While it is true that the greatest books betray the most intimate acquaintance with the time in which they are written, and disclose the impress of that time in thought, structure, and style, it is also true that such books are so essentially independent of contemporary forms and moods that they largely escape the vicissitudes which attend those forms and moods.  The element of enduring interest in them outweighs the accidents of local speech or provincial knowledge, as the force and genius of Caesar survive the armor he wore and the language he spoke.  A great book is a possession for all time, because a writer of the first rank is the contemporary of every generation; he is never outgrown, exhausted, or even old-fashioned, although the garments he wore may have been laid aside long ago.

In this permanent quality, unchanged by changes of taste and form, resides the secret of that charm which draws about the great poets men and women of each succeeding period, eager to listen to words which thrilled the world when it was young, and which have a new meaning for every new age.  It is safe to say that Homer will speak to men as long as language survives, and that translation will follow translation to the end of time.  What Robinson said of the Bible in one of the great moments of modern history may be said of the greater works of literature:  more light will always stream from them.  Indeed, many of them will not be understood until they are read in the light of long periods of history; for as the great books are interpretations of life, so life in its historic revelation is one continuous commentary on the greater books.

This preponderance of the permanent over the accidental or temporary in books of this class is largely due to the unconscious element which plays so great a part in them:  the element of universal experience, in which every man shares in the exact degree in which, in mind and heart, he approaches greatness.  It is idle to attempt to separate arbitrarily in Shakespeare, for instance, those elements in the poet’s work which were deliberately introduced from those which went into it by the unconscious action of his whole nature; but no one can study the plays intelligently without becoming more and more clearly aware of those depths of life which moved in the poet before they moved in his work; which enlarged, enriched, and silently reorganised his view of life and his power of translating life out of individual into universal terms.  It would be impossible, for instance, to write such a play as “The Tempest” by sheer force of intellect; in the creation of such a work there is involved, beyond literary skill, calculation, and deep study of the relation of thought to form, a ripeness of spirit, a clearness of insight, a richness of imagination, which are so much part of the very soul of the poet that he does not separate them in thought, and cannot consciously balance, adjust, and employ them.  They are quite beyond his immediate control, as they are beyond all attempts to imitate them.