it were, upon an outing, lest with too
close housing it grow pallid and shrink in girth. Or maybe they indulge
themselves in humor. Perhaps they think that their pages grow dull and that
ridicule will restore the balance. They throw it in like a drunken porter
to relieve a solemn scene. I fancy that editors of this baser sort keep on
their shelves one or two volumes for their readers' sport and mirth. I read
recently a review of an historical romance--a last faltering descendant of
the race--whose author in an endeavor to restore the past, had made too
free a use of obsolete words. With what playfulness was he held up to
scorn! Mary come up, sweet chuck! How his quaint phrasing was turned
against him! What a merry fellow it is who writes, how sharp and caustic!
There's pepper on his mood.

But generally, it is said, book reviews are too flattering. Professor
Bliss Perry, being of this opinion, offered some time ago a statement
that "Magazine writing about current books is for the most part bland,
complaisant, pulpy.... The Pedagogue no longer gets a chance at the gifted
young rascal who needs, first and foremost, a premonitory whipping; the
youthful genius simply stays away from school and carries his unwhipped
talents into the market place." At a somewhat different angle of the same
opinion, Dr. Crothers suggests in an essay that instead of being directed
to the best books, we need to be warned from the worst. He proposes to set
up a list of the Hundred Worst Books. For is it not better, he asks, to put
a lighthouse on a reef than in the channel? The open sea does not need a
bell-buoy to sound its depth.

On these hints I have read some of the book criticisms of days past to
learn whether they too were pulpy--whether our present silken criticism
always wore its gloves and perfumed itself, or whether it has fallen to
this smiling senility from a sterner youth. Although I am usually a rusty
student, yet by diligence I have sought to mend my knowledge that I might
lay it out before you. Lately, therefore, if you had come within our Public
Library, you would have found me in one of these attempts. Here I went,
scrimping the other business of the day in order that I might be at my
studies before the rush set in up town. Mine was the alcove farthest from
the door, where are the mustier volumes that fit a bookish student. So if
your quest was the lighter books--such verse and novels as present fame
attests--you did not find