Search -
Diversions of the Echo club [by B. Taylor].
Diversions of the Echo club - by B. Taylor Author:Bayard Taylor Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: NIGHT THE THIRD. |HEN the sportive tilting with light lan.ces, the reciprocal, good-natured chaffing, in which the members of the Club were wont to indul... more »ge on coming together, had subsided, the conversation took the following turn : Zoi'LUS (to The Ancient). I've been considering what you said the last time, about the prevalent literary taste not being entirely healthy. How far would you apply that verdict to the authors ? Their relative popularity is your only gauge for the characters of the readers. The Ancient. I don't think I had any individual authors in my mind at the time. But a great deal of all modern literature is ephemeral, created from day to day to supply a certain definite demand, and sinking out of sight, sooner or later. Nine readers out of ten make no distinction between this ephemeral material and the few works which reallybelong to our literary history; that is, they confound the transitory with the permanent authors. Zoi'LUS. So far, I agree with you. Now the inference would be that those nine readers, who lack the finer judgment, and who, of course, represent the prevalent taste, are responsible for the success of the transitory authors. But they do not make the latter; they do not even dictate the character of their works; hence the school, no matter how temporary it may be, must be founded by the authors,—which obliges us to admit a certain degree of originality and power. The Ancient. I see where you are going; let us have no reasoning in a ring, I pray you ! If you admit the two classes of authors, it is enough. I have already seen one generation forgotten, and I fancy I now see the second slipping the cables of their craft, and making ready to drop down stream with the ebb-tide. I remember, for instance, that in 1840 there were many we...« less