ery of a new planet to be far less
important than that of a new pudding, as we have already more planets
than we know what to do with, while we never can have puddings enough.
We are now outgrowing this limited view of science, but in regard to
literature the delusion still remains; if it is anything more than an
amusement, it must afford solid information; it is not yet owned that it
has value for itself, as an art. Of course, all true instruction,
however conveyed, is palatable; to a healthy mind the _Mecanique
Celeste_ is good reading; so is Mill's "Political Economy," or De
Morgan's "Formal Logic." But words are available for something which is
more than knowledge. Words afford a more delicious music than the chords
of any instrument; they are susceptible of richer colors than any
painter's palette; and that they should be used merely for the
transportation of intelligence, as a wheelbarrow carries brick, is not
enough. The highest aspect of literature assimilates it to painting and
music. Beyond and above all the domain of use lies beauty, and to aim at
this makes literature an art.

A book without art is simply a commodity; it may be exceedingly valuable
to the consumer, very profitable to the producer, but it does not come
within the domain of pure literature. It is said that some high legal
authority on copyright thus cites a case: "One Moore had written a book
which he called 'Irish Melodies,'" and so on. Now, as Aristotle defined
the shipbuilder's art to be all of the ship but the wood, so the
literary art displayed in Moore's Melodies was precisely the thing
ignored in this citation.

To pursue literature as an art is not therefore to be a mathematician
nor a political economist; still less to be a successful journalist,
like Greeley, or a lecturer with a thousand annual invitations, like
Gough. These careers have really no more to do with literature than has
the stage or the bar. Indeed, a man may earn twenty thousand dollars a
year by writing "sensation stories," and have nothing to do with
literature as an art. But to devote one's life to perfecting the manner,
as well as the matter, of one's work; to expatriate one's self long
years for it, like Motley; to overcome vast physical obstacles for it,
like Prescott or Parkman; to live and die only to transfuse external
nature into human words, like Thoreau; to chase dreams for a lifetime,
like Hawthorne; to labor tranquilly and see a nation imbued with one's