THE POWER OF SELF-CRITICISM
constantly in a state of transition; and however much we may delight in the methods of a generation or a century ago, we do not tolerate them at the hands of modern writers. Take for instance the modern novel; its form and structure—one might almost say its spirit, too—have been radically changed from that of Thackeray and Dickens. And it does not help us nearly so much, as writers, to know which of the two is the greater novelist, as to understand in what respects Henry James and Maupassant are better craftsmen than either of them. Professor Woodberry, in The Appreciation of Literature, insists that, even for the general reader, "the serious study of one's own literature is most fruitfully begun by acquaintance with those authors who are in vogue and nearly contemporary." In the case of the would be writer it is not merely most fruitful, but absolutely imperative, to keep abreast
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