The
second, in these years rests upon the knees of the gods.
All this must not be taken in too absolute a sense. There are
medicines, and good ones, in the hands of writers and of critics,
to abate, if not to heal, this plague of sentimentalism. I have
stated ultimate causes only. They are enough to keep the mass of
Americans reading sentimentalized fiction until some fundamental
change has come, not strong enough to hold back the van of
American writing, which is steadily moving toward restraint,
sanity, and truth. Every honest composition is a step forward in
the cause; and every clear-minded criticism.
But one must doubt the efficacy, and one must doubt the
healthiness, of reaction into cynicism and sophisticated
cleverness. There are curious signs, especially in what we may
call the literature of New York, of a growing sophistication that
sneers at sentiment and the sentimental alike. "Magazines of
cleverness" have this for their keynote, although as yet the
satire is not always well aimed. There are abundant signs that the
generation just coming forward will rejoice in such a pose. It is
observable now in the colleges, where the young literati turn up
their noses at everything American,--magazines, best-sellers, or
one-hundred-night plays,--and resort for inspiration to the
English school of anti-Victorians: to Remy de Gourmont, to Anatole
France.
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