LITEEAET VALUES 11 



some such title, to " Vanity Fair," he achieved a 

 stroke of art. It is said that a now famous line of 

 Keats was first written thus : 



" A thing of beauty is a continaal joy." 



How the effect of the line was heightened by the 

 change of one word, and itself became " a joy for- 

 ever." Poe, too, altered two lines of his with like 

 magical effect, when for 



" To tlie beauty of fair Greece, 

 And the grandeur of old Kome," 



he wrote : 



" To the glory that was Greece, 



And the grandeur that was Eome." 



The phrase " well of pure English " conveys the 

 same idea as " well of English undefiled," but how 

 much greater the artistic value of the latter than of 

 the former ! Thus the literary value of a sentence 

 may turn upon a single word. 



The everyday speech of the people is often full 

 of the stuff of which literature is made. No poet 

 could invent better epithets and phrases than abound 

 in the common vernacular. The sayings and pro- 

 verbs of a people are also, for the most part, of the 

 pure gold of literature. 



One trouble with all definitions of literature is 

 that they proceed upon the theory that literature is 

 a definite something that may be determined by de- 

 finite tests like gold or silver, whereas it is more 

 like life or nature itself. It is not so much some- 

 thing as the visible manifestation of something ; it 



