tween them supply the only competent and modest part of the history of
literature. To discern the significance of men and books, to classify
and explain them, is another matter. We have not, and we never shall
have, a calculus sufficient for human life even at its weakest and
poorest. Let him who conceives high hopes from the progress of knowledge
and the pertinacity of thought tame and subdue his pride by considering,
for a moment, the game of chess. That game is played with thirty-two
pieces, of six different kinds, on a board of sixty-four squares. Each
kind of piece has one allotted mode of action, which is further cramped
by severe limitations of space. The conditions imposed upon the game are
strict, uniform, and mechanical. Yet those who have made of chess a life-
long study are ready to confess their complete ignorance of the
fundamental merits of particular moves; one game does not resemble
another; and from the most commonplace of developments there may spring
up, on the sudden, wild romantic possibilities and situations that are
like miracles. If these surprising flowers of fancy grow on the chess-
board, how shall we set a limit to the possibilities of human life, which
is chess, with variety and uncertainty many million times increased? It
is prudent, therefore, to say little of the laws which govern the course
of human history, to avoid, except for pastime, the discussion of
tendencies and movements, and to speak chiefly of men and books. If an
author can be exhibited as the effect of certain causes (and I do not
deny that some authors can plausibly be so exhibited) he loses his virtue
as an author. He thought of himself as a cause, a surprising intruder
upon the routine of the world, an original creator. I think that he is
right, and that the profitable study of a man is the study which regards
him as an oddity, not a quiddity.

A general statement of the law that governs literary history may perhaps
be borrowed from the most unreasonable of the arts--the art of dress. One
of the powerful rulers of men, and therefore of books, is Fashion, and
the fluctuations of literary fashion make up a great part of literary
history. If the history of a single fashion in dress could ever be
written, it would illuminate the literary problem. The motives at work
are the same; thoughtful wearers of clothes, like thoughtful authors, are
all trying to do something new, within the limits assigned by practical
u