commends him to the would-be writer as Johnson commended Addison.

There is no ore that will assay more literary metal to the
page than Brann. As a writer's writer no man of our time
surpasses him. His vocabulary is conceded, even by his
most envious critics, to outrange that of any other
American. His gift of figurative speech--that essential that
distinguishes literature from mere correct writing--rivals that
of any writer in any country, language or time. Brann's
compass of words, idioms and phrases harks back to the
archaic and reaches forward to the futuristic.

If you wish merely to learn to appreciate literature so that
you may nod approval in polite society when an accredited
writer's name is mentioned, go to college and listen to the
lectures of literary Ph. D.'s. But if you want to learn to
write, take your Bible, your Shakespeare and your Brann
and hie you to your garret, there to read, reread, study,
memorize, and imitate if you can. And God be praised if
you can steal the best and to it add somewhat of your own.

Brann offends, shocks and outrages, is suppressed,
damned, forcibly ignored and laboriously forgotten, because
though the lark sings in his words, "the buzzard is on the
wing." But Brann did not make the stench that offends the
nostrils of the nice; he only stirred up the cesspools to let
us know that they were there, and so enlist volunteers for
their abatement. That riles the kept keepers of lesser
fames because they have agreed that the fine art of letters
should be to spray the attar of posies to counteract the