Produced by Ralph Zimmerman, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team DEFINITIONS ESSAYS IN CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM BY HENRY SEIDEL CANBY, Ph.D. Editor of _The Literary Review_ of _The New York Evening Post_, and a member of the English Department of Yale University. NEW YORK ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author wishes to acknowledge the courtesy of _The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Magazine, The Century Magazine, The Literary Review of The New York Evening Post, The Bookman, The Nation, and The North American Review_ for permission to reprint such of these essays as have appeared in their columns. PREFACE The unity of this book is to be sought in the point of view of the writer rather than in a sequence of chapters developing a single theme and arriving at categorical conclusions. Literature in a civilization like ours, which is trying to be both sophisticated and democratic at the same moment of time, has so many sources and so many manifestations, is so much involved with our social background, and is so much a question of life as well as of art, that many doors have to be opened before one begins to approach an understanding. The method of informal definition which I have followed in all these essays is an attempt to open doors through which both writer and reader may enter into a better comprehension of what novelists, poets, and critics have done or are trying to accomplish. More than an entrance upon many a vexed controversy and hidden meaning I cannot expect to have achieved in this book; but where the door would not swing wide I have at least tried to put one foot in the crack. The sympathetic reader may find his own way further; or may be stirred by my endeavor to a deeper appreciation, interest, and insight. That is my hope. New York, April, 1922. CONTENTS PREFACE I. ON FICTION SENTIMENTAL AMERICA FREE FICTION A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION TOWARD FICTION THE ESSENCE OF POPULARITY II. ON THE AMERICAN TRADITION THE AMERICAN TRADITION BACK TO NATURE THANKS TO THE ARTISTS TO-DAY IN AMERICAN LITERATURE: ADDRESSED TO THE BRITISH TIME'S MIRROR THE FAMILY MAGAZINE III. THE NEW GENERATION THE YOUNG ROMANTICS PURITANS ALL THE OLDER GENERATION A LITERATURE OF PROTEST BARBARIANS A LA MODE IV. THE REVIEWING OF BOOKS A PROSPECTUS FOR CRITICISM THE RACE OF REVIEWERS THE SINS OF REVIEWING MRS. WHARTON'S "THE AGE OF INNOCENCE" MR. HERGESHEIMER'S "CYTHEREA" V. PHILISTINES AND DILETTANTE POETRY FOR THE UNPOETICAL EYE, EAR, AND MIND OUT WITH THE DILETTANTE FLAT PROSE VI. MEN AND THEIR BOOKS CONRAD AND MELVILLE THE NOVELIST OF PITY HENRY JAMES THE SATIRIC RAGE OF BUTLER CONCLUSION DEFINING THE INDEFINABLE I ON FICTION SENTIMENTAL AMERICA