he might not forget the prodigy? Now that the earth had
been divided over again, and the poet in his actual guise of novelist
had richly shared in its goods with the farmer, the noble, the merchant,
and the abbot, was it necessary or even fair that he should be the guest
of heaven? In other words, now that every successful author could keep
his automobile, did any one want his autograph?

In the silence that fell upon the company at these words, the ticking of
the clock under its classic pediment on the mantel was painfully
audible, and had the effect of intimating that time now had its innings
and eternity was altogether out of it. Several minutes seemed to pass
before any one had the courage to ask whether the degradation of
authorship was not partially the result of the stand taken by the
naturalists in Zola, who scorned the name of art for his calling and
aspired to that of science. The hardy adventurer who suggested this
possibility said that it was difficult to imagine the soul stirred to
the same high passion by the botanist, the astronomer, the geologist,
the electrician, or even the entomologist as in former times by the
poet, the humorist, the novelist, or the playwright. If the fictionist
of whatever sort had succeeded in identifying himself with the
scientist, he must leave the enjoyment of divine honors to the pianist,
the farce-comedian, the portrait-painter, the emotional actor, and the
architect, who still deigned to practise an art.

The philosopher smiled, and owned that this was very interesting, and
opened up a fresh field of inquiry. The first question there was whether
the imaginative author were not rather to blame for not having gone far
enough in the scientific direction in the right scientific fashion than
for having taken that course at all. The famous reproach of poetry made
by Huxley, that it was mostly "sensual caterwauling," might well have
given the singer pause in striking the sympathetic catgut of his lyre:
perhaps the strings were metallic; but no matter. The reproach had a
justice in it that must have stung, and made the lyrist wish to be an
atomic theorist at any cost. In fact, at that very moment science had,
as it were, caught the bread out of fiction's mouth, and usurped the
highest functions of imagination. In almost every direction of its
recent advance it had made believe that such and such a thing was so,
and then proceeded to prove it. To this method we owed not only the
pos