English Literature: Its History and Significance for the Life of the English-Speaking World | Page 5

that constitutes its charm. When
Milton makes Satan say, "Myself am Hell," he does not state any fact,
but rather opens up in these three tremendous words a whole world of
speculation and imagination. When Faustus in the presence of Helen
asks, "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?" he does not
state a fact or expect an answer. He opens a door through which our
imagination enters a new world, a world of music, love, beauty,
heroism,--the whole splendid world of Greek literature. Such magic is
in words. When Shakespeare describes the young Biron as speaking
In such apt and gracious words That aged ears play truant at his tales,
he has unconsciously given not only an excellent description of himself,
but the measure of all literature, which makes us play truant with the
present world and run away to live awhile in the pleasant realm of
fancy. The province of all art is not to instruct but to delight; and only
as literature delights us, causing each reader to build in his own soul
that "lordly pleasure house" of which Tennyson dreamed in his "Palace
of Art," is it worthy of its name.
The third characteristic of literature, arising directly from the other two,
is its permanence. The world does not live by bread alone.
Notwithstanding its hurry and bustle and apparent absorption in

material things, it does not willingly let any beautiful thing perish. This
is even more true of its songs than of its painting and sculpture; though
permanence is a quality we should hardly expect in the present deluge
of books and magazines pouring day and night from our presses in the
name of literature. But this problem of too many books is not modern,
as we suppose. It has been a problem ever since Caxton brought the
first printing press from Flanders, four hundred years ago, and in the
shadow of Westminster Abbey opened his little shop and advertised his
wares as "good and chepe." Even earlier, a thousand years before
Caxton and his printing press, the busy scholars of the great library of
Alexandria found that the number of parchments was much too great
for them to handle; and now, when we print more in a week than all the
Alexandrian scholars could copy in a century, it would seem
impossible that any production could be permanent; that any song or
story could live to give delight in future ages. But literature is like a
river in flood, which gradually purifies itself in two ways,--the mud
settles to the bottom, and the scum rises to the top. When we examine
the writings that by common consent constitute our literature, the clear
stream purified of its dross, we find at least two more qualities, which
we call the tests of literature, and which determine its permanence.
TESTS OF LITERATURE. The first of these is universality, that is, the
appeal to the widest human interests and the simplest human emotions.
Though we speak of national and race literatures, like the Greek or
Teutonic, and though each has certain superficial marks arising out of
the peculiarities of its own people, it is nevertheless true that good
literature knows no nationality, nor any bounds save those of humanity.
It is occupied chiefly with elementary passions and emotions,--love and
hate, joy and sorrow, fear and faith,--which are an essential part of our
human nature; and the more it reflects these emotions the more surely
does it awaken a response in men of every race. Every father must
respond to the parable of the prodigal son; wherever men are heroic,
they will acknowledge the mastery of Homer; wherever a man thinks
on the strange phenomenon of evil in the world, he will find his own
thoughts in the Book of Job; in whatever place men love their children,
their hearts must be stirred by the tragic sorrow of Oedipus and King
Lear. All these are but shining examples of the law that only as a book

or a little song appeals to universal human interest does it become
permanent.
The second test is a purely personal one, and may be expressed in the
indefinite word "style." It is only in a mechanical sense that style is "the
adequate expression of thought," or "the peculiar manner of expressing
thought," or any other of the definitions that are found in the rhetorics.
In a deeper sense, style is the man, that is, the unconscious expression
of the writer's own personality. It is the very soul of one man reflecting,
as in a glass, the thoughts and feelings of humanity. As no glass is
colorless, but tinges more or less deeply the reflections from its surface,
so no author can interpret human life without unconsciously giving to it
the native hue of