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THE TECHNIQUE OF FORM whom he names are as great, if not greater, than the French and Italian, their greatness is not due to their looser method of construction, but in spite of it. There is progress in the art of writing, as well as in other arts, and the wise modern writer profits by the improved methods. The tales of Boccaccio are inimitable specimens of their kind; but now that we have the modern conception of what a short story should be, as formulated by Poe and Maupassant and Kipling, it would seem scarcely worth while for any writer of to-day deliberately to revert to the cruder form of the early Italian novella. Balzac's Contes Drolatiques are likely to remain the last attempt of the sort to gain literary recognition. Don Quixote is one of the three or four indisputably greatest books in the world but that is no reason why any twentieth-century tyro in novel writing should take Cervantes for his model and [123]