Fashions in Literature | Page 7

is as complex as life itself.
This quality is strikingly exhibited for us in Jowett's translation of
Plato--which is as modern in feeling and phrase as anything done in
Boston--in the naif and direct Herodotus, and, above all, in the King
James vernacular translation of the Bible, which is the great text-book
of all modern literature.
The second quality is knowledge of human nature. We can put up with
the improbable in invention, because the improbable is always
happening in life, but we cannot tolerate the so-called psychological
juggling with the human mind, the perversion of the laws of the mind,
the forcing of character to fit the eccentricities of plot. Whatever
excursions the writer makes in fancy, we require fundamental
consistency with human nature. And this is the reason why
psychological studies of the abnormal, or biographies of criminal
lunatics, are only interesting to pathologists and never become classics
in literature.
A third quality common to all masterpieces is what we call charm, a
matter more or less of style, and which may be defined as the agreeable
personality of the writer. This is indispensable. It is this personality
which gives the final value to every work of art as well as of literature.
It is not enough to copy nature or to copy, even accurately, the
incidents of life. Only by digestion and transmutation through
personality does any work attain the dignity of art. The great works of
architecture, even, which are somewhat determined by mathematical
rule, owe their charm to the personal genius of their creators. For this
reason our imitations of Greek architecture are commonly failures. To
speak technically, the masterpiece of literature is characterized by the
same knowledge of proportion and perspective as the masterpiece in
art.

If there is a standard of literary excellence, as there is a law of
beauty--and it seems to me that to doubt this in the intellectual world is
to doubt the prevalence of order that exists in the natural--it is certainly
possible to ascertain whether a new production conforms, and how far
it conforms, to the universally accepted canons of art. To work by this
rule in literary criticism is to substitute something definite for the
individual tastes, moods, and local bias of the critic. It is true that the
vast body of that which we read is ephemeral, and justifies its existence
by its obvious use for information, recreation, and entertainment. But to
permit the impression to prevail that an unenlightened popular
preference for a book, however many may hold it, is to be taken as a
measure of its excellence, is like claiming that a debased Austrian coin,
because it circulates, is as good as a gold stater of Alexander. The case
is infinitely worse than this; for a slovenly literature, unrebuked and
uncorrected, begets slovenly thought and debases our entire intellectual
life.
It should be remembered, however, that the creative faculty in man has
not ceased, nor has puny man drawn all there is to be drawn out of the
eternal wisdom. We are probably only in the beginning of our evolution,
and something new may always be expected, that is, new and fresh
applications of universal law. The critic of literature needs to be in an
expectant and receptive frame of mind. Many critics approach a book
with hostile intent, and seem to fancy that their business is to look for
what is bad in it, and not for what is good. It seems to me that the first
duty of the critic is to try to understand the author, to give him a fair
chance by coming to his perusal with an open mind. Whatever book
you read, or sermon or lecture you hear, give yourself for the time
absolutely to its influence. This is just to the author, fair to the public,
and, above all, valuable to the intellectual sanity of the critic himself. It
is a very bad thing for the memory and the judgment to get into a habit
of reading carelessly or listening with distracted attention. I know of
nothing so harmful to the strength of the mind as this habit. There is a
valuable mental training in closely following a discourse that is
valueless in itself. After the reader has unreservedly surrendered
himself to the influence of the book, and let his mind settle, as we say,
and resume its own judgment, he is in a position to look at it

objectively and to compare it with other facts of life and of literature
dispassionately. He can then compare it as to form, substance, tone,
with the enduring literature that has come down to us from all the ages.
It is a phenomenon known to all of us that we may for the moment be
carried away by a book