LITERAET VALUES 8 



grow and stand upright without a certain balance 

 and proportion. A man does not live out half his 

 days without a certain simplicity of life. Excesses, 

 irregularities, violences, kill him. It is the same 

 with books — they, too, are under the same law ; 

 they hold the gift of life on the same terms. Only 

 an honest book can live ; only absolute sincerity 

 can stand the test of time. Any selfish or second- 

 ary motive vitiates a work of art, as it vitiates a 

 religious life. Indeed, I doubt if we fully appreci- 

 ate the literary value of the staple, fundamental hu- 

 man virtues and qualities — probity, directness, sim- 

 plicity, sincerity, love. There is just as much room 

 and need for the exercise of these qualities in the 

 making of a book as in the building of a house, or 

 in a business career. How conspicuous they are in 

 all the enduring books — in Bunyan, in Walton, in 

 Defoe, in the Bible ! It i& they that keep alive 

 such a book as " Two Years before the Mast," which 

 Stevenson pronounced the best sea-story in the lan- 

 guage, as it undoubtedly is. None of Stevenson's 

 books have quite this probity and singleness of pur- 

 pose, or show this effacement of the writer by the 

 man. It might be said that our interest in such 

 books is not literary at all, but purely human, like 

 our interest in " Kobinson Crusoe," or in life and 

 things themselves. The experience itself of a sailor's 

 life, however, would be to most of us very prosy and 

 distasteful. Hence there is something in the record, 

 something in the man behind the record, that col- 

 ors his pages, and that is the source of our interest. 



