NARY

This paper was prepared and delivered at several of our universities as
introductory to a course of five lectures which insisted on the value of
literature in common life--some hearers thought with an exaggerated
emphasis--and attempted to maintain the thesis that all genuine, enduring
literature is the outcome of the time that produces it, is responsive to
the general sentiment of its time; that this close relation to human life
insures its welcome ever after as a true representation of human nature;
and that consequently the most remunerative method of studying a
literature is to study the people for whom it was produced. Illustrations
of this were drawn from the Greek, the French, and the English
literatures. This study always throws a flood of light upon the meaning
of the text of an old author, the same light that the reader
unconsciously has upon contemporary pages dealing with the life with
which he is familiar. The reader can test this by taking up his
Shakespeare after a thorough investigation of the customs, manners, and
popular life of the Elizabethan period. Of course the converse is true
that good literature is an open door into the life and mode of thought of
the time and place where it originated.

THE RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE

I hade a vision once--you may all have had a like one--of the stream of
time flowing through a limitless land. Along its banks sprang up in
succession the generations of man. They did not move with the stream-they
lived their lives and sank away; and always below them new generations
appeared, to play their brief parts in what is called history--the
sequence of human actions. The stream flowed on, opening for itself
forever a way through the land. I saw that these successive dwellers on
the stream were busy in constructing and setting afloat vessels of
various size and form and rig--arks, galleys, galleons, sloops, brigs,
boats propelled by oars, by sails, by steam. I saw the anxiety with which
each builder launched his venture, and watched its performance and
progress. The anxiety was to invent and launch something that should
float on to the generations to come, and carry the name of the builder
and the fame of his generation. It was almost pathetic, these puny
efforts, because faith always sprang afresh in the success of each new
venture. Many of the vessels could scarcely be said to be launched at
all; they sank like lead, close to the shore. Others floated