1900; Mrs. Wharton's "House of Mirth," 1905, and "The Fruit of the Tree," 1907; Sinclair's "Jungle," 1906; O. Henry's "Gentle Grafter," 1908; Herrick's "Together," 1908, not to speak of Mr. Mencken's isolated exception, Mr. Dreiser's "Sister Carrie," 1900. As an historian Mr. Mencken is to be viewed with alarm.
I have sworn to myself not to end this review on the note of detraction, but to bring it back to the note of sincere admiration on which it started. Though Mr. Mencken lacks the patience, the discrimination and the "organ for truth" which the critic of a "civilized minority" ought to possess, he has other great talents. He is, as I have said elsewhere, alive. He has been the occasion of life in others. He has a rare gift at stirring people up and making them strike an attitude, and at least start on the long process of becoming intelligent beings. And he is beginning to quote from good authors. He is beginning to quote shyly from the New Testament in the Latin of the Vulgate. What may that bode? No one who has followed his work as carefully and hopefully as I have these many years can have failed to recognize that his obvious calling is to some form of ministry. From the first, he has exhibited the desk-beating proclivities, the overstrained voice, the tumid phrases and the denunciatory fervor which one associates with the popular orator. Years ago I pointed out the absurdity of his presenting himself as chiefly an æsthetic interpreter when every drop of his blood seethes with moral passion and every beat of his heart summons him to moral propaganda. In his Fourth Series, when Mr. Mencken is not a theologian he is a moralist. His book is properly describable as a moral miscellany.
