FASHIONS IN LITERATURE

By Charles Dudley Warner

INTRODUCTION

Thirty years ago and more those who read and valued good books in thiscountry made the acquaintance of Mr. Warner, and since the publication of"My Summer In a Garden" no work of his has needed any other introductionthan the presence of his name on the title-page; and now that reputationhas mellowed into memory, even the word of interpretation seemssuperfluous. Mr. Warner wrote out of a clear, as well as a full mind, andlucidity of style was part of that harmonious charm of sincerity andurbanity which made him one of the most intelligible and companionable ofour writers. 

It is a pleasure, however, to recall him as, not long ago, we saw himmove and heard him speak in the ripeness of years which brought him thefull flavor of maturity without any loss of freshness from his humor orserenity from his thought. He shared with Lowell, Longfellow, and Curtisa harmony of nature and art, a unity of ideal and achievement, which makehim a welcome figure, not only for what he said, but for what he was; oneof those friends whose coming is hailed with joy because they seem alwaysat their best, and minister to rather than draw upon our own capital ofmoral vitality. 

Mr. Warner was the most undogmatic of idealists, the most winning ofteachers. He had always some thing to say to the ethical sense, a wordfor the conscience; but his approach was always through the mind, and hisenforcement of the moral lesson was by suggestion rather than bycommandment. There was nothing ascetic about him, no easy solution of thedifficulties of life by ignoring or evading them; nor, on the other hand, was there any confusion of moral standards as the result of a confusionof ideas touching the nature and functions of art. He saw clearly, hefelt deeply, and he thought straight; hence the rectitude of his mind, the sanity of his spirit, the justice of his dealings with the thingswhich make for life and art. He used the essay as Addison used it, notfor sermonic effect, but as a form of art which permitted a man to dealwith serious things in a spirit of gayety, and with that lightness oftouch which conveys influence without employing force. He was as deeplyenamored as George William Curtis with the highest ideals of life forAmerica, and, like Curtis, his expression caught the grace anddistinction of those ideals. 

It is a pleasure to hear his voice once more, because its very accentssuggest the most interesting, high-minded, and captivating ideals ofliving; he brings with him that air of fine breeding which is diffused bythe men who, in mind as in manners, have been, in a distinctive sense, gentlemen; who have lived so constantly and habitually on intimate termswith the highest things in thought and character that the tone of thisreally best society has become theirs. Among men of talent there areplebeians as well as patricians; even genius, which is never vulgar, issometimes unable to hide the vulgarity of the aims and ideas which itclothes with beauty without concealing their essential nature. Mr. Warnerwas a patrician; the most democratic of men, he was one of the mostfastidious in his intellectual companionships and affiliations. Thesubjects about which he speaks with his oldtime directness and charm inthis volume make us aware of the serious temper of his mind, of his deepinterest in the life of his time and people, and of the easy and naturalgrace with which he insisted on facing the fact and bringing it to thetest of the highest standards. In his discussion of "Fashions inLiterature" he deftly brings before us the significance of literature andthe signs which it always wears, while he seems bent upon consideringsome interesting aspects of contemporary writing. 

And how admirably he has described his own work in his definition ofqualities which are common to all literature of a high order: simplicity, knowledge of human nature, agreeable personality. It would be impossiblein briefer or more comprehensive phrase to sum up and express the secretof his influence and of the pleasure he gives us. It is to suggest thisapplication of his words to himself that this preparatory comment iswritten. 

When "My Summer In a Garden" appeared, it won a host of friends who didnot stop to ask whether it was a piece of excellent journalism or a bitof real literature. It was so natural, so informal, so intimate thatreaders accepted it as matter of course, as they accepted the blooming offlowers and the flitting of birds. It was simply a report of certainthings which had happened out of doors, made by an observing neighbor, whose talk seemed to be of a piece with the diffused fragrance and lightand life of the old-fashioned garden. This easy approach, along naturallines of interest, by quietly putting himself on common ground with hisreader, Mr. Warner never abandoned; he was so delightful a companion thatuntil he ceased to walk beside them, many of his friends of the mind didnot realize how much he had enriched them by the way. This charmingsimplicity, which made it possible for him to put himself on intimateterms with his readers, was the result of his sincerity, his clearness ofthought, and his ripe culture: that knowledge of the best which rids aman forever of faith in devices, dexterities, obscurities, and all othersubstitutes for the lucid realities of thinking and of character. 

