BOOKS AFD CRITICS. 



161 



lurned into rhyme Ovid's " De Arte Amandi " 

 " for Curll's chaste press," he said he was going 

 to oblige the town with a poetical trifle. You all 

 remember Tope's couplet — 



'•Rhymes ere he wakes, and prints before term ends, 

 Obliged by hunger and request of friends." 



The second line ought to be read thus : 



" Obliged by hunger and— request of friends," 



hunger being the real cause of the hurried pub- 

 lication ; "request of friends" the cause as- 

 signed, suppose on the title-page. The transfor- 

 mation of the teacher into the paid author was 

 complete ; but the professional author, though 

 compelled to supply the article which was in de- 

 mand, still gave himself the airs of an indepen- 

 dent gentleman, and affected to be controlling 

 taste instead of ministering to it. 



In our own day, notwithstanding the excep- 

 tions to which I have alluded, it is now the rule 

 that the character of general literature is deter- 

 mined by the taste of the reading public. It is 

 true that any man may write what he likes, and 

 may print it. But if he cannot get the public to 

 buy it, his book can hardly be said to be pub- 

 lished. At any rate, books that are* not read 

 count for nothing in that literature of the day 

 which is the subject before us. 



Let us first inquire what literature is as to its 

 mass, before we look into its composition. And 

 here it will simplify our subject if we divide 

 books into two classes — literature strictly so 

 called, and the books which are not literature. 



Literature does not mean all printed matter. 

 Blue-books and acts of Parliament, Mrs. Beeton's 

 " Household Management," Timbs's " Year-book 

 of Facts," Fresenius's " Chemical Analysis," these 

 are not literature. The word is not applicable to 

 all the books in our libraries. Most books are 

 didactic — i. e., they are intended to convey in- 

 formation on special subjects. Treatises on agri- 

 culture, astronomy, a dictionary of commerce, 

 are not literary works. They are books — useful, 

 ! necessary for those who are studying agriculture, 

 astronomy, commerce — but they do not come 

 S under the head of literature. There are books 

 I which the publishers are pleased to advertise as 

 I "gift-books," the object of whose existence is 

 I that they may be "given" — no doubt they an- 

 | swer their purpose, they are "given" — and there 

 \ is an end of them. I have seen an American 

 advertising column headed " swift-selling books," 

 the object of which books, I presume, was that 

 they might be " sold," like Peter Pindar's razors. 

 When we have excluded all books which teach 



47 



special subjects, all gift-books, all swift-selling 

 books, all religious books, history and politics, 

 those which remain are " literature." 



I am unable to give a definition of literature. 

 I have not met with a satisfactory one. Mr. Stop- 

 ford Brooke, in a little book which I can cordially 

 recommend to beginners — it is called " A Primer 

 of English Literature" — has felt this difficulty at 

 the outset. He says in his first page, " By litera- 

 ture we mean the written thoughts and feelings 

 of intelligent men and women arranged in a way 

 which will give pleasure to the reader." It would 

 be easy to show the defects of this definition ; 

 but, till I am prepared to propose a better, we 

 may let this pass. Of what books the class litera- 

 ture consists may be better understood by set- 

 ting the class in opposition to special books than 

 by a description. Catalogues of classified libra- 

 ries use the term " belles-lettres " for this class 

 of book. 



When we have thus reduced the comprehen- 

 sion of the term " literature " to its narrowest 

 limits, the mass of reading soliciting our notice is 

 still enormous — overwhelming. First come the 

 periodicals, and of periodicals first the dailies. 

 The daily newspaper is political or commercial, 

 mainly ; but even the daily paper now, which pre- 

 tends to any standing, must have its column of 

 literature. The weekly papers are literary in a 

 large proportion of their bulk. Our old friend 

 the Saturday Review is literary as to a full half 

 of its contents, and, having worked off the froth 

 and frivolity of its froward youth, offers you for 

 sixpence a cooperative store of literary opinion 

 of a highly - instructive character, and always 

 worth attention. There are the exclusively liter- 

 ary weeklies — the Academy, the Athenaeum, the 

 Literary World — all necessary to be looked at 

 as being integral parts of current opinion. We 

 come to the monthlies. It is characteristic of 

 the eager haste of our modern Athenians to hear 

 " some new thing," that we cannot now wait for 

 quarter-day. Those venerable old wooden three- 

 deckers, the Edinburgh Review and the Quarterly 

 Review, still put out to sea under the command, 

 I believe, of the Ancient Mariner, but the active 

 warfare of opinion is conducted by the three new 

 iron monitors, the Fortnightly, the Contemporary, 

 and the Nineteenth Century. In these monthlies 

 the best writers of the day vie with each other 

 in soliciting our jaded appetites on every con- 

 ceivable subject. Indeed, the monthly periodical 

 seems destined to supersede books altogether. 

 Books now are largely made up of republished 

 review articles. Even when this is not the case, 



