despised of the learned world, and, if a favorite with the vulgar,
not always a respected one. Strange that learned and vulgar alike
should repeat the fallacy in dispraising the preeminently popular
art of our own times! To Sir Francis Bacon "Hamlet" was presumably
only a playactor's play. If the great American story should arrive
at last, would we not call it "only a novel"?



THE ESSENCE OF POPULARITY


You might suppose that popular literature was a modern invention.
Cultivated shoulders shrug at the mention of "best sellers" with
that air of "the world is going to the devil" which just now is
annoyingly familiar. Serious minded people write of _The Saturday
Evening Post_ as if it represented some new fanaticism destined to
wreck civilization. The excessive popularity of so many modern novels
is felt to be a mystery.

Of course there are new elements in literary popularity. The wave
of interest used to move more slowly. Now thousands, and sometimes
millions, read the popular story almost simultaneously, and see
it, just a little later on the films. Millions, also, of the class
which never used to read at all are accessible to print and have
the moving pictures to help them.

But popularity has not changed its fundamental characteristics.
The sweep of one man's idea or fancy through other minds, kindling
them to interest, has been typical since communication began. The