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Excerpt from An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction, in Modern Times
For a good many years I have used this essay of Green's with an advanced class in the theory of prose fiction. It has worked well. It always arouses discussion, and in doing so it has the great virtue that it imperiously leads the argument away from superficialities and center it upon fundamentals. Its service as stimulus to high thinking cannot easily to overestimated. For any student, and especially for one who has known only the unidea'd criticism of fiction so popular today, it is a fine thing to come in contact with a high-minded, sturdy, and uncompromising thinker such as Green is. As Green says of the hearer of tragedy, "He bears about him, for a time at least, among the rank vapors of the earth , something of the freshness and fragrance of the higher air." I trust that this reprint, by making the essay more easily accessible than it has been heretofore, will help to raise the grade of student thought and taste and criticism.
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