COMPARATIVE LITERATURE.
CHAPTER I.
WHAT IS LITERATURE?
§ 1. Charles Lamb in one of his essays speaks of "books which are no books" as a catalogue including calendars and directories, scientific treatises and the statutes at large, the works of Hume and Gibbon, the histories of Flavius Josephus ("that learned Jew"), Paley's Moral Philosophy, almanacks, and draught-boards bound and lettered on the back. It moved the spleen of Elia "to see these things in books' clothing perched upon shelves, like false saints, usurpers of true shrines—to reach down a well-bound semblance of a volume and to come bolt on a withering Population Essay—to expect a Steele or a Farquhar and find Adam Smith." But, humorous and capricious as it is, this catalogue gives us a glimpse of problems which since the days of Elia have gradually assumed defined shape and serious significance:—How shall we distinguish the various classes of writing which social evolution produces; how shall we separate specialized scientific studies from the works of creative imagination—the latter apparently Elia's ideal "books;"
