It is, therefore, no disparagement of the great company of writers who have been the secretaries of the race in all ages to fasten attention upon the claims of the four men of genius whom the world has accepted as the supreme masters of the art of literature, and to point out again the immense importance of their works in the educational life of the individual and of society.
It cannot be said too often that literature is the product of the continuous spiritual activity of the race; that it cannot be arbitrarily divided into periods save for mere convenience of arrangement; and that it is impossible to understand and value its latest products unless one is able to find their place and discern their value in the order of a spiritual development.

To secure an adequate impression of this highest expression of the human spirit one must keep in view the work of the past quite as definitely as the work of the present; in such a broad survey there is a constant deliverance from the rashness of contemporary judgments, and from that narrowness of feeling which limits one's vital contact with the life of the race to the products of a single brief period.
In any attempt to indicate the fundamental significance of the art of literature in the educational development of the individual and of society there must also be a certain repetition of idea and of illustration.

This limitation, if it be a limitation, is inherent in the very nature of the undertaking.

Literature is, for purposes of comment and exposition, practically inexhaustible; its themes are as varied and as numerous as the objects upon which the mind can fasten and about which the imagination can play.

But while its forms and products are almost without number, this magnificent growth has, in the last analysis, a single root, and in these brief chapters the endeavour has been made, very inadequately, to bring the mind to this deep and hidden unity of life and art.