My Literary Passions | Page 4

LITERARY PASSIONS
By William Dean Howells
1895

CONTENTS:
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL. I. THE BOOKCASE AT HOME II.
GOLDSMITH III. CERVANTES IV. IRVING V. FIRST FICTION
AND DRAMA VI. LONGFELLOW'S "SPANISH STUDENT" VII.
SCOTT VIII. LIGHTER FANCIES IX. POPE X. VARIOUS
PREFERENCES XI. UNCLE TOM'S CABIN XII. OSSIAN XIII.
SHAKESPEARE XIV. IK MARVEL XV. DICKENS XVI.
WORDSWORTH, LOWELL, CHAUCER XVII. MACAULAY. XVIII.
CRITICS AND REVIEWS. XIX. A NON-LITERARY EPISODE XX.
THACKERAY XXI. "LAZARILLO DE TORMES" XXII. CURTIS,
LONGFELLOW, SCHLEGEL XXIII. TENNYSON XXIV. HEINE
XXV. DE QUINCEY, GOETHE, LONGFELLOW. XXVI. GEORGE
ELIOT, HAWTHORNE, GOETHE, HEINE XXVII. CHARLES
READE XXVIII. DANTE. XXIX. GOLDONI, MANZONI,
D'AZEGLIO XXX. "PASTOR FIDO," "AMINTA," "ROMOLA,"
"YEAST," "PAUL FERROLL" XXXI. ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN,
BJORSTJERNE BJORNSON XXXII. TOURGUENIEF, AUERBACH
XXXIII. CERTAIN PREFERENCES AND EXPERIENCES XXXIV.
VALDES, GALDOS, VERGA, ZOLA, TROLLOPE, HARDY XXXV.
TOLSTOY

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL
The papers collected here under the name of 'My Literary Passions'
were printed serially in a periodical of such vast circulation that they
might well have been supposed to have found there all the acceptance
that could be reasonably hoped for them. Nevertheless, they were
reissued in a volume the year after they first appeared, in 1895, and
they had a pleasing share of such favor as their author's books have
enjoyed. But it is to be doubted whether any one liked reading them so
much as he liked writing them--say, some time in the years 1893 and
1894, in a New York flat, where he could look from his lofty windows
over two miles and a half of woodland in Central Park, and halloo his
fancy wherever he chose in that faery realm of books which he
re-entered in reminiscences perhaps too fond at times, and perhaps
always too eager for the reader's following. The name was thought by
the friendly editor of the popular publication where they were serialized
a main part of such inspiration as they might be conjectured to have,

and was, as seldom happens with editor and author, cordially agreed
upon before they were begun.
The name says, indeed, so exactly and so fully what they are that little
remains for their bibliographer to add beyond the meagre historical
detail here given. Their short and simple annals could be eked out by
confidences which would not appreciably enrich the materials of the
literary history of their time, and it seems better to leave them to the
imagination of such posterity as they may reach. They are rather
helplessly frank, but not, I hope, with all their rather helpless frankness,
offensively frank. They are at least not part of the polemic which their
author sustained in the essays following them in this volume, and
which might have been called, in conformity with 'My Literary
Passions', by the title of 'My Literary Opinions' better than by the vague
name which they actually wear.
They deal, to be sure, with the office of Criticism and the art of Fiction,
and so far their present name is not a misnomer. It follows them from
an earlier date and could not easily be changed, and it may serve to
recall to an elder generation than this the time when their author was
breaking so many lances in the great, forgotten war between Realism
and Romanticism that the floor of the "Editor's Study" in Harper's
Magazine was strewn with the embattled splinters. The "Editor's Study"
is now quite another place, but he who originally imagined it in 1886,
and abode in it until 1892, made it at once the scene of such constant
offence that he had no time, if he had the temper, for defence. The great
Zola, or call him the immense Zola, was the prime mover in the attack
upon the masters of the Romanticistic school; but he lived to own that
he had fought a losing fight, and there are some proofs that he was right.
The Realists, who were undoubtedly the masters of fiction in their
passing generation, and who prevailed not only in France, but in Russia,
in Scandinavia, in Spain, in Portugal, were overborne in all
Anglo-Saxon countries by the innumerable hosts of Romanticism, who
to this day possess the land; though still, whenever a young novelist
does work instantly recognizable for its truth and beauty among us, he
is seen and felt to have wrought in the spirit of Realism. Not even yet,
however, does the average critic recognize this, and such lesson as the
"Editor's Study" assumed to teach remains here in all its essentials for
his improvement.

Month after month for the six years in which the "Editor's Study"
continued in the keeping of its first occupant, its lesson was more or
less stormily delivered, to the exclusion, for the greater part, of other
prophecy, but it has not been found well to keep the tempestuous
manner along with the fulminant matter in