That Mr. Howells gave unequivocal indications of possessing this fine
quality interested us in his modest preludings. Marked, as they no doubt
were, by some uncertainty of aim and indefiniteness of thought, that
"stinting," as Chaucer calls it, of the nightingale "ere he beginneth
sing," there was nothing in them of the presumption and extravagance
which young authors are so apt to mistake for originality and vigor.
Sentiment predominated over reflection, as was fitting in youth; but
there was a refinement, an instinctive reserve of phrase, and a felicity
of epithet, only too rare in modern, and especially in American writing.
He was evidently a man more eager to make something good than to make a
sensation,--one of those authors more rare than ever in our day of
hand-to-mouth cleverness, who has a conscious ideal of excellence, and,
as we hope, the patience that will at length reach it. We made occasion
to find out something about him, and what we learned served to increase
our interest. This delicacy, it appeared, was a product of the
rough-and-ready West, this finish the natural gift of a young man with
no advantage of college-training, who, passing from the compositor's
desk to the editorship of a local newspaper, had been his own faculty of
the humanities. But there are some men who are born cultivated. A
singular fruit, we thought, of our shaggy democracy,--as interesting a
phenomenon in that regard as it has been our fortune to encounter.
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