period, which may often and justly be called prejudice. A book may
gain its popularity either way, but the results of the first are
more likely to be enduring. "Paradise Lost," the least popular of
popular poems, still stirs the instinctive craving for heroic
revolt, and lives for that quite as much as for the splendors of
its verse. Dryden's "Hind and the Panther," which exploited the
prejudices of its times, and was popular then, is almost dead.

What are these instinctive cravings that seek satisfaction in
fiction and, finding it, make both great and little books popular?
Let me list a few without attempting to be complete.

First in importance probably is the desire to escape from reality
into a more interesting life. This is a foundation, of course, of
all romantic stories, and is part of the definition of the
romantic, but it applies to much in literature that is not usually
regarded as romance. A more interesting life than yours or mine
does not mean one we should wish actually to live, otherwise it
would be difficult to account for the taste for detective stories
of many sedentary bank presidents; nor does it mean necessarily a
beautiful, a wild, a romantic life. No, we wish to escape to any
imagined life that will satisfy desires suppressed by
circumstance, or incapable of development in any attainable
reality.

This desire to escape is eternal, the variety differs with the
individual and still more with the period. While youthful love, or
romantic adventure as in "Treasure Island," has been an acceptable
mode for literature at least as far back as the papyrus tales of
the Egyptians, more precise means of delivery from the intolerable