I maintain that there is no necessity for
apologizing for a man who helped in a small way to stop such mutilation.
We have heard a discussion to-night on the disappearance of literature.
That's no new thing. That's what certain kinds of literature have been
doing for several years. The fact is, my friends, that the fashion in
literature changes, and the literary tailors have to change their cuts or
go out of business. Professor Winchester here, if I remember fairly
correctly what he said, remarked that few, if any, of the novels produced
to-day would live as long as the novels of Walter Scott. That may be his
notion. Maybe he is right; but so far as I am concerned, I don't care if
they don't.
Professor Winchester also said something about there being no modern
epics like Paradise Lost. I guess he's right. He talked as if he was
pretty familiar with that piece of literary work, and nobody would
suppose that he never had read it. I don't believe any of you have ever
read Paradise Lost, and you don't want to. That's something that you
just want to take on trust. It's a classic, just as Professor Winchester
says, and it meets his definition of a classic--something that everybody
wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
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