irements may be met
forthwith.]

"No, no, the essential thing is not quite that," observed an attendant
lackey, a really clever writer, who wrote, indeed, far more
intelligently than he thought. He was a professor of patriotism, and
prior to being embalmed in the academy he had charge of the
postgraduate work in atavism and superior sneering. "No, my test is
not quite that, and if you venture to disagree with me about this or
anything else you are a ruthless Hun and an impudent Jew. No, the
garbage-man may very well be an excellent judge: for by my quite
infallible test the one thing requisite for a critic of our great
Philistine literature is an ability to induce within himself such an
internal disturbance as resembles a profound murmur of ancestral
voices--"

"But, oh, dear me!" says Horvendile, embarrassed by such talk.

"--And to experience a mysterious inflowing," continued the other, "of
national experience--"

"The function is of national experience undoubtedly," said Horvendile,
"but still--"

"--Whenever he meditates," concluded this lackey bewilderingly, "upon
the name of Bradford and six other surnames.[4] At all events, I have
turned wearily from your book, you bolshevistic German Jew--"

[Footnote 4: Saevius Nicanor does not record the wonder-working
surnames employed to produce this ancient, ante-Aristotlean [Greek:
_katharsis_], and they are not certainly known. But, quite unaided, I
believe, by old Nicanor's hint, Dr. Stuart Pratt Sherman (the
accomplished editor of divers contributions to literature, and the
author of several books) has discovered, through a series of
interesting experiments in vivisection, that the one needful endowment
for a critic of American letters is the power to induce within himself
"a profound murmur of ancestral voices, and to experience a mysterious
inflowing of national experience, in meditating on the names of Mark
Twain, Whitman, Thoreau, Lincoln, Emerson, Franklin, and Bradford."
Compare "Is There Anything To Be Said for Literary Tradition," in _The
Bookman_ for October, 1920. Any candid consideration of Dr. Sherman's
phraseology, here as elsewhere, cannot fail to suggest that he has
happily re-discovered the long-lost critical abracadabra of
Philistia.]

"But I," says Horvendile feebly, "am not a German Jew."

"Oh, yes, you are, and so is everybody else whose literary likings are
not my likings. I repeat, then, that I have turned wearily from your
book. Wheth