The sun., 1919-11-02
Dwells Delightfully
on Personalities of
w riters Nota bic
in Expansion Per-
iod of American
Letters-Discusses
College Training
in Art of Writing

There are very few people who
would not like to have the power TO
write-and to write so that other peo-
pie would want to read them. How
can they learn to do It? I'm sorry to
say / cannot tell the way. 1 asked
Prof. Barrett Wendell, who has been,
a professor of literature at Harvard
for a quarter of century. IL he knew
OF way, and this is what he wrote
me:
""Years ago. he said, L had a hope
that by careful work our colleges
might develop some such training In
literary skill as is developed in musi-
cal conservatories. Experiment proved
this, at least to my mind, impracticable.
The only way to learn to write
so that any one will read you is to
write: nulIa dies sine Inca. On the
whole the true school of literary pro-
duction for the past century has been
Journalism. In. the reporters work
, there is a reality unattainable aca-
demically. Taste is another matter
and can be trained. But after all
nothing can get anywhere but spark
of what, when it appears in flame, we
call genius
lut yOuIS VI tiiO yOuha
woman who goes in for technical train
ing knows just what he wants, and
gets it. And more and more young
men are seeking assured professions
for which they can get definite prep
aration. There are no schools of au-
thorship. The college student learns
TO criticise, to tell the true in literature
from the false, but there is nothing IN
IL l,1y 1,i ~.
create. General college culture doubt
! less increased the powers of a Lowell
or Longfellow. but 1t might have
been a positive drawback TO the orig
inality of Walt Whitman Mark Twain
and James Whitcomb Riley. At no
time in their lives could these men
! have passed an examination for the
| freshman class of the American col
lege.
Gould Walt Whitman have spent
four years at Harvard and then have
written Leaves of Grass? Impos-
siblo What he learned at HarvarJ
would have prevented him from strik-
ing out in such an original vein as
that. Nor would Mark Twain have
dared to go against every canon ot
good taste in literature and turn out
The Innocents Abroad If he had sat
meath the elms Of good ond Yale. He
struck out for himself, and his poor
taste was so funny that 1t made a
new kind of literature into which
taste did not seem to enter at all.
Authors and College.
~ once made up list Of the Amer
aan authors who won fame In the hun
, dred years between 1900 and 100
| from Noah Webster to Thompsor
| Seton. ] took II from Brander Mai
| thews's chronology of literature. Their
| were tifty-nine of them-twenty- -eigh'
| went to college, thirty-one did MOI
Some of the collegians did not gradu
ate, many of the older ones were grad
! uated very young. Moreover, In tho
early days there were no literary
courses. Young men studied mathe
matics. ancient languages. logic an"
natural philosophy. There was mer
tai training in plenty, some cultur'
but not at all what our young peop'
are getting to-day.
! Nov come down to the preser:
time-the showing for collegians is
little better but not so very much.
! Edward J. O'Brien OF the Boston Trot
script reads and Judges every year the
| short stories that appear in the worth
| while magazines In 1917 he found
sixty-t three which lie classifies as en-
during stories. Forty-six writer's pro
duced them. OF the forty-six writers
I am not sure of the education Of four,
but of the remaining forty-two TWEEN
| ty-six went to college, sixteen did not.
| a.. a.. .ka.. - 1,,,, ,Na,y
| who have been successful In literature.
OF the twenty-eight collegians who
were among the fifty-nine leading
American authors of the last century
Harvard furnished twelve -- fourteen
would have been half of them. OF the
| twenty-siX college educated short
story writer's OF 1917 five came out of
Harvard, two out of Radcliffe-seven
from the one university.
IF creative writing cannot be
taught perhaps It can bc inspired. and
II is possible that such Harvard pro-
fessors as Wendell himself, Briggs,
Perry, Kittredge. Nelson, Baker havs
helped to inspire their students.
Some OF the writer's of to-day whC
earned no college degree wish they
had. That most sweet tempered and
modest of men, William Dean Howells
who began as a printer wrote me
once: I would fain have been schooled,
for think II would have saved Inc
time, and have always thought the
average of my ignorance would have
been less
ARNOLD Bennett, who did not go to
college, is IN favor OF a college edu-
cation for writer's. William Lyon
Phelps OF Yale believes that colleges
do not make geniuses, nor he says,
can II frustrate them But Kipling
once implied that they could, when he
wrote that for the most part colleges
are places where the pebbles are poi
ished and the diamonds are dinrmed
But 80 many of us are pebbles and
so few diamonds that we may well
take a chance. College education Ger
tainly increases our happiness.
"To the young man or woman who
wants to write would say, whether or
not you go to college, write Keep
everlastingly at IL. Don't try for
long time to publish what you write.
for II you send amateur work to q
magazine you are competing with
those who, probably, can do 1t better
Show II to some friend who knows
And II you find out that this great
Gift OF the gods isn't yours, quit