characterized by lofty thought, by fine feeling and, as a rule, by a
beautiful simplicity of expression. They have another quality, hard to
define but easy to understand, a quality which leaves upon us the
impression of eternal youth, as if they had been dipped in the fountain
which Ponce de Leon sought for in vain through the New World. If a great
book could speak, it would use the words of the Cobzar (poet) in his "Last
Song":

The merry Spring, he is my brother,
And when he comes this way
Each year again, he always asks me:
"Art thou not yet grown gray?"
But I. I keep my youth forever,
Even as the Spring his May.

A DEFINITION. Literature, then, if one must formulate a definition, is the
written record of man's best thought and feeling, and English literature is
the part of that record which belongs to the English people. In its
broadest sense literature includes all writing, but as we commonly define
the term it excludes works which aim at instruction, and includes only the
works which aim to give pleasure, and which are artistic in that they
reflect nature or human life in a way to arouse our sense of beauty. In a
still narrower sense, when we study the history of literature we deal
chiefly with the great, the enduring books, which may have been written in
an elder or a latter day, but which have in them the magic of all time.

One may easily challenge such a definition, which, like most others, is far
from faultless. It is difficult, for example, to draw the line sharply
between instructive and pleasure-giving works; for many an instructive book
of history gives us pleasure, and there may be more instruction on