Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 August 1883 — Literature and Literature Makers [ARTICLE]

Literature and Literature Makers

First of all, the reading worlck demands to be entertained. It is for this that it reads —when it reads only—not studies. Literature does not bow to it as humbly as it once’did. Literature is no longer a royal mendicant. And yet we do not liberate it from subordination to our cajsrices. And, under certain limitations, this attitude is the reader’s clear preogative. Literature must be the suitor in a courtship; and all that a lover ought and ought not to be his mistress, literature ought or ought*aet to be to the reading world. But, then, what ought the reading worlcl to be ? A faithful right-minded, true-hearted mistress, willing to be won by service, not by servility. Are we going to demand, asks the young aspirant, that he bow down to our crotchets and whims? The requirement that he shall court and strive to please, he is ready and eager to meet. He sees its necessity; but he sees, too, the danger of its overgrowth. He sees that if he ever lets that necessity dictate to him and allows himself to wince or cringe under the frown of commercial or political interests; or the petulance of sectional prejudices and seif; love; or the tardiness of pecuniary, rgl turns,.or the disregard of the multitude his own reading public itself will cy and by turn and impeach him. We want, consequently, to assure our young men here that they shall not have to meet these unjust demands; but that our exactions and limitations shall be such only as are consistent with the perfection of candor and good faith in both them and us. Two demands we have a fundamental right to make and we make them both at once. To wit, that our literary product shall be at the same time both national and universal, in character and in value.— G. W. Cable.