第24章

As literature, however, apart from its religious connection, it is subjectto any of the criteria of literature.In so far it is the fair subject of criticism.It must stand or fall when it enters the realm of literature by the standards of other books.Indeed, many questions regarding its dates, the authorship of unassigned portions, the meaning of its disputed passages may be answered most fairly by literary tests.That is always liable to abuse; but literary tests are always liable to that.There have been enough blunders made in the knowledge of us all to require us to go carefully in such a matter.The Waverley Novels were published anonymously, and, while some suspected Scott at once, others were entirely clear that on the ground of literary style his authorship was entirely impossible! Let a magazine publish an anonymous serial, and readers everywhere are quick to recognize the writer from his literary style and his general ideas, but each group "recognizes" a different writer.Arguments based chiefly on style overlook the large personal equation in all writing.The same writer has more than one natural style.It is not until he becomes in a certain sense affected--grows proud of his peculiarities--that he settles down to one form.And it is quite impossible to assign a book to any narrow historical period on the ground of its style alone.But though large emphasis could be laid upon the literary merits of the Bible to the obscuring of its other more important merits, it is yet true that from the literary point of view the Bible stands as an English classic, indeed, as the outstanding English classic.To acknowledge ignorance of it is to confess one's self ignorant of our greatest literary possession.

A moment ago it was said that as a piece of literature the Bible must accept the standards of other literary books.For all present purposes we can define great literature as worthy written expression of great ideas.If we may take the word "written" for granted, the rough definition becomes this: that great literature is the worthy expression of great ideas.Works which claim to be great in literature may fail of greatness in either half of that test.Petty, local, unimportant ideas may be well clothed, or great ideas may be unworthily expressed; in either case the literature is poor.It is not until great ideas are wedded to worthy expression that literature becomes great.Failure at one end or the other will explain the failure of most of the work that seeks to be accounted literature.The literary value of a bookcannot be determined by its style alone.It is possible to say nothing gracefully, even with dignity, symmetry, rhythm; but it is not possible to make literature without ideas.Abiding literature demands large ideas worthily expressed.Now, of course, "large" and "small" are not words that are usually applied to the measurement of ideas; but we can make them seem appropriate here.Let us mean that an idea is large or small according to its breadth of interest to the race and its length of interest to the race.If there is an idea which is of value to all the members of the human race to- day, and which does not lose its value as the generations come and go, that is the largest possible idea within human thought.Transient literature may do without those large ideas.A gifted young reporter may describe a dog fight or a presidential nominating convention in such terms as lift his article out of carelessness and hasty newspaper writing into the realm of real literature; but it cannot become abiding literature.It has not a large enough idea to keep it alive.And to any one who loves worthy expression there is a sense of degradation in the use of fine literary powers for the description of purely transient local events.It is always regrettable when men with literary skill are available for the description of a ball game, or are exploited as worthy writers about a prize-fight.If a man has power to express ideas well, he ought to use that power for the expression of great ideas.

Many of us have seen a dozen books hailed as classic novels sure to live, each of them the great American novel at last, the author to be compared with Dickens and Thackeray and George Eliot.And the books have gone the way of all the earth.With some, the trouble is a weak, involved, or otherwise poor style.With most the trouble is lack of real ideas.Charles Dickens, to be sure, does deal with boarding-schools in England, with conditions which in their local form do not recur and are not familiar to us; but he deals with them as involving a great principle of the relation of society to youth, and so David Copperfield or Oliver Twist becomes a book for the life of all of us, and for all time.And even here it is evident that not all of Dickens's work will live, but only that which is least narrowly local and is most broadly human.

There is a further striking illustration in a familiar event in Americanhistory.Most young people are required to study Webster's speech in reply to Robert Hayne in the United States Senate, using it as a model in literary construction.The speech of Hayne is lost to our interest, yet the fact is that Hayne himself was gifted in expression, that by the standards of simple style his speech compares favorably with that of Webster.Yet reading Webster's reply takes one not to the local condition which was concerning Hayne, but to a great principle of liberty and union.He shows that principle emerging in history; the local touches are lost to thought as he goes on, and a truth is expressed in terms of history which will be valid until history is ended.It is not simply Webster's style; it is that with his great idea which made his reply memorable.