introductory to a course of five lectures which insisted on the value of literature in common life--some hearers thought with an exaggerated emphasis--and attempted to maintain the thesis that all genuine, enduring literature is the outcome of the time that produces it, is responsive to the general sentiment of its time; that this close relation to human life insures its welcome ever after as a true representation of human nature; and that consequently the most remunerative method of studying a literature is to study the people for whom it was produced. Illustrations of this were drawn from the Greek, the French, and the English literatures. This study always throws a flood of light upon the meaning of the text of an old author, the same light that the reader unconsciously has upon contemporary pages dealing with the life with which he is familiar. The reader can test this by taking up his Shakespeare after a thorough investigation of the customs, manners, and popular life of the Elizabethan period. Of course the converse is true that good literature is an open door into the life and mode of thought of the time and place where it originated.
THE RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE
I hade a vision once--you may all have had a like one--of the stream of time flowing through a limitless land. Along its banks sprang up in succession the generations of man. They did not move with the stream-they lived their lives and sank away; and always below them new generations appeared, to play their brief parts in what is called history--the sequence of human actions. The stream flowed on, opening for itself forever a way through the land. I saw that these successive dwellers on the stream were busy in constructing and setting afloat vessels of various size and form and rig--arks, galleys, galleons, sloops, brigs, boats propelled by oars, by sails, by steam. I saw the anxiety with which each