Show THE FUNCTIONS OF SOME NASTY BOOKS There are many books bools especially in the drama and early novels which do more than acquaint the reader with the literature of their respective pe pe- They paint contemporary life vividly and they also plumb the lowest levels of moral dation As literary landmarks these books and plays furnish ample reason for their places in the study of English literature as exponents of sensational sensational sensational sen sen- salaciousness unequaled even in the rancid love stories of today do they not possess an additional value For the reader who has sat tense while reading reading reading read read- ing Websters Webster's White Devil and Beaumont and Fletchers Fletcher's Maids Tragedy or has been nauseated ed by the crassness of Fieldings Fielding's Tom Jones or Roderic Random will not be taken talen unawares by the elaborately illustrated upper class unwholesomeness which today occupies the the pages of many periodicals Not altogether perhaps perhaps per per- haps because he has no relish for the sensational but because he has only to strip the fashionable clothing and the veiled talk from the lay figures to discover who were their more robust models back in the less attractive mire For no matter whether it be the twentieth century the sixteenth or the eighteenth the circumstances of human frailties change little The Wall Vall Street speculator has many traits in common with Elizabethan soldiers of fortune the duchesses of the eighteenth century century century cen cen- tury are very like the social climbers of this One reading in the earlier periods is aware that no amount of beautiful poetry in the Beaumont and Fletcher plays covered their ethical decline he knows too that neither the the the- gl glamour mour of great wealth nor smartness in fluently written frenzied love stories of today disguises their want of moral fibre Because these earlier earlie writers do not leave one single emotional vice unexplored they provide today today today to to- day an effective antidote for the decay of moral ideals But after all this turbid reading when the landmarks are back on the reference shelves and the rubbish of today in the furnaces one will come to the noble books in our literature for inspiration to create newer and higher ideals or for courage to pursue vanishing ones For as the late William Villiam James stated it Just as our courage courage courage cour cour- age is often a reflex of another's courage so our faith in mental and moral progression is apt to be bea a faith in some one else's faith K P. P |