SYSTEM IN HEADING
You have now definitely set sail on the sea of literature. You are
afloat, and your anchor is up. I think I have given adequate warning
of the dangers and disappointments which await the unwary and the
sanguine. The enterprise in which you are engaged is not facile, nor
is it short. I think I have sufficiently predicted that you will
have your hours of woe, during which you may be inclined to send to
perdition all writers, together with the inventor of printing. But if
you have become really friendly with Lamb; if you know Lamb, or even
half of him; if you have formed an image of him in your mind, and can,
as it were, hear him brilliantly stuttering while you read his essays
or letters, then certainly you are in a fit condition to proceed and
you want to know in which direction you are to proceed. Yes, I have
caught your terrified and protesting whisper: "I hope to heaven he
isn't going to prescribe a Course of English Literature, because I
feel I shall never be able to do it!" I am not. If your object in life
was to be a University Extension Lecturer in English literature,
then I should prescribe something drastic and desolating. But as your
object, so far as I am concerned, is simply to obtain the highest and
most tonic form of artistic pleasure of which you are capable, I shall
not prescribe any regular course. Nay, I shall venture to dissuade
you from any regular course. No man, and assuredly no beginner, can
possibly pursue a historical course of literature without wasting a
lot of weary time in acquiring mere knowledge which will yield neither
pleasure nor advantage. In the choice of reading the individual must
count; caprice must count, for caprice is often the truest index to
the individuality. Stand defiantly on your own feet, and do not excuse
yourself to yourself. You do not exist in order to honour literature
by becoming an encyclopædia of literature. Literature exists for your
service. Wherever you happen to be, that, for you, is the centre of
literature.
Still, for your own sake you must confine yourself for a long time
to recognised classics, for reasons already explained. And though you
should not follow a course, you must have a system or principle. Your
native sagacity will tell you that caprice, left quite unfettered,
will end by being quite ridiculous. The system which I recommend is
embodied in this counsel: Let one thing lead to another. In the sea of
literature every part communicates with every other part; there are no
land-locked lakes. It was with an eye to this system that I originally
recommended you to start with Lamb. Lamb, if you are his intimate, has
already brought you into relations with a number of other prominent
writers with whom you can in turn be intimate, and who will be
particularly useful to you. Among these are Wordsworth, Coleridge,
Southey, Hazlitt, and Leigh Hunt. You cannot know Lamb without knowing
these men, and some of them are of the highest importance. From the
circle of Lamb's own work you may go off at a tangent at various
points, according to your inclination. If, for instance, you are drawn
towards poetry, you cannot, in all English literature, make a better
start than with Wordsworth. And Wordsworth will send you backwards
to a comprehension of the poets against whose influence Wordsworth
fought. When you have understood Wordsworth's and Coleridge's _Lyrical
Ballads_, and Wordsworth's defence of them, you will be in a position
to judge poetry in general. If, again, your mind hankers after an
earlier and more romantic literature, Lamb's _Specimens of English
Dramatic Poets Contemporary with Shakspere_ has already, in an
enchanting fashion, piloted you into a vast gulf of "the sea which is
Shakspere."
Again, in Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt you will discover essayists inferior
only to Lamb himself, and critics perhaps not inferior. Hazlitt
is unsurpassed as a critic. His judgments are convincing and his
enthusiasm of the most catching nature. Having arrived at Hazlitt or
Leigh Hunt, you can branch off once more at any one of ten thousand
points into still wider circles. And thus you may continue up and down
the centuries as far as you like, yea, even to Chaucer. If you chance
to read Hazlitt on _Chaucer and Spenser_, you will probably put
your hat on instantly and go out and buy these authors; such is his
communicating fire! I need not particularise further. Commencing with
Lamb, and allowing one thing to lead to another, you cannot fail to be
more and more impressed by the peculiar suitability to your needs of
the Lamb entourage and the Lamb period. For Lamb lived in a time of
universal rebirth in English literature. Wordsworth and Coleridge
were re-creating poetry; Scott was re-creating the novel; Lamb was
re-creating the human document; and Hazlitt, Coleridge, Leigh Hunt,
and others were re-creating criticism. Sparks are flying all about the
place, and it will be not less than a miracle if something combustible
and indestructible in you does not take fire.
I have only one cautionary word to utter. You may be saying to
yourself: "So long as I stick to classics I cannot go wrong." You can
go wrong. You can, while reading naught but very fine stuff, commit
the grave error of reading too much of one kind of stuff. Now there
are two kinds, and only two kinds. These two kinds are not prose and
poetry, nor are they divided the one from the other by any differences
of form or of subject. They are the inspiring kind and the informing
kind. No other genuine division exists in literature. Emerson, I
think, first clearly stated it. His terms were the literature of
"power" and the literature of "knowledge." In nearly all great
literature the two qualities are to be found in company, but one
usually predominates over the other. An example of the exclusively
inspiring kind is Coleridge's _Kubla Khan_. I cannot recall any
first-class example of the purely informing kind. The nearest approach
to it that I can name is Spencer's _First Principles_, which, however,
is at least once highly inspiring. An example in which the inspiring
quality predominates is _Ivanhoe_; and an example in which the
informing quality predominates is Hazlitt's essays on Shakespeare's
characters. You must avoid giving undue preference to the kind in
which the inspiring quality predominates or to the kind in which the
informing quality predominates. Too much of the one is enervating; too
much of the other is desiccating. If you stick exclusively to the
one you may become a mere debauchee of the emotions; if you stick
exclusively to the other you may cease to live in any full sense. I do
not say that you should hold the balance exactly even between the two
kinds. Your taste will come into the scale. What I say is that neither
kind must be neglected.
Lamb is an instance of a great writer whom anybody can understand and
whom a majority of those who interest themselves in literature can
more or less appreciate. He makes no excessive demand either on the
intellect or on the faculty of sympathetic emotion. On both sides of
Lamb, however, there lie literatures more difficult, more recondite.
The "knowledge" side need not detain us here; it can be mastered by
concentration and perseverance. But the "power" side, which comprises
the supreme productions of genius, demands special consideration.
You may have arrived at the point of keenly enjoying Lamb and yet be
entirely unable to "see anything in" such writings as _Kubla Khan_ or
Milton's _Comus_; and as for _Hamlet_ you may see nothing in it but a
sanguinary tale "full of quotations." Nevertheless it is the supreme
productions which are capable of yielding the supreme pleasures, and
which _will_ yield the supreme pleasures when the pass-key to them
has been acquired. This pass-key is a comprehension of the nature of
poetