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 ture. He may even wonder whether he is not suffering from a premature hardening of the arteries of sympathy. He finds himself denounced as a reactionary; and he doubts whether he has the courage of his reactions.

Whenever I turn away from this paragraph to comment on the other essays in this volume, I seem to see Brander Matthews peering into a dusky street, and to hear the sound of the tocsin bell.

"The younger generation is knocking at the door. "That is the pretty phrase which used to be employed to describe the coming of age of a numerous group of new talents. It evokes the image of eager but modest youngsters, rather timorously offering their maiden speeches, their first poems, and their unsunned paintings to the critical scrutiny of their elders and their masters. And as a matter of fact one can call up out of literary history actual instances of such behavior on the part of the younger men—even in America, and even among critics and poets. With such deference the youthful William Dean Howells approached James Russell Lowell. With such reverence, Whitman offered his Leaves of Grass to his master Emerson. For the moment I am unable to think of other American cases. But then consider the respect of Johnson for Pope, of Pope and Congreve for Dryden, of Dryden for Honest Ben, or the religious tribute of the young Milton to his immediate predecessor, Shakespeare. The graceful antique mode of "knocking at the door" is now so completely for-