"Because he's the man who's safest not to say anything about babies or--anything alive.... Obviously a literary congress in America must be a festival in honour of sterility. "Aunt Dove demands it. Like celebrating the virginity of Queen Elizabeth...." § 4 I find among the fragments of my departed friend some notes that seem to me to be more or less relevant here. They are an incomplete report of the proceedings of a section S, devoted to _Poiometry_, apparently the scientific measurement of literary greatness. It seems to have been under the control of a special committee, including Mr. James Huneker, Mr. Slosson, Sir Thomas Seccombe, Mr. James Douglas, Mr. Clement K. Shorter, the acting editor of the _Bookman_, and the competition editress of the _Westminster Gazette_.... Apparently the notes refer to some paper read before the section. Its authorship is not stated, nor is there any account of its reception. But the title is "The Natural History of Greatness, with especial reference to Literary Reputations." The opening was evidently one of those rapid historical sketches frequent in such papers. "Persuasion that human beings are sometimes of disproportionate size appears first in the Egyptian and Syrian wall paintings.... Probably innate.... The discouragement of the young a social necessity in all early societies. In all societies?... Exaggerated stories about the departed.... Golden ages. Heroic ages. Ancestor worship.... Dead dogs better than living lions.... Abraham. Moses. The Homeric reputation, the first great literary cant. Resentment against Homer's exaggerated claims on the part of intelligent people. Zoilus. Caricature of the Homerists in the Satyricon. Other instances of unorthodox ancient criticism.... Shakespeare as an intellectual nuisance.... Extreme suffering caused to contemporary writers by the Shakespeare legend.... "Another form of opposition to these obsessions is the creation of countervailing reputations. Certain people in certain ages have resolved to set up Great Men of their own to put beside these Brocken spectres from the past. This marks a certain stage of social development, the beginning of self-consciousness in a civilized community. Self-criticism always begins in self-flattery. Virgil as an early instance of a Great Man of set intentions; deliberately put up as the Latin Homer.... "Evolution of the greatness of Aristotle during the Middle Ages. "Little sense of contemporary Greatness among the Elizabethans.