classify it under a hard dog-Latin name. "A primrose by the river's brim
a dicotyledon was to him, and it was nothing more." That is not their
attitude.

There is not much influence on the higher side of life to be got from a
study of nothing else but metals, or nothing else but triangles, or
nothing else but germs. But literature exerts a most potent influence on
this higher side of life; for it not only supplies thoughts and
expresses feelings, but it is in itself--thanks to its expression--a
force to make them felt and to give them effective life. It not only
instructs--it moves. For, remember, great literature was never produced
by cynicism nor by affectation: men of weak convictions or feelings have
never been supreme writers. As at Athens, at Rome, or in Elizabethan
England, great literature belongs to periods full of animation, of
enterprise, of high ideals, of strong aims or strong beliefs. In that
prevailing spirit the great writers share, and they impart it forever to
us who read. There exhales from what they write an inspiring power of
earnestness. As Longinus phrases it, we seem to be possessed by a divine
effluence from those mighty minds.

It is often complained, in regard to our schools, that moral teaching
without religious stimulation is futile. The reason assents, but the
will is unmoved. "We want," says Shelley, "the generous impulse to act
that which we perceive." Great literature lends this impulse. Let us
have plenty of great literature in our schools.

I do not, indeed, claim that literature always and completely conveys
the requisite impulsion, but I claim that, in its impressiveness or its
charm, by its appeal to the imagination and the sensibilities, it can go
far, as Heine thought of Schiller's poetry, to "beget deeds." "Let me,"
said Fletcher, "make the songs of a people, and let who will make its
laws." "Certainly," declares that flower of chivalry, Sir Philip Sidney,
"I must confess ... I never heard the old song of Percy and Douglas that
I found not my heart moved more than with a trumpet." Bare psychology
teaches us; bare history teaches us; but great literature both teaches
and inspires; it gives not only light, but warmth. "Reading good books
of morality," Bacon sadly confesses, "is a little flat and dead." Great
literature puts the breath of life into this deadness. Not merely to
peruse, but to assimilate, the _King Lear_ of Shakespeare or the _Vita
Nuova_ of Dante cannot fail to tur