SOURCE: "Thomas Nelson Page," in Southern Writers: Biographical and Critical Sources, Volume II, M. E. Church, 1903, pp. 120-51.

Mims, one of the first scholars of Southern literature, provides a contemporary assessment of Page's popularity and achievements.

Different from the poet and the critic is the romancer who finds in the past the inspiration of his art, and would fain preserve the traditions and legends of a bygone age. Mr. Page, by birth, training, temperament, is in thorough sympathy with the ante-bellum South, and in the new life springing up all about him he has endeavored to preserve what is most noteworthy in a civilization that seems to him "the sweetest, purest, and most beautiful ever lived." He would have us not "to forget the old radiance in the new glitter," believing with Burke that people will never look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors...