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In the career of the most unliterary of writers, in the sense that literary ambition had never entered the world of his imagination, the coming into existence of the first book is quite an inexplicable event. In my own case I cannot trace it back to any mental or psychological cause which one could point out and hold to.
Such a tendency, however, is directly opposed to the true feeling for idiomatic English. It destroys the sense of security, the assurance of perfect congruity between thought and expression, which the unliterary and unacademic speaker and writer often has, and which, with both literary and unliterary, is the basis for all expressive use of language'.
There seems to be such an extraordinary quantity of clever, talented, ignorant, unliterary literature let loose in them. Where does it all come from? And why isn't it better done or worse done? I suppose we might call it 'near literature. Sometimes, indeed, it is very near. I suppose it is the public school system that is accountable.
I suppose that persistency, a glibber tongue than he himself possessed, a mass of printed rubbish which always looks imposing to the unliterary, that primitive combination of authoritativeness and hospitality which makes some men as ready to say Yes to a stranger as they are to say No at home, and perhaps some lack of moral courage, may account for it.
Her delicacy and good sense of expression contrast well with the over-fanciful, unliterary quality of the letters of persons who came prominently forward as teachers of thought and literature, and who no doubt jarred miserably in their letters, if not in their conversation, upon the refined skill of Hawthorne and his wife.
To them nearly all the life of the world is in letters, and I suppose they would be astonished if they knew how little the thoughts of the majority of people are occupied with books, and with all that vast thought circulation which is the vital current of the world to book-men. Newspapers have reached their present power by becoming unliterary, and reflecting all the interests of the world.
Fifty thousand dollars offered for his copyright seemed a generous sum to the unliterary General Grant, and it took the vehement persuasion of one who was himself a publisher to convince him that his prospective publishers would not hesitate at quadrupling that sum rather than lose the chance of publishing the book.
Bartley could not deny himself this gibe; but he trusted to Lapham's unliterary habit of mind for his security in making it, and most other people would consider it sincere reporter's rhetoric. "You know," he explained to Lapham, "that we have to look at all these facts as material, and we get the habit of classifying them.
The kind and reasonable mood, the righteous conscience incarnate in the studied art, the charming literary allusion for the sake of the unliterary lesson, the genial philosophy 'not too good For human nature's daily food' the wisdom alike of the closet and the public square, the large patience and the undying hopefulness!
It is significant that 'No Thoroughfare, the one play of his invention which was actually produced, was performed at the Adelphi, and was discovered then not to differ widely from the other robust and high-colored melodramas ordinarily acted at that hopelessly unliterary playhouse.
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