To his love of reality and his sincere interest in men, Mr. Warner addednatural shrewdness and long observation of the psychology of men andwomen under the stress and strain of experience. His knowledge of humannature did not lessen his geniality, but it kept the edge of his mindkeen, and gave his work the variety not only of humor but of satire. Hecared deeply for people, but they did not impose on him; he loved hiscountry with a passion which was the more genuine because it was exactingand, at times, sharply critical. There runs through all his work, as acritic of manners and men, as well as of art, a wisdom of life born ofwide and keen observation; put not into the form of aphorisms, but ofshrewd comment, of keen criticism, of nice discrimination between themanifold shadings of insincerity, of insight into the action and reactionof conditions, surroundings, social and ethical aims on men and women. The stories written in his later years are full of the evidences of aknowledge of human nature which was singularly trustworthy andpenetrating. 

When all has been said, however, it remains true of him, as of so many ofthe writers whom we read and love and love as we read, that the secret ofhis charm lay in an agreeable personality. At the end of the analysis, ifthe work is worth while, there is always a man, and the man is theexplanation of the work. This is pre-eminently true of those writerswhose charm lies less in distinctively intellectual qualities than intemperament, atmosphere, humor-writers of the quality of Steele, Goldsmith, Lamb, Irving. It is not only, therefore, a pleasure to recallMr. Warner; it is a necessity if one would discover the secret of hischarm, the source of his authority. 

He was a New Englander by birth and by long residence, but he was also aman of the world in the true sense of the phrase; one whose ethicaljudgment had been broadened without being lowered; who had learned thattruth, though often strenuously enforced, is never so convincing as whenstated in terms of beauty; and to whom it had been revealed that to livenaturally, sanely, and productively one must live humanly, with dueregard to the earthly as well as to heavenly, with ease as well asearnestness of spirit, through play no less than through work, in thelarge resources of art, society, and humor, as well as with the ancientand well-tested rectitudes of the fathers. 

The harmonious play of his whole nature, the breadth of his interests andthe sanity of his spirit made Mr. Warner a delightful companion, and keptto the very end the freshness of his mind and the spontaneity of hishumor; life never lost its savor for him, nor did his style part with itsdiffused but thoroughly individual humor. This latest collection of hispapers, dealing with a wide range of subjects from the "Education of theNegro" to "Literature and the Stage, " with characteristic comments on"Truthfulness" and "The Pursuit of Happiness, " shows him at the end ofhis long and tireless career as a writer still deeply interested incontemporary events, responsive to the appeal of the questions of thehour, and sensitive to all things which affected the dignity andauthority of literature. In his interests, his bearing, his relations tothe public life of the country, no less than in his work, he held fast tothe best traditions of literature, and he has taken his place among therepresentative American men of Letters. 

HAMILTON W. MABIE. 

FASHIONS IN LITERATURE

If you examine a collection of prints of costumes of differentgenerations, you are commonly amused by the ludicrous appearance of mostof them, especially of those that are not familiar to you in your owndecade. They are not only inappropriate and inconvenient to your eye, butthey offend your taste. You cannot believe that they were ever thoughtbeautiful and becoming. If your memory does not fail you, however, andyou retain a little honesty of mind, you can recall the fact that acostume which seems to you ridiculous today had your warm approval tenyears ago. You wonder, indeed, how you could ever have tolerated acostume which has not one graceful line, and has no more relation to thehuman figure than Mambrino's helmet had to a crown of glory. You cannotimagine how you ever approved the vast balloon skirt that gave yoursweetheart the appearance of the great bell of Moscow, or that youyourself could have been complacent in a coat the tails of which reachedyour heels, and the buttons of which, a rudimentary survival, werebetween your shoulder-blades--you who are now devoted to a female figurethat resembles an old-fashioned churn surmounted by an isoscelestriangle. 

