated his tradesmen, who was one and sometimes all of
+them together, and a profligate generally, commonly adds, "But he was a
+perfect gentleman."  And yet there has always been a standard that
+excludes George IV from the rank of gentleman, as it excludes Tupper from
+the rank of poet.
+
+The standard of literary judgment, then, is not in the individual,--that
+is, in the taste and prejudice of the individual,--any more than it is in
+the immediate contemporary opinion, which is always in flux and reflux
+from one extreme to another; but it is in certain immutable principles
+and qualities which have been slowly evolved during the long historic
+periods of literary criticism.  But how shall we ascertain what these
+principles are, so as to apply them to new circumstances and new
+creations, holding on to the essentials and disregarding contemporary
+tastes; prejudices, and appearances?  We all admit that certain pieces of
+literature have become classic; by general consent there is no dispute
+about them.  How they have become so we cannot exactly explain.  Some say
+by a mysterious settling of universal opinion, the operation of which
+cannot be exactly defined.  Others say that the highly developed critical
+judgment of a few persons, from time to time, has established forever
+what we agree to call masterpieces.  But this discussion is immaterial,
+since these supreme examples of literary excellence exist in all kinds of
+composition,--poetry, fable, romance, ethical teaching, prophecy,
+interpretation, history, humor, satire, devotional flight into the
+spiritual and supernatural, everything in which the human mind has
+exercised itself,--from the days of the Egyptian moralist and the Old
+Testament annalist and poet down to our scientific age.  These
+masterpieces exist from many periods and in many languages, and they all
+have qualities in common which have insured their persistence.
+To discover what these qualities are that have insured permanence and
+promise indefinite continuance is to have a means of judging with an
+approach to scientific accuracy our contemporary literature.  There is no
+thing of beauty that does not conform to a law of order and beauty--poem,
+story, costume, picture, statue, all fall into an ascertainable law of
+art.  Nothing of man's making is perfect, but any creation approximates
+perfection in the measure that it conforms to inevitable law.
+
+To ascertain this law, and apply it, in art or in literature, to the
+changing conditions of our progressive life, is the business of the
+artist.  It is the business of the critic to mark how the performance
+conforms to or departs from the law evolved and transmitted in the long-
+experience of the race.  True criticism, then, is not a matter of caprice
+or of individual liking or disliking, nor of conformity to a prevailing
+and generally temporary popular judgment.  Individual judgment may be
+very interesting and have its value, depending upon the capacity of the
+judge.  It was my good fortune once to fall in with a person who had been
+moved, by I know not what inspiration, to project himself out of his safe
+local conditions into France, Greece, Italy, Cairo, and Jerusalem.  He
+assured me that he had seen nothing anywhere in the wide world of nature
+and art to compare with the beauty of Nebraska.
+
+What are the qualities common to all the masterpieces of literature, or,
+let us say, to those that have endured in spite of imperfections and
+local provincialisms?
+
+First of all I should name simplicity, which includes lucidity of
+expression, the clear thought in fitting, luminous words.  And this is
+true when the thought is profound and the subject is as complex as life
+itself.  This quality is strikingly exhibited for us in Jowett's
+translation of Plato--which is as modern in feeling and phrase as
+anything done in Boston--in the naif and direct Herodotus, and, above
+all, in the King James vernacular translation of the Bible, which is the
+great text-book of all modern literature.
+
+The second quality is knowledge of human nature.  We can put up with the
+improbable in invention, because the improbable is always happening in
+life, but we cannot tolerate the so-called psychological juggling with
+the human mind, the perversion of the laws of the mind, the forcing of
+character to fit the eccentricities of plot.  Whatever excursions the
+writer makes in fancy, we require fundamental consistency with human
+nature.  And this is the reason why psychological studies of the
+abnormal, or biographies of criminal lunatics, are only interesting to
+pathologists and never become classics in literature.
+
+A third quality common to all masterpieces is what we call charm, a
+matter more or less of style, and which may be defined as the agreeable
+personality of the writer.  This is indispensable.  It is this
+personality which gives the final value to every work of art as well as
+of literature.  It is not enough to copy nature or to copy, even
+accurately, the incidents of life.  Only by digestion and transmutation
+through personality does any work attain the dignity of art.  The great
+works of architecture, even, which are somewhat determined by
+mathematical rule, owe their charm to the personal genius of their
+creators.  For this reason our imitations of Greek architecture are
+commonly failures.  To speak technically, the masterpiece of literature
+is characterized by the same knowledge of proportion and perspective as
+the masterpiece in art.
+
+If there is a standard of literary excellence, as there is a law of
+beauty--and it seems to me that to doubt this in the intellectual world
+is to doubt the prevalence of order that exists in the natural--it is
+certainly possible to ascertain whether a new production conforms, and
+how far it conforms, to the universally accepted canons of art.  To work
+by this rule in literary criticism is to substitute something definite
+for the individual tastes, moods, and local bias of the critic.  It is
+true that the vast body of that which we read is ephemeral, and justifies
+its existence by its obvious use for information, recreation, and
+entertainment.  But to permit the impression to prevail that an
+unenlightened popular preference for a book, however many may hold it,
+is to be taken as a measure of its excellence, is like claiming that a
+debased Austrian coin, because it circulates, is as good as a gold stater
+of Alexander.  The case is infinitely worse than this; for a slovenly
+literature, unrebuked and uncorrected, begets slovenly thought and
+debases our entire intellectual life.
+
+It should be remembered, however, that the creative faculty in man has
+not ceased, nor has puny man drawn all there is to be drawn out of the
+eternal wisdom.  We are probably only in the beginning of our evolution,
+and something new may always be expected, that is, new and fresh
+applications of universal law.  The critic of literature needs to be in
+an expectant and receptive frame of mind.  Many critics approach a book
+with hostile intent, and seem to fancy that their business is to look for
+what is bad in it, and not for what is good.  It seems to me that the
+first duty of the critic is to try to understand the author, to give him
+a fair chance by coming to his perusal with an open mind.  Whatever book
+you read, or sermon or lecture you hear, give yourself for the time
+absolutely to its influence.  This is just to the author, fair to the
+public, and, above all, valuable to the intellectual sanity of the critic
+himself.  It is a very bad thing for the memory and the judgment to get
+into a habit of reading carelessly or listening with distracted
+attention.  I know of nothing so harmful to the strength of the mind as
+this habit.  There is a valuable mental training in closely following a
+discourse that is valueless in itself.  After the reader has unreservedly
+surrendered himself to the influence of the book, and let his mind
+settle, as we say, and resume its own judgment, he is in a position to
+look at it objectively and to compare it with other facts of life and of
+literature dispassionately.  He can then compare it as to form,
+substance, tone, with the enduring literature that has come down to us
+from all the ages.  It is a phenomenon known to all of us that we may for
+the moment be carried away by a book which upon cool reflection we find
+is false in ethics and weak in construction.  We find this because we
+have standards outside ourselves.
