“What is not true is that the pioneer sportsmen who founded the Alpine Club had exceptional insight into the moods of the snow. One or two of them, no doubt, struck out a little literature as the result of the impact of novel experiences upon naïve minds.... On the whole, in spite of their defects, their machine-made perorations and their ponderous jests, they brought an acceptable addition to the existing stock of the literature of adventure.... But they had their limitations, and these were rather narrow. They dealt almost exclusively with the externals of mountaineering experience; and when they ventured further their writing was apt to be of the quality of fustian. Their spiritual adventures among the mountains were apt to be melodramatic or insignificant. Perhaps their Anglo-Saxon reticence prevented themselves from ‘letting themselves go.’... At all events there does remain this notable distinction--that, while the most eloquent writings of the most eloquent Alpine Club-man are as a rule deliberately and ostentatiously objective, the subjective literature of mountains--the literature in which we see the writer yielding to the influence of scenery, instead of lecturing about its beauties, existed long before that famous dinner party at the house of William Mathews, senior, at which the Alpine Club was founded. England, as we have said, contributed practically nothing to that literature.” We have quoted this passage at some length because it expresses a novel attitude in direct contradiction to the accepted views sanctified by tradition. We do not entirely endorse it. The article contains proof that its writer has an intimate knowledge of early Alpine literature, but one is tempted to fancy that his research did not survive the heavy period of the ’eighties, and that he is unacquainted with those modern writers whose work is distinctly subjective. None the less, his contention suggests an interesting line of study; and in this chapter we shall try briefly to sketch the main tendencies, though we cannot review in detail the whole history, of Alpine literature, a subject which requires a book in itself.