Outlines of English and American Literature | Page 6

[Sidenote: THE QUALITY OF GREATNESS]
To the inevitable question, What are the marks of great literature? no
positive answer can be returned. As a tree is judged by its fruits, so is
literature judged not by theory but by the effect which it produces on
human life; and the judgment is first personal, then general. If a book
has power to awaken in you a lively sense of pleasure or a profound
emotion of sympathy; if it quickens your love of beauty or truth or
goodness; if it moves you to generous thought or noble action, then that
book is, for you and for the time, a great book. If after ten or fifty years

it still has power to quicken you, then for you at least it is a great book
forever. And if it affects many other men and women as it affects you,
and if it lives with power from one generation to another, gladdening
the children as it gladdened the fathers, then surely it is great literature,
without further qualification or need of definition. From this viewpoint
the greatest poem in the world--greatest in that it abides in most human
hearts as a loved and honored guest--is not a mighty Iliad or Paradise
Lost or Divine Comedy; it is a familiar little poem of a dozen lines,
beginning "The Lord is my Shepherd."
It is obvious that great literature, which appeals to all classes of men
and to all times, cannot go far afield for rare subjects, or follow new
inventions, or concern itself with fashions that are here to-day and gone
to-morrow. Its only subjects are nature and human nature; it deals with
common experiences of joy or sorrow, pain or pleasure, that all men
understand; it cherishes the unchanging ideals of love, faith, duty,
freedom, reverence, courtesy, which were old to the men who kept their
flocks on the plains of Shinar, and which will be young as the morning
to our children's children.
Such ideals tend to ennoble a writer, and therefore are great books
characterized by lofty thought, by fine feeling and, as a rule, by a
beautiful simplicity of expression. They have another quality, hard to
define but easy to understand, a quality which leaves upon us the
impression of eternal youth, as if they had been dipped in the fountain
which Ponce de Leon sought for in vain through the New World. If a
great book could speak, it would use the words of the Cobzar (poet) in
his "Last Song":
The merry Spring, he is my brother, And when he comes this way Each
year again, he always asks me: "Art thou not yet grown gray?" But I. I
keep my youth forever, Even as the Spring his May.
A DEFINITION. Literature, then, if one must formulate a definition, is
the written record of man's best thought and feeling, and English
literature is the part of that record which belongs to the English people.
In its broadest sense literature includes all writing, but as we commonly
define the term it excludes works which aim at instruction, and includes

only the works which aim to give pleasure, and which are artistic in
that they reflect nature or human life in a way to arouse our sense of
beauty. In a still narrower sense, when we study the history of literature
we deal chiefly with the great, the enduring books, which may have
been written in an elder or a latter day, but which have in them the
magic of all time.
One may easily challenge such a definition, which, like most others, is
far from faultless. It is difficult, for example, to draw the line sharply
between instructive and pleasure-giving works; for many an instructive
book of history gives us pleasure, and there may be more instruction on
important matters in a pleasurable poem than in a treatise on ethics.
Again, there are historians who allege that English literature must
include not simply the works of Britain but everything written in the
English language. There are other objections; but to straighten them all
out is to be long in starting, and there is a pleasant journey ahead of us.
Chaucer had literature in mind when he wrote:
Through me men goon into that blisful place Of hertës hele and dedly
woundës cure; Through me men goon unto the wells of grace, Ther
grene and lusty May shal ever endure: This is the wey to al good
aventure.
CHAPTER II
BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE
Then the warrior, battle-tried, touched the sounding glee-wood:
Straight awoke the harp's sweet note; straight a song uprose, Sooth and
sad its music. Then from hero's lips there fell A wonder-tale, well told.
Beowulf, line 2017 (a free rendering)
In its beginnings English literature is like a river, which