69 



If there be any man who for ages has commanded the admiration 

 of mankind, if there be any man who ia any branch of study 

 confessedly stands head and shoulders above the rest let this 

 (says A. P. Stanley) be the man whose works we read. As the 

 thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns they 

 shall learn to sift the chaff from the wheat, what is mean and 

 contemptible will perish, what is noble and godlike will remain. 



The perusal of the works of our best authors, whether in prose 

 or poetry, is calculated to lift business men out of the narrow 

 sphere of their occupation, and give them " nobler loves and nobler 

 cares." Such study shows us that in the evolution of the world 

 there is no evil but brings a larger good, and assists us to grasp 

 the distinction between the great primary ideas of life, and the 

 small secondary ideas which jostle each other in the turmoil of 

 thought. So a due sense of proportion in the concerns of life is 

 gained, and broad sympathies and world-wide charity take the 

 place of mean and petty aims. All great poetry is catholic : the 

 next generation will remember the verse of Trench, the Protestant 

 Archbishop, side by side with that of Cardinal Newman, whose 

 finest poem consoled the lonely vigil of Gordon at Khartoum. 

 Literature is cosmopolitan, and, rightly used, is a corrective of 

 that insularity on which we Britishers pride ourselves. We 

 rejoice that there exists across the Atlantic a literature original, 

 splendid, racy of the soil. It is impossible to study the later 

 literature of Britain without being irresistibly carried back to 

 former eras — the Georgian, the so-called Augustan age, the 

 Elizabethan, the Chaucerian, and still on until the origin of 

 English song is lost in the twilight of fable. The intellectual 

 succession can be traced — sometimes clearly, sometimes only 

 dimly as when a great master has arisen and inaugurated, as it 

 were, a new style distinct from all that had gone before. This 

 study is equally useful, interesting and inspiring, if it be carried 

 backward to more ancient literature, to learn how much even a 

 19th century writer is indebted to Eome or Greece. The average 

 Lancashire man clings to his newspaper, and ofttimes takes his 

 views from the anonymous writers therein. (Someone has said 

 that "the face under a mask is not the one which is most 

 troubled with blushes.") Newspapers have their own useful 

 function ; but we do not hear in them the voice of the Sibyl, 

 which, (to quote a Greek author) uttering things simple and 

 unadorned reaches through innumerable years. The experience 

 of the world is enshrined in its noblest literature. There con- 

 summate artists have given us some of the finest gems of thought 

 "which on the stretched forefinger of all time sparkle forever." 



Sometimes the question is asked — what is the mechanism of 

 poetry ? Of course there is an art hi writing verse, there must 

 be some attention to established rules, the rhythm, the lilt, is 



