58 LITEEAEY VALUES 



critic says of Madame de Stael that she had no style ; 

 she wrote just as she thought, but without being able 

 to impart to her writing the living quality of her 

 speech. It is not importance of subject matter that 

 makes a work great, but importance of the subjec- 

 tivity of the writer, — a great mind, a great soijl, a 

 great personality. A work that bears the imprint 

 of these, that is charged with the lite and power of 

 these, which it gives forth again under pressure, is 

 alone entitled to high rank. 



All pure literature is the revelation of a man. In 

 a work of true literary art the subject matter has 

 been so interpenetrated and vitalized by the spirit 

 or personality of the writer, has become so thor- 

 oughly identified with it, that the two are one and 

 inseparable, and the style is the man. Works in 

 which this blending and identification, through emo- 

 tion or imagination, of the author with his subject 

 has not taken place, or has taken place imperfectly, 

 do not belong to pure literature. They may serve a 

 useful purpose ; but all useful purposes, in the strict 

 sense, are foreign to those of art, which means for- 

 eign to the spirit that would live in the whole, that 

 would live in the years and not in the days, in time 

 and not in the hour. The true literary artist gives 

 you of the substance of his mind ; not merely his 

 thought or his philosophy, but something more inti- 

 mate and personal than that. It is not a tangible 

 object passed from his hand to yours; it is much 

 more like a transfusion of blood from his veins to 

 yours. Montaigne gives us Montaigne, — the most 