+
+I am not concerned to define here what is meant by literature.  A great
+mass of it has been accumulated in the progress of mankind, and,
+fortunately for different wants and temperaments, it is as varied as the
+various minds that produced it.  The main thing to be considered is that
+this great stream of thought is the highest achievement and the most
+valuable possession of mankind.  It is not only that literature is the
+source of inspiration to youth and the solace of age, but it is what a
+national language is to a nation, the highest expression of its being.
+Whatever we acquire of science, of art, in discovery, in the application
+of natural laws in industries, is an enlargement of our horizon, and a
+contribution to the highest needs of man, his intellectual life.  The
+controversy between the claims of the practical life and the intellectual
+is as idle as the so-called conflict between science and religion.  And
+the highest and final expression of this life of man, his thought, his
+emotion, his feeling, his aspiration, whatever you choose to call it, is
+in the enduring literature he creates.  He certainly misses half his
+opportunity on this planet who considers only the physical or what is
+called the practical.  He is a man only half developed.  I can conceive
+no more dreary existence than that of a man who is past the period of
+business activity, and who cannot, for his entertainment, his happiness,
+draw upon the great reservoir of literature.  For what did I come into
+this world if I am to be like a stake planted in a fence, and not like a
+tree visited by all the winds of heaven and the birds of the air?
+
+Those who concern themselves with the printed matter in books and
+periodicals are often in despair over the volume of it, and their actual
+inability to keep up with current literature.  They need not worry.  If
+all that appears in books, under the pressure of publishers and the
+ambition of experimenters in writing, were uniformly excellent, no reader
+would be under any more obligation to read it than he is to see every
+individual flower and blossoming shrub.  Specimens of the varieties would
+suffice.  But a vast proportion of it is the product of immature minds,
+and of a yearning for experience rather than a knowledge of life.  There
+is no more obligation on the part of the person who would be well
+informed and cultivated to read all this than there is to read all the
+colored incidents, personal gossip, accidents, and crimes repeated daily,
+with sameness of effect, in the newspapers, some of the most widely
+circulated of which are a composite of the police gazette and the comic
+almanac.  A great deal of the reading done is mere contagion, one form or
+another of communicated grippe, and it is consoling and even surprising
+to know that if you escape the run of it for a season, you have lost
+nothing appreciable.  Some people, it has been often said, make it a rule
+never to read a book until it is from one to five years old, By this
+simple device they escape the necessity of reading most of them, but this
+is only a part of their gain.  Considering the fact that the world is
+full of books of the highest value for cultivation, entertainment, and
+information, which the utmost leisure we can spare from other pressing
+avocations does not suffice to give us knowledge of, it does seem to be
+little less than a moral and intellectual sin to flounder about blindly
+in the flood of new publications.  I am speaking, of course, of the
+general mass of readers, and not of the specialists who must follow their
+subjects with ceaseless inquisition.  But for most of us who belong to
+the still comparatively few who, really read books, the main object of
+life is not to keep up with the printing-press, any more than it is the
+main object of sensible people to follow all the extremes and whims of
+fashion in dress.  When a fashion in literature has passed, we are
+surprised that it should ever have seemed worth the trouble of studying
+or imitating.  When the special craze has passed, we notice another
+thing, and that is that the author, not being of the first rank or of the
+second, has generally contributed to the world all that he has to give in
+one book, and our time has been wasted on his other books; and also that
+in a special kind of writing in a given period--let us say, for example,
+the historico-romantic--we perceive that it all has a common character,
+is constructed on the same lines of adventure and with a prevailing type
+of hero and heroine, according to the pattern set by the first one or two
+stories of the sort which became popular, and we see its more or less
+mechanical construction, and how easily it degenerates into commercial
+book-making.  Now while some of this writing has an individual flavor
+that makes it entertaining and profitable in this way, we may be excused
+from attempting to follow it all merely because it happens to be talked
+about for the moment, and generally talked about in a very
+undiscriminating manner.  We need not in any company be ashamed if we
+have not read it all, especially if we are ashamed that, considering the
+time at our disposal, we have not made the acquaintance of the great and
+small masterpieces of literature.  It is said that the fashion of this
+world passeth away, and so does the mere fashion in literature, the
+fashion that does not follow the eternal law of beauty and symmetry, and
+contribute to the intellectual and spiritual part of man.  Otherwise it
+is only a waiting in a material existence, like the lovers, in the words
+of the Arabian story-teller, "till there came to them the Destroyer of
+Delights and the Sunderer of Companies, he who layeth waste the palaces
+and peopleth the tombs."
+
+Without special anxiety, then, to keep pace with all the ephemeral in
+literature, lest we should miss for the moment something that is
+permanent, we can rest content in the vast accumulation of the tried and
+genuine that the ages have given us.  Anything that really belongs to
+literature today we shall certainly find awaiting us tomorrow.
+
+The better part of the life of man is in and by the imagination.  This is
+not generally believed, because it is not generally believed that the
+chief end of man is the accumulation of intellectual and spiritual
+material.  Hence it is that what is called a practical education is set
+above the mere enlargement and enrichment of the mind; and the possession
+of the material is valued, and the intellectual life is undervalued.  But
+it should be remembered that the best preparation for a practical and
+useful life is in the high development of the powers of the mind, and
+that, commonly, by a culture that is not considered practical.  The
+notable fact about the group of great parliamentary orators in the days
+of George III is the exhibition of their intellectual resources in the
+entire world of letters, the classics, and ancient and modern history.
+Yet all of them owed their development to a strictly classical training
+in the schools.  And most of them had not only the gift of the
+imagination necessary to great eloquence, but also were so mentally
+disciplined by the classics that they handled the practical questions
+upon which they legislated with clearness and precision.  The great
+masters of finance were the classically trained orators William Pitt and
+Charles James Fox.
+
+In fine, to return to our knowledge of the short life of fashions that
+are for the moment striking, why should we waste precious time in chasing
+meteoric appearances, when we can be warmed and invigorated in the
+sunshine of the great literatures?
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext Fashions in Literature, by C. D. Warner
+
diff --git a/old/cwflt10.zip b/old/cwflt10.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4bd6e89
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/cwflt10.zip
diff --git a/old/cwflt11.txt b/old/cwflt11.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cebb1a9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/cwflt11.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,1021 @@
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Fashions in Literature, by Warner
+#13 in our series by Charles Dudley Warner
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check
+the laws for your country before redistributing these files!!!!!
+
+Please take a look at the important information in this header.
+We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an
+electronic path open for the next readers.
+
+Please do not remove this.
+
+This should be the first thing seen when anyone opens the book.
