MERE LITEEATUKE 187 



ment, good breeding, etc. — are not to be sneered at, 

 unless they stand alone, with no man behind them ; 

 and literary qualities — style, learning, fancy, etc. — 

 are not to be sneered at unless they stand alone, 

 which is not infrequently the case. We should not 

 apply the phrase " mere gentleman " to Washing- 

 ton, or Lincoln, or Wellington, though these men 

 may have been the most thorough of gentlemen ; 

 neither should we apply the phrase " mere litera- 

 ture " to the works of Bacon, or Shakespeare, or 

 Carlyle, or Dante, or Plato. The Bible is literature, 

 but it is not mere literature. We apply the latter 

 term to writings that have little to recommend them 

 save their technical and artistic excellence, like tha 

 mass of current poetry and fiction. The men who 

 have nothing to say and say it extremely well pro- 

 duce mere literature. 



Both England and France have at the present 

 time many excellent writers, men who possess every 

 grace of style and charm of expression, who still 

 give us only a momentary pleasure. They do not 

 move us, they do not lay strong hands upon us, their 

 works do not take hold of any great reality ; they 

 produce mere literature. Literary seriousness, lit- 

 erary earnestness, cannot atone for a want of manly 

 seriousness and moral earnestness. A sensitive artis- 

 tic conscience cannot make us content with a dull 

 or obtuse moral conscience. The literary worker is 

 to confront reality in just as serious a mood as does 

 the man of science, if he hopes to produce anything 

 that rises above mere literature. The picnickers, 



