And what is this "yore and gore" fiction when you analyze it? It is simply a sublimated "dime novel" which, by reason of increased demand for easy reading, on the part of the tired brain, has been put into a little better cover, and published by Harpers. Hitherto it was published by Beadle or some other fellow of that sort. It is current now. The people are reading it. They will continue to do so for a year or two, and then it will disappear. I like what Zangwill said of it a while ago. I cannot quote it exactly, but it was like this: "I had a dream the other night, wherein I scrambled over the roofs of buildings pursued by detectives. I lowered myself by drain pipes. I did business in dark corridors. I retreated up narrow passages with my good broadsword flaming, and laid scores of men at my feet. I was sealed up in dungeons. I was snatched out of the deep by the hair of my head. I slew men in hecatombs; and then, when the morning came and I awoke, there was not a shred of intellectual wrack left behind on which my mind could take hold. I had dreamed it all with the cerebellum. It was all organic. Why didn't I dream a novel by Turgenef, or Bjornsen? It takes brains to write "Fathers and Sons" or the "Bankrupt," and it takes brains to read such masterpieces." With all due respect to the very calm and fine position taken by Professor McClintock [Prof. W. D. McClintock had asserted his belief that the twentieth century would stand for a great revival of romantic literature], this novel of lust and war does not strike me as being very high-class art. It may seem good and fine and fresh and inspiring, this fiction which slays its millions, but I am a good deal of a Quaker. I would not slay anybody for anything. Therefore, such art does not appear beautiful to me. I do not believe it is good for our youth to read "yore and gore" fiction. There _are_ romancers--Prof. McClintock named one--who have personal quality. I don't care what school of fiction a man belongs to if he has something to say to me which has not been said a thousand times by somebody else. Such a man is Robert Louis Stevenson. He slew men also, but he uttered something beside war cries. But this "shilling shocker," this searching after the dreadful and the unknown which is red with blood, does not strike me as literature at all. It is all the work of the cerebellum. It is not the work of the cerebrum. I should put it like this--If a man can tell us something that has not been told before; if he can add something to the literature of the world--a real creation--if he can, like the coral insect, build his own little cell upon the great underlying mass of English literature, I do not care what you call him, nor what he calls himself, he is worthy my support.