These vagaries of taste, which disfigure or destroy correct proportionsor hide deformities, are nowhere more evident than in the illustrationsof works of fiction. The artist who collaborates with the contemporarynovelist has a hard fate. If he is faithful to the fashions of the day, he earns the repute of artistic depravity in the eyes of the nextgeneration. The novel may become a classic, because it represents humannature, or even the whimsicalities of a period; but the illustrations ofthe artist only provoke a smile, because he has represented merely theunessential and the fleeting. The interest in his work is archaeological, not artistic. The genius of the great portrait-painter may to some extentovercome the disadvantages of contemporary costume, but if the costume ofhis period is hideous and lacks the essential lines of beauty, his workis liable to need the apology of quaintness. The Greek artist and theMediaeval painter, when the costumes were really picturesque and made usforget the lack of simplicity in a noble sumptuousness, had never thisposthumous difficulty to contend with. 

In the examination of costumes of different races and different ages, weare also struck by the fact that with primitive or isolated peoplescostumes vary little from age to age, and fashion and the fashions areunrecognized, and a habit of dress which is dictated by climate, or hasbeen proved to be comfortable, is adhered to from one generation toanother; while nations that we call highly civilized, meaning commonlynot only Occidental peoples, but peoples called progressive, are subjectto the most frequent and violent changes of fashions, not in generationsonly, but in decades and years of a generation, as if the mass had nomind or taste of its own, but submitted to the irresponsible ukase oftailors and modistes, who are in alliance with enterprising manufacturersof novelties. In this higher civilization a costume which is artistic andbecoming has no more chance of permanence than one which is ugly andinconvenient. It might be inferred that this higher civilization producesno better taste and discrimination, no more independent judgment, indress than it does in literature. The vagaries in dress of the Westernnations for a thousand years past, to go back no further, are certainlyhighly amusing, and would be humiliating to people who regarded taste andart as essentials of civilization. But when we speak of civilization, wecannot but notice that some of the great civilizations; the longestpermanent and most notable for highest achievement in learning, science, art, or in the graces or comforts of life, the Egyptian, the Saracenic, the Chinese, were subject to no such vagaries in costume, but adhered tothat which taste, climate, experience had determined to be the mostuseful and appropriate. And it is a singular comment upon our modernconceit that we make our own vagaries and changeableness, and not anyfixed principles of art or of utility, the criterion of judgment, onother races and other times. 

The more important result of the study of past fashions, in engravingsand paintings, remains to be spoken of. It is that in all theillustrations, from the simplicity of Athens, through the artificialityof Louis XIV and the monstrosities of Elizabeth, down to the undescribedmodistic inventions of the first McKinley, there is discoverable aradical and primitive law of beauty. We acknowledge it among the Greeks, we encounter it in one age and another. I mean a style of dress that isartistic as well as picturesque, that satisfies our love of beauty, thataccords with the grace of the perfect human figure, and that gives asperfect satisfaction to the cultivated taste as a drawing by Raphael. While all the other illustrations of the human ingenuity in making thehuman race appear fantastic or ridiculous amuse us or offend our taste, --except the tailor fashion-plates of the week that is now, --these fewexceptions, classic or modern, give us permanent delight, and arerecognized as following the eternal law of beauty and utility. And weknow, notwithstanding the temporary triumph of bad taste and the publiclack of any taste, that there is a standard, artistic and imperishable. 

