of convenience, split literature up into divisions and sub-divisions--
such as prose and poetry; or imaginative, philosophic, historical;
or elegiac, heroic, lyric; or religious and profane, etc., *ad infinitum*.
But the greater truth is that literature is all one--and indivisible.
The idea of the unity of literature should be well planted and fostered
in the head. All literature is the expression of feeling, of passion,
of emotion, caused by a sensation of the interestingness of life.
What drives a historian to write history? Nothing but the overwhelming
impression made upon him by the survey of past times.
He is forced into an attempt to reconstitute the picture for others.
If hitherto you have failed to perceive that a historian is a being
in strong emotion, trying to convey his emotion to others,
read the passage in the *Memoirs* of Gibbon, in which he describes
how he finished the *Decline and Fall*. You will probably never again
look upon the *Decline and Fall* as a "dry" work.


What applies to history applies to the other "dry" branches.
Even Johnson's Dictionary is packed with emotion. Read the last paragraph
of the preface to it: "In this work, when it shall be found
that much is omitted, let it not be forgotten that much
likewise is performed.... It may repress the triumph of malignant criticism
to observe that if our language is not here fully displayed,
I have only failed in an attempt which no human powers
have hitherto completed...." And so on to the close:
"I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wish to please
have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds:
I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little
to fear or hope from censure or from praise." Yes, tranquillity;
but not frigid! The whole passage, one of the finest in English prose,