54 LITERARY VALUES 



tunable metal, I said to myself that if men would 

 avoid that general language and general manner in 

 which they strive to hide all that is peculiar, and 

 would say only what is uppermost in their own 

 minds, after their own individual manner, every 

 man would be interesting. . . . But whatever pro- 

 perties a man of narrow intellect feels to be peculiar 

 he studiously hides ; he is ashamed or afraid of him- 

 self, and all his communications to men are unskill- 

 ful plagiarisms from the common stock of thought 

 and knowledge, and he is of course flat and tire- 

 some." 



The great mass of the writing and sermonizing of 

 any age is of the kind here indicated ; it is the re- 

 sult of the machinery of culture and of books and 

 the schools put into successful operation. But now 

 and then a man appears whose writing is vital ; his 

 page may be homely, but it is alive ; it is full of 

 personal magnetism. The writer does not merely 

 give us what he thinks or knows ; he gives us him- 

 seK. There is nothing secondary or artificial be- 

 tween himself and his reader. It is books of this 

 kind that mankind does not willingly let die. Some 

 minds are like an open fire, — how direct and instant 

 our communication with them ; how they interest 

 us ; there are no screens or disguises ; we see and 

 feel the vital play of their thought ; we are face to 

 face with their spirits. Indeed all good literature, 

 whether poetry or prose, is the open fire ; there is 

 directness, reality, charm ; we get something at first- 

 hand that warms and stimulates. 



