YOUR PARTICULAR CASE
The attitude of the average decent person towards the classics of his
own tongue is one of distrust--I had almost said, of fear. I will not
take the case of Shakespeare, for Shakespeare is "taught" in schools;
that is to say, the Board of Education and all authorities pedagogic
bind themselves together in a determined effort to make every boy in
the land a lifelong enemy of Shakespeare. (It is a mercy they don't
"teach" Blake.) I will take, for an example, Sir Thomas Browne, as
to whom the average person has no offensive juvenile memories. He is
bound to have read somewhere that the style of Sir Thomas Browne is
unsurpassed by anything in English literature. One day he sees the
_Religio Medici_ in a shop-window (or, rather, outside a shop-window,
for he would hesitate about entering a bookshop), and he buys it, by
way of a mild experiment. He does not expect to be enchanted by it;
a profound instinct tells him that Sir Thomas Browne is "not in his
line"; and in the result he is even less enchanted than he expected to
be. He reads the introduction, and he glances at the first page or two
of the work. He sees nothing but words. The work makes no appeal
to him whatever. He is surrounded by trees, and cannot perceive the
forest. He puts the book away. If Sir Thomas Browne is mentioned, he
will say, "Yes, very fine!" with a feeling of pride that he has at any
rate bought and inspected Sir Thomas Browne. Deep in his heart is a
suspicion that people who get enthusiastic about Sir Thomas Browne
are vain and conceited _poseurs_. After a year or so, when he has
recovered from the discouragement caused by Sir Thomas Browne, he may,
if he is young and hopeful, repeat the experiment with Congreve
or Addison. Same sequel! And so on for perhaps a decade, until his
commerce with the classics finally expires! That, magazines and newish
fiction apart, is the literary history of the average decent person.
And even your case, though you are genuinely preoccupied with thoughts
of literature, bears certain disturbing resemblances to the drab
case of the average person. You do not approach the classics with
gusto--anyhow, not with the same gusto as you would approach a new
novel by a modern author who had taken your fancy. You never murmured
to yourself, when reading Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_ in bed: "Well,
I really must read one more chapter before I go to sleep!" Speaking
generally, the classics do not afford you a pleasure commensurate with
their renown. You peruse them with a sense of duty, a sense of doing
the right thing, a sense of "improving yourself," rather than with a
sense of gladness. You do not smack your lips; you say: "That is
good for me." You make little plans for reading, and then you invent
excuses for breaking the plans. Something new, something which is not
a classic, will surely draw you away from a classic. It is all very
well for you to pretend to agree with the verdict of the elect that
_Clarissa Harlowe_ is one of the greatest novels in the world--a new
Kipling, or even a new number of a magazine, will cause you to neglect
_Clarissa Harlowe_, just as though Kipling, etc., could not be kept
for a few days without turning sour! So that you have to ordain rules
for yourself, as: "I will not read anything else until I have read
Richardson, or Gibbon, for an hour each day." Thus proving that you
regard a classic as a pill, the swallowing of which merits jam! And
the more modern a classic is, the more it resembles the stuff of the
year and the less it resembles the classics of the centuries, the more
easy and enticing do you find that classic. Hence you are glad that
George Eliot, the Brontës, Thackeray, are considered as classics,
because you really _do_ enjoy them. Your sentiments concerning them
approach your sentiments concerning a "rattling good story" in a
magazine.
I may have exaggerated--or, on the other hand, I may have
understated--the unsatisfactory characteristics of your particular
case, but it is probable that in the mirror I hold up you recognise
the rough outlines of your likeness. You do not care to admit it; but
it is so. You are not content with yourself. The desire to be more
truly literary persists in you. You feel that there is something wrong
in you, but you cannot put your finger on the spot. Further, you feel
that you are a bit of a sham. Something within you continually
forces you to exhibit for the classics an enthusiasm which you do
not sincerely feel. You even try to persuade yourself that you are
enjoying a book, when the next moment you drop it in the middle and
forget to resume it. You occasionally buy classical works, and do not
read them at all; you practically decide that it is enough to possess
them, and that the mere possession of them gives you a _cachet_. The
truth is, you are a sham. And your soul is a sea of uneasy remorse.
You reflect: "According to what Matthew Arnold says, I ought to be
perfectly mad about Wordsworth's _Prelude_. And I am not. Why am I
not? Have I got to be learned, to undertake a vast course of study, in
order to be perfectly mad about Wordsworth's _Prelude_? Or am I born
without the faculty of pure taste in literature, despite my vague
longings? I do wish I could smack my lips over Wordsworth's _Prelude_
as I did over that splendid story by H.G. Wells, _The Country of the
Blind_, in the _Strand Magazine_!".... Yes, I am convinced that in
your dissatisfied, your diviner moments, you address yourself in these
terms. I am convinced that I have diagnosed your symptoms.
Now the enterprise of forming one's literary taste is an agreeable
one; if it is not agreeable it cannot succeed. But this does not imply
that it is an easy or a brief one. The enterprise of beating Colonel
Bogey at golf is an agreeable one, but it means honest and regular
work. A fact to be borne in mind always! You are certainly not
going to realise your ambition--and so great, so influential an
ambition!--by spasmodic and half-hearted effort. You must begin by
making up your mind adequately. You must rise to the height of the
affair. You must approach a grand undertaking in the grand manner. You
ought to mark the day in the calendar as a solemnity. Human nature is
weak, and has need of tricky aids, even in the pursuit of happiness.
Time will be necessary to you, and time regularly and sacredly set
apart. Many people affirm that they cannot be regular, that regularity
numbs them. I think this is true of a very few people, and that in
the rest the objection to regularity is merely an attempt to excuse
idleness. I am inclined to think that you personally are capable of
regularity. And I am sure that if you firmly and constantly devote
certain specific hours on certain specific days of the week to this
business of forming your literary taste, you will arrive at the goal
much sooner. The simple act of resolution will help you. This is the
first preliminary.
The second preliminary is to surround yourself with books, to create
for yourself a bookish atmosphere. The merely physical side of books
is important--more important than it may seem to the inexperienced.
Theoretically (save for works of reference), a student has need for
but one book at a time. Theoretically, an amateur of literature might
develop his taste by expending sixpence a week, or a penny a day, in
one sixpenny edition of a classic after another sixpenny edition of a
classic, and he might store his library in a hat-box or a biscuit-tin.
But in practice he would have to be a monster of resolution to succeed
in such conditions. The eye must be flattered; the hand must be
flattered; the sense of owning must be flattered. Sacrifices must
be made for the acquisition of literature. That which has cost a
sacrifice is always endeared. A detailed scheme of buying books
will come later, in the light of further knowledge. For the present,
buy--buy whatever has received the _imprimatur_ of critical authority.
Buy without any immediate reference to what you will read. Buy!
Surround yourself with volumes, as handsome as you can afford. And
for reading, all that I will now particularly enjoin is a general and
inclusive tasting, in order to attain a sort of familiarity with the
look of "literature in all its branches." A turning over of the pages
of a volume of Chambers's _Cyclopædia of English Literature_, the
third for preference, may be suggested as an admirable and a diverting
exercise. You might mark the authors that flash an appeal to you.