The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-06-11
THERE METER WAs 4 rRTLBr

Waterbury, June 10-At the com
 mencement exercises at St. Margarets
 school. Waterbury, to-day, the day be-
 ing also the schools twentieth anniver-
 sary and the Rev. Dr. Russell's birth
 day, the chief address was by Professor
 c. T. Winchester of N1iddletown. His
 topic was Some Remarks on Modern
 Fiction" His address in part was as follows:
 PROFESSOR WINCHESTER'S AD-
 DRESS.
 One function of literature has always
 been to entertain and amuse. The lit- erature which has done this has always
 been the popular literature, for in the busy world we all need something to lift our thoughts above the round of daily struggle and daily endurance, to rouse our admiration and to touch our sympa- thy. And, of course, the easiest way to do this is to tell story, and that is why the epic which tells a story, or rather sings it, Is the earliest of all literature. When you tell a story in character you add to its interest, and when you have a separate character to each person you act Instead of merely relating it, and when you get scenery to delight the eye you have the drama. For many centu- ries the drama has been the most pop ular of intellectual entertainments among many people. because while it appeals to the sympathies, it does not demand that they shall be able to read or write. But the drama has it's linn its; it can address comparatively few people at a time, and is necessarily brief.
 As soon, therefore, as the reading habit became general among the peo- pie a demand arose for a story to be printed at length. The present century is prominently the age of the novel. In the seventeenth century, and in the be- ginning of the eighteenth, we begin to see the literature popular in England, mostly lays and romances. About the middle of the last century Richardson hit upon the novel I'm something like It's modern shape. But printing was still a slow and costly process, there were no journals comparing with our present popular and widely circulated maga- zines, no facilities for obtaining good literature at a cheap price, In fact, no such immense reading public as exists at the present day. Since the days of Sir Walter Scott the novelist has been accorded place in the ranks of men of letters nearly equal to that of poet or historian, and has enjoyed a much wider fame than either. The names of Dickens, Thackeray and George Eliot are likely to be remembered as long as those of Macauley and Froude, Tenny- son and Browning.
 It is not only In England that the in- fluence of the novel fas been so marked during the last fifty or sixty years. In France Balzac, Dumas and Victor Hugo mark the immense vogue of the differ ent types of fiction; in Germany, though they seem to like a rather more serious line, and do not quite get out from un- der the influence of that most long winded and platitudinous book that ever usurped the name of novel, Goethe's wilhelm Meister," yet such names as Freytag and Auerbach deserve to stand high, and in Russia the great names of Tolstoi and Turgeneff, to say nothing of
 
 Bjornsen and Ibsen, with the Spanish Valder and the Dutch Maarten Maar- tens, may be mentioned All oyer Eu- rope the novel has been having It's in- nings. InI regard to the novel of to-day, the number of novels that can make some pretense to literary merit has increased of, late years. The London Atheneum devotes a page or two every week to recent novels, re- viewing about six or ten a week, or about 400 year on am average, all Eng-t fish novels, supposed to be at least above the average of mere trash, good enough, at least, to be damned. Many of these are the old-fashioned two or three volume sort, but the great extent of the reading public makes call for ,heaper and more compact editions. The number of copies of a popular novel hat are sold now, would astound a novelist of twenty-five years ago.
 Over 1000 copies of Trilby, 1t is | said, have been sold in America during | he past three months, Of course, the | rewards of a successful novel | st are comparatively munificent. Mrs. 1 rhackeray Ritchie, in her volume of | Just pupliSIlSut teiAS oL | Ter fathers joy at his publishers haV- ng offered him thousand pounds for | lis new novel, Henry Esrpond," "the l most splendid offer" said Thackeray, l and I hardly like to take him at his | vord." Five thousand dollars for "Hen | V Esnlond." It Is probably safe to | ay that the Hampers have paid Du | daurier ten times that sum for "Tril- ,y." I am not sure that this possi- ,ility of immediate and vast popular ty, this demand for light and popular eading has not been an injury to the cal value of the novel.
 It is very seldom that the greatest music Is most immediately popular; ovelty some unfamiliar or eccentric notive, or even an attractive mediocrity re, as a rule, the surest conditions of Iterary success. The short story is the ne popular literary form which affords oom for the display of great artists bility for unity and completeness of req atment, and yet very careful elabora- ion of detail. That would be a sue essful novel that should reach 50,000 opies, but the writer of the short story T the Century or Harper, may. reach 50, ,0OO readers at once. There has been ) much inducement lately to put the cry best literary work into the short tory, that it may be sometimes thought nat the days of the full volume are