I
The day inevitably comes to every writer when he must take his place
amid the silent throngs of the past, when no new work from his pen can
call attention to him afresh, when the partiality of his friends no
longer counts, when his friends and admirers are themselves gathered
to the same silent throng, and the spirit of the day in which he wrote
has given place to the spirit of another and a different day. How, oh,
how will it fare with him then? How is it going to fare with Lowell and
Longfellow and Whittier and Emerson and all the rest of them? How has
it fared with so many names in the past, that were, in their own day,
on all men’s tongues? Of the names just mentioned, Whittier and Emerson
shared more in a particular movement of thought and morals of the
times in which they lived than did the other two, and to that extent
are they in danger of dropping out and losing their vogue. Both had
a significance to their own day and generation that they can hardly
have to any other. The new times will have new soul maladies and need
other soul doctors. The fashions of this world pass away--fashions in
thought, in style, in humor, in morals, as well as in anything else.
As men strip for a race, so must an author strip for this race with
time. All that is purely local and accidental in him will only impede
him; all that is put on or assumed will impede him--his affectations,
his insincerities, his imitations; only what is vital and real in him,
and is subdued to the proper harmony and proportion, will count. A
malformed giant will not in this race keep pace with the lesser but
better-built stripling. How many more learned and ponderous tomes has
Gilbert White’s little book left behind! Mere novelty, how short-lived
is that! Every age will have its own novelties. Every age will have its
own hobbies and hobbyists, its own clowns, its own follies and fashions
and infatuations. What every age will not have in the same measure is
sanity, proportion, health, penetration, simplicity. The strained and
overwrought, the fantastic and far-fetched, are sure to drop out. Every
pronounced style, like Carlyle’s, is sure to suffer. The obscurities
and affectations of some recent English poets and novelists are certain
to drag them down. Browning, with his sudden leaps and stops, and all
that Italian rubbish, is fearfully handicapped.
Things do not endure in this world without a certain singleness and
continence. Trees do not grow and stand upright without a certain
balance and proportion. A man does not live out half his days without a
certain simplicity of life. Excesses, irregularities, violences, kill
him. It is the same with books--they, too, are under the same law;
they hold the gift of life on the same terms. Only an honest book can
live; only absolute sincerity can stand the test of time. Any selfish
or secondary motive vitiates a work of art, as it vitiates a religious
life. Indeed, I doubt if we fully appreciate the literary value of the
staple, fundamental human virtues and qualities--probity, directness,
simplicity, sincerity, love. There is just as much room and need for
the exercise of these qualities in the making of a book as in the
building of a house, or in a business career. How conspicuous they
are in all the enduring books--in Bunyan, in Walton, in Defoe, in the
Bible! It is they that keep alive such a book as “Two Years before the
Mast,” which Stevenson pronounced the best sea-story in the language,
as it undoubtedly is. None of Stevenson’s books have quite this probity
and singleness of purpose, or show this effacement of the writer by the
man. It might be said that our interest in such books is not literary
at all, but purely human, like our interest in “Robinson Crusoe,” or in
life and things themselves. The experience itself of a sailor’s life,
however, would be to most of us very prosy and distasteful. Hence there
is something in the record, something in the man behind the record,
that colors his pages, and that is the source of our interest. This
personal element, this flavor of character, is the salt of literature.
Without it, the page is savorless.