Then those dead-level sentences that seem to return forever into themselves, that have no direction or fall, that do not point and hurry to some definite conclusion,—we soon yawn over these too.
What rare power the late Henry George had to invest his subject with interest! What a current in his book “Progress and Poverty”!—While it seems to me that in his “Social Evolution” Benjamin Kidd suffers from the want of this talent; I do not get the full force of his periods at the first reading.
III
Literature abounds in attempts to define literature. One of the most strenuous and thorough-going definitions I have seen has lately been published by one of our college professors—it is a most determined attempt to corral the whole subject. “Nothing belongs to real literature,” says the professor, “unless it consists of written words that constitute a carrying statement which makes sense, arranged rhythmically, euphoniously, and harmoniously, and so chosen as to connote an adequate number of ideas and things, the suggestion of which will call up in the reader sustained emotions which do not produce undue tension, and in which the element of pleasure predominates, on the whole, over that of pain. Practically,” the writer goes on to say, “every word of this description should be kept in our minds, so that we may consciously apply it as a test to any piece of writing about the literary character of which we are in doubt.”
Fancy a reader, in his quest for the real article, going about with this drag-net of a paragraph in his mind. Will the definition or description bear turning around upon itself? Is it a good sample of literary art? The exactness and literalness of science are seldom permissible in literature. That a definition of anything may have literary value it must possess a certain indirect and imaginative character, as when Carlyle defined poetry as the heroic of speech. Contrast with the above John Morley’s definition of literature: “All the books—and they are not so many—where moral truth and human passion are touched with a certain largeness, sanity, and attraction of form.” This is much better literature, because the language is much more flexible and imaginative. It imparts more warmth to the mind; it is more suggestive, while as a literary touchstone it is just as available.
Good literature may be a much simpler thing than our teachers would lead us to believe. The prattle of a child may have rare literary value. The little Parisian girl who, when asked by a lady the price of the trinkets she offered for sale, replied, “Judge for yourself, madam; I have tasted no food since yesterday,” expressed herself with consummate art. If she had said simply, “Whatever your ladyship pleases to give,” her reply would have been graceful, but commonplace. By the personal turn which she gave it, she added almost a lyrical touch. When Thackeray changed the title of one of his novels from “Scenes from Town Life,” or some such title, to “Vanity Fair,” he achieved a stroke of art. It is said that a now famous line of Keats was first written thus:
“A thing of beauty is a continual joy.”
How the effect of the line was heightened by the change of one word, and itself became “a joy forever.” Poe, too, altered two lines of his with like magical effect, when for
“To the beauty of fair Greece,
And the grandeur of old Rome,”