together and correlated in a synthetic map! The spirit of literature
is unifying; it joins the candle and the star, and by the magic of an
image shows that the beauty of the greater is in the less. And, not
content with the disclosure of beauty and the bringing together of all
things whatever within its focus, it enforces a moral wisdom by the
tracing everywhere of cause and effect. It consoles doubly--by the
revelation of unsuspected loveliness, and by the proof that our lot
is the common lot. It is the supreme cry of the discoverer, offering
sympathy and asking for it in a single gesture. In attending a
University Extension Lecture on the sources of Shakespeare's plots,
or in studying the researches of George Saintsbury into the origins
of English prosody, or in weighing the evidence for and against the
assertion that Rousseau was a scoundrel, one is apt to forget what
literature really is and is for. It is well to remind ourselves that
literature is first and last a means of life, and that the enterprise
of forming one's literary taste is an enterprise of learning how best
to use this means of life. People who don't want to live, people who
would sooner hibernate than feel intensely, will be wise to eschew
literature. They had better, to quote from the finest passage in a
fine poem, "sit around and eat blackberries." The sight of a "common
bush afire with God" might upset their nerves.




CHAPTER II

YOUR PARTICULAR CASE