STYLE AND THE MAN 65 



In literature proper our interest, I think, is always 

 in the writer himself, — his quality, his personality, 

 his point of view. We may fancy that we care only 

 for the subject matter ; but the bom writer makes 

 any subject interesting to us by his treatment of it 

 or by the personal element he infuses into it. When 

 our concern is primarily with the subject matter, with 

 the fact or the argument, or with the information 

 conveyed, then we are not dealing with literature in 

 the strict sense. It is not so much what the writer 

 tells us that makes literature, as the way he tells 

 it; or rather, it is the degree in which he imparts to 

 it some rare personal quality or charm that is the gift 

 of his own spirit, something which cannot be de- 

 tached from the work itself, and which is as inherent 

 as the sheen of a bird's plumage, as the texture of 

 a flower's petal. There is this analogy in nature. 

 The hive bee does not get honey from the flowers ; 

 honey is a product of the bee. What she gets from 

 the flowers is mainly sweet water or nectar ; this she 

 puts through a process of her own, and to it adds a 

 minute drop of her own secretion, formic acid. It 

 is her special personal contribution that converts the 

 nectar into honey. 



In the work of the literary artist, common facts 

 and experiences are changed and heightened in the 

 same way. Sainte-Beuve, speaking of certain parts 

 of Rousseau's "Confessions," says, "Such pages were, 

 in !French literature, the discovery of a new world, a 

 world of sunshine and of freshness, which men had 

 near them without having perceived it." They had 



