by his different dialect. The Greek anthology had suggested to him
something which was, he said, "if less than verse, yet more than prose";
and he went, with the step of genius, beyond any "formal resuscitation
of the Greek epigrams, ironical and tender, satirical and sympathetic,
as casual experiments in unrelated themes," to an "epic rendition of
modern life" which suggests the novel in its largest aspects. An
admirable scheme occurred to him: he would imagine a graveyard such as
every American village has and would equip it with epitaphs of a
ruthless veracity such as no village ever saw put into words. The effect
was as if all the few honest epitaphs in the world had suddenly come
together in one place and sent up a shout of revelation.

Conventional readers had the thrill of being shocked and of finding an
opportunity to defend the customary reticences; ironical readers had the
delight of coming upon a host of witnesses to the contrast which irony
perpetually observes between appearance and reality; readers militant
for the "truth" discovered an occasion to demand that pious fictions
should be done away with and the naked facts exposed to the sanative
glare of noon. And all these readers, most of them unconsciously no
doubt, shared the fearful joy of sitting down at an almost incomparably
abundant feast of scandal. Where now were the mild decencies of
Tiverton, of Old Chester, of Friendship Village? The roofs and walls of
Spoon River were gone and the passers-by saw into every bedroom; the
closets were open and all the skeletons rattled undenied; brains and
breasts had unlocked themselves and set their most private treasures out
for the most public gaze.

It was the scandal and not the poetry of _Spoon River_, criticism may
suspect, which particularly spread its fame. Mr. Masters used an
especial candor in affairs of sex, an instinct which, secretive