Distinctions between truth, nobility, and beauty are merely for the sake of helping our thought. That which is noble must be true and it must be beautiful. That which is lacking in truth is lacking also in beauty. This, however, we are not always able to discover without analysing. Something may seem beautiful while we are thinking of beauty alone; but let us test its nobility or its truth, and if these are wanting we suddenly discover defects in the beauty we had not perceived before. Who of us has not seen a woman who seemed at first to be perfectly beautiful, but whom we afterward found to be lacking in intellect or character. On re-examining the beauty we discover a weak mouth, inexpressive eyes, and other defects which may in time quite spoil the perfection of form we had admired so much at first, and we wonder how we could overlook these defects. The fact is, one supreme quality is likely to blind us to all defects until we cease to gaze upon that quality and hunt for others. If we are literary critics, the first quality of literature that is likely to attract our attention is that of artistic beauty, which usually shows itself especially in the style. The musical flow of the words, the aptness and grace of the images, the refinement in the choice of words, make style, which, like charity, is a garment which covers a multitude of sins. If we are students, we look at the truth of the statements, their accuracy, their real significance, and talk about the poem’s or the story’s “depth” or lack of depth. But the common reader is more likely to judge the literary work by its nobility; in a novel such a reader wants characters he can admire and imitate, in a poem he wants thoughts that will inspire. Often to such a reader the lack of truth and of beauty are not even perceived. We see that which we look for, and fail to see that in which we have no interest. But what part does amusement play in real literature? We hear that the “star of the public amuser is in the ascendant.” Is the novel any the less literature for being amusing? or may it amuse without being literature?