TALKS ON THE STUDY OF LITERATURE BY ARLO BATES [Illustration] BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge COPYRIGHT, 1897 BY ARLO BATES ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This volume is made up from a course of lectures delivered under the auspices of the Lowell Institute in the autumn of 1895. These have been revised and to some extent rewritten, and the division into chapters made; but there has been no essential change. CONTENTS PAGE I. What Literature Is 1 II. Literary Expression 23 III. The Study of Literature 33 IV. Why we Study Literature 45 V. False Methods 60 VI. Methods of Study 69 VII. The Language of Literature 88 VIII. The Intangible Language 111 IX. The Classics 123 X. The Value of the Classics 135 XI. The Greater Classics 142 XII. Contemporary Literature 154 XIII. New Books and Old 167 XIV. Fiction 184 XV. Fiction and Life 199 XVI. Poetry 219 XVII. The Texture of Poetry 227 XVIII. Poetry and Life 241 TALKS ON THE STUDY OF LITERATURE I WHAT LITERATURE IS As all life proceeds from the egg, so all discussion must proceed from a definition. Indeed, it is generally necessary to follow definition by definition, fixing the meaning of the terms used in the original explanation, and again explaining the words employed in this exposition. I once heard a learned but somewhat pedantic man begin to answer the question of a child by saying that a lynx is a wild quadruped. He was allowed to get no further, but was at once asked what a quadruped is. He responded that it is a mammal with four feet. This of course provoked the inquiry what a mammal is; and so on from one question to another, until the original subject was entirely lost sight of, and the lynx disappeared in a maze of verbal distinctions as completely as it might have vanished in the tangles of the forest primeval. I feel that I am not wholly safe from danger of repeating the experience of this well-meaning pedant if I attempt to give a definition of literature. The temptation is strong to content myself with saying: "Of course we all know what literature is." The difficulty which I have had in the endeavor to frame a satisfactory explanation of the term has convinced me, however, that it is necessary to assume that few of us do know, and has impressed upon me the need of trying to make clear what the word means to me. If my statement seem insufficient for general application, it will at least show the sense which I shall give to "literature" in these talks.