The student of manners might find an interesting field in noting how, inour Occidental civilizations, fluctuations of opinions, of morals, and ofliterary style have been accompanied by more or less significantexhibitions of costumes. He will note in the Precieux of France and theEuphuist of England a corresponding effeminacy in dress; in the frankpaganism of the French Revolution the affectation of Greek and Romanapparel, passing into the Directoire style in the Citizen and theCitizeness; in the Calvinistic cut of the Puritan of Geneva and of NewEngland the grim severity of their theology and morals. These examplesare interesting as showing an inclination to express an inner conditionby the outward apparel, as the Quakers indicate an inward peace by anexternal drabness, and the American Indian a bellicose disposition by redand yellow paint; just as we express by red stripes our desire to killmen with artillery, or by yellow stripes to kill them with cavalry. It isnot possible to say whether these external displays are relics ofbarbarism or are enduring necessities of human nature. 

The fickleness of men in costume in a manner burlesques their shifty anduncertain taste in literature. A book or a certain fashion in letterswill have a run like a garment, and, like that, will pass away before itwaxes old. It seems incredible, as we look back over the literary historyof the past three centuries only, what prevailing styles and moods ofexpression, affectations, and prettinesses, each in turn, have pleasedreasonably cultivated people. What tedious and vapid things they read andliked to read! Think of the French, who had once had a Villon, intoxicating themselves with somnolent draughts of Richardson. But, then, the French could match the paste euphuisms of Lyly with the novels ofScudery. Every modern literature has been subject to these epidemics anddiseases. It is needless to dwell upon them in detail. Since the greatdiffusion of printing, these literary crazes have been more frequent andof shorter duration. We need go back no further than a generation to findabundant examples of eccentricities of style and expression, of crazesover some author or some book, as unaccountable on principles of art asmany of the fashions in social life. --The more violent the attack, thesooner it is over. Readers of middle age can recall the furor overTupper, the extravagant expectations as to the brilliant essayistGilfillan, the soon-extinguished hopes of the poet Alexander Smith. Forthe moment the world waited in the belief of the rising of new stars, andas suddenly realized that it had been deceived. Sometimes we likeruggedness, and again we like things made easy. Within a few years adistinguished Scotch clergyman made a fortune by diluting a paragraphwritten by Saint Paul. It is in our memory how at one time all the boystried to write like Macaulay, and then like Carlyle, and then likeRuskin, and we have lived to see the day when all the girls would like towrite like Heine. 

In less than twenty years we have seen wonderful changes in public tasteand in the efforts of writers to meet it or to create it. We saw theeverlastingly revived conflict between realism and romanticism. We sawthe realist run into the naturalist, the naturalist into the animalist, the psychologist into the sexualist, and the sudden reaction to romance, in the form of what is called the historic novel, the receipt for whichcan be prescribed by any competent pharmacist. The one essential in theingredients is that the hero shall be mainly got out of one hole bydropping him into a deeper one, until--the proper serial length beingattained--he is miraculously dropped out into daylight, and stands toreceive the plaudits of a tenderhearted world, that is fond of nothing somuch as of fighting. 

The extraordinary vogue of certain recent stories is not so much to bewondered at when we consider the millions that have been added to thereaders of English during the past twenty-five years. The wonder is thata new book does not sell more largely, or it would be a wonder if theability to buy kept pace with the ability to read, and if discriminationhad accompanied the appetite for reading. The critics term thesesuccesses of some recent fictions "crazes, " but they are really sustainedby some desirable qualities--they are cleverly written, and they are forthe moment undoubtedly entertaining. Some of them as undoubtedly appealto innate vulgarity or to cultivated depravity. I will call no names, because that would be to indict the public taste. This recent phenomenonof sales of stories by the hundred thousand is not, however, wholly dueto quality. Another element has come in since the publishers haveawakened to the fact that literature can be treated like merchandise. Touse their own phrase, they "handle" books as they would "handle" patentmedicines, that is, the popular patent medicines that are desired becauseof the amount of alcohol they contain; indeed, they are sold along withdry-goods and fancy notions. I am not objecting to this great and widedistribution any more than I am to the haste of fruit-dealers to markettheir products before they decay. The wary critic will be very carefulabout dogmatizing over the nature and distribution of literary products. It is no certain sign that a book is good because it is popular, nor isit any more certain that it is good because it has a very limited sale. Yet we cannot help seeing that many of the books that are the subject ofcrazes utterly disappear in a very short time, while many others, approved by only a judicious few, continue in the market and slowlybecome standards, considered as good stock by the booksellers andcontinually in a limited demand. 

