active by giving him higher objects of ambition than sensual gratification or a mere display of money.
The great characteristic of literature, as distinguished from scientific or technical writing, is its breadth and largeness, in contrast to all that is narrow and exclusive. Its aim is not so much to convey information as to set the mind of the reader at work for itself in harmony with the great spirits of our race. It awakens power in the mind, and kindles the affections. It carries a man back to the past, and bids him thence gather hope for the future.
Good literature is, therefore, in the highest sense practical. It is common to contrast the practical to the poetical character; but the practical and the poetical powers have much in common, and both are opposed to the abstract and the speculative. A truly practical man, if he has a warm heart, has generally a touch of humour and of poetry within, which peeps out, in spite of itself, in the midst of his work. It is equally true that in every great poet there is always a practical element of judgment, at least in matters relating to his own art; otherwise, however deep his feelings, however lofty his perception of the beautiful, he would fail of giving such body and form to his compositions as to convey his thoughts in a manner suited to the apprehension of mankind at large. For this, among other reasons the study of the works of a great poet is improving to the young; it tends to give an appreciation of good work and finished execution, and of the fitness of means to the end for which they are used. What is clumsy, ill-contrived, and slovenly becomes disagreeable to a mind so trained.
There is, however, an impression in some persons' minds that, while books of information and of science give solidity to the understanding, poetry and works of fiction can at best only foster a love of ornament. Such an opinion may excite the less surprise when we read in the words of one of the most accomplished masters of the art of writing in the last century a description of the office of the poet. Thus writes Pope:—
"Poetry and criticism are by no means the universal concern of the world, but only the affair of idle men who write in their closets and of idle men who read there All the advantages, I can think of, accruing from a genius for poetry, are the agreeable power of self-amusement when a man is idle or alone, the privilege of being admitted into the best company, and the freedom of saying as many careless things as other people, without being so severely remarked on."
"No wonder," remarks the eloquent lecturer,[1] from whose pages I borrow the above quotation, "that, when a poet could
- ↑ 'The Influence of Poetry on the Working Classes,' by the late Rev. F. W. Robertson, of Brighton.
