THE LITERARY DISCIPLINE OTHER BOOKS BY JOHN ERSKINE THE MORAL OBLIGATION TO BE INTELLIGENT AND OTHER ESSAYS THE KINDS OF POETRY AND OTHER ESSAYS DEMOCRACY AND IDEALS GREAT AMERICAN WRITERS (With W. P. Trent) _POETRY_ ACTÆON AND OTHER POEMS THE SHADOWED HOUR HEARTS ENDURING _A Play in one Scene_ COLLECTED POEMS 1907-1922 THE LITERARY DISCIPLINE BY JOHN ERSKINE _Professor of English at Columbia University_ [Illustration] NEW YORK DUFFIELD & COMPANY 1923 Copyright, 1922, by the NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW Copyright, 1923, by DUFFIELD & COMPANY _Printed in U. S. A._ TO GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE ix I. DECENCY IN LITERATURE 3 II. ORIGINALITY IN LITERATURE 47 III. THE CULT OF THE NATURAL 91 IV. THE CULT OF THE CONTEMPORARY 137 V. THE CHARACTERS PROPER TO LITERATURE 187 PREFACE The following chapters were first published serially in _The North American Review_, from November, 1922, to March, 1923. For their reappearance in this volume I have made slight changes in them all, and have inserted in the fourth chapter a few paragraphs written for _The Bookman_ of July, 1922. The editors of both magazines have my thanks for permission to reprint. The title of the book will disclose at once the critical theory underlying these essays; they are studies in the discipline which literature imposes on those who cultivate it as an art, and their doctrine is that language as a medium of expression has certain limitations which the writer must respect, and that the psychology of his audience limits him also in what he may say, if he would gain a wide hearing and keep it. To know what can be said in words, and what effect it will have on your readers, is the inward art of writing, much more important even than the management of a sentence or the shaping of a paragraph.