The English essayists have spent a good deal of time lately in discussingthe question whether it is possible to tell a good contemporary book froma bad one. Their hesitation is justified by a study of English criticismof new books in the quarterly, monthly, and weekly periodicals from thelatter part of the eighteenth century to the last quarter of thenineteenth; or, to name a definite period, from the verse of the Lakepoets, from Shelley and Byron, down to Tennyson, there is scarcely a poetwho has attained world-wide assent to his position in the first or secondrank who was not at the hands of the reviewers the subject of mockery andbitter detraction. To be original in any degree was to be damned. Andthere is scarcely one who was at first ranked as a great light duringthis period who is now known out of the biographical dictionary. Nothingin modern literature is more amazing than the bulk of English criticismin the last three-quarters of a century, so far as it concernedindividual writers, both in poetry and prose. The literary rancor shownrose to the dignity almost of theological vituperation. 

Is there any way to tell a good book from a bad one? Yes. As certainly asyou can tell a good picture from a bad one, or a good egg from a bad one. Because there are hosts who do not discriminate as to the eggs or thebutter they eat, it does not follow that a normal taste should not knowthe difference. 

Because there is a highly artistic nation that welcomes the flavor ofgarlic in everything, and another which claims to be the most civilizedin the world that cannot tell coffee from chicory, or because the ancientChinese love rancid sesame oil, or the Esquimaux like spoiled blubber andtainted fish, it does not follow that there is not in the world awholesome taste for things natural and pure. 

It is clear that the critic of contemporary literature is quite as likelyto be wrong as right. He is, for one thing, inevitably affected by theprevailing fashion of his little day. And, worse still, he is apt to makehis own tastes and prejudices the standard of his judgment. His view iscommonly provincial instead of cosmopolitan. In the English period justreferred to it is easy to see that most of the critical opinion wasdetermined by political or theological animosity and prejudice. The rulewas for a Tory to hit a Whig or a Whig to hit a Tory, under whateverliterary guise he appeared. If the new writer was not orthodox in theview of his political or theological critic, he was not to be toleratedas poet or historian, Dr. Johnson had said everything he could sayagainst an author when he declared that he was a vile Whig. Macaulay, aWhig, always consulted his prejudices for his judgment, equally when hewas reviewing Croker's Boswell or the impeachment of Warren Hastings. Hehated Croker, --a hateful man, to be sure, --and when the latter publishedhis edition of Boswell, Macaulay saw his opportunity, and exclaimedbefore he had looked at the book, as you will remember, "Now I will dusthis jacket. " The standard of criticism does not lie with the individualin literature any more than it does in different periods as to fashionsand manners. The world is pretty well agreed, and always has been, as tothe qualities that make a gentleman. And yet there was a time when thevilest and perhaps the most contemptible man who ever occupied theEnglish throne, --and that is saying a great deal, --George IV, wasuniversally called the "First Gentleman of Europe. " The reproach might besomewhat lightened by the fact that George was a foreigner, but for thewider fact that no person of English stock has been on the throne sinceSaxon Harold, the chosen and imposed rulers of England having beenFrench, Welsh, Scotch, and Dutch, many of them being guiltless of theEnglish language, and many of them also of the English middle-classmorality. The impartial old Wraxall, the memorialist of the times ofGeorge III, having described a noble as a gambler, a drunkard, asmuggler, an appropriator of public money, who always cheated histradesmen, who was one and sometimes all of them together, and aprofligate generally, commonly adds, "But he was a perfect gentleman. "And yet there has always been a standard that excludes George IV from therank of gentleman, as it excludes Tupper from the rank of poet. 

