treasured up on purpose to a life beyond
life." And so literature becomes a store of inexhaustible vials, filled
with the most generous elixir decanted from the world's master-spirits.
Listen again to Vauvenargues: "Good literature is the essence of the
best minds, the abstract of their knowledge, the fruit of their long
vigils." Or let us drop metaphor, and accept, as entirely satisfying and
luminous, the account given by Mr. John Morley, that "literature
consists of all books ... where moral truth and human passion are
touched with a certain largeness, sanity, and attraction of form."

* * * * *

Such is the sense in which we interpret the term "literature."

The range and variety of such true literature are as wide and varied as
human genius. It includes, for instance, the novel, whenever the novel,
as in Balzac, Thackeray, and Fielding, shows this fine, large, sane,
attractive touch; it includes verse, when, and only when, moral truth
and human passion are touched finely or nobly in this way. Its forms are
manifold, and its themes include--

All thoughts, all passions, all delights
Whatever stirs this mortal frame.

In its shape and form literature may be a hard-headed essay of Bacon or
an impassioned lyric of Shelley; its sound may be the majestic
organ-peal of Milton or the sumptuous flute music of Keats; its mood may
be the scathing fervour of Carlyle or the genial humour of Lamb; its
manner may be the rugged strength of Browning or the fastidious grace of
Arnold; but, whatever it be, it everywhere contains this high
distinction; it touches some vital truth or human passion with "a
certain largeness and sanity and attraction of form." What is not sane
and large and expressive is not the literature which we meet to study
and absorb.

Literature, then, is no mere "elegant trifling." It is no mere _belles
lettres_. We do not, indeed, pretend, and none but a human machine will
pretend, to despise the graces and charms of _belles lettres_. That
would be as ridiculous and inhuman as to despise the delights of music
or architecture. But literature is more than _belles lettres_; it is
something of far superior intellectual weight and dignity, of far
superior moral force and energy. In its contents it is a body of the
wisest, most suggestive, most impressive utterance of the world's best
minds, at their best moments, from the Psalmist to Wordsworth, from the
_Iliad_ to _The Ring a