The whole discussion resolves itself into the question: How much of the brute element, in which early literature abounds, is to be given to children? Shall they be made to fear unnecessarily, shall the ugly phases of life be allowed, simply because they come through the ages stamped as classic? All due consideration must be paid to the sensitiveness of childhood; but in what manner? Not by catering to it, not by eliminating the cause from the story without at the same time seeking to strengthen the inherent weakness of the child. Dr. Felix Adler[40] would remove from our folk-lore all the excrescences that denote a false superstition and that create prejudice of any kind; he would have bad stepmothers taken from the fairy tales, because an unjust hatred for a class is encouraged; he would prune away whatever is of no ornamental or ethical value. Assuredly it is best, as Dr. Adler points out, “to eliminate ... whatever is merely a relic of ancient animism.” Mr. Howells believes that it is our pedant pride which perpetuates the beast man in our classics, and it is true that some of our literature has lived in spite of that characteristic, and not because of it. But who is to point this beast man out for us, who is to judge whether this or that corrupts, who to eliminate and who to recreate? The classics would have to be rewritten whenever there was a shift in moral viewpoint. A mushroom growth of story-writers, those who “tame” our fairy tales, who dilute fancy with sentimentalism, and who retell badly what has been told surpassing well, threatens to choke the flower. It is not the beast man in classic literature we have to fear so much as the small man of letters, enthused by the educational idea, who rewrites to order, and does not put into his text any of the invigorating spirit which marks all truly great literature. We have always to return to the ultimate goal, to the final court of appeal. If there is too much brutal strength in a story intended for children, it had best be read or told to them, rather than place in their hands what is not literature but the mere husk. Such a letter as Lamb wrote to Godwin leads us to feel that at times misgivings seized him as to his own mutilation of Homer and of his much-beloved Chapman. But such hesitancy is the exception and not the rule to-day.