The standard of literary judgment, then, is not in the individual, --thatis, in the taste and prejudice of the individual, --any more than it is inthe immediate contemporary opinion, which is always in flux and refluxfrom one extreme to another; but it is in certain immutable principlesand qualities which have been slowly evolved during the long historicperiods of literary criticism. But how shall we ascertain what theseprinciples are, so as to apply them to new circumstances and newcreations, holding on to the essentials and disregarding contemporarytastes; prejudices, and appearances? We all admit that certain pieces ofliterature have become classic; by general consent there is no disputeabout them. How they have become so we cannot exactly explain. Some sayby a mysterious settling of universal opinion, the operation of whichcannot be exactly defined. Others say that the highly developed criticaljudgment of a few persons, from time to time, has established foreverwhat we agree to call masterpieces. But this discussion is immaterial, since these supreme examples of literary excellence exist in all kinds ofcomposition, --poetry, fable, romance, ethical teaching, prophecy, interpretation, history, humor, satire, devotional flight into thespiritual and supernatural, everything in which the human mind hasexercised itself, --from the days of the Egyptian moralist and the OldTestament annalist and poet down to our scientific age. Thesemasterpieces exist from many periods and in many languages, and they allhave qualities in common which have insured their persistence. Todiscover what these qualities are that have insured permanence andpromise indefinite continuance is to have a means of judging with anapproach to scientific accuracy our contemporary literature. There is nothing of beauty that does not conform to a law of order and beauty--poem, story, costume, picture, statue, all fall into an ascertainable law ofart. Nothing of man's making is perfect, but any creation approximatesperfection in the measure that it conforms to inevitable law. 

To ascertain this law, and apply it, in art or in literature, to thechanging conditions of our progressive life, is the business of theartist. It is the business of the critic to mark how the performanceconforms to or departs from the law evolved and transmitted in thelong-experience of the race. True criticism, then, is not a matter ofcaprice or of individual liking or disliking, nor of conformity to aprevailing and generally temporary popular judgment. Individual judgmentmay be very interesting and have its value, depending upon the capacityof the judge. It was my good fortune once to fall in with a person whohad been moved, by I know not what inspiration, to project himself out ofhis safe local conditions into France, Greece, Italy, Cairo, andJerusalem. He assured me that he had seen nothing anywhere in the wideworld of nature and art to compare with the beauty of Nebraska. 

What are the qualities common to all the masterpieces of literature, or, let us say, to those that have endured in spite of imperfections andlocal provincialisms?

First of all I should name simplicity, which includes lucidity ofexpression, the clear thought in fitting, luminous words. And this istrue when the thought is profound and the subject is as complex as lifeitself. This quality is strikingly exhibited for us in Jowett'stranslation of Plato--which is as modern in feeling and phrase asanything done in Boston--in the naif and direct Herodotus, and, aboveall, in the King James vernacular translation of the Bible, which is thegreat text-book of all modern literature. 

The second quality is knowledge of human nature. We can put up with theimprobable in invention, because the improbable is always happening inlife, but we cannot tolerate the so-called psychological juggling withthe human mind, the perversion of the laws of the mind, the forcing ofcharacter to fit the eccentricities of plot. Whatever excursions thewriter makes in fancy, we require fundamental consistency with humannature. And this is the reason why psychological studies of the abnormal, or biographies of criminal lunatics, are only interesting to pathologistsand never become classics in literature. 

A third quality common to all masterpieces is what we call charm, amatter more or less of style, and which may be defined as the agreeablepersonality of the writer. This is indispensable. It is this personalitywhich gives the final value to every work of art as well as ofliterature. It is not enough to copy nature or to copy, even accurately, the incidents of life. Only by digestion and transmutation throughpersonality does any work attain the dignity of art. The great works ofarchitecture, even, which are somewhat determined by mathematical rule, owe their charm to the personal genius of their creators. For this reasonour imitations of Greek architecture are commonly failures. To speaktechnically, the masterpiece of literature is characterized by the sameknowledge of proportion and perspective as the masterpiece in art. 