+Do not change or edit it without written permission. The words
+are carefully chosen to provide users with the information they
+need about what they can legally do with the texts.
+
+
+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*****These Etexts Are Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and
+further information is included below, including for donations.
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a 501(c)(3)
+organization with EIN [Employee Identification Number] 64-6221541
+
+
+
+Title: Fashions in Literature
+
+Author: Charles Dudley Warner
+
+Release Date: March, 2002  [Etext #3109]
+[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule]
+[The actual date this file first posted = 01/10/01]
+[Last modified date = 11/26/01]
+
+Edition: 11
+
+Language: English
+
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Fashions in Literature, by Warner
+******This file should be named cwflt11.txt or cwflt11.zip******
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, cwflt12.txt
+VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, cwflt11a.txt
+
+This etext was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created from multiple editions,
+all of which are in the Public Domain in the United States, unless a
+copyright notice is included. Therefore, we usually do NOT keep any
+of these books in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+We are now trying to release all our books one year in advance
+of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
+Please be encouraged to send us error messages even years after
+the official publication date.
+
+Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til
+midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
+The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at
+Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A
+preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
+and editing by those who wish to do so.
+
+Most people start at our sites at:
+http://gutenberg.net
+http://promo.net/pg
+
+
+Those of you who want to download any Etext before announcement
+can surf to them as follows, and just download by date; this is
+also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the
+indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an
+announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.
+
+http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03
+or
+ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext03
+
+Or /etext02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90
+
+Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want,
+as it appears in our Newsletters.
+
+
+Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
+
+We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The
+time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
+to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
+searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. This
+projected audience is one hundred million readers. If our value
+per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
+million dollars per hour this year as we release fifty new Etext
+files per month, or 500 more Etexts in 2000 for a total of 3000+
+If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total
+should reach over 300 billion Etexts given away by year's end.
+
+The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext
+Files by December 31, 2001. [10,000 x 100,000,000 = 1 Trillion]
+This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
+which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.
+
+At our revised rates of production, we will reach only one-third
+of that goal by the end of 2001, or about 4,000 Etexts unless we
+manage to get some real funding.
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created
+to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+As of 10/28/01 contributions are only being solicited from people in:
+Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho,
+Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan,
+Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico,
+New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania,
+Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont,
+Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming
+
+We have filed in about 45 states now, but these are the only ones
+that have responded.
+
+As the requirements for other states are met,
+additions to this list will be made and fund raising
+will begin in the additional states. Please feel
+free to ask to check the status of your state.
+
+In answer to various questions we have received on this:
+
+We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork
+to legally request donations in all 50 states. If
+your state is not listed and you would like to know
+if we have added it since the list you have, just ask.
+
+While we cannot solicit donations from people in
+states where we are not yet registered, we know
+of no prohibition against accepting donations
+from donors in these states who approach us with
+an offer to donate.
+
+
+International donations are accepted,
+but we don't know ANYTHING about how
+to make them tax-deductible, or
+even if they CAN be made deductible,
+and don't have the staff to handle it
+even if there are ways.
+
+All donations should be made to:
+
+Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+PMB 113
+1739 University Ave.
+Oxford, MS 38655-4109
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a 501(c)(3)
+organization with EIN [Employee Identification Number] 64-6221541,
+and has been approved as a 501(c)(3) organization by the US Internal
+Revenue Service (IRS). Donations are tax-deductible to the maximum
+extent permitted by law. As the requirements for other states are met,
+additions to this list will be made and fund raising will begin in the
+additional states.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+You can get up to date donation information at:
+
+http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html
+
+
+***
+
+If you can't reach Project Gutenberg,
+you can always email directly to:
+
+Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
+
+hart@pobox.com forwards to hart@prairienet.org and archive.org
+if your mail bounces from archive.org, I will still see it, if
+it bounces from prairienet.org, better resend later on. . . .
+
+Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message.
+
+We would prefer to send you information by email.
+
+
+***
+
+
+Example command-line FTP session:
+
+ftp ftp.ibiblio.org
+login: anonymous
+password: your@login
+cd pub/docs/books/gutenberg
+cd etext90 through etext99 or etext00 through etext02, etc.
+dir [to see files]
+get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files]
+GET GUTINDEX.?? [to get a year's listing of books, e.g., GUTINDEX.99]
+GET GUTINDEX.ALL [to get a listing of ALL books]
+
+
+**The Legal Small Print**
+
+
+(Three Pages)
+
+***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START***
+Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers.
+They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
+your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from
+someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
+fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
+disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how
+you may distribute copies of this etext if you want to.
+
+*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT
+By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
+this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive
+a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by
+sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
+you got it from. If you received this etext on a physical
+medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
+
+ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS
+This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etexts,
+is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart
+through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project").
+Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
+on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
+distribute it in the United States without permission and
+without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth
+below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext
+under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
+
+Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market
+any commercial products without permission.
+
+To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable
+efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
+works. Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any
+medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other
+things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
+disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer
+codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
+But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
+[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may
+receive this etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims
+all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
+legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
+UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
+INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
+OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
+POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
+
+If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of
+receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
+you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
+time to the person you received it from. If you received it
+on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
+such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
+copy. If you received it electronically, such person may
+choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
+receive it electronically.
+
+THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
+TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
+PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+
+Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
+the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
+above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
+may have other legal rights.
+
+INDEMNITY
+You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation,
+and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated
+with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
+texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including
+legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the
+following that you do or cause:  [1] distribution of this etext,
+[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the etext,
+or [3] any Defect.
+
+DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
+You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by
+disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
+"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
+or:
+
+[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
+     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
+     etext or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
+     if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable
+     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
+     including any form resulting from conversion by word
+     processing or hypertext software, but only so long as
+     *EITHER*:
+
+     [*]  The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
+          does *not* contain characters other than those
+          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
+          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
+          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
+          author, and additional characters may be used to
+          indicate hypertext links; OR
+
+     [*]  The etext may be readily converted by the reader at
+          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
+          form by the program that displays the etext (as is
+          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
+          OR
+
+     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
+          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
+          etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
+          or other equivalent proprietary form).
+
+[2]  Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this
+     "Small Print!" statement.
+
+[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the
+     gross profits you derive calculated using the method you
+     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
+     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
+     payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation"
+     the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were
+     legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
+     periodic) tax return.  Please contact us beforehand to
+     let us know your plans and to work out the details.
+
+WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
+Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of
+public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed
+in machine readable form.
+
+The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time,
+public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses.
+Money should be paid to the:
+"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or
+software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at:
+hart@pobox.com
+
+[Portions of this header are copyright (C) 2001 by Michael S. Hart
+and may be reprinted only when these Etexts are free of all fees.]
+[Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be used in any sales
+of Project Gutenberg Etexts or other materials be they hardware or
+software or any other related product without express permission.]
