ussion, "The Tendency and
Influence of Modern Fiction." Mr. Underwood said: "To some of us the
field of modern fiction may have seemed before this evening a
wilderness without a chart. We are fortunate in having with us a man
who has left the 'main travelled roads' of fiction and, to mix
metaphors a little, a man who can tell us whether the 'idols' that are
'crumbling' are those of the realist or those of the idealist,--Mr.
Hamlin Garland."]

GENTLEMEN:--It is very interesting and pleasant to have the
critic come at the problem in his mathematical fashion, but that will
not settle it. I will tell you what will settle it--the human soul of
the creative man; because if he has the creative power and impulse in
him it will make no difference to him whether or not a single person in
the world reads or understands his book, or appreciates and understands
his painting. What could the critic do with Claude Monet thirty-five
years ago? What could the critic do with Robert Browning when he
appeared? What has the critic done thus far with Walt Whitman, the
greatest spiritual democrat this nation has ever produced? This question
is not settled by the schools; it is not settled by critics; it is not
to be settled by a group of realists or a group of veritists, or the
latest group of impressionists. It is to be settled by the creative
impulse of the man, first; and second, and always subordinate to the
real artist, the public.

Now, I am perfectly willing to admit that there has been for the past
year or two a revival of what might be called the "shilling shocker" in
literature, but it seems to me Professor McClintock entirely
overestimates and exaggerates the influence of the "yore and gore"
fictionists; and even if it were true that they filled the magazines to
the exclusion of Mr. Read [Opie P. Read] and myself--

[Mr. Read: Which they don't:]

Which they don't--and if it were true that the pendulum is swinging
toward the "shilling shocker," it does not follow that it will be a
century before there is a return to the thoughtful study of social life.
This romance can die, and these books be as dead as Hugh Conway's
"Called Back" in less than ten years. I am perfectly willing to admit
all these mutations of taste, but there is something deeper than that.
Do you know, I have a notion that the reign of cheap melodrama and
farce-comedy on our stage and of the "shilling shocker" during the last
two years is due larg