The daily Cairo bulletin. (Cairo, Ill.) 1878-1???, 1884-06-19
LITERATURE OF TO.I
Librarian Poole Says 1t Is super.or
to That Of the Past.

! How does the literature of the pres
ent compare with that of the past. Mr..
Poolep" the LIBRARIAN of the public Ii
brary was asked.
"By literature you mean fiction. I
suppose" was the cautious ar,w"r;
land then I'll say that it is vas''v su-
perior to fiction writings of inner
times, and that the moral tone ~H'c-
tally has UNNECESSARILY improve"
"How do individual writers com
parev For instance, Sterne and George
"Sterne is unique. He stands out
alone in literature. The same is true
OF Fielding. He, also, is inimita HE in
the treatment of his plot, in diao ne,
In pathos, and humor. One cannot
compare either with George + 'ot he-
cause she, too, stand alone. SO q a
character and philosopher, as vc'I as
a novelist will say this thai no lit
erature of this century average, Hnch
higher than that of hundred rcars
ago. A good deal of the latter IS zone
forever, and nobody cares to have it
back"
How about scientific writings"
"Ihere are more scientific writer's
now than we ever had before. srf they
are of higher standing. We hqd no
men like Darwin, Huxley and = Hdall
in times past Science itself W in its
infancy then. And as to style, "rr., the
present writers are much supc""r. We
have probably hundred leadir Glen.
titlc writer's to-day, represen No the
best serious thought of the a~e. A
great deal of the so called scientific
matter that appeared 100 or 2Do years
ago had not literary merit enough 10
appear in the columns of the daily
Nea0S. Lots of abnormal things such
as large pigs, giants, twins, etc., were
written volumes about that would be
settled by a newspaper paragraph, to-
day. And there was still good deal
of necromancy and witchcraft latent in
the brains of the writer's of that day."
"Now do you think, for instance, that
such work as 'Hume's Essay on Man
which was an event of at the time.
would cut any figure If it were to ap-
per now for the first timer
mo, | can't agree to that. think
everything Hume wrote is still worth
reading. In fact, Hume's miscellane-
GUS writings are read to-day as much
as they ever were. And that brings
me to the statement that the writers of
antiquity are read more to-day than
they ever were. Plato and Homer, for
instance, though we have dozen trans
lations of them are so much in dem and
that we are always without them here
in the library. Dante, too, is more
widely read than ever. And single
works, such as Demosthenes' Grafton
on the Crown, were never so much
read as now. Such works are immor-
tal."
"And how do the writer's OF the
present in point of numbers compare
with their brethren in the past?"
Very much superior of course.
There is no comparison, in fact. And
as for style and artistic development of
plot, ETC., there has been a great i'm
provement of late. Miss Frances Bur-
ney and Sam Richardson, for instance,
who used to be considered models in tho
WllStiC plnuuluS VI tuclI StOTlcS, are
very crude in their methods as COM
pared with to-day's writer's of fiction"
"How about historical writingsp Has
there not been great Improvement
1.-The best contemporaneous writers
on history are very much ahead of those
of the past. There are some great ex-
ceptions, of course, like Gibbons, whose
historical writings will always be stand
ard works. But in point of style and
impartiality we are far ahead. The
great curse of English history is its
spirit of partisanship. You find that
in all of them. American history is
very well, too, and is getting to be
written much better now than It used to
be. Bancroft's history consider one
of the poorest ever written. 1t is not
truthful, is very prolix, and written
from partisan standpoint and from
an imperfect knowledge of the facts.
In style it is sophomore. Chicago
NeWs.