+
+*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.10/04/01*END*
+
+
+
+
+
+This etext was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+
+
+
+
+FASHIONS IN LITERATURE
+
+By Charles Dudley Warner
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+Thirty years ago and more those who read and valued good books in this
+country made the acquaintance of Mr. Warner, and since the publication of
+"My Summer In a Garden" no work of his has needed any other introduction
+than the presence of his name on the title-page; and now that reputation
+has mellowed into memory, even the word of interpretation seems
+superfluous.  Mr. Warner wrote out of a clear, as well as a full mind,
+and lucidity of style was part of that harmonious charm of sincerity and
+urbanity which made him one of the most intelligible and companionable of
+our writers.
+
+It is a pleasure, however, to recall him as, not long ago, we saw him
+move and heard him speak in the ripeness of years which brought him the
+full flavor of maturity without any loss of freshness from his humor or
+serenity from his thought.  He shared with Lowell, Longfellow, and Curtis
+a harmony of nature and art, a unity of ideal and achievement, which make
+him a welcome figure, not only for what he said, but for what he was; one
+of those friends whose coming is hailed with joy because they seem always
+at their best, and minister to rather than draw upon our own capital of
+moral vitality.
+
+Mr. Warner was the most undogmatic of idealists, the most winning of
+teachers.  He had always some thing to say to the ethical sense, a word
+for the conscience; but his approach was always through the mind, and his
+enforcement of the moral lesson was by suggestion rather than by
+commandment.  There was nothing ascetic about him, no easy solution of
+the difficulties of life by ignoring or evading them; nor, on the other
+hand, was there any confusion of moral standards as the result of a
+confusion of ideas touching the nature and functions of art.  He saw
+clearly, he felt deeply, and he thought straight; hence the rectitude of
+his mind, the sanity of his spirit, the justice of his dealings with the
+things which make for life and art.  He used the essay as Addison used
+it, not for sermonic effect, but as a form of art which permitted a man
+to deal with serious things in a spirit of gayety, and with that
+lightness of touch which conveys influence without employing force.  He
+was as deeply enamored as George William Curtis with the highest ideals
+of life for America, and, like Curtis, his expression caught the grace
+and distinction of those ideals.
+
+It is a pleasure to hear his voice once more, because its very accents
+suggest the most interesting, high-minded, and captivating ideals of
+living; he brings with him that air of fine breeding which is diffused by
+the men who, in mind as in manners, have been, in a distinctive sense,
+gentlemen; who have lived so constantly and habitually on intimate terms
+with the highest things in thought and character that the tone of this
+really best society has become theirs.  Among men of talent there are
+plebeians as well as patricians; even genius, which is never vulgar, is
+sometimes unable to hide the vulgarity of the aims and ideas which it
+clothes with beauty without concealing their essential nature.  Mr.
+Warner was a patrician; the most democratic of men, he was one of the
+most fastidious in his intellectual companionships and affiliations.
+The subjects about which he speaks with his oldtime directness and charm
+in this volume make us aware of the serious temper of his mind, of his
+deep interest in the life of his time and people, and of the easy and
+natural grace with which he insisted on facing the fact and bringing it
+to the test of the highest standards.  In his discussion of "Fashions in
+Literature" he deftly brings before us the significance of literature and
+the signs which it always wears, while he seems bent upon considering
+some interesting aspects of contemporary writing.
+
+And how admirably he has described his own work in his definition of
+qualities which are common to all literature of a high order: simplicity,
+knowledge of human nature, agreeable personality.  It would be impossible
+in briefer or more comprehensive phrase to sum up and express the secret
+of his influence and of the pleasure he gives us.  It is to suggest this
+application of his words to himself that this preparatory comment is
+written.
+
+When "My Summer In a Garden" appeared, it won a host of friends who did
+not stop to ask whether it was a piece of excellent journalism or a bit
+of real literature.  It was so natural, so informal, so intimate that
+readers accepted it as matter of course, as they accepted the blooming of
+flowers and the flitting of birds.  It was simply a report of certain
+things which had happened out of doors, made by an observing neighbor,
+whose talk seemed to be of a piece with the diffused fragrance and light
+and life of the old-fashioned garden.  This easy approach, along natural
+lines of interest, by quietly putting himself on common ground with his
+reader, Mr. Warner never abandoned; he was so delightful a companion that
+until he ceased to walk beside them, many of his friends of the mind did
+not realize how much he had enriched them by the way.  This charming
+simplicity, which made it possible for him to put himself on intimate
+terms with his readers, was the result of his sincerity, his clearness of
+thought, and his ripe culture: that knowledge of the best which rids a
+man forever of faith in devices, dexterities, obscurities, and all other
+substitutes for the lucid realities of thinking and of character.
+
+To his love of reality and his sincere interest in men, Mr. Warner added
+natural shrewdness and long observation of the psychology of men and
+women under the stress and strain of experience.  His knowledge of human
+nature did not lessen his geniality, but it kept the edge of his mind
+keen, and gave his work the variety not only of humor but of satire.  He
+cared deeply for people, but they did not impose on him; he loved his
+country with a passion which was the more genuine because it was exacting
+and, at times, sharply critical.  There runs through all his work, as a
+critic of manners and men, as well as of art, a wisdom of life born of
+wide and keen observation; put not into the form of aphorisms, but of
+shrewd comment, of keen criticism, of nice discrimination between the
+manifold shadings of insincerity, of insight into the action and reaction
+of conditions, surroundings, social and ethical aims on men and women.
+The stories written in his later years are full of the evidences of a
+knowledge of human nature which was singularly trustworthy and
+penetrating.
+
+When all has been said, however, it remains true of him, as of so many of
+the writers whom we read and love and love as we read, that the secret of
+his charm lay in an agreeable personality.  At the end of the analysis,
+if the work is worth while, there is always a man, and the man is the
+explanation of the work.  This is pre-eminently true of those writers
+whose charm lies less in distinctively intellectual qualities than in
+temperament, atmosphere, humor-writers of the quality of Steele,
+Goldsmith, Lamb, Irving.  It is not only, therefore, a pleasure to recall
+Mr. Warner; it is a necessity if one would discover the secret of his
+charm, the source of his authority.
+
+He was a New Englander by birth and by long residence, but he was also a
+man of the world in the true sense of the phrase; one whose ethical
+judgment had been broadened without being lowered; who had learned that
+truth, though often strenuously enforced, is never so convincing as when
+stated in terms of beauty; and to whom it had been revealed that to live
+naturally, sanely, and productively one must live humanly, with due
+regard to the earthly as well as to heavenly, with ease as well as
+earnestness of spirit, through play no less than through work, in the
+large resources of art, society, and humor, as well as with the ancient
+and well-tested rectitudes of the fathers.
+
+The harmonious play of his whole nature, the breadth of his interests and
+the sanity of his spirit made Mr. Warner a delightful companion, and kept
+to the very end the freshness of his mind and the spontaneity of his
+humor; life never lost its savor for him, nor did his style part with its
+diffused but thoroughly individual humor.  This latest collection of his
+papers, dealing with a wide range of subjects from the "Education of the
+Negro" to "Literature and the Stage," with characteristic comments on
+"Truthfulness" and "The Pursuit of Happiness," shows him at the end of
+his long and tireless career as a writer still deeply interested in
+contemporary events, responsive to the appeal of the questions of the
+hour, and sensitive to all things which affected the dignity and
+authority of literature.  In his interests, his bearing, his relations to
+the public life of the country, no less than in his work, he held fast to
+the best traditions of literature, and he has taken his place among the
+representative American men of Letters.
+
+HAMILTON W.  MABIE.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+FASHIONS IN LITERATURE
+
+If you examine a collection of prints of costumes of different
+generations, you are commonly amused by the ludicrous appearance of most
+of them, especially of those that are not familiar to you in your own
+decade.  They are not only inappropriate and inconvenient to your eye,
+but they offend your taste.  You cannot believe that they were ever
+thought beautiful and becoming.  If your memory does not fail you,
+however, and you retain a little honesty of mind, you can recall the fact
+that a costume which seems to you ridiculous today had your warm approval
+ten years ago.  You wonder, indeed, how you could ever have tolerated a
+costume which has not one graceful line, and has no more relation to the
+human figure than Mambrino's helmet had to a crown of glory.  You cannot
+imagine how you ever approved the vast balloon skirt that gave your
+sweetheart the appearance of the great bell of Moscow, or that you
+yourself could have been complacent in a coat the tails of which reached
+your heels, and the buttons of which, a rudimentary survival, were
+between your shoulder-blades--you who are now devoted to a female figure
+that resembles an old-fashioned churn surmounted by an isosceles
+triangle.
+
+These vagaries of taste, which disfigure or destroy correct proportions
+or hide deformities, are nowhere more evident than in the illustrations
+of works of fiction.  The artist who collaborates with the contemporary
+novelist has a hard fate.  If he is faithful to the fashions of the day,
+he earns the repute of artistic depravity in the eyes of the next
+generation.  The novel may become a classic, because it represents human
+nature, or even the whimsicalities of a period; but the illustrations of
+the artist only provoke a smile, because he has represented merely the
+unessential and the fleeting.  The interest in his work is
+archaeological, not artistic.  The genius of the great portrait-painter
+may to some extent overcome the disadvantages of contemporary costume,
+but if the costume of his period is hideous and lacks the essential lines
+of beauty, his work is liable to need the apology of quaintness.  The
+Greek artist and the Mediaeval painter, when the costumes were really
+picturesque and made us forget the lack of simplicity in a noble
+sumptuousness, had never this posthumous difficulty to contend with.
+
+In the examination of costumes of different races and different ages, we
+are also struck by the fact that with primitive or isolated peoples
+costumes vary little from age to age, and fashion and the fashions are
+unrecognized, and a habit of dress which is dictated by climate, or has
+been proved to be comfortable, is adhered to from one generation to
+another; while nations that we call highly civilized, meaning commonly
+not only Occidental peoples, but peoples called progressive, are subject
+to the most frequent and violent changes of fashions, not in generations
+only, but in decades and years of a generation, as if the mass had no
+mind or taste of its own, but submitted to the irresponsible ukase of
+tailors and modistes, who are in alliance with enterprising manufacturers
+of novelties.  In this higher civilization a costume which is artistic
+and becoming has no more chance of permanence than one which is ugly and
+inconvenient. It might be inferred that this higher civilization produces
+no better taste and discrimination, no more independent judgment, in
+dress than it does in literature.  The vagaries in dress of the Western
+nations for a thousand years past, to go back no further, are certainly
+highly amusing, and would be humiliating to people who regarded taste and
+art as essentials of civilization.  But when we speak of civilization, we
+cannot but notice that some of the great civilizations; the longest
+permanent and most notable for highest achievement in learning, science,
+art, or in the graces or comforts of life, the Egyptian, the Saracenic,
+the Chinese, were subject to no such vagaries in costume, but adhered to
+that which taste, climate, experience had determined to be the most
+useful and appropriate.  And it is a singular comment upon our modern
+conceit that we make our own vagaries and changeableness, and not any
+fixed principles of art or of utility, the criterion of judgment, on
+other races and other times.
+
+The more important result of the study of past fashions, in engravings
+and paintings, remains to be spoken of.  It is that in all the
+illustrations, from the simplicity of Athens, through the artificiality
+of Louis XIV and the monstrosities of Elizabeth, down to the undescribed
+modistic inventions of the first McKinley, there is discoverable a
+radical and primitive law of beauty.  We acknowledge it among the Greeks,
+we encounter it in one age and another.  I mean a style of dress that is
+artistic as well as picturesque, that satisfies our love of beauty, that
+accords with the grace of the perfect human figure, and that gives as
+perfect satisfaction to the cultivated taste as a drawing by Raphael.
+While all the other illustrations of the human ingenuity in making the
+human race appear fantastic or ridiculous amuse us or offend our taste,
+--except the tailor fashion-plates of the week that is now,--these few
+exceptions, classic or modern, give us permanent delight, and are
+recognized as following the eternal law of beauty and utility.  And we
+know, notwithstanding the temporary triumph of bad taste and the public
+lack of any taste, that there is a standard, artistic and imperishable.
+
+The student of manners might find an interesting field in noting how, in
+our Occidental civilizations, fluctuations of opinions, of morals, and of
+literary style have been accompanied by more or less significant
+exhibitions of costumes.  He will note in the Precieux of France and the
+Euphuist of England a corresponding effeminacy in dress; in the frank
+paganism of the French Revolution the affectation of Greek and Roman
+apparel, passing into the Directoire style in the Citizen and the
+Citizeness; in the Calvinistic cut of the Puritan of Geneva and of New
+England the grim severity of their theology and morals.  These examples
+are interesting as showing an inclination to express an inner condition
+by the outward apparel, as the Quakers indicate an inward peace by an
+external drabness, and the American Indian a bellicose disposition by red
+and yellow paint; just as we express by red stripes our desire to kill
+men with artillery, or by yellow stripes to kill them with cavalry.  It
+is not possible to say whether these external displays are relics of
+barbarism or are enduring necessities of human nature.