If there is a standard of literary excellence, as there is a law ofbeauty--and it seems to me that to doubt this in the intellectual worldis to doubt the prevalence of order that exists in the natural--it iscertainly possible to ascertain whether a new production conforms, andhow far it conforms, to the universally accepted canons of art. To workby this rule in literary criticism is to substitute something definitefor the individual tastes, moods, and local bias of the critic. It istrue that the vast body of that which we read is ephemeral, and justifiesits existence by its obvious use for information, recreation, andentertainment. But to permit the impression to prevail that anunenlightened popular preference for a book, however many may hold it, isto be taken as a measure of its excellence, is like claiming that adebased Austrian coin, because it circulates, is as good as a gold staterof Alexander. The case is infinitely worse than this; for a slovenlyliterature, unrebuked and uncorrected, begets slovenly thought anddebases our entire intellectual life. 

It should be remembered, however, that the creative faculty in man hasnot ceased, nor has puny man drawn all there is to be drawn out of theeternal wisdom. We are probably only in the beginning of our evolution, and something new may always be expected, that is, new and freshapplications of universal law. The critic of literature needs to be in anexpectant and receptive frame of mind. Many critics approach a book withhostile intent, and seem to fancy that their business is to look for whatis bad in it, and not for what is good. It seems to me that the firstduty of the critic is to try to understand the author, to give him a fairchance by coming to his perusal with an open mind. Whatever book youread, or sermon or lecture you hear, give yourself for the timeabsolutely to its influence. This is just to the author, fair to thepublic, and, above all, valuable to the intellectual sanity of the critichimself. It is a very bad thing for the memory and the judgment to getinto a habit of reading carelessly or listening with distractedattention. I know of nothing so harmful to the strength of the mind asthis habit. There is a valuable mental training in closely following adiscourse that is valueless in itself. After the reader has unreservedlysurrendered himself to the influence of the book, and let his mindsettle, as we say, and resume its own judgment, he is in a position tolook at it objectively and to compare it with other facts of life and ofliterature dispassionately. He can then compare it as to form, substance, tone, with the enduring literature that has come down to us from all theages. It is a phenomenon known to all of us that we may for the moment becarried away by a book which upon cool reflection we find is false inethics and weak in construction. We find this because we have standardsoutside ourselves. 

I am not concerned to define here what is meant by literature. A greatmass of it has been accumulated in the progress of mankind, and, fortunately for different wants and temperaments, it is as varied as thevarious minds that produced it. The main thing to be considered is thatthis great stream of thought is the highest achievement and the mostvaluable possession of mankind. It is not only that literature is thesource of inspiration to youth and the solace of age, but it is what anational language is to a nation, the highest expression of its being. Whatever we acquire of science, of art, in discovery, in the applicationof natural laws in industries, is an enlargement of our horizon, and acontribution to the highest needs of man, his intellectual life. Thecontroversy between the claims of the practical life and the intellectualis as idle as the so-called conflict between science and religion. Andthe highest and final expression of this life of man, his thought, hisemotion, his feeling, his aspiration, whatever you choose to call it, isin the enduring literature he creates. He certainly misses half hisopportunity on this planet who considers only the physical or what iscalled the practical. He is a man only half developed. I can conceive nomore dreary existence than that of a man who is past the period ofbusiness activity, and who cannot, for his entertainment, his happiness, draw upon the great reservoir of literature. For what did I come intothis world if I am to be like a stake planted in a fence, and not like atree visited by all the winds of heaven and the birds of the air?

