_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 centers
it upon fundamentals. Its service as a stimulus to high thinking cannot
easily be 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._
F. N. S.
_University of Michigan
December 1, 1910._