Identifier: childsguidetorea00macy (find matches)
Title: A child's guide to reading
Year: 1909 (1900s)
Authors: Macy, John Albert, 1877-1932
Subjects: Books and reading for children Children's literature
Publisher: New York : Baker & Taylor
Contributing Library: New York Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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rain that collects information and not thepart that sees pictures. But Thackeray paints MissBeatrice tripiping down the stairs to greet Esmond,and no eye that has seen her through Thackerayswords but can recall the portrait at will. Furtherdescription of Beatrice accompanies the action allthrough the book and no one can tell, or cares to tell,where narration pauses and description begins. ISTo one can tell, either, Avhere out of all thisemerges that quality of writing called style. Mannerof expression is not a separable shell in which thestuff is contained like a kernel. The manner is inthe substance. Yet there is a charm of words feltfor itself which seems to lie above and aroimd.thething conveyed. In other books Thackeray loses hisplot, and sometimes apparently forgets his characters,and yet he carries the reader on by virtue of sayingthings compellingly and invitingly. When, as in Esmond, the order of action is so satisfying andthe people are so interesting to watch and be with, 46
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THACKERAY The Readins; of Fiction t5 and in addition every page is a delight to the ear,then literary excellence is complete. Here, united in one book, are the elements offiction—plot, character, description and style. Andfrom these elements, however blended, there resultsa total value, the measure of a books importance inrelation to the other things in life. This value isessentially moral, not so much because literature isunder peculiar obligations to preach and teach moral-ity as because it is part of life and the fundamentalthings in life are moral in the large sense of the word.It is as impossible to think of a fiction which shallbe neither moral nor immoral as to think of an actwhich shall be, in the modern meaningless word, un-moral. Even a very slight fiction, like a trivial act,weighs on one side or the other. All the best ofour novelists have been fully conscious of theirethical obligations to their readers. Having thoughtdeeply enough about life to write about it, they cou

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