Books, Culture and Character (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

Published in 1906, this collection of speeches constitutes a forceful polemic for judging art, and literary art in particular, by a Judeo-Christian moral compass.  The author warns against the doctrine of "art for art's sake," finding that its true aim is "to put something ignoble in the place of what should be noble; something vulgar or something vile in the place of what should be wholly pure or wholly fine."