Outlines of English and American Literature | Page 5

or love, or life itself,
in that it can be understood or appreciated but can never be exactly
described. It has certain describable qualities, however, and the best
place to discover these is our own bookcase.
[Sidenote: THE TREE AND THE BOOK]
Here on a shelf are a Dictionary, a History of America, a text on
Chemistry, which we read or study for information; on a higher shelf
are As You Like It, Hiawatha, Lorna Doone, The Oregon Trail, and
other works to which we go for pleasure when the day's work is done.
In one sense all these and all other books are literature; for the root
meaning of the word is "letters," and a letter means a character
inscribed or rubbed upon a prepared surface. A series of letters
intelligently arranged forms a book, and for the root meaning of "book"
you must go to a tree; because the Latin word for book, liber, means
the inner layer of bark that covers a tree bole, and "book" or "boc" is
the old English name for the beech, on whose silvery surface our

ancestors carved their first runic letters.
So also when we turn the "leaves" of a book, our mind goes back over a
long trail: through rattling printing-shop, and peaceful monk's cell, and
gloomy cave with walls covered with picture writing, till the trail ends
beside a shadowy forest, where primitive man takes a smooth leaf and
inscribes his thought upon it by means of a pointed stick. A tree is the
Adam of all books, and everything that the hand of man has written
upon the tree or its products or its substitutes is literature. But that is
too broad a definition; we must limit it by excluding what does not here
concern us.
[Sidenote: BOOKS OF KNOWLEDGE AND OF POWER]
Our first exclusion is of that immense class of writings--books of
science, history, philosophy, and the rest--to which we go for
information. These aim to preserve or to systematize the discoveries of
men; they appeal chiefly to the intellect and they are known as the
literature of knowledge. There remains another large class of writings,
sometimes called the literature of power, consisting of poems, plays,
essays, stories of every kind, to which we go treasure-hunting for
happiness or counsel, for noble thoughts or fine feelings, for rest of
body or exercise of spirit,--for almost everything, in fine, except
information. As Chaucer said, long ago, such writings are:
For pleasaunce high, and for noon other end.
They aim to give us pleasure; they appeal chiefly to our imagination
and our emotions; they awaken in us a feeling of sympathy or
admiration for whatever is beautiful in nature or society or the soul of
man.
[Sidenote: THE ART OF LITERATURE]
The author who would attempt books of such high purpose must be
careful of both the matter and the manner of his writing, must give one
thought to what he shall say and another thought to how he shall say it.
He selects the best or most melodious words, the finest figures, and

aims to make his story or poem beautiful in itself, as a painter strives to
reflect a face or a landscape in a beautiful way. Any photographer can
in a few minutes reproduce a human face, but only an artist can by care
and labor bring forth a beautiful portrait. So any historian can write the
facts of the Battle of Gettysburg; but only a Lincoln can in noble words
reveal the beauty and immortal meaning of that mighty conflict.
To all such written works, which quicken our sense of the beautiful,
and which are as a Jacob's ladder on which we mount for higher views
of nature or humanity, we confidently give the name "literature,"
meaning the art of literature in distinction from the mere craft of
writing.
[Sidenote: THE PASSING AND THE PERMANENT]
Such a definition, though it cuts out the greater part of human records,
is still too broad for our purpose, and again we must limit it by a
process of exclusion. For to study almost any period of English letters
is to discover that it produced hundreds of books which served the
purpose of literature, if only for a season, by affording pleasure to
readers. No sooner were they written than Time began to winnow them
over and over, giving them to all the winds of opinion, one generation
after another, till the hosts of ephemeral works were swept aside, and
only a remnant was left in the hands of the winnower. To this remnant,
books of abiding interest, on which the years have no effect save to
mellow or flavor them, we give the name of great or enduring literature;
and with these chiefly we deal in our present study.