DEMOCEAOY AND LITEEATITRE 153 



said that literature is essentially aristocratic ; that 

 is, I suppose, that it implies a degree of excellence, 

 a kind of excellence, quite beyond the appreciation 

 of the masses. This is no doubt in a measure true, 

 and always has been true. While the mass of the 

 people are not good offhand judges of the best litera- 

 ture, it is equally true that great literature — litera- 

 ture that has , breadth and power, like the English 

 Bible or like Bunyaai, and many other books that 

 transcend the sphere of mere letters — makes its 

 way more or less among the people. The highest 

 ideals in any sphere can never draw the many ; yet 

 the few, the elect who are drawn by them, are prob- 

 ably just as sure to appear in a democracy as in an 

 oligarchy. 



To some readers democracy in literature seems to 

 suggest only an incursion of the loud, the vulgar, 

 the cheap and meretricious. Apparently it suggests 

 only these things to Mr. Edmund GrOsse, whose 

 volume " Questions at Issue " contains an essay 

 upon this subject. 



Mr. Gosse congratulates the guild of letters that 

 the summits of literature have not yet been sub- 

 merged by the flood of democracy. The standards 

 have not been lowered in obedience to the popular 

 taste. 



But Mr. Gosse thinks the social revolution or 

 evolution now imminent will require a new species 

 of poetry, that this poetry will be democratic to a 

 degree at present unimaginable, though just what it 

 is to be democratic in poetry is not very clear to 



