a wide audience (and most authors, I suppose, wish for such an audience), you cannot be too meticulously careful as to what you say to it. Write no idle words; do not even speak idle words. Did not the Great Master Himself warn us on this subject? Given the whole world for audience, it would be but a poor privilege unless you had something profitable to present or to propound for its profit-something tending to advance or cherish the Ideal. Write a book, I should say, to charm and reform all the world if you can. It stands in mighty want of reformation. Be continually bent upon doing good. This is the grand need of the Universe, although foolish people may call it "cant" to say so. 3. Literature should be addressed to the soul of man: they who merely seek to amuse are on the level of clowns. Just think of it. We take a man to be a Citizen and Pilgrim of Eternity, however encompassed and oppressed he may be by his temporal and mortal surroundings. Why should he mainly seek to "fiddle empty nonsense to a being so tragically situated? Why only seek to amuse him? Literature should be created for the immortal soul of man. Does the immortal soul only wish to be amused? Amusement, says Swift, is "the happiness of those who cannot talk." 1 It seems to me that the man who only seeks to amuse his reader is no better than a clown -who, of course, has his recognised place in the world, and even a good clown will sometimes be highly instructive as well as amusing. It should be remembered that monkeys are amusing. "Who are you," asks Whitman, "that wanted only a book to join you in your nonsense?" 2 The cultivation of Hesperian Pippins should not be regarded as a mere source of amusement. Impose 1 Thoughts on Various Subjects,' Works, Vol. iv. p. 332. 24 Leaves of Grass,' p. 265. not such degradation upon it. Not even Ribstone Pippins do we cultivate for the mere fun of the thing. And indeed every man who writes a book and tries to have it published virtually says to the public: "Ho, ye! Listen to me ! He should not venture to do so, I repeat, unless he feels convinced that he has something good to tell them. 66 66 4. The artist also should be animated by the loftiest purpose.-The artist also should be animated by the loftiest purpose. In estimating a work of art, says Ruskin, ask whether it have any virtue or substance as a link in the chain of truth; whether it have recorded or interpreted anything before unknown; whether it have added one single stone to our Heaven-pointing pyramid; cut away one dark bough, or levelled one rugged hillock in our path.” 1 Contrariwise, it is curious to find Lord Morley speaking of the offence of art with a moral purpose, 2 all-forgetful of his noble doctrine of the high calling of Literature, to which I have just referred. Why should not art have a moral purpose? Do not the works of Creation seem to be animated by moral purpose? Is God not serious? Is not moral purpose the most exigent of all our needs? Is it not mainly through the lack of moral purpose that so much of the world welters in misery? It appears to me that the whole of life should be pervaded by moral purpose, not only in Philosophy and Religion, but in the walks of Literature and Art as well. I hold 1 Modern Painters,' Vol. i. p. 85. "It is treason to the cause of art for any man to invent, unless he invents something better than has been invented before, or something different in kind." -Ib., p. 124. 2 Voltaire,' p. 129. So Goethe: "A good work of art can, and will indeed, have moral consequences; but to require moral ends of the artist is to destroy his profession."- Autobiography,' Vol. i. p. 469. A strange contrast to his views set forth above, par. 2. that all our Churches and Schools should be living Temples of the Ideal. 5. Great Literature will generally be found to be of high didactic value: even stuttered wisdom is far better than voluble small talk.-Great Literature, then (returning to our main subject), in addition to its esthetic value-without which it cannot be Literature, will probably be found, as already suggested, to be of high didactic value to the true student, and that not only by the general drift and suggestion of the story, if it be a story, but also by its meditative and reflective passages. The presence of such passages in a writing is an unmistakable note of intellectual greatness, as we may have occasion to see further on. They are to be found in the writings of all men of first-rate calibre from Moses down to Thomas Carlyle. They specially mark the writer's insight, his knowledge, his general vision, his intellectual grip of things. The great writer is, ever and anon, giving happy and concise expression to the profoundest and most important convictions of the Human Heart. The noble genius shows no small part of his power in reducing the vague to the visual. In doing so he can scarcely fail to be a great teacher. He is continually saying things worth repeating. Indeed, a writer's greatness and true worth may almost be gauged by his quotability. A man is intellectually measurable, as it were, by the memorable things which he has said. Your small man, intellectually or otherwise, is the man who says nothing worth repeating. What is the use of saying anything to us, through the medium of print, unless it be worth thinking about and remembering and repeating on fit occasion? Let all authors, teachers, and preachers reflect upon it. Stuttered wisdom, even, is infinitely better than voluble small talk. The most copious flux of language without clear purpose and sacred wisdom is curse, not blessing. Let a man talk or write reams every day, and if there be nothing memorable, or thought-worthy, or thought-exciting in it, no vision of vital grandeur or beauty, both that man and his speeches or writings remain contemptible. Apply this criticism to politicians, theologians, philosophers, poets, novelists, critics-to all kinds of writing and speaking people, in short, and you will find that thousands of them are worthless. Apply it to any particular man's writings, and you will have little difficulty in deciding whether they contain an element of greatness or not. If they be great, you will find them encrusted, as it were, with the gold and the cut diamonds of thought; whilst the small will be marked by the total absence of gem or precious metal. 6. The Geniuses of the World may be determined by the wisdom and luminosity of their thoughts.— By what a man has to say of wise and luminous thought even by this criterion alone you may determine who have been the Seers and Poets of the World. The Seer or great author is always distinguishing himself by letting floods of light in upon important subjects. The greatest of the Biblical writers are of this order, as are Eschylus, 1 Lord Kames has well remarked that " accuracy of judgment is not friendly to declamation or copious eloquence."- Elements of Criticism,' Vol. i. p. 22. We have a thousand times too much copious eloquence" poured into our sound-worn ears. It will be different, of course, when (as in the case of Milton's angels) the eloquence is angelic :— Prompt eloquence Flowed from their lips in prose or numerous verse, To add more sweetness." -'Paradise Lost,' Bk. v. Meanwhile, I think we may take it that to speak with perfect lucidity and suavity to some noble end is the best kind of oration. Sophocles, Dante, Calderon, Shakespeare, Milton, Burns, Carlyle, and their like; whilst your small or trifling author-the non-seeing vain mancarries with him, perhaps, no lantern at all-not even the illuminating power of a rush-light. His feat rather consists in exhaling darkness and extinguishing vision. His works are distinguished not by the embarrassments of riches, but by the embarrassments of poverty in every page. 7. Poetry and Literature should be civilising agencies. Until a man is spiritualised he is but of the anthropoid order of beasts.-I hold the opinion that Poetry and Literature at large, if worthy of the name, should be nothing less than civilising agencies. In Nature and Humanity we are face to face not only with bare facts and laws, but with the esthetical and moral implications of such facts and laws. Certain facts of Nature and Humanity produce certain feelings or emotions in every well-endowed and attentive spectator. The highest triumph of a poem or a picture lies in producing such feelings or emotions in the reader or spectator as might be roused by the scenes or incidents which it depicts. In turn, such emotions may act upon the Will, and thence go out to help in the spiritual conquest of man. In the possibility of this consummation lies the possibility of the salvation and the greatness of the Individual, as also the possibility of the salvation and the greatness of the Race. Until he is spiritualised, man is but of the anthropoid order of beasts. Therefore the efforts of all true and noble educators must be directed towards having him spiritualised; and thus it happens that the profoundest service that poems or any other writings can do for the reader is not merely to satisfy the intellect, or supply something polished and interesting, nor even to depict great |