Unity.—A book, picture, statue, play, or oratorio is an artistic unity when no part of it could be removed without injury to the whole effect. True art masses many forces to a single central purpose. The more complex a book is in its substance (not its expression),—that is to say, the greater the variety of thoughts and feelings compressed within its lids,—the higher it will rank, if the parts are good in themselves and are so related as to produce one tremendous effect. But no intrusion of anything not essentially related to the supreme purpose can be tolerated. A good book is like a soldier who will not burden himself with anything that will not increase his fighting power, because, if he did, its weight would diminish his fighting force. In the same way, if a book contains unnecessary matter, a portion of the attention that should be concentrated upon the real purpose of the volume, is absorbed by the superfluous pages, rendering the effect less powerful than it would otherwise be. Most of the examples of high motive named above, would be in place here, especially,—
Prometheus.
The Forsaken Merman.
The Light of Asia.
Other fine specimens of unity are,—
Holmes's "Nautilus."
Hood's "Bridge of Sighs."
Gray's "Elegy."
Hunt's "Abou Ben Adhem."
Longfellow's "Psalm of Life."
Whittier's "Barefoot Boy."
Shelley's "Ode to a Skylark."
Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind."
Byron's "Eve of Waterloo."
Bryant's "Thanatopsis."
Reed's "Drifting."
Drake's "Culprit Fay."
Irving's "Art of Bookmaking," etc. (in "Sketch Book").
Rives' "Story of Arnon."
Dante's "Divine Comedy."
Schiller's "Veiled Statue of Truth."
Goethe's "Erl King."
Humor alone has a right to violate unity even apparently; and although wit and humor produce their effects by displaying incongruities, yet underlying all high art, in this department as in others, there is always a deep unity,—a truth revealed and enforced by the destruction of its contradictories accomplished by the sallies of wit and humor.
Universality.—Other things equal, the more people interested in the subject the more important the book. A matter which affects a million people is of more consequence than one which affects only a single person. National affairs, and all matters of magnitude, of course possess this quality; but magnitude is not necessary to universality,—the thoughts, feelings, and actions of an unpretentious person in a little village may be types of what passes in the life of every human being, and by their representativeness attain a more universal interest for mankind than the business and politics of a state.
The rules of tennis are not of so wide importance as an English grammar, nor is the latter so universal as Dante's "Inferno" or "The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius,"—these being among the books that in the highest degree possess the quality under discussion. Other fine examples are—
Goethe's "Faust."
Shakespeare's Plays and Sonnets.
Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress."
Arnold's "Light of Asia."
Bacon's and Emerson's Essays.
"Uncle Tom's Cabin."
Sewell's "Black Beauty."
Eliot's "Romola."
Curtis' "Prue and I."
Cooper's "Last of the Mohicans."
Tourgée's "Hot Plowshares."
Irving's "Sketch Book."
Plato, Spencer, etc.
In fact, all books that express love, longing, admiration, tenderness, sorrow, laughter, joy, victory over nature or man, or any other thought or feeling common to men, have the attribute of universality in greater or less degree.
Suggestiveness.—Every great work of art suggests far more than it expresses. This truth is illustrated by paintings like Bierstadt's "Yosemite" or his "Drummer Boy," Millet's "Angelus," or Turner's "Slave Ship." Statues like the "Greek Slave" or "The Forced Prayer;" speeches like those of Phillips, Fox, Clay, Pitt, Bright, Webster, and Brooks; songs like "Home, Sweet Home," "My Country," "Douglas," "Annie Laurie;" and books like