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 famous "criticism" of the prophet Habakkuk. What (he must have said to himself) would they think in the salons of a man who talked like this:—

And the everlasting mountains were scattered,

The perpetual hills did bow:

His ways are everlasting?

Evidently Habakkuk could never hope for a second invitation; and therefore he wrote rubbish. And I believe, as I said, that there are many people who more or less unconsciously judge literature by this measure, by asking, "Would these people be pleasant to meet? would one like to hear this kind of thing in one's drawing-room?" And this is well enough with secondary books, since they contain nothing but "characters," and "incidents," and "scenes," and "facts"; but it is by no means well in literature, in which, as we found out, all these things are symbols, words of a language, used, not for themselves, but because they are significant. Remember our old definition—ecstasy, the withdrawal, the standing apart from common life—and you will see that we may almost reverse this popular method of judgment, and