Page:Americans (1922).djvu/338

 has never, like Rossetti, gone to market before breakfast to paint a calf in a farmer's cart. In the hundred and sixteen Shelburne essays, there are only a dozen American subjects; and of these only four or five at the most can be called in any sense "contemporary." This proves, I think, a partial retrogression from the purpose indicated by the epigraph of his First Series: "Before we have an American literature, we must have an American criticism." Mr. More has written distinguished and important criticism in America for Americans apropos of English themes. But he has done too little to meet his poor living fellow-countrymen half way; and to give and to receive the recognitions which are among the functions and the rewards of letters. He has not done as much as he might have done to establish a place for easy colloquial intercourse at some point between the news-papering reading public and that hermit's retreat of his with the Sanskrit inscription above the door.

For this reason, I welcome, as a token of amendment, his preface to his recent volume on The Wits. Mr. More has not the prefatory habit. It is his custom to plunge in medias res, like an epic poet or a member of the Modern Language Association. But here, like a man of this world, he begins with a preface, affable, familiar, charming, provocative. He chats about the way he composed these essays—that was before he withdrew from New York to Princeton in order that his children might grow up