A humble, but a useful, way to begin is by definition.
I use definition in no pedantic sense. I mean, in general, logical
definition where the class or _genus_ of the thing to be
described--whether best-selling novel or sentimental tendency--is
first made clear, and then its _differentia,_ its differences
from the type analyzed out and assorted. But this process in
literature cannot be as formal as logic. Good literature cannot be
bound by formulas. Yet when a poem charged with hot emotion, or a
story that strays into new margins of experience, is caught and
held until one can compare it with others, see the curve on which
it is moving, guess its origin and its aim, forever after it
becomes easier to understand, more capable of being thought about
and appreciated. And when the current of taste of some new
generation that overflows conventions and washes forward, or
backward, into regions long unlaved, is viewed as a current, its
direction plotted, its force estimated, its quality compared, why
that is definition, and some good will come of it.
Some general definition of that intellectual emotion which we call
good reading is especially needed in America.
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