There can be no excuse for many of these omissions. Several of these names are of international eminence. Their works have not been confined to Germany, but have appeared in English translation. They stand in the foremost rank of modern literature, and both in England and America there are critical books which accord them extensive consideration. Without a knowledge of them no one—not even a Britisher—can lay claim to an understanding of modern letters. Yet the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ denies them space and still poses as an adequate reference work.
One may hope to find some adequate treatment of the German lyric to recent years with its “remarkable variety of new tones and pregnant ideas,” in the article on _German Literature_. But that hope will straightway be blasted when one turns to the article in question. The entire new renaissance in German poetry is dismissed in a brief paragraph of thirty-one lines! It would have been better to omit it altogether, for such a cursory and inadequate survey of a significant subject can result only in disseminating a most unjust and distorted impression. And the bibliography at the end of this article on modern German literature reveals nothing so much as the lack of knowledge on the part of the critic who compiled it. Not only is the _Britannica_ deficient in its information, but it does not reveal the best sources from which this omitted information might be gained.
An even more absurdly inadequate treatment is accorded the poets of modern Sweden. Despite the fact that Swedish literature is little known to Americans, the poetry of that country ranks very high—higher (according to some eminent critics) than the poetry of France or Germany. But the _Britannica_ makes no effort to disturb our ignorance; and so the great lyric poetry of Sweden since 1870 is barely touched upon. However, Mr. Edmund Gosse, a copious contributor to the Encyclopædia, has let the cat out of the bag. In one of his books he has pronounced Fröding, Levertin and Heidenstam “three very great lyrical artists,” and has called Snoilsky a poet of “unquestioned force and fire.” Turning to the _Britannica_ we find that Snoilsky is dismissed with half the space given Sydney Dobell and a third of the space given Patmore. Levertin receives only a third of a column; and Fröding is denied any biography whatever. He is thrown in with a batch of minor writers under _Sweden_. Heidenstam, the new Nobel prize-winner, a poet who, according to Charles Wharton Stork, “stands head and shoulders above any now writing in England,” receives only eight lines in the general notice! And Karlfeldt, another important lyrist, who is the Secretary of the Swedish Academy, is considered unworthy of even a word in the “supreme” _Encyclopædia Britannica_.