Emerson's Essays.
Æschylus' "Prometheus."
Goethe's "Faust" and "Wilhelm Meister."
Dante's "Divine Comedy."
"Hamlet" and many other of Shakspeare's Plays.
Curtis' "Prue and I."
The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.
The Sermons of Phillips Brooks and Robertson.
"My Summer in a Garden," by Warner; etc.
A single sentence in Emerson often suggests a train of thought that would fill a volume; and a single inflection of Patti's voice in singing "Home, Sweet Home" will fill the heart to overflowing.
Expression.—Like a musician, an author must study technique. A book may possess high motive, artistic unity, universality, suggestiveness, magnitude of thought, and yet be lacking in clearness, purity, music, smoothness, force, finish, tone-color, or even in proper grammatical construction. The style ought to be carefully adapted to the subject and to the readers likely to be interested in it. Force and beauty may be imparted to the subject by a good style. In poetry beauty is the supreme object, the projection of truth upon the mind being subordinate. Poetry expresses the truths of the soul. In prose, on the other hand, truth is the main purpose, and beauty is used as a helper. As a soldier studies his guns, and a dentist his tools, so a writer must study the laws of rhythm, accent, phrasing, alliteration, phonetic syzygy, run-on and double-ending lines, rhyme, and, last but not least, the melodies of common speech. The first three and the last are the most important, and should be thoroughly studied in Shakspeare, Addison, Irving, and other masters of style by every one who wishes to write or to judge the work of others. Except as to rhyme, the arts of writing prose and poetry are substantially the same. Theoretically there is a fundamental difference in respect to rhythm,—that of a poem being limited to the repetition of some chosen type, that of prose being unlimited. A little study makes it clear, however, that the highest poetry, as that of Shakspeare's later plays, crowds the type with the forms of common speech; while the highest efforts of prose, as that of Addison, Irving, Phillips, Ingersoll's oration over his dead brother, etc., display rhythms that approach the order and precision of poetry. In practice the best prose and the best poetry approach each other very closely, moving from different directions toward the same point.
It is of great advantage to form the habit of noticing the tunes of speech used by those around us; the study will soon become very pleasurable, and will be highly profitable by teaching the observer what mode of expression is appropriate to each variety of thought and feeling. There is a rhythm that of itself produces a comic effect, no matter how sober the words may be; and it is the same that we find in "Pinafore," in the "Mariner's Duet" in the opera of "Paul Jones," and in the minstrel dance. For fifteen centuries all the great battle-songs have been written in the same rhythm; they fall into it naturally, because it expresses the movement of mighty conflict. See Lanier's "Science of English Verse," pages 151 et seq., 231 et seq. This is the best book upon technique; but Spencer's Essay on the Philosophy of Style, and Poe's Essay on his composition of "The Raven" should not be overlooked. Franklin and many others have discovered the laws of style simply by careful study of the "Spectator."
Of course it is not easy to decide the true rank of a book, even when we have tested it in respect to all the elements we have named. One book may be superior in expression, another in suggestiveness, and so on. Then we have to take note of the relative importance of these various elements of greatness. A little superiority in motive or suggestiveness is worth far more than the same degree of superiority as to unity or magnitude. A book filled with noble sentiment, though lacking unity, should rank far above "Don Juan," or any other volume that expresses the ignoble part of human nature, however perfect the work may be from an artistic point of view. Having now examined the tests of intrinsic merit, let me revert for a moment to my remark, a few pages back, to the effect that "Looking Backward" and "Robert Elsmere" deserve a high rank. They are books of lofty aim, great magnitude of subject and thought, fine unity, wide universality, exhaustless suggestiveness, and more than ordinary power of expression. Doubtless they are not absolute classics,—not books of all time,—for their subjects are transitional, not eternal. They deal with doubts, religious and industrial; when these have passed away, the mission of the books will be fulfilled, and their importance will be less. But they are relative classics,—books that are of great value to their age, and will be great as long as their subjects are prominent.
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