New Britain herald., 1916-11-27
THE CRITIC EXPLAINS.
Our Modern Age Is Supposed to Have
Abandoned Its Heritage and
Standards.
(NeW York Tribune)


There are few Americans critics
whose judgments upon past literature
are better worth listening to than Mr.
William @. Brownell's; and few, to
| judge by his address before the Ma
tional Institute of Arts and Letters
who understand less Of the reasons
| for the present day course of Amer
lean writings. "Standards'' was his
subject and his wit at the expense Of
sundry American authors seems to
have greatly enlivened the sitting Of
the institute.
There is no softer morsel for the
SatiriSt than the experimental art Of
a young nation cropping for its path
to the light. 1t has all the humorous
elem ents of q boys voice changin &
from soprano to bass and breaking in
to falsetto-or Of any fapper letting
down her skirts for the first party. A
philosopher or an historian might
find immortal! indications, not in the
achievement, but in the growth. But
never critic! His is the business of
weighing fine gold with a fine bal
ance. Woe to the immature lummox
who submits crude ore!
Our modern age has abandoned its
heritage and it's standards, according
to Mr. Brownel1. Item one the vers
librists. Item two, our literature of
cleverness, our o. Henry, our Edna
Ferber And why have we fallen so
low? The elective system in our col
leges for one thing. And a general
surfeit of cleverness, Of a national dis
taste for learning, for oonventionality
for any intellectual standard Of Sc
verify, for another. ill.,. ...
No one will care to dispute Mr..
Browne1l's rating of O. Henry or Miss
Ferber. His expert judgment stands
q, far better chance than most Of en-
during-though the percentage of &C
curacy of even the greatest of con-
temporary critics is always sadly low,
Of course. The regret will be that so
Intelligent an American should so ut
terly miss the point Our great mod
ern experiment with democracy is not
only political, but social and artistic
as we'll. It is the biggest thing, of the
time, SO big that only q literary critic
could dream Of ignoring it. 1t is not
lessening but increasing in scope. 1t
has back of it all the faith that
great European artist once expressed:
I never could understand the rea-
son why one-tenth part of our people
should be cultured and the other
nine -tenths must serve as the mater
ial support Of the minority and them
selves remain in ignorance. I do not
want to think OR to live with any 9TH
er belief than that our ninety mill i.
lions of people (and those who shall
be born after us) will all be some day
cultured, humanized and happy.
While such a revolution is in pro-
cess it is idle to talk of critical yard
sticks. Eternal standards of art
there are, yes; but to treat of them
as controlling or affecting the demo-
cratic growth Of the present is like
citing Euclid to an earthquake. Life
is the first essential of art, and 1t is
to be found not in our american au- !
thors who write in Paris and Lon /
don. but exactly in the men and Wo- !
men in the thick of the American me- !
lee whom Mr.. Brownell condescend- |
ingly pats on the shoulder. Mr.. |
BrownelI is an excellent botanist, wise I,
and deft in classifying dead flowers. |
The business of gardening, of hand
ling seeds and live plants, is quite an
other matter.