Abstract

The Cliche and the Classic

What is a classic? The best that has been thought and said in the world. There is a criterion of the classic, more vulgar but none the less significant, persistence, in those pieces of prose and poetry, often fugitive, often widely misquoted and anonymous in the memories of a wide public. "A Treasury of the Familiar," edited by Ralph L. Woods, should include naturally passages of prose and poetry connected with both. The paradox remains why so much that is clearly cheap, limp in expression, flaccid in feeling, cliché in thought, should survive. There is Rudyard Kipling's poems "If" along with the "Ode to a Grecian Urn." Granted the purpose of the anthology, they belong here. For both are familiar and both have for generations brought tears to the eyes, sometimes to the same people, though at different stages in the history of their tastes.