outgrown, exhausted, or even old-fashioned, although the garments he
wore may have been laid aside long ago.

In this permanent quality, unchanged by changes of taste and form,
resides the secret of that charm which draws about the great poets men
and women of each succeeding period, eager to listen to words which
thrilled the world when it was young, and which have a new meaning for
every new age. It is safe to say that Homer will speak to men as long
as language survives, and that translation will follow translation to
the end of time. What Robinson said of the Bible in one of the great
moments of modern history may be said of the greater works of
literature: more light will always stream from them. Indeed, many of
them will not be understood until they are read in the light of long
periods of history; for as the great books are interpretations of
life, so life in its historic revelation is one continuous commentary
on the greater books.

This preponderance of the permanent over the accidental or temporary
in books of this class is largely due to the unconscious element which
plays so great a part in them: the element of universal experience, in
which every man shares in the exact degree in which, in mind and
heart, he approaches greatness. It is idle to attempt to separate
arbitrarily in Shakespeare, for instance, those elements in the poet's
work which were deliberately introduced from those which went into it
by the unconscious action of his whole nature; but no one can study
the plays intelligently without becoming more and more clearly aware
of those depths of life which moved in the poet before they moved in
his work; which enlarged, enriched, and silently reorganised his view
of life and his power of translating life out of individual into
universal terms. It would be impossible, for instance, to write such a
play as "The Tempest" by sheer force of intellect; in the creation of
such a work there is involved, beyond literary skill, calculation, and
deep study of the relation of thought to form, a ripeness of spirit, a
clearness of insight, a richness of imagination, which are so much
part of the very soul of the poet that he does not separate them in
thought, and cannot consciously balance, adjust, and employ them. They
are quite beyond his immediate control, as they are beyond all
attempts to imitate them.

Cleverness may learn all the forms and methods, but it is powerless to
imitate greatness; it can simul