Page:Studies in Letters and Life (Woodberry, 1890).djvu/132

122 in a genuine emotion that it outlived the other modes of literature contemporary with it, and developed its final perfection only in the next age of the counter reformation in the art of Tasso and Guarini. But even in its earlier history the idyl shares with the best narrative poems that beauty of form which has conferred on both an immortality denied to the novel. The poets were all literary artists: they polished their verses with assiduous care; they expended many years in correction, elaboration, and adjustment; and they obtained that exquisite finish which, surface-like as it may seem, is adamant to the tooth of time. They achieved beauty, and won the delight that comes from its creation and contemplation; humor, too, they made their own, and gave it universal interest; they illustrated in practice the theory of art for art's sake; yet, after all, what is the judgment of posterity, we will not say on the men who were never suspected of being heroes, but on their works? They have left a literature, not of intellectual or moral weight, but of recreation; one that does not reveal, but amuses,—does not enlighten, inform, or guide life, but solaces and helps to while it away. This literature