Page:The Dial vol. 15 (July 1 - December 16, 1893).djvu/43

 1893.]

instinct seems to warn people that if they were to do that, the particular debate engaged in would immediately branch off either into a prolonged and probably technical inquiry into the precise meaning and limits of the term Journalism or into an interminable and almost certainly violent dispute as to what constitutes Literature. The latter question in especial is full of "excellent differences" for those who care to discuss it: because according to some theorists on the subject there would seem to be scarcely any written or printed matter—when once you have risen above the Postoffice Directory—which is not literature; while with the very superfine class of critics, the difficulty is to find anything that is. Literature begins for the former almost where it began with Dogberry. Anyone who could have "pleaded his clergy" in the middle ages, would in their view apparently have been a literary man. Between this estimate and that of the Superfine Critic who claims to confine the name of literature to some limited class of composition which he happens himself to admire, or perhaps affect, the gap yawns enormous : and I for one have no intention of attempting to bridge it. The true definition of literature no doubt lies somewhere between them; and will be fixed on that auspicious day when it is found possible to determine the exact proportions in which Form and Matter enter into the constitution of literary merit. In the meantime we must content ourselves with admitting that form is certainly, if in an undefined degree, the more important of the two. It would be dangerous to admit any more than this in a day when so many minor poets are abroad; for a considerable number of these, while particularly careful of form, have reduced the value of their matter to a vanishing point, and any encouragement to them to carry the process yet further is to be strongly deprecated. Still this much, as I have said, must be admitted: that it is primarily form rather than matter which constitutes literature."

Among other papers presented at the Thursday session was that sent by Mr. Henry Arthur Jones, who took for his subject "The Future of the English Drama," and forecast it with an optimism quite excusable in the writer of so many serious and successful plays. While this session was in progress, the subject of "Literature for Children" was under consideration in another hall of the building, and papers were read by Mrs. D. Lothrop, Mrs. Elia W. Peattie, and Mr. Hezekiah Butterworth. In the afternoon, a programme of authors' reading for children was carried out in the presence of a very large audience, composed mostly of young people.

"Aspects of Modern Fiction" was the general subject of the Friday session of the Congress. Mr. George W. Cable was asked to preside, and the choice was no less happy than that of the chairmen for the three preceding sessions. Mr. Cable followed the example of his predecessors in the chair, and read the opening paper, his subject being: "The Uses and Methods of Fiction." We extract a passage from the close of this paper:

Mrs. Mary Hartwell Catherwood followed Mr. Cable with a paper on "Form and