If this distinction needs often to be made between the literature which is information and the literature which is art, it is because both kinds of book use the same medium, and speech is the commonest of mediums. Painting or music escape such a confusion, but writing is a slippery craft, now running to a bare record or to good advice, now drifting into a music of words, articulating a beauty that seems ageless and impersonal, and sometimes doing a bit of all these things at once. In daily conversation, when we talk of anything in human interest, we use the same words as literature is made of; what more natural than to conclude that literature therefore may deal with any subject we talk of? We resent the suggestion that art should be narrower than life itself. Yet if we admit any difference at all between art and life, between literature and our average conversations, between books which give information and books which give delight, and if art is the record of that aspect of life we delight in not for the moment but permanently, then art is indeed narrower than life itself; outside of it will remain the trivial things, however likable, of our daily round, which we forget gladly, so many other pleasant and trivial things supplant them; and outside of it also will remain very important issues which we hope and resolve shall be temporary—the grave wrongs and errors which call not for eternal contemplation but for reform. Face to face with such problems, we often feel that art is inadequate. What can poetry do for the sick or the dying? What solace is there in music or sculpture for the wretchedly poor? The answer to such questions is not in art but in conduct; death calls for fortitude, sickness must be cured, poverty must be relieved; and if books deal with such subjects, it is not for a literary end, but to aid us in practical remedies. Indeed, to have a literary ambition as we contemplate another’s misery, would seem possible only for a fiend; it is in the merit of Mrs. Stowe’s story of Uncle Tom that the book seems a protest from the soul rather than a work of art. If there are sins and misfortunes, it may be necessary to spread the news, as though the house were on fire, but if we really care for our house we shall not linger to enjoy the cadence of the thrilling call. On the other hand, if we are to lose ourselves in a book or a play, if we are to live in it repeatedly, ourselves the hero, in love with the heroine, and hating the villain, then the book or play must give us an experience in some sense better than the life ordinarily available to us; who would waste a moment on Cleopatra in a book, if he knew where to find her in the world? Or perhaps in life she was less charming than Plutarch said she was, or than Shakespeare showed her to be; perhaps we could not be drawn irresistibly to her until the poet made her better than she was—made her, that is, a character proper for the literature which is to be enjoyed as art. II