of souls.  His share in the British product is perhaps appreciable; but from the native point of view, at least, it would seem as if his earlier work were, and would remain, most representative both because of its motives and methods.  Early or late, he has beyond question pointed out the way to many followers in the psychologic path:  his influence, perhaps less obvious than Howells’, is none the less undisputable.  The development in the hands of writers younger than these veterans has been rich, varied, often noteworthy in quality.  But of all this it is too soon to speak.

With regard to the fictional evolution on American soil, it is clear that four great writers, excluding the living, separate themselves from the crowd:  Irving, Cooper, Poe and Hawthorne.  Moreover, two of these, Irving and Poe, are not novelists at all, but masters of the sketch or short story.  It will be best, however, for our purpose to give them all some attention, for whatever the form of fiction they used, they are all influential in the development of the Novel.

Other authors of single great books may occur to the student, perhaps clamoring for admission to a company so select.  Yet he is likely always to come back and draw a dividing line here.  Bret Harte, for instance, is dead, and in the short story of western flavor he was a pioneer of mark, the founder of a genre:  probably no other writer is so significant in his field.  But here again, although he essayed full-length fiction, it was not his forte.  So, too, were it not that Mark Twain still cheers the land of the living with his wise fun, there would be for the critic the question, is he a novelist, humorist or essayist.  Is “Roughing It” more typical of his genius than “Tom Sawyer” or “Huckleberry Finn”?  How shall we characterize “Puddin’ Head Wilson”?  Under what category shall we place “A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur” and “Joan of Arc”?  The query reminds us once more that literature means personality as well as literary forms and that personality is more important than are they.  And again we turn away regretfully (remembering that this is an attempt to study not fiction in all its manifestations, but the Novel) from the charming short stories—­little classics in their kind—­bequeathed by Aldrich, and are almost sorry that our judgment demands that we place him first as a poet.  We think, too, of that book so unique in influence, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” nor forget that, besides producing it, Mrs. Stowe, in such a work as “Old Town Folks,” started the long line of studies of New England rustic life which, not confined to that section, have become so welcome a phase of later American art in fiction.  Among younger authors called untimely from their labors, it is hard to resist the temptation to linger over such a figure as that of Frank Norris, whose vital way of handling realistic material with epic breath in his unfinished trilogy, gave so great promise for his future.

It may be conceded that nothing is more worth mention in American fiction of the past generation than the extraordinary cultivation of the short-story, which Mr. Brander Matthews dignifies and unifies by a hyphen, in order to express his conviction that it is an essentially new art form, to study which is a fascinating quest, but aside from our main intention.