+
+The fickleness of men in costume in a manner burlesques their shifty and
+uncertain taste in literature.  A book or a certain fashion in letters
+will have a run like a garment, and, like that, will pass away before it
+waxes old.  It seems incredible, as we look back over the literary
+history of the past three centuries only, what prevailing styles and
+moods of expression, affectations, and prettinesses, each in turn, have
+pleased reasonably cultivated people.  What tedious and vapid things they
+read and liked to read!  Think of the French, who had once had a Villon,
+intoxicating themselves with somnolent draughts of Richardson.  But,
+then, the French could match the paste euphuisms of Lyly with the novels
+of Scudery.  Every modern literature has been subject to these epidemics
+and diseases.  It is needless to dwell upon them in detail.  Since the
+great diffusion of printing, these literary crazes have been more
+frequent and of shorter duration.  We need go back no further than a
+generation to find abundant examples of eccentricities of style and
+expression, of crazes over some author or some book, as unaccountable on
+principles of art as many of the fashions in social life.--The more
+violent the attack, the sooner it is over.  Readers of middle age can
+recall the furor over Tupper, the extravagant expectations as to the
+brilliant essayist Gilfillan, the soon-extinguished hopes of the poet
+Alexander Smith.  For the moment the world waited in the belief of the
+rising of new stars, and as suddenly realized that it had been deceived.
+Sometimes we like ruggedness, and again we like things made easy.  Within
+a few years a distinguished Scotch clergyman made a fortune by diluting a
+paragraph written by Saint Paul.  It is in our memory how at one time all
+the boys tried to write like Macaulay, and then like Carlyle, and then
+like Ruskin, and we have lived to see the day when all the girls would
+like to write like Heine.
+
+In less than twenty years we have seen wonderful changes in public taste
+and in the efforts of writers to meet it or to create it.  We saw the
+everlastingly revived conflict between realism and romanticism.  We saw
+the realist run into the naturalist, the naturalist into the animalist,
+the psychologist into the sexualist, and the sudden reaction to romance,
+in the form of what is called the historic novel, the receipt for which
+can be prescribed by any competent pharmacist.  The one essential in the
+ingredients is that the hero shall be mainly got out of one hole by
+dropping him into a deeper one, until--the proper serial length being
+attained--he is miraculously dropped out into daylight, and stands to
+receive the plaudits of a tenderhearted world, that is fond of nothing so
+much as of fighting.
+
+The extraordinary vogue of certain recent stories is not so much to be
+wondered at when we consider the millions that have been added to the
+readers of English during the past twenty-five years.  The wonder is that
+a new book does not sell more largely, or it would be a wonder if the
+ability to buy kept pace with the ability to read, and if discrimination
+had accompanied the appetite for reading.  The critics term these
+successes of some recent fictions "crazes," but they are really sustained
+by some desirable qualities--they are cleverly written, and they are for
+the moment undoubtedly entertaining.  Some of them as undoubtedly appeal
+to innate vulgarity or to cultivated depravity.  I will call no names,
+because that would be to indict the public taste.  This recent phenomenon
+of sales of stories by the hundred thousand is not, however, wholly due
+to quality.  Another element has come in since the publishers have
+awakened to the fact that literature can be treated like merchandise.
+To use their own phrase, they "handle" books as they would "handle"
+patent medicines, that is, the popular patent medicines that are desired
+because of the amount of alcohol they contain; indeed, they are sold
+along with dry-goods and fancy notions.  I am not objecting to this great
+and wide distribution any more than I am to the haste of fruit-dealers to
+market their products before they decay.  The wary critic will be very
+careful about dogmatizing over the nature and distribution of literary
+products.  It is no certain sign that a book is good because it is
+popular, nor is it any more certain that it is good because it has a very
+limited sale.  Yet we cannot help seeing that many of the books that are
+the subject of crazes utterly disappear in a very short time, while many
+others, approved by only a judicious few, continue in the market and
+slowly become standards, considered as good stock by the booksellers and
+continually in a limited demand.
+
+The English essayists have spent a good deal of time lately in discussing
+the question whether it is possible to tell a good contemporary book from
+a bad one.  Their hesitation is justified by a study of English criticism
+of new books in the quarterly, monthly, and weekly periodicals from the
+latter part of the eighteenth century to the last quarter of the
+nineteenth; or, to name a definite period, from the verse of the Lake
+poets, from Shelley and Byron, down to Tennyson, there is scarcely a poet
+who has attained world-wide assent to his position in the first or second
+rank who was not at the hands of the reviewers the subject of mockery and
+bitter detraction.  To be original in any degree was to be damned.  And
+there is scarcely one who was at first ranked as a great light during
+this period who is now known out of the biographical dictionary.  Nothing
+in modern literature is more amazing than the bulk of English criticism
+in the last three-quarters of a century, so far as it concerned
+individual writers, both in poetry and prose.  The literary rancor shown
+rose to the dignity almost of theological vituperation.
+
+Is there any way to tell a good book from a bad one?  Yes.  As certainly
+as you can tell a good picture from a bad one, or a good egg from a bad
+one.  Because there are hosts who do not discriminate as to the eggs or
+the butter they eat, it does not follow that a normal taste should not
+know the difference.
+
+Because there is a highly artistic nation that welcomes the flavor of
+garlic in everything, and another which claims to be the most civilized
+in the world that cannot tell coffee from chicory, or because the ancient
+Chinese love rancid sesame oil, or the Esquimaux like spoiled blubber and
+tainted fish, it does not follow that there is not in the world a
+wholesome taste for things natural and pure.
+
+It is clear that the critic of contemporary literature is quite as likely
+to be wrong as right.  He is, for one thing, inevitably affected by the
+prevailing fashion of his little day.  And, worse still, he is apt to
+make his own tastes and prejudices the standard of his judgment.  His
+view is commonly provincial instead of cosmopolitan.  In the English
+period just referred to it is easy to see that most of the critical
+opinion was determined by political or theological animosity and
+prejudice.  The rule was for a Tory to hit a Whig or a Whig to hit a
+Tory, under whatever literary guise he appeared.  If the new writer was
+not orthodox in the view of his political or theological critic, he was
+not to be tolerated as poet or historian, Dr.  Johnson had said
+everything he could say against an author when he declared that he was a
+vile Whig.  Macaulay, a Whig, always consulted his prejudices for his
+judgment, equally when he was reviewing Croker's Boswell or the
+impeachment of Warren Hastings.  He hated Croker,--a hateful man, to be
+sure,--and when the latter published his edition of Boswell, Macaulay saw
+his opportunity, and exclaimed before he had looked at the book, as you
+will remember, "Now I will dust his jacket."  The standard of criticism
+does not lie with the individual in literature any more than it does in
+different periods as to fashions and manners.  The world is pretty well
+agreed, and always has been, as to the qualities that make a gentleman.
