deep in a novel, for example, with no other purpose than an hour's unprofitable pleasure, it is annoying to be told by the authors of several other novels that he has chosen this pleasure unwisely. He may be pardoned if, in a moment of irritation, he tells the disputants plucking at his sleeve to please go on writing their fiction as well as in them lies, and he will decide for himself which of their books to read.
For it is not in the nature of man to relish a too strenuous dictatorship in matters which he cannot be made to believe are of very urgent importance. When Mr. Hamlin Garland says that American literature must be distinctly and unmistakably American, that it must be faithful to American conditions, it is difficult not to reply that there is no "must" for us of Mr. Garland's devising. Let him write his stories as he thinks best, and his many admirers will read them with satisfaction; but his authority is necessarily limited to his own literary offspring. He cannot expect to whip other people's children. When Mr. Hall Caine tells the good people of Edinburgh that the novelist is his brother's keeper, that it
