WRESTLING WITH AN AUTHOR
Having disposed, so far as is possible and necessary, of that
formidable question of style, let us now return to Charles Lamb, whose
essay on _Dream Children_ was the originating cause of our inquiry
into style. As we have made a beginning of Lamb, it will be well to
make an end of him. In the preliminary stages of literary culture,
nothing is more helpful, in the way of kindling an interest and
keeping it well alight, than to specialise for a time on one author,
and particularly on an author so frankly and curiously "human" as
Lamb is. I do not mean that you should imprison yourself with Lamb's
complete works for three months, and read nothing else. I mean that
you should regularly devote a proportion of your learned leisure to
the study of Lamb until you are acquainted with all that is important
in his work and about his work. (You may buy the complete works in
prose and verse of Charles and Mary Lamb, edited by that unsurpassed
expert Mr. Thomas Hutchison, and published by the Oxford University
Press, in two volumes for four shillings the pair!) There is no reason
why you should not become a modest specialist in Lamb. He is the very
man for you; neither voluminous, nor difficult, nor uncomfortably
lofty; always either amusing or touching; and--most important--himself
passionately addicted to literature. You cannot like Lamb without
liking literature in general. And you cannot read Lamb without
learning about literature in general; for books were his hobby, and he
was a critic of the first rank. His letters are full of literariness.
You will naturally read his letters; you should not only be infinitely
diverted by them (there are no better epistles), but you should
receive from them much light on the works.
It is a course of study that I am suggesting to you. It means a
certain amount of sustained effort. It means slightly more resolution,
more pertinacity, and more expenditure of brain-tissue than are
required for reading a newspaper. It means, in fact, "work." Perhaps
you did not bargain for work when you joined me. But I do not think
that the literary taste can be satisfactorily formed unless one is
prepared to put one's back into the affair. And I may prophesy to
you, by way of encouragement, that, in addition to the advantages of
familiarity with masterpieces, of increased literary knowledge, and
of a wide introduction to the true bookish atmosphere and "feel" of
things, which you will derive from a comprehensive study of Charles
Lamb, you will also be conscious of a moral advantage--the very
important and very inspiring advantage of really "knowing something
about something." You will have achieved a definite step; you will be
proudly aware that you have put yourself in a position to judge as an
expert whatever you may hear or read in the future concerning Charles
Lamb. This legitimate pride and sense of accomplishment will stimulate
you to go on further; it will generate steam. I consider that this
indirect moral advantage even outweighs, for the moment, the direct
literary advantages.
Now, I shall not shut my eyes to a possible result of your diligent
intercourse with Charles Lamb. It is possible that you may be
disappointed with him. It is--shall I say?--almost probable that you
will be disappointed with him, at any rate partially. You will have
expected more joy in him than you have received. I have referred in
a previous chapter to the feeling of disappointment which often comes
from first contacts with the classics. The neophyte is apt to find
them--I may as well out with the word--dull. You may have found Lamb
less diverting, less interesting, than you hoped. You may have had
to whip yourself up again and again to the effort of reading him. In
brief, Lamb has not, for you, justified his terrific reputation. If
a classic is a classic because it gives _pleasure_ to succeeding
generations of the people who are most keenly interested in
literature, and if Lamb frequently strikes you as dull, then evidently
there is something wrong. The difficulty must be fairly fronted,
and the fronting of it brings us to the very core of the business of
actually forming the taste. If your taste were classical you would
discover in Lamb a continual fascination; whereas what you in fact do
discover in Lamb is a not unpleasant flatness, enlivened by a vague
humour and an occasional pathos. You ought, according to theory, to be
enthusiastic; but you are apathetic, or, at best, half-hearted. There
is a gulf. How to cross it?
To cross it needs time and needs trouble. The following considerations
may aid. In the first place, we have to remember that, in coming
into the society of the classics in general and of Charles Lamb in
particular, we are coming into the society of a mental superior. What
happens usually in such a case? We can judge by recalling what happens
when we are in the society of a mental inferior. We say things of
which he misses the import; we joke, and he does not smile; what makes
him laugh loudly seems to us horseplay or childish; he is blind to
beauties which ravish us; he is ecstatic over what strikes us as
crude; and his profound truths are for us trite commonplaces. His
perceptions are relatively coarse; our perceptions are relatively
subtle. We try to make him understand, to make him see, and if he is
aware of his inferiority we may have some success. But if he is not
aware of his inferiority, we soon hold our tongues and leave him alone
in his self-satisfaction, convinced that there is nothing to be done
with him. Every one of us has been through this experience with a
mental inferior, for there is always a mental inferior handy, just
as there is always a being more unhappy than we are. In approaching a
classic, the true wisdom is to place ourselves in the position of the
mental inferior, aware of mental inferiority, humbly stripping off all
conceit, anxious to rise out of that inferiority. Recollect that
we always regard as quite hopeless the mental inferior who does
not suspect his own inferiority. Our attitude towards Lamb must be:
"Charles Lamb was a greater man than I am, cleverer, sharper, subtler,
finer, intellectually more powerful, and with keener eyes for beauty.
I must brace myself to follow his lead." Our attitude must resemble
that of one who cocks his ear and listens with all his soul for a
distant sound.
To catch the sound we really must listen. That is to say, we must read
carefully, with our faculties on the watch. We must read slowly and
perseveringly. A classic has to be wooed and is worth the wooing.
Further, we must disdain no assistance. I am not in favour of studying
criticism of classics before the classics themselves. My notion is to
study the work and the biography of a classical writer together, and
then to read criticism afterwards. I think that in reprints of the
classics the customary "critical introduction" ought to be put at
the end, and not at the beginning, of the book. The classic should
be allowed to make his own impression, however faint, on the virginal
mind of the reader. But afterwards let explanatory criticism be read
as much as you please. Explanatory criticism is very useful; nearly
as useful as pondering for oneself on what one has read! Explanatory
criticism may throw one single gleam that lights up the entire
subject.
My second consideration (in aid of crossing the gulf) touches the
quality of the pleasure to be derived from a classic. It is never a
violent pleasure. It is subtle, and it will wax in intensity, but
the idea of violence is foreign to it. The artistic pleasures of
an uncultivated mind are generally violent. They proceed from
exaggeration in treatment, from a lack of balance, from attaching too
great an importance to one aspect (usually superficial), while quite
ignoring another. They are gross, like the joy of Worcester sauce on
the palate. Now, if there is one point common to all classics, it is
the absence of exaggeration. The balanced sanity of a great mind makes
impossible exaggeration, and, therefore, distortion. The beauty of a
classic is not at all apt to knock you down. It will steal over you,
rather. Many serious students are, I am convinced, discouraged in the
early stages because they are expecting a wrong kind of pleasure. They
have abandoned Worcester sauce, and they miss it. They miss the coarse
_tang_. They must realise that indulgence in the _tang_ means the
sure and total loss of sensitiveness--sensitiveness even to the _tang_
itself. They cannot have crudeness and fineness together. They must
choose, remembering that while crudeness kills pleasure, fineness ever
intensifies it.