4. So far as the student is able to compare the book with others by the same author, or with books by his contemporaries, or with similar works of other periods, how does it rank in such a comparison? These are questions to which every intelligent reader can upon reflection make some kind of answer. They do not go very far toward fixing an author's real rank, but they help to form a definite link between question 1 and question 3: to force us to decide in our own minds why we think a book is worth while. The third step is impossible without the first, and of slight value without the second. When those have been attempted, however imperfectly, we may ask two more questions. Byron's Historical significance. What historical importance has such an attempt as this author's, achieved with such a degree of success, in changing the life and thought of his time? Illustrations: Uncle Tom's Cabin, a great idea crudely executed, had, because of the circumstances of the age, a tremendous effect upon public sentiment. It is thus historically important, though of little significance for literature. English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, Lowell's Biglow Papers, Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Gold Bug, all have historical significance in excess of their absolute values. The question is, did the book stop an old abuse, or begin a new type? Did it mark the beginning, the climax, or the end of any significant stage in human progress? If so, it has value for students, and may be recommended to their attention. For the student is supposed to be a person interested in tracing the beginnings of things. Education in its higher stages depends very largely upon this interest in origins. Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas. Books which one would never think of bringing before a club of business men, or an audience of working girls, have value for the audience which is pledged to at least four years of intellectual life. The final question of personal appeal. The other and final question is, What value has this book for us? This is the substitution of judgment for impulse, the forming of a deliberate estimate, the voicing of thoughtful praise, the appeal of an intelligent sympathy. Does the book make goodness more compelling, and weakness more base? Does it radiate cheer, or teem with fascinating mystery? Do we learn in its pages how to read character, how to penetrate the dullness of the good, and the false brilliancy of evil? Or is it just a good book to transport one out of every day into a world where weariness and satiety are unknown, and the zest of youth is inexhaustible? He is to read this Here is where we must remember Jim. book, and we must show cause why he cannot afford to miss it. He is a creature of inertia, prejudice, and a singular blindness to his own best interests. (Jim is everybody except ourselves.) Therefore it is our task to rouse his curiosity, placate his instinctive resentment against those who would improve him, and kindle in him the spark of intellectual ambition. To do that we must study the book, study the causes of our likes and dislikes, and study Jim. Viewed in this light, the interpretation of literature becomes tangible even to the beginner. All that The interpretation of literature to oneself. has been said in this chapter applies to the interpretation to another mind of literature already known and valued by oneself. There is another sense in which the interpretation of literature means the reader's own approach to literature, his own apprehension of its meaning and value. It will be evident that there is no time or place in a first course in composition for the systematic study of literature, except in the form of specimens of literary types. College courses in the history of literature take up those principles of interpretation of poetry, drama, and fiction upon which our study of these artistic forms is based. In such courses the application of the questions above suggested is just as appropriate as in forming one's estimate of a familiar book for purposes of composition. Nothing can be more important for a student than to learn to ask instantly of any work of art a picture, a statue, a building, as well as a novel or a play: What was the artist's design? Why did he choose it? How near did he come to realizing it? It is so that we judge men when we contemplate their lives; so that we estimate the success of a system of government, or an educational method, or a plan for city parks and boulevards, or a mechanical invention, or any other subject of human judgment. WHAT WAS HE GETTING AT ? HOW NEAR DID HE COME TO IT? These are the questions, of which the third is most prominent on the lips of the beginner, the first most interesting to the student, and the second most appropriate to the enlightened and generous critic. "Let such teach others who themselves excel, And censure freely who have written well." If culture is an endeavor "to know the best that is known and thought in the world," those who aim to become cultured will need to ask themselves far more often "What is the best?" and " Why is it the best?" than "Does it (at the present backward stage of my development) appeal to me?" It is our business to learn to know the best; the liking will take care of itself. Culture rests on knowledge, not on caprice. We grow by reaching beyond our height. Something tells us there is more higher up, and we climb. This is education. CHAPTER XVI DESCRIPTION Language is but a poor bull's-eye lantern wherewith to show off the vast cathedral of the world; and yet a particular thing once said in words is so definite and memorable, that it makes us forget the absence of the many which remain unexpressed. - STEVENSON. Two kinds of description. - Description in its widest sense includes any account of the appearance of an object. The term is not so used in rhetoric. A mail-order catalogue describes a cream separator, a newspaper advertisement describes a house for sale, a police circular describes a missing man, by the enumeration of details for a practical purpose. The business men wish to sell the articles described in their advertising matter; the police wish to find the missing bank clerk. Their only aim is clearness, and their method is really exposition. A totally different kind of description, to which the name is exclusively applied in rhetoric, is the art of suggesting mental images by the use of words with the purpose of giving pleasure. When the novelist describes a corner grocery where village politicians congregate, he aims to remind us of country stores where we have watched just such loafers sitting around the stove. He is not selling groceries, nor stoves, nor politicians; he is writing fiction. By his humor, his realism, or it may be his romantic sentiment, he hopes to beguile us into believing that his particular Sam or Jerry is a real person. He helps us to see these people in their favorite haunt, in order that when we meet them again elsewhere we shall instinctively nod acquaintance. A professional charity worker describes a family for the confidential records of the bureau in business-like terms of age, sex, occupation, habits, degree of poverty and shiftlessness, and so forth. The minister, pleading for sympathy with the poor, or the short-story writer, will take the same family and make us realize them in one way or another-like or dislike. A florist's catalogue describes spring flowers with deliberate intent to lure unwary citizens into buying more bulbs than they really need. The poet gives us, without money and without price, the "Daffodils That come before the swallow dares, and take A street-car expert counts the crowds waiting for a crosstown car in order to test the validity of the public demand for better service. A student of human nature will stand by his side noting how different people in the crowd behave under provocation, some frowning, some joking, some grumbling, some swearing. The written reports of the two observers will differ rather widely. Literary description aims to communicate feeling. — In every such case the main purpose of the man who has something to sell, something to accomplish, is to communicate facts as clearly and as forcibly as possible. The aim of the writer or the student of nature or human nature is to communicate interest, feeling, sympathy, pleasure. Compare a geologist's account of a river gorge with that of an artist; contrast the notebook description of a laboratory experiment in spectrum analysis with a poet's description of a rainbow. Some of the best nature books, like those of John Burroughs and Thoreau, combine accurate scientific observation and the art of literary suggestion. The two kinds of descriptive writing, in rare instances, run together; but ordinarily they are widely separated in purpose and method. Expository description has already been practiced in connection with the early chapters, and will continue to be practiced in |