ART PRINCIPLES IN LITERATURE [Illustration] THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TORONTO ART PRINCIPLES IN LITERATURE BY FRANCIS P. DONNELLY, S.J. [Illustration] THE MACMILLAN COMPANY PUBLISHERS NEW YORK MCMXXV PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. SET UP AND PRINTED. PUBLISHED OCTOBER, 1923. REPRINTED APRIL, 1925. REPRINTED JULY, 1928. WYNKOOP HALLENBECK CRAWFORD COMPANY, NEW YORK, U. S. A. INTRODUCTION In the _Art of Interesting_ (Kenedy, 1920) the writer began a discussion of the principles of art and of their application to writing and speaking. In this work the discussion is carried further and is not restricted to the one feature of arousing and fixing attention, especially in oratory, which was the chief topic of the _Art of Interesting_. The following chapters represent the reactions of the writer to literature both as composed today and as taught in our schools. Any active mind, bewildered by the ceaseless experimenting in literature and education, and not satisfied with a passive acceptance of even excellent critics, is necessarily forced back upon first principles. Such a mind will not yield to the despair of skepticism, that there are no first principles, nor to the despair of agnosticism, that there may be such principles but we cannot know them, nor yet to the despair of pragmatism, that we must wait and see whether the human race ages from now will give us assurance that there really are principles of art because the last man has seen that these principles have been found to work up to the moment prior to which he joined Tutankhamen.