is to find out what the opinion of some section of the public is, and then to formulate it and express it.  The successful journalist tells his readers what they want to be told.  He becomes their prophet by making clear to them what they themselves are thinking.  He influences people by agreeing with them.  In doing this he may be entirely sincere, for his readers may be right and may demand from him the statement of his own most serious convictions; but the fact remains that his motive for expression is centred in them instead of in himself.  It is not thus that literature is motivated.  Literature is not a formulation of public opinion, but an expression of personal and particular belief.  For this reason it is more likely to be true.  Public opinion is seldom so important as private opinion.  Socrates was right and Athens wrong.  Very frequently the multitude at the foot of the mountain are worshiping a golden calf, while the prophet, lonely and aloof upon the summit, is hearkening to the very voice of God.

The journalist is limited by the necessity of catering to majorities; he can never experience the felicity of Dr. Stockmann, who felt himself the strongest man on earth because he stood most alone.  It may sometimes happen that the majority is right; but in that case the agreement of the journalist is an unnecessary utterance.  The truth was known before he spoke, and his speaking is superfluous.  What is popularly said about the educative force of journalism is, for the most part, baseless.  Education occurs when a man is confronted with something true and beautiful and good which stimulates to active life that “bright effluence of bright essence increate” which dwells within him.  The real ministers of education must be, in Emerson’s phrase, “lonely, original, and pure.”  But journalism is popular instead of lonely, timely rather than original, and expedient instead of pure.  Even at its best, journalism remains an enterprise; but literature at its best becomes no less than a religion.

These considerations are of service in studying what is written for the theatre.  In all periods, certain contributions to the drama have been journalistic in motive and intention, while certain others have been literary.  There is a good deal of journalism in the comedies of Aristophanes.  He often chooses topics mainly for their timeliness, and gathers and says what happens to be in the air.  Many of the Elizabethan dramatists, like Dekker and Heywood and Middleton for example, looked at life with the journalistic eye.  They collected and disseminated news.  They were, in their own time, much more “up to date” than Shakespeare, who chose for his material old stories that nearly every one had read.  Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair is glorified journalism.  It brims over with contemporary gossip and timely witticisms.  Therefore it is out of date to-day, and is read only by people who wish to find out certain facts of London life in Jonson’s time. Hamlet in 1602 was not a novelty; but it is still read and seen by people who wish to find out certain truths of life in general.