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can be made against some of our home products. I should hesitate to say that I found a writer characteristically American, since I have never been in your country and have no clear notion of distinctively American characteristics. Mr. Lindsay, for whom I have a great admiration, represents a temper unknown among us, but he seems to me more energetic, excitable, and rapid of movement than any American I have ever met. Mr. Hergesheimer is to me simply a very good novelist with an individual style. Mr. Robert Frost is simply a very good poet who came over here and had a considerable influence on one of our poets, Edward Thomas, of whom we are exceedingly proud. Who was it that kept on shouting for years for "the great American novel?" Was it we? Of course it was not. It was American critics singly and in chorus, and I am inclined to believe that Mr. Aiken's English critic is merely a projection of many American critics, falsely patriotic and blind to excellence in literature, with whom he might justly be incensed.

This confession I will freely make, that on the whole we know less of your best literature than you of ours, though your worst literature is, in the popular magazines, rapidly driving ours from the field. It seems to me, speaking at a distance of two thousand miles or so, that there is in America a larger appetite for would-be-good, and especially for experimental, literature than there is in England. We recognize that fact and are grateful for it: indeed some of our best writers are deeply indebted for support to the American public. I will add, having determined on frankness, that the opinion actually held in England of American literature, as we know it, is not such as would gratify Mr. Aiken or any American interested in the writers of his country, whether the dissatisfaction fell on those writers or on our ignorance. It is (remember that I am speaking of facts and express no view as to whether the facts ought to be what they are) a comparatively low opinion. But, once again, Mr. Aiken's English critic with his preconceived theory has no real existence; and Mr. Aiken's suggestion that, unconsciously (a kindly reservation!) we are influenced by jealousy is really not worthy of him.

The American appetite for the newest, and, so far as it can be found, the best, in ideas and literature from England is, I suppose, no new thing; but, judging by the numbers of our authors who have recently visited, or are about to visit, America, it is par-