By the Christmas Fire

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: kind," at least for purposes of reprobation. The author who is saddest when he writes takes us at a disadvantage. He may assert that he is only telling us the truth. If it is ugly, that is not his fault. He pictures to us the thing he sees, and declares that if we could free ourselves from our sentimental preference for what is pleasing we should praise him for his fidelity. In all this the author is well within his rights. But if he prefers unmitigated gloom in his representations of life, we on our part have the right of not taking him too seriously. Speaking of disillusion, two can play at that game. We must get over our too romantic attitude toward literature. We must not exaggerate the significance of literature of DiiHuton what is presented to us, and treat that which is of necessity partial as if it were universal. When we are presented with a poor and shabby world, peopled only with sordid self-seekers, we need not be unduly depressed. We take the thing for what it is, a fragment. We are not looking directly at the world, but only at so much of it as has been mirrored in one particular mind. The mirror is not very large, and there is an obvious flaw in it which more or less distorts the image. Still let us be thankful for what is set before us, and make allowance for the natural human limitations. In this way one can read almost any sincere book, not only with profit, but with a certain degree of pleasure. Let us remember that only a very small amount of good literature falls within Shelley's definition of poetry as " the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and besl minds." For these rare outpourings of joyous, healthy life we are duly thank ful. They are to be received as gifts of the gods, but we must not expect too many of them. Even...