So great is the part that books play in our life, or, at least, in the
formation of our several personalities, that to master the contents of
certain books of admitted excellence has always been considered a chief
element in a liberal education; that is to say, it is a recognized
method of introducing the mind to the world at large. We must,
nevertheless, recognize a broad distinction in the manner in which books
render us this assistance. In the case of some books the value of the
contribution consists mainly, though not exclusively, in the actual
facts which they contain; in others, the actual facts are of secondary
importance and their chief value consists in the manner in which these
facts are brought before our minds. No hard and fast line can be drawn
between the two classes, but the difference may be broadly indicated by
saying that while the former give us the _facts_ of life, the latter
give us _pictures_ of life.
The distinction may be illustrated by one or two examples. Such works as
Locke’s _Essay on the Human Understanding_, and Gibbon’s _Decline and
Fall of Rome_, must obviously be placed under the head of books in which
the facts are of first importance. Equally, the novels of George Eliot,
in which she gives us a full and truthful picture of English midland
life, must be included among those books where the presentation of the
facts is of more importance than the facts themselves. And so, too, in
the case of _The Story of an African Farm_, where we have a picture of
rural life in South Africa, or in _Diana of the Crossways_. Only in the
latter work the personality of the central character is so commanding
that the book is not so much a picture as a portrait--a portrait of a
beautiful and wayward woman exposed to temptation by the very abundance
of her own gifts.
Here, then, we have two distinct elements, matter and manner; and it is
upon the degree in which these elements are respectively present in any
given work that the main divisions of literature--the division which
separates works of creative literature from works of literature, simply
so-called--is based.
Poetry, drama, history, biography, essays, description, criticism, the
great masterpieces of fiction--all open up to us the untold wealth of
reality and imagination.