XVIII. THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS 244 LITERARY VALUES I LITERARY VALUES I The day inevitably comes to every writer when he must take his place amid the silent throngs of the past, when no new work from his pen can call attention to him afresh, when the partiality of his friends no longer counts, when his friends and admirers are themselves gathered to the same silent throng, and the spirit of the day in which he wrote has given place to the spirit of another and a different day. How, oh, how will it fare with him then? How is it going to fare with Lowell and Longfellow and Whittier and Emerson and all the rest of them? How has it fared with so many names in the past, that were, in their own day, on all men’s tongues? Of the names just mentioned, Whittier and Emerson shared more in a particular movement of thought and morals of the times in which they lived than did the other two, and to that extent are they in danger of dropping out and losing their vogue. Both had a significance to their own day and generation that they can hardly have to any other. The new times will have new soul maladies and need other soul doctors. The fashions of this world pass away--fashions in thought, in style, in humor, in morals, as well as in anything else. As men strip for a race, so must an author strip for this race with time. All that is purely local and accidental in him will only impede him; all that is put on or assumed will impede him--his affectations, his insincerities, his imitations; only what is vital and real in him, and is subdued to the proper harmony and proportion, will count. A malformed giant will not in this race keep pace with the lesser but better-built stripling. How many more learned and ponderous tomes has Gilbert White’s little book left behind! Mere novelty, how short-lived is that! Every age will have its own novelties. Every age will have its own hobbies and hobbyists, its own clowns, its own follies and fashions and infatuations. What every age will not have in the same measure is sanity, proportion, health, penetration, simplicity. The strained and overwrought, the fantastic and far-fetched, are sure to drop out. Every pronounced style, like Carlyle’s, is sure to suffer. The obscurities and affectations of some recent English poets and novelists are certain to drag them down. Browning, with his sudden leaps and stops, and all that Italian rubbish, is fearfully handicapped.