In our best moments, it touches us most
deeply; and when the sentiment of human brotherhood kindles most warmly
within us, we discover in literature an exquisite answering ardor. When
everything that can be, has been said about a true work of art, its finest
charm remains,--the charm derived from a source beyond the conscious reach
even of the artist.
The novel, then, must be pure literature; as much so as the poem. But
poetry--now that the day of the broad Homeric epic is past, or temporarily
eclipsed--appeals to a taste too exclusive and abstracted for the demands
of modern readers. Its most accommodating metre fails to house our endless
variety of mood and movement; it exacts from the student an exaltation
above the customary level of thought and sentiment greater than he can
readily afford. The poet of old used to clothe in the garb of verse his
every observation on life and nature; but to-day he reserves for it only
his most ideal and abstract conceptions. The merit of Cervantes is not so
much that he laughed Spain's chivalry away, as that he heralded the modern
novel of character and manners. It is the latest, most pliable, most
catholic solution of the old problem,--how to unfold man to himself.
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