The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1916-1920, 1919-07-27
ON CLIPPING WINGS: COLLEGE.


MOT long ago commentator published parallel
v Lists of leading contemporary English Ian
guage authors, those who had been to college set
against those who had not. The Nots had ma
jority and the conclusion drawn that college
is bad for the writing talent.
The explanation, as we remember it, was that
college develops the Critical Faculty at the expense
of the Creative. 1t seems to us hollow and rum
bling sort of an explanation, and then Critical Fac
ulty and Creative Faculty, discussed if they
were mutually exclusive, abracadabra. What
dye mean Critical Faculty? If you mean artistic
conscience, then this faculty is the very best tool
an author has on his bench. Even MARK TWAIN,
ruggedy impatient of literary niceties as he was
knew his own mind about his own work, and once
got up glorious rage against a literary whipper
snapper who offered to correct his unorthodox but
lovingly considered punctuation.
This sort of critical faculty received testimonial
IN THE Sun few weeks ago from an authority no
less practical than Mr. GEORGE HORACE LoRTMER
who insisted like any STEVENSON that good writing
Is "hard writing, slow writing, rewriting"
But if you mean an impossibilism, aesthetic
superciliousness, If you mean Just what Will
IRWIN meant when he struck off the epithet high
broW, then that is not faculty. but disease, one
TO which weak constitutions are subject and which
results from injury in youth. We concede that the
average college English course, administered by a
certain type of professor, probably inficts such
injury on certain percentage of the subjects. Not
however on the students whose welfare interests
us here, those who have marked bent for writing
and some character behind it. They may be affected
both ways for the time being but later, if they
worth their salt, the effects should be thrown off.
Come, Let Us Read.
The average college English course, to the extent
of our knowledge of them is an effort to make the
student write and to form his hand on academic
models combined with more or less willy effort to
see that he reads the neglected English classics
BBowUIF and CHAUCER, the dramatists of ELIZA
BErH's time, the novelists and poets of ANNE's
and so on up There is also good deal of stuff and
nonsense derived originally from men like SAINTE-
BEUvE (who had small use for BALzAc) and his
successors (who think Esml0nd better novel than
Vanity Fair because it is better constructed) and
of late years loaded with German silver, to the
effect that Mysticism by reaction begat Classicism
and Classicism Romanticism, and Romanticism
Naturalism, &c-while the Protectorate and the
French Revolution and such things acted as fairy
godmothers, if not as aecoucheurs.
We doubt that this does much real harm, except
to the forests that yield the paper pulp Good read
ing done under compulson may be better than none
at all As for the precious dcta of the continental
oracles the only students who take them with even
momentary seriousness are the grindS, and with
permanent seriousness the particular grinds who
hope to be professors of English Literature. If
anything is certain about the begeting business it
is that one closet entomologist misplaced IN a chair
of English begets another after his own kind; if
anything connected with literature be taught it
is h,w 70 lecture on the subject; if any kind of