if we said that literature, like pictorial art and
music, is one of the recognized resources for the gladdening of life,
and that we meet in order to get as much of that high refreshment as
possible in each other's company. And this, indeed, we do so far frankly
acknowledge and confess.

But we also claim that there is a more serious aspect of our
association. We believe that great literature and its zealous study
produce most powerful effects, both upon our inner selves and upon the
value and happiness of our lives; that they supply us with a rich
equipment, both for our private thinking and feeling and also for social
action and social intercourse; that from great literature we derive
indefeasible resources, which form glorious company in the midst of
solitude, abundant wealth in the midst of poverty, and an unfailing
refuge from the too frequent harshness of circumstance.

Our objects are not those of mere dilettanti, although for my part I
should blame no association which boldly inscribed "dilettanti" on its
breezy flag. Our "literature" is not mere elegant trifling--although men
who do choose to spend an occasional evening in trifling with elegance
are men whom we can still afford to respect and perhaps to envy. But
literature, as we understand it, is no trifling, however elegant. By
literature we mean what Milton has called the "seasoned life of man
preserved and stored up in books"; and the seasoned life of man is no
trifle. We mean something of which the influence--or the effluence--may
profoundly determine the quality of our lives, both as they affect
others and as they affect ourselves.

* * * * *

We do not mean simply printed books. The vaster proportion of what is
printed is not literature. It may be statements of fact and items of
information; it may be sound science and unimpeachable record; it may be
truism; it may be platitude; it is often sheer bathos or doggerel. We do
not count these things as literature. A good deal of singing,
piano-beating and tin-whistling is not music. It is only in virtue of a
certain fine quality that books are literature. According to Emerson,
literature is "a record of the best thoughts." According to Matthew
Arnold it is "the best that has been thought and said in the world." If
literature is a collection of great books, then we may recall Milton's
description of a great book, as "the precious life-blood of a
master-spirit, embalmed and