THE ROOTS OF MODERN TASTE
517
an analogy with Trollope. And the analogy is fair enough. Howells
produced in the free Trollopian way, and with the same happy
yielding of the rigorous artistic conscience in favor of the careless
flow of life, although not in favor of the claims of a "good story";
and now and then, even in our exigent age, we are willing to find
respite from the strict demands of conscious art, especially if we
can do so without a great loss of other sanctions and integrities.
Howells, it is thought, can give us the pleasures of our generic image
of the Victorian novel. He was a man of principle without being
a man of heroic
moral
intensity, and we expect of him that he will
in~olve
us in the enjoyment of moral activity through the medium of
a lively awareness of manners, and that he will delight us by touching
on high matters in the natural course of gossip.
This is a very attractive expectation and Howells does not
really disappoint it. He is not Trollope's equal, but at his best he is in
his own right a very engaging novelist. Whether or not he deserves a
stronger adjective than this may for the moment be left open to ques–
tion, but engaging he undoubtedly is. And yet I think that he cannot
now engage us, that we cannot expect a revival of interest in
him-his stock is probably quite as high in the market as it will go.
The excellent omnibus volume of Howells which Professor Commager
recently brought out was piously reviewed but it was not bought.
And when, last year, I imagined that it might
be
useful to my students
to have a notion of the cultural and social situation which Howells
described and therefore spent a considerable time talking about
his
books, I received the first anonymous letter I have ever had from a
student-it warned me that the lapse of taste shown by my excessive
interest in a dull writer was causing a scandal in the cafeterias.
As
an historical figure, Howells must of course always make a
strong
claim
upon our attention. His boyhood and youth, to which he
so often returned in memory in his pleasant autobiographical books,
were spent in circumstances of which everyone must be aware who
wishes to understand the course of American culture. Howells' in–
duction into the intellectual life gives us one of the points from which
we can measure what has happened to the humanistic idea in the
modem world.
If
we want to know what was the estate of literature
a hundred years ago, if we want to
be
made aware of hoW' the
