mind that evening, but somehow you contrived to get
on to it, drawn by an overpowering fascination. And as your faithful
friend was sympathetic and discreet, and flattered you by a respectful
curiosity, you proceeded further and further into the said matter,
growing more and more confidential, until at last you cried out, in a
terrific whisper: "My boy, she is simply miraculous!" At that moment
you were in the domain of literature.

Let me explain. Of course, in the ordinary acceptation of the word,
she was not miraculous. Your faithful friend had never noticed that
she was miraculous, nor had about forty thousand other fairly keen
observers. She was just a girl. Troy had not been burnt for her. A
girl cannot be called a miracle. If a girl is to be called a miracle,
then you might call pretty nearly anything a miracle.... That is
just it: you might. You can. You ought. Amid all the miracles of
the universe you had just wakened up to one. You were full of your
discovery. You were under a divine impulsion to impart that discovery.
You had a strong sense of the marvellous beauty of something, and you
had to share it. You were in a passion about something, and you had
to vent yourself on somebody. You were drawn towards the whole of the
rest of the human race. Mark the effect of your mood and utterance
on your faithful friend. He knew that she was not a miracle. No other
person could have made him believe that she was a miracle. But you, by
the force and sincerity of your own vision of her, and by the fervour
of your desire to make him participate in your vision, did for quite
a long time cause him to feel that he had been blind to the miracle of
that girl.

You were producing literature. You were alive. Your eyes were
unlidded, your ears were unstopped, to some part of the beauty and the
strangeness of the world; and a strong instinct within you forced you
to tell someone. It was not enough for you that you saw and heard.
Others had to see and hear. Others had to be wakened up. And they
were! It is quite possible--I am not quite sure--that your faithful
friend the very next day, or the next month, looked at some other
girl, and suddenly saw that she, too, was miraculous! The influence of
literature!

The makers of literature are those who have seen and felt the
miraculous interestingness of the universe. And the greatest makers
of literature are those whose vision has been the widest, and whose
feeling has been the mo