As a matter of fact, there was little that interested them, or which at
all events didn't disappoint and somewhat bewilder. The novel was
groaning under the thraldom of realism; poetry, with one or two
exceptions, was given up to bric-a-brac and metrical ingenuity. To
young men for whom French romanticism was still alive, who were still
content to see the world through the spiritual eyes of Shelley and
Keats, and who had not yet learned to belittle Carlyle, there seemed a
strange lack of generosity and, indeed, vitality in the literary ideals
of the hour. The novel particularly seemed barren and unprofitable to
them, more and more an instrument of science than a branch of
literature. Laughter had deserted it, as clearly as romance or pathos,
and more and more it was becoming the vehicle of cynical biology on the
one hand, and Unitarian theology on the other. Besides, strangest of
all, men were praised for lacking those very qualities which to these
boys had seemed essential to literature. The excellences praised were
the excellences of science, not literature.
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