elements in a general effect. But the first class of writers have
no monopoly of literary merit. There is a sense in which Addison
is superior to Carlyle; a sense in which Cicero is better than
Tacitus, in which Voltaire excels Montaigne: it certainly lies not
in the choice of words; it lies not in the interest or value of the
matter; it lies not in force of intellect, of poetry, or of humour.
The three first are but infants to the three second; and yet each,
in a particular point of literary art, excels his superior in the
whole. What is that point?

2. The Web.--Literature, although it stands apart by reason of the
great destiny and general use of its medium in the affairs of men,
is yet an art like other arts. Of these we may distinguish two
great classes: those arts, like sculpture, painting, acting, which
are representative, or, as used to be said very clumsily,
imitative; and those, like architecture, music, and the dance,
which are self-sufficient, and merely presentative. Each class, in
right of this distinction, obeys principles apart; yet both may
claim a common ground of existence, and it may be said with
sufficient justice that the motive and end of any art whatever is
to make a pattern; a pattern, it may be, of colours, of sounds, of
changing attitudes, geometrical figures, or imitative lines; but
still a pattern. That is the plane on which these sisters meet; it
is by this that they are arts; and if it be well they should at
times forget their childish origin, addressing their intelligence
to virile tasks, and performing unconsciously that necessary
function of their life, to make a pattern, it is still imperative
that the pattern shall be made.

Music and literature, the two temporal arts, contrive their pattern