. A child's guide to reading . —and more important—interests. A good novel is a self-contained, complete worldwith its own laws and inhabitants. The inhabitantsand laws of different novels resemble each other insome degree or we should not be able to understandthem. Great books, and great men, have commonqualities, and yet it is true, in large measure, thatthey are memorable for their difference from otherbooks and men. This suggests why histories of lit-erature and analytical studies of the forms of lit-erature are so often artificial and lifeless. The criticis fond of grouping books and auth
. A child's guide to reading . —and more important—interests. A good novel is a self-contained, complete worldwith its own laws and inhabitants. The inhabitantsand laws of different novels resemble each other insome degree or we should not be able to understandthem. Great books, and great men, have commonqualities, and yet it is true, in large measure, thatthey are memorable for their difference from otherbooks and men. This suggests why histories of lit-erature and analytical studies of the forms of lit-erature are so often artificial and lifeless. The criticis fond of grouping books and authors together, offinding points of resemblance, of marking genius withbrands and labels. In some histories of Elizabethandrama, Shakespeare is neatly placed in the center ofa rising and declining school of playwrights. Heis laid out like the best specimen of a collection ina glass case. Shakespeare was a playwright; no doubthe was a practical one. But the important thingabout him is that he was the greatest of poets, and 56. SCOTT The Reading of Fiction lie is not at ease in any school or class of literaryworkmen. He is inexplicably, gigantically differentfrom all other Elizabethan dramatists, and if he isto be grouped at all, his fellows are the few greatestpoets of the world, not his contemporaries in the art,or the business, of playmaking, the best of whom donot reach to his shoulder. All the supreme creativegeniuses are difficult to classify. They work in con-ventional art forms, the drama, the epic, in whichscores of lesser poets have worked; but the greatestart emerges above the forai. When rules of art andsharp characterizations of schools of art fit snuglyon the shoulders of a writer, that alone is sufficientto prove that he is not a writer of the highest wisely critics and philosophers may argueabout fiction and other forms of art, inexperiencedreaders will be narrowing their outlook if they makeup their minds, after one or two experiments or asa resul
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