+And yet there was a time when the vilest and perhaps the most
+contemptible man who ever occupied the English throne,--and that is
+saying a great deal,--George IV, was universally called the "First
+Gentleman of Europe."  The reproach might be somewhat lightened by the
+fact that George was a foreigner, but for the wider fact that no person
+of English stock has been on the throne since Saxon Harold, the chosen
+and imposed rulers of England having been French, Welsh, Scotch, and
+Dutch, many of them being guiltless of the English language, and many of
+them also of the English middle-class morality.  The impartial old
+Wraxall, the memorialist of the times of George III, having described a
+noble as a gambler, a drunkard, a smuggler, an appropriator of public
+money, who always cheated his tradesmen, who was one and sometimes all of
+them together, and a profligate generally, commonly adds, "But he was a
+perfect gentleman."  And yet there has always been a standard that
+excludes George IV from the rank of gentleman, as it excludes Tupper from
+the rank of poet.
+
+The standard of literary judgment, then, is not in the individual,--that
+is, in the taste and prejudice of the individual,--any more than it is in
+the immediate contemporary opinion, which is always in flux and reflux
+from one extreme to another; but it is in certain immutable principles
+and qualities which have been slowly evolved during the long historic
+periods of literary criticism.  But how shall we ascertain what these
+principles are, so as to apply them to new circumstances and new
+creations, holding on to the essentials and disregarding contemporary
+tastes; prejudices, and appearances?  We all admit that certain pieces of
+literature have become classic; by general consent there is no dispute
+about them.  How they have become so we cannot exactly explain.  Some say
+by a mysterious settling of universal opinion, the operation of which
+cannot be exactly defined.  Others say that the highly developed critical
+judgment of a few persons, from time to time, has established forever
+what we agree to call masterpieces.  But this discussion is immaterial,
+since these supreme examples of literary excellence exist in all kinds of
+composition,--poetry, fable, romance, ethical teaching, prophecy,
+interpretation, history, humor, satire, devotional flight into the
+spiritual and supernatural, everything in which the human mind has
+exercised itself,--from the days of the Egyptian moralist and the Old
+Testament annalist and poet down to our scientific age.  These
+masterpieces exist from many periods and in many languages, and they all
+have qualities in common which have insured their persistence.
+To discover what these qualities are that have insured permanence and
+promise indefinite continuance is to have a means of judging with an
+approach to scientific accuracy our contemporary literature.  There is no
+thing of beauty that does not conform to a law of order and beauty--poem,
+story, costume, picture, statue, all fall into an ascertainable law of
+art.  Nothing of man's making is perfect, but any creation approximates
+perfection in the measure that it conforms to inevitable law.
+
+To ascertain this law, and apply it, in art or in literature, to the
+changing conditions of our progressive life, is the business of the
+artist.  It is the business of the critic to mark how the performance
+conforms to or departs from the law evolved and transmitted in the long-
+experience of the race.  True criticism, then, is not a matter of caprice
+or of individual liking or disliking, nor of conformity to a prevailing
+and generally temporary popular judgment.  Individual judgment may be
+very interesting and have its value, depending upon the capacity of the
+judge.  It was my good fortune once to fall in with a person who had been
+moved, by I know not what inspiration, to project himself out of his safe
+local conditions into France, Greece, Italy, Cairo, and Jerusalem.  He
+assured me that he had seen nothing anywhere in the wide world of nature
+and art to compare with the beauty of Nebraska.
+
+What are the qualities common to all the masterpieces of literature, or,
+let us say, to those that have endured in spite of imperfections and
+local provincialisms?
+
+First of all I should name simplicity, which includes lucidity of
+expression, the clear thought in fitting, luminous words.  And this is
+true when the thought is profound and the subject is as complex as life
+itself.  This quality is strikingly exhibited for us in Jowett's
+translation of Plato--which is as modern in feeling and phrase as
+anything done in Boston--in the naif and direct Herodotus, and, above
+all, in the King James vernacular translation of the Bible, which is the
+great text-book of all modern literature.
+
+The second quality is knowledge of human nature.  We can put up with the
+improbable in invention, because the improbable is always happening in
+life, but we cannot tolerate the so-called psychological juggling with
+the human mind, the perversion of the laws of the mind, the forcing of
+character to fit the eccentricities of plot.  Whatever excursions the
+writer makes in fancy, we require fundamental consistency with human
+nature.  And this is the reason why psychological studies of the
+abnormal, or biographies of criminal lunatics, are only interesting to
+pathologists and never become classics in literature.
+
+A third quality common to all masterpieces is what we call charm, a
+matter more or less of style, and which may be defined as the agreeable
+personality of the writer.  This is indispensable.  It is this
+personality which gives the final value to every work of art as well as
+of literature.  It is not enough to copy nature or to copy, even
+accurately, the incidents of life.  Only by digestion and transmutation
+through personality does any work attain the dignity of art.  The great
+works of architecture, even, which are somewhat determined by
+mathematical rule, owe their charm to the personal genius of their
+creators.  For this reason our imitations of Greek architecture are
+commonly failures.  To speak technically, the masterpiece of literature
+is characterized by the same knowledge of proportion and perspective as
+the masterpiece in art.
+
+If there is a standard of literary excellence, as there is a law of
+beauty--and it seems to me that to doubt this in the intellectual world
+is to doubt the prevalence of order that exists in the natural--it is
+certainly possible to ascertain whether a new production conforms, and
+how far it conforms, to the universally accepted canons of art.  To work
+by this rule in literary criticism is to substitute something definite
+for the individual tastes, moods, and local bias of the critic.  It is
+true that the vast body of that which we read is ephemeral, and justifies
+its existence by its obvious use for information, recreation, and
+entertainment.  But to permit the impression to prevail that an
+unenlightened popular preference for a book, however many may hold it,
+is to be taken as a measure of its excellence, is like claiming that a
+debased Austrian coin, because it circulates, is as good as a gold stater
+of Alexander.  The case is infinitely worse than this; for a slovenly
+literature, unrebuked and uncorrected, begets slovenly thought and
+debases our entire intellectual life.
+
+It should be remembered, however, that the creative faculty in man has
+not ceased, nor has puny man drawn all there is to be drawn out of the
+eternal wisdom.  We are probably only in the beginning of our evolution,
+and something new may always be expected, that is, new and fresh
+applications of universal law.  The critic of literature needs to be in
+an expectant and receptive frame of mind.  Many critics approach a book
+with hostile intent, and seem to fancy that their business is to look for
+what is bad in it, and not for what is good.  It seems to me that the
+first duty of the critic is to try to understand the author, to give him
+a fair chance by coming to his perusal with an open mind.  Whatever book
+you read, or sermon or lecture you hear, give yourself for the time
+absolutely to its influence.  This is just to the author, fair to the
+public, and, above all, valuable to the intellectual sanity of the critic
+himself.  It is a very bad thing for the memory and the judgment to get
+into a habit of reading carelessly or listening with distracted
+attention.  I know of nothing so harmful to the strength of the mind as
+this habit.  There is a valuable mental training in closely following a
+discourse that is valueless in itself.  After the reader has unreservedly
+surrendered himself to the influence of the book, and let his mind
+settle, as we say, and resume its own judgment, he is in a position to
+look at it objectively and to compare it with other facts of life and of
+literature dispassionately.  He can then compare it as to form,
+substance, tone, with the enduring literature that has come down to us
+from all the ages.  It is a phenomenon known to all of us that we may for
+the moment be carried away by a book which upon cool reflection we find
+is false in ethics and weak in construction.  We find this because we
+have standards outside ourselves.
+
+I am not concerned to define here what is meant by literature.  A great
+mass of it has been accumulated in the progress of mankind, and,
+fortunately for different wants and temperaments, it is as varied as the
+various minds that produced it.  The main thing to be considered is that
+this great stream of thought is the highest achievement and the most
+valuable possession of mankind.  It is not only that literature is the
+source of inspiration to youth and the solace of age, but it is what a
+national language is to a nation, the highest expression of its being.
+Whatever we acquire of science, of art, in discovery, in the application
+of natural laws in industries, is an enlargement of our horizon, and a
+contribution to the highest needs of man, his intellectual life.  The
+controversy between the claims of the practical life and the intellectual
+is as idle as the so-called conflict between science and religion.  And
+the highest and final expression of this life of man, his thought, his
+emotion, his feeling, his aspiration, whatever you choose to call it, is
+in the enduring literature he creates.  He certainly misses half his
+opportunity on this planet who considers only the physical or what is
+called the practical.  He is a man only half developed.  I can conceive
+no more dreary existence than that of a man who is past the period of
+business activity, and who cannot, for his entertainment, his happiness,
+draw upon the great reservoir of literature.  For what did I come into
+this world if I am to be like a stake planted in a fence, and not like a
+tree visited by all the winds of heaven and the birds of the air?
+
+Those who concern themselves with the printed matter in books and
+periodicals are often in despair over the volume of it, and their actual
+inability to keep up with current literature.  They need not worry.  If
+all that appears in books, under the pressure of publishers and the
+ambition of experimenters in writing, were uniformly excellent, no reader
+would be under any more obligation to read it than he is to see every
+individual flower and blossoming shrub.  Specimens of the varieties would
+suffice.  But a vast proportion of it is the product of immature minds,
+and of a yearning for experience rather than a knowledge of life.  There
+is no more obligation on the part of the person who would be well
+informed and cultivated to read all this than there is to read all the
+colored incidents, personal gossip, accidents, and crimes repeated daily,
+with sameness of effect, in the newspapers, some of the most widely
+circulated of which are a composite of the police gazette and the comic
+almanac.  A great deal of the reading done is mere contagion, one form or
+another of communicated grippe, and it is consoling and even surprising
+to know that if you escape the run of it for a season, you have lost
+nothing appreciable.  Some people, it has been often said, make it a rule
+never to read a book until it is from one to five years old, By this
+simple device they escape the necessity of reading most of them, but this
+is only a part of their gain.  Considering the fact that the world is
+full of books of the highest value for cultivation, entertainment, and
+information, which the utmost leisure we can spare from other pressing
+avocations does not suffice to give us knowledge of, it does seem to be
+little less than a moral and intellectual sin to flounder about blindly
+in the flood of new publications.  I am speaking, of course, of the
+general mass of readers, and not of the specialists who must follow their
+subjects with ceaseless inquisition.  But for most of us who belong to
+the still comparatively few who, really read books, the main object of
+life is not to keep up with the printing-press, any more than it is the
+main object of sensible people to follow all the extremes and whims of
+fashion in dress.  When a fashion in literature has passed, we are
+surprised that it should ever have seemed worth the trouble of studying
+or imitating.  When the special craze has passed, we notice another
+thing, and that is that the author, not being of the first rank or of the
+second, has generally contributed to the world all that he has to give in
+one book, and our time has been wasted on his other books; and also that
+in a special kind of writing in a given period--let us say, for example,
+the historico-romantic--we perceive that it all has a common character,
+is constructed on the same lines of adventure and with a prevailing type
+of hero and heroine, according to the pattern set by the first one or two
+stories of the sort which became popular, and we see its more or less
+mechanical construction, and how easily it degenerates into commercial
+book-making.  Now while some of this writing has an individual flavor
+that makes it entertaining and profitable in this way, we may be excused
+from attempting to follow it all merely because it happens to be talked
+about for the moment, and generally talked about in a very
+undiscriminating manner.  We need not in any company be ashamed if we
+have not read it all, especially if we are ashamed that, considering the
+time at our disposal, we have not made the acquaintance of the great and
+small masterpieces of literature.  It is said that the fashion of this
+world passeth away, and so does the mere fashion in literature, the
+fashion that does not follow the eternal law of beauty and symmetry, and
+contribute to the intellectual and spiritual part of man.  Otherwise it
+is only a waiting in a material existence, like the lovers, in the words
+of the Arabian story-teller, "till there came to them the Destroyer of
+Delights and the Sunderer of Companies, he who layeth waste the palaces
+and peopleth the tombs."
+
+Without special anxiety, then, to keep pace with all the ephemeral in
+literature, lest we should miss for the moment something that is
+permanent, we can rest content in the vast accumulation of the tried and
+genuine that the ages have given us.  Anything that really belongs to
+literature today we shall certainly find awaiting us tomorrow.
+
+The better part of the life of man is in and by the imagination.  This is
+not generally believed, because it is not generally believed that the
+chief end of man is the accumulation of intellectual and spiritual
+material.  Hence it is that what is called a practical education is set
+above the mere enlargement and enrichment of the mind; and the possession
+of the material is valued, and the intellectual life is undervalued.  But
+it should be remembered that the best preparation for a practical and
+useful life is in the high development of the powers of the mind, and
+that, commonly, by a culture that is not considered practical.  The
+notable fact about the group of great parliamentary orators in the days
+of George III is the exhibition of their intellectual resources in the
+entire world of letters, the classics, and ancient and modern history.
+Yet all of them owed their development to a strictly classical training
+in the schools.  And most of them had not only the gift of the
+imagination necessary to great eloquence, but also were so mentally
+disciplined by the classics that they handled the practical questions
+upon which they legislated with clearness and precision.  The great
+masters of finance were the classically trained orators William Pitt and
+Charles James Fox.
+
+In fine, to return to our knowledge of the short life of fashions that
+are for the moment striking, why should we waste precious time in chasing
+meteoric appearances, when we can be warmed and invigorated in the
+sunshine of the great literatures?
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Fashions in Literature
+by Charles Dudley Warner
+
diff --git a/old/cwflt11.zip b/old/cwflt11.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ff8d4a1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/cwflt11.zip