In literature proper our interest, I think, is always in the writer himself,--his quality, his personality, his point of view. We may fancy that we care only for the subject matter; but the born writer makes any subject interesting to us by his treatment of it or by the personal element he infuses into it. When our concern is primarily with the subject matter, with the fact or the argument, or with the information conveyed, then we are not dealing with literature in the strict sense. It is not so much what the writer tells us that makes literature, as the way he tells it; or rather, it is the degree in which he imparts to it some rare personal quality or charm that is the gift of his own spirit, something which cannot be detached from the work itself, and which is as inherent as the sheen of a bird’s plumage, as the texture of a flower’s petal. There is this analogy in nature. The hive bee does not get honey from the flowers; honey is a product of the bee. What she gets from the flowers is mainly sweet water or nectar; this she puts through a process of her own, and to it adds a minute drop of her own secretion, formic acid. It is her special personal contribution that converts the nectar into honey. In the work of the literary artist, common facts and experiences are changed and heightened in the same way. Sainte-Beuve, speaking of certain parts of Rousseau’s “Confessions,” says, “Such pages were, in French literature, the discovery of a new world, a world of sunshine and of freshness, which men had near them without having perceived it.” They had not perceived it because they had not had Rousseau’s mind to mirror it for them. The sunshine and the freshness were a gift of his spirit. The new world was the old world in a new light. What charmed them was a quality personal to Rousseau. Nature they had always had, but not the Rousseau sensibility to nature. The same may be said of more recent writers upon outdoor themes. Readers fancy that in the works of Thoreau or of Jefferies some new charm or quality of nature is disclosed, that something hidden in field or wood is brought to light. They do not see that what they are in love with is the mind or spirit of the writer himself. Thoreau does not interpret nature, but nature interprets him. The new thing disclosed in bird and flower is simply a new sensibility to these objects in the beholder. In morals and ethics the same thing is true. Let an essayist like Dr. Johnson or Arthur Helps state a principle or an idea and it has a certain value; let an essayist like Ruskin or Emerson or Carlyle state the same principle and it has an entirely different value, makes an entirely different impression,--the qualities of mind and character of these writers are so different. The reader’s relation with them is much more intimate and personal.