Thus I go some way--though by no means all the way--towards defining
literature when I remind you that its very name (_litterae_--letters)
implies the written rather than the spoken word; that, for example,
however closely they approximate one to the other as we trace them back,
and even though we trace them back to identical beginnings, the
Writer--the Man of Letters--does to-day differ from the Orator. There was
a time, as you know, when the poet and the historian had no less than the
orator, and in the most literal sense, to 'get a hearing.' Nay, he got it
with more pains: for the orator had his senate-house or his law-court
provided, whereas Thespis jogged to fairs in a cart, and the Muse of
History, like any street acrobat, had to collect her own crowd. Herodotus
in search of a public packed his history in a portmanteau, carted it to
Olympia, found a favourable 'pitch,' as we should say, and wooed an
audience to him much as on a racecourse nowadays do those philanthropic
gentlemen who ply a dubious trade with three half-crowns and a gold
chain. It would cost us an effort to imagine the late Bishop Stubbs thus
trying his fortune with a bag full of select Charters at Queen's Club or
at Kempton Park, and exerting his lungs to retrieve a crowd that showed
some disposition to edge off towards the ring or the rails.

The historian's conditions have improved; and like any other sensible man
he has advanced his claim with them, and revised his method. He writes
nowadays with his eye on the printed book. He may or may not be a dull
fellow: being a dull fellow, he may or may not be aware of it; but at
least he knows that, if you lay him upside down on your knee, you can on
awaking pick him up, resume your absorption, and even turn back some
pages to discover just where or why your interest flagged: whereas a
Hellene who deserted Herodotus, having a bet on the Pentathlon, not only
missed what he missed but missed it for life.