There are many people of my acquaintance who think it almost indecent to talk of literature as a fine art. They have the same distaste for the word "art" as others have for the name of God. It has indeed been misused in certain æsthetic circles and discussed almost unctuously, so that it is often associated with long hair and cant, and seems nonsensical if not disreputable to plain and honest men. I remember an Oxford don, chiefly noted for his cricket and his knowledge of Homer, and in later life for his dyspepsia, abusing a distinguished Austrian critic who visited the University--"These foreigners are always talking about Art!" Foreigners and long-haired æsthetes were one and the same thing to my atrabilious instructor. The latter was an exact man. No wonder he detested a word which is used so vaguely and in so many contrary senses; which is sometimes applied to a poem or a novel as if its "art" were an ornamental thing _separate_ from the poem or the novel; or as if it were a mere synonym for style or adherence to some technical formula. Yet we cannot very well get on without the word, and we certainly cannot avoid its connotation. No man in his senses can deny that there is such a thing as the "art of literature," though it may seem absurd to talk about it. No one, however healthy in his tastes, would refuse to distinguish the statement "This is a very good book"--which may mean only that it is instructive, or useful for certain purposes--from the statement "This, anyhow, is literature"--which means something quite specific, namely, that this is a work of art. The very word would become less offensive if we could be a little less vague about it, if we could make up our minds what it is that it does mean or that we wish it to mean. We all of us distinguish between good and bad in literature, even if we regard our own judgments as fallible. We are all disposed to mistrust the opinions of our contemporaries, though we have a childlike faith in the verdict of posterity. Well, what is it that will satisfy posterity, and that ought, _a fortiori_, to satisfy us? What is it, in the domain of the delightful, as opposed to the merely knowable, which has value for the future, and therefore should have more value for the present? And what is it--an even more important question--which may have this kind of value for us, whether posterity choose to value it or not? That is the main point. We want to find what that quality is, in literature or any of the fine arts, which makes it a matter of so great consideration to us. What do we expect and demand from it, if it is to be something of real moment? That is one side of the question. And putting the question from the other side--What sort of process is implied in the writing of literature, and what is the sanction of the writer? It seems we are compelled to form some provisional theory of art before we can make the most modest pretensions to discuss literature. For such a theory