Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/34

 §5. But there are obstacles to the definition of literature which arise not from the origin of the word, nor from unhistorical ideas of the learned or the unlearned, but from the different and even conflicting aims of writing in different states of social life and the different means adopted to secure such aims. "By literature," says Mr. Stopford Brooke, "we mean the written thoughts and feelings of intelligent men and women arranged in a way which will give pleasure to the reader;" and the same admirable critic adds that "prose is not literature unless it have style and character and be written with curious care." Without pausing to ask whether Mr. Brooke would extend his ideal of "prose" so as to cover the rythmical cadence of Al-Harîrî, or the Chinese Tsze in which rimes are repeated at the end of lines of indeterminate length, without raising any questions about the development of prose, and allowing one ideal end of literature as opposed to science to be pleasure, not discovery or instruction, we find that the pleasure imparted by literature and the means of imparting it have in different states of social life varied surprisingly. For example, from our modern standpoint Professor Jebb is perhaps right in saying that "there can be no literature without writing; for literature implies fixed form; and, though memory may do great feats, a merely oral tradition cannot guarantee fixed form." Yet we cannot forget that even at the zenith of Greek civilization music and dancing (to say nothing of acting) formed an integral part of certain literary pleasures to a degree which our modern familiarity with printed books renders almost inconceivable. Not only have the pleasures of literature varied with the average character of the men and women it addressed—from communal villagers singing their harvest hymn to the courtly audience of Boileau—but