The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-10-06

gang Of pirates came upon the scene, but at any rate it meant that some sort of interest was taken in the literary world end that the literary world expected that some sort Of interest would be taken in it. It certainly did. I remember my amazement-and, I must add, my admira- tion-when I first read through Rossettis voluminous and innumerable letters to my grandfather at about the time when he was publishing his first volume of poems They were really magnificent these letters. I think that no author ever in such a splendid way set about securing favorable notices from the press. It was not that the authon of The Blessed Da- mozel' was not ashamed to corrupt the press; he simply gloried in it as if it were game or a thrilling adventure. He might have been Napoleon conducting a successful battle; and my grandfather might have been his chief of staff Not single organ was neglected. It was: Tell Watts to get at So and So; nobody that I know knows Dash, but you might reach him through Blank And so on through many letters and many hurried notes as, ideas came up in the great mans mind I do not, know whether anything of the sort had ever been done before, but l am pretty certain it can never have been done more. thoroughly. It could not have been done; there would not have been rsom. No stone was left unturned. And do not know that see any harm in all this
 The press responded magnifcently and ;e Do Montgomery the press would probably have responded as magnificently, and Montgomery would have still been noth- ing. The fact is that the great thing for literature-is to get the public to read books at all.'
 "Hueffer had met Turgeniev, the Rus sian novelist, whose books had a large sale in America 30 years ago, and this chapter x is taken up largely with that famous man. Yes says Hueffer, it t~is impossible to say whether Turgeniev or Flaubert was the greatest of all novel, ists. They lived and unfolded their un- precedented talents in the same years, in the same city, in the same circle filled with the same high ideals and high enthusiasms. And this is a very striking proof of how high effort in the arts flourishes by the mere dontagion of con tact It is the custom of grudging Rus scphiles to declare that Turgeniev gained nothing by living in France. Or, even, 1t is their custom to declare that he lost great deal.'
 Nothing will be truer than to say that Turgeniev was born with a natural gift and a natural technique that made him at once the most gifted and the most technically perfect of all writers. His first story, which was written be- fore he was 21, and before he had ever been to France, is as perfect as is Fathers and Children" or "fhe House of the Gentlefolk." And it would be as absurd to say that Flaubert or Gautier influenced the character of Turgeniev's works as 1t would be to say that Turge- niev was an influence to Zola, Maupas- sant or the Goncourts Great writers, or strong personalities, when they have passed their impressionable years, are no longer subject to influences. They develop along lines of their own geniuses. But they are susceptible to sympathy, to encouragement, to ideas of rivalry, to contagious ambitions. And only too fre- quently they have a necessity for a tram quil and sympathetic home life. The one set of incentives Turgeniev found among the French masters. The other was given him in the home of the Viardots. Such an existence he could have found mo- where else in the civilized world of that day.' '