Campbell that there were tigers on the shores of Lake Erie. It only proves that in those days a poet put any animals into his landscape which he thought would add interest to it. In his "Gertrude of Wyoming" he pictured the Pennsylvania frontier settlement as having all the romantic accessories of the Old World.

"Delightful Wyoming, beneath thy skies

The happy shepherd swains had naught to do
But feed their flocks in green declivities,
Or skim perchance thy lake with light canoes,
From morn till evening's sweeter pastimes grew.
Thy lovely maidens would the dance renew,
And aye the sunny mountains halfway down
Would echo flageolets from some romantic town.
Not far away some Andalusian saraband
Would sound to many a native rondelay."

When "Gertrude of Wyoming" reached Pennsylvania, the fair reader would say, "How beautiful!" But this did not prove that she had ever heard an Andalusian saraband in her native State.

The fashions in literature are like fashions in dress. They come and go according to their own laws. We cannot say that the new fashion is better or worse than the old; it is sufficient to note the fact that it is different.

In a book of fugitive poems published in 1745 a young lady of fashion tosses her head as she thinks of the past.

"Our grandmothers, they tell us, wore
Their farthingales and their bandore,
Their pinions forehead cloth and ruff,
Content with their own cloth and stuff.
I hate old things and age, I see
These times are good enough for me,
The goldsmiths now are very neat,
I love the air of Lombard Street.
Whate'er a ship from India brings,
Pearls, diamonds, silks, are pretty things,
The cabinet, the screen, the fan
Please me extremely from Japan.

And what affects me still the more

They had none of these things heretofore."

This is an illusion dear to the heart of the

youth of each generation - they had none of these things heretofore." This is the force which drives every fashion to an extreme.

At the present time the fashion in novels is strongly, even savagely unsentimental. Many of our most admired authors manifest a cold animosity toward their characters. They, poor creatures, have done nothing to deserve it. The author of their being turns against them. He will not shed tears over their failures, or rejoice over

their small successes. He does not even allow them to be amusing. His business is to show them up. As for the communities in which they live, their smugness and narrowness are portrayed by a hand that never relents. The author will let no guilty town escape.

But what does this prove about the actual life of America? What if in these small towns there should be big-hearted, keen-witted citizens, with a zest for life and a great capacity for rational enjoyment? And what if, in many cases, their fellow citizens, instead of freezing them out should be proud of them?

In that case, says the fashionable novelist of the severer school, you have material for the biographer or the historian. Such characters do not appeal to the writer of serious fiction in these days. If you want another kind of novel you must wait till the fashion changes or else go back to your old favorites.

NEW POETS AND POETS

NOT SO NEW

BEN JONSON, in giving his comedy of the "New Inn" to the press, appeals to the quiet reader against the judgment of the fashionable theatergoers who had damned his play on the first night. From the security of the printed page he defies his enemies.

"What did they come for? I will partly answer. They came to see and be seen, to make a general muster of themselves in clothes bought on credit, and to possess the stage against the play by rising between the acts in oblique lines to make affidavit to the world that they did not understand one scene." The poet was like a lawyer demanding a change of venue.

"Reader, if such thou be, I make thee my patron and dedicate the piece to thee, for thy better literature. I trust myself and my book to thy rustic candor rather than to the pomp and pride of their solemn ignorance. Fare thee well! Fall to! Read!"

That was some three hundred years ago. One generation of theater-goers after another has

passed away, each with its own standard of taste. But the printed page remains. We take up the book and are contemporaries of Ben Jonson, and hear his great voice booming at us. "Reader! Fall to! Read!"

And because we are readers and not an audience gathered in a theater to greet a particular actor, we obey. A book is new which we have never read before. The passing of a thousand years between the writing and the reading is an irrelevancy.

This is a matter which the new poets and their friends are in danger of forgetting. Here is one who writes of the sudden change that has taken place in poetic values:

"We have revolted against the horrible boredom of exploded tradition. The old conventionalities are of no use to us. They give no sustenance and we turn from the old ways of apprehending beauty and are in open rebellion against all accepted standards. We refuse to do the old stunts. Life is now open to us on all sides. I am elated with the experience, which shows how completely we have stood existence on its head."

Now, this is a very natural feeling, and there