viii                PREFACE
begin. We shall no longer believe that to be authen-
tically "national" we must continue to hash up the
crude and inconsequential exaggerations character-
istic of us in the minds of foreign readers; but by
abandoning the impossible attempt to create supreme
art out of social materials that are shifting and local,
we shall see our way toward a national literature
that shall embrace, perhaps for the first time in the
history of the world, the universal hopes and im-
pulses of humanity.
  A confirmation of this belief lies in considerations
of a more practical nature. The output of books in
modern life is so great; translations from writers of
large outlook are so many and admirable; and so
marvellous are the communications by which the
world's best books are brought to our hands, that
only the blind can fail to see that lasting literary
achievement must concern itself henceforward, as
never before, with broadly human vision.
  Yet this vision will not come, as a few of our more
recent poets seem to fancy, from some imaginarily