and the informing kind. No other genuine division exists in literature.
Emerson, I think, first clearly stated it. His terms were
the literature of "power" and the literature of "knowledge."
In nearly all great literature the two qualities are to be found
in company, but one usually predominates over the other.
An example of the exclusively inspiring kind is Coleridge's *Kubla Khan*.
I cannot recall any first-class example of the purely informing kind.
The nearest approach to it that I can name is Spencer's
*First Principles*, which, however, is at least once highly inspiring.
An example in which the inspiring quality predominates is *Ivanhoe*;
and an example in which the informing quality predominates is
Hazlitt's essays on Shakespeare's characters. You must avoid giving undue
preference to the kind in which the inspiring quality predominates
or to the kind in which the informing quality predominates.
Too much of the one is enervating; too much of the other is desiccating.
If you stick exclusively to the one you may become a mere debauchee
of the emotions; if you stick exclusively to the other you may cease
to live in any full sense. I do not say that you should hold the balance
exactly even between the two kinds. Your taste will come into the scale.
What I say is that neither kind must be neglected.


Lamb is an instance of a great writer whom anybody can understand
and whom a majority of those who interest themselves in literature
can more or less appreciate. He makes no excessive demand
either on the intellect or on the faculty of sympathetic emotion.
On both sides of Lamb, however, there lie literatures more difficult,
more recondite. The "knowledge" side need not detain us here;
it can be mastered by concentration and perseverance.
But the "power" side, which comprises the supreme productions of genius,