I will tell you what literature is!  No—­I only wish I could.  But I can’t.  No one can.  Gleams can be thrown on the secret, inklings given, but no more.  I will try to give you an inkling.  And, to do so, I will take you back into your own history, or forward into it.  That evening when you went for a walk with your faithful friend, the friend from whom you hid nothing—­or almost nothing ...!  You were, in truth, somewhat inclined to hide from him the particular matter which monopolised your mind that evening, but somehow you contrived to get on to it, drawn by an overpowering fascination.  And as your faithful friend was sympathetic and discreet, and flattered you by a respectful curiosity, you proceeded further and further into the said matter, growing more and more confidential, until at last you cried out, in a terrific whisper:  “My boy, she is simply miraculous!” At that moment you were in the domain of literature.

Let me explain.  Of course, in the ordinary acceptation of the word, she was not miraculous.  Your faithful friend had never noticed that she was miraculous, nor had about forty thousand other fairly keen observers.  She was just a girl.  Troy had not been burnt for her.  A girl cannot be called a miracle.  If a girl is to be called a miracle, then you might call pretty nearly anything a miracle....  That is just it:  you might.  You can.  You ought.  Amid all the miracles of the universe you had just wakened up to one.  You were full of your discovery.  You were under a divine impulsion to impart that discovery.  You had a strong sense of the marvellous beauty of something, and you had to share it.  You were in a passion about something, and you had to vent yourself on somebody.  You were drawn towards the whole of the rest of the human race.  Mark the effect of your mood and utterance on your faithful friend.  He knew that she was not a miracle.  No other person could have made him believe that she was a miracle.  But you, by the force and sincerity of your own vision of her, and by the fervour of your desire to make him participate in your vision, did for quite a long time cause him to feel that he had been blind to the miracle of that girl.

You were producing literature.  You were alive.  Your eyes were unlidded, your ears were unstopped, to some part of the beauty and the strangeness of the world; and a strong instinct within you forced you to tell someone.  It was not enough for you that you saw and heard.  Others had to see and hear.  Others had to be wakened up.  And they were!  It is quite possible—­I am not quite sure—­that your faithful friend the very next day, or the next month, looked at some other girl, and suddenly saw that she, too, was miraculous!  The influence of literature!