to the function of compost for succeeding harvests of romance. Though
probably but one or two of Mr. Churchill's books--perhaps not even
one--can be expected to outlast a generation with much vitality, he
cannot be denied the honor of having added something agreeable if
imponderable to the national memory and so of having served his country
in one real way if not in another.


3. ROBERT HERRICK

If the novels of Robert Herrick were nothing else they would still be
indispensable documents upon that first and second decade of the
twentieth century in America, when a minority unconvinced by either
romance or Roosevelt set out to scrutinize the exuberant complacence
which was becoming a more and more ominous element in the national
character. Imperialism, running a cheerful career in the Caribbean and
in the Pacific, had set the mode for average opinion; the world to
Americans looked immense and the United States the most immense
potentiality in it.

Small wonder then that the prevailing literature gave itself generally
to large proclamations about the future or to spacious recollections of
the past in which the note was hope unmodified. Small wonder either--be
it said to the credit of literature--that the same period caused and saw
the development of the most emphatic protest which has come from native
pens since the abolition of slavery--not excepting even the literary
rebels of the eighties. Much of that protest naturally expressed itself
in fiction, of many orders of intelligence and competence and intention.
Various voices have been louder or shriller or sweeter or in some cases
more thoroughgoing than Mr. Herrick's; but his is the voice which, in