Excerpt from The Literary World: Eighth Reader
The boy or girl who reads this book will find in it certain pieces of prose and poetry, each complete in itself, which have come to be regarded as standard literature. These, and many others besides, every intelligent boy and girl should know. Young readers may well ask, in this day of almost endless variety in books and periodicals, What is standard literature and why should we read it? Such a direct question deserves a clear and candid answer.
All prose and poetry which have found a permanent place in the minds of cultivated people we call standard literature. This did not happen by chance. Out of a great deal of writing in every age, a few stories and essays and plays and poems pleased men and women so much that they collected them in libraries for their own enjoy ment and for the use of others. These pieces of literature are in artistic form, that is, they are so put together as to satisfy our sense of beauty. We find pleasure in looking at a Greek statue because it is perfectly proportioned; we enjoy an old Italian painting because it is delicate in coloring and harmonious in form; we are attracted by aclassic temple or a Gothic tower because of its wonderful symmetry. Such statues and paintings and buildings appeal to our finer feelings, or emotions, and stimulate our imaginations. Good literature does that, too, besides making us think and act. It furnishes us with worthy ideas and noble ideals. In reading it, we unconsciously grow in time to love and imitate the best and to distin guish what is cheap and showy from what is genuine and lasting.
The English poet Wordsworth, in one of his fine poems, hopes that the mind of the person to whom he is speaking will some day be a mansion for all lovely forms and her memory as a dwelling-place of all sweet sounds and harmonies. That is what the authors of this book which you are beginning wish for your minds and memories. You should read, first of all, for enjoyment; literature is intended to give pleasure. Through pleasure will come profit. Your mind will be enriched, your memories stored with treasures. What you read in this volume has permanent value. Most of these literary units have been sealed with the approval of more than one generation of readers. After you have finished this book, if you ear nestly desire to go on reading, you will have learned what standard literature is, and the question with which this little introductory talk to you began will have been satis factorily answered.
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