Those who concern themselves with the printed matter in books andperiodicals are often in despair over the volume of it, and their actualinability to keep up with current literature. They need not worry. If allthat appears in books, under the pressure of publishers and the ambitionof experimenters in writing, were uniformly excellent, no reader would beunder any more obligation to read it than he is to see every individualflower and blossoming shrub. Specimens of the varieties would suffice. But a vast proportion of it is the product of immature minds, and of ayearning for experience rather than a knowledge of life. There is no moreobligation on the part of the person who would be well informed andcultivated to read all this than there is to read all the coloredincidents, personal gossip, accidents, and crimes repeated daily, withsameness of effect, in the newspapers, some of the most widely circulatedof which are a composite of the police gazette and the comic almanac. Agreat deal of the reading done is mere contagion, one form or another ofcommunicated grippe, and it is consoling and even surprising to know thatif you escape the run of it for a season, you have lost nothingappreciable. Some people, it has been often said, make it a rule never toread a book until it is from one to five years old, By this simple devicethey escape the necessity of reading most of them, but this is only apart of their gain. Considering the fact that the world is full of booksof the highest value for cultivation, entertainment, and information, which the utmost leisure we can spare from other pressing avocations doesnot suffice to give us knowledge of, it does seem to be little less thana moral and intellectual sin to flounder about blindly in the flood ofnew publications. I am speaking, of course, of the general mass ofreaders, and not of the specialists who must follow their subjects withceaseless inquisition. But for most of us who belong to the stillcomparatively few who, really read books, the main object of life is notto keep up with the printing-press, any more than it is the main objectof sensible people to follow all the extremes and whims of fashion indress. When a fashion in literature has passed, we are surprised that itshould ever have seemed worth the trouble of studying or imitating. Whenthe special craze has passed, we notice another thing, and that is thatthe author, not being of the first rank or of the second, has generallycontributed to the world all that he has to give in one book, and ourtime has been wasted on his other books; and also that in a special kindof writing in a given period--let us say, for example, thehistorico-romantic--we perceive that it all has a common character, isconstructed on the same lines of adventure and with a prevailing type ofhero and heroine, according to the pattern set by the first one or twostories of the sort which became popular, and we see its more or lessmechanical construction, and how easily it degenerates into commercialbook-making. Now while some of this writing has an individual flavor thatmakes it entertaining and profitable in this way, we may be excused fromattempting to follow it all merely because it happens to be talked aboutfor the moment, and generally talked about in a very undiscriminatingmanner. We need not in any company be ashamed if we have not read it all, especially if we are ashamed that, considering the time at our disposal, we have not made the acquaintance of the great and small masterpieces ofliterature. It is said that the fashion of this world passeth away, andso does the mere fashion in literature, the fashion that does not followthe eternal law of beauty and symmetry, and contribute to theintellectual and spiritual part of man. Otherwise it is only a waiting ina material existence, like the lovers, in the words of the Arabianstory-teller, "till there came to them the Destroyer of Delights and theSunderer of Companies, he who layeth waste the palaces and peopleth thetombs. "

Without special anxiety, then, to keep pace with all the ephemeral inliterature, lest we should miss for the moment something that ispermanent, we can rest content in the vast accumulation of the tried andgenuine that the ages have given us. Anything that really belongs toliterature today we shall certainly find awaiting us tomorrow. 

The better part of the life of man is in and by the imagination. This isnot generally believed, because it is not generally believed that thechief end of man is the accumulation of intellectual and spiritualmaterial. Hence it is that what is called a practical education is setabove the mere enlargement and enrichment of the mind; and the possessionof the material is valued, and the intellectual life is undervalued. Butit should be remembered that the best preparation for a practical anduseful life is in the high development of the powers of the mind, andthat, commonly, by a culture that is not considered practical. Thenotable fact about the group of great parliamentary orators in the daysof George III is the exhibition of their intellectual resources in theentire world of letters, the classics, and ancient and modern history. Yet all of them owed their development to a strictly classical trainingin the schools. And most of them had not only the gift of the imaginationnecessary to great eloquence, but also were so mentally disciplined bythe classics that they handled the practical questions upon which theylegislated with clearness and precision. The great masters of financewere the classically trained orators William Pitt and Charles James Fox. 

In fine, to return to our knowledge of the short life of fashions thatare for the moment striking, why should we waste precious time in chasingmeteoric appearances, when we can be warmed and invigorated in thesunshine of the great literatures?