Page:A Study of Fairy Tales.djvu/67

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PRINCIPLES OF SELECTION
43

duce varied emotional effects. All the great fairy tales appeal to emotion of a high moral quality and it is this which is the source of their universal appeal. It is this high moral quality of the spiritual truth, which is the center of the tale's unity, holding together all the parts under one emotional theme. This is the source of the perennial freshness of the old tale; for while the immortal truth it presents is old, the personality of the child that meets it is new. For the child, the tale is new because he discovers in it a bit of himself he had not known before, and it retains for him a lasting charm so that he longs to hear it again and again. The beauty of truth, the reward of goodness, and the duty of fairness, give a high emotional quality to Little Two-Eyes; and Sleeping Beauty illustrates the blighting power of hatred to impose a curse and the saving power of love to overcome the works of hatred.

Considering folk-tales from the standpoint of emotion, if asked to suggest what author's work would rank in the same class, one is rather surprised to find, that for high moral quality, variety, and worthy cause, the author who comes to mind is none other than Shakespeare. Perhaps, with all due respect to literature's idol, one might even venture to question which receives honor by the comparison, Shakespeare or the folk-tales? It might be rather a pleasant task to discover who is the Cordelia, the Othello, the Rosalind, and the Portia of the folk-tales; or who