Then, (though the States in the field of imagination present not
a single first-class work, not a single great literatus,) the main
objects, to amuse, to titillate, to pass away time, to circulate the
news, and rumors of news, to rhyme and read rhyme, are yet attain'd,
and on a scale of infinity. To-day, in books, in the rivalry of
writers, especially novelists, success, (so-call'd,) is for him or
her who strikes the mean flat average, the sensational appetite for
stimulus, incident, persiflage, &c., and depicts, to the common
calibre, sensual, exterior life. To such, or the luckiest of them, as
we see, the audiences are limitless and profitable; but they cease
presently. While this day, or any day, to workmen portraying interior
or spiritual life, the audiences were limited, and often laggard--but
they last forever.
Compared with the past, our modern science soars, and our journals
serve--but ideal and even ordinary romantic literature, does not,
I think, substantially advance. Behold the prolific brood of the
contemporary novel, magazine-tale, theatre-play, &c. The same endless
thread of tangled and superlative love-story, inherited, apparently
from the Amadises and Palmerins of the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries
over there in Europe. The costumes and associations brought down to
date, the seasoning hotter and more varied, the dragons and ogres
left out--but the _thing_, I should say, has not advanced--is just as
sensational, just as strain'd--remains about the same, nor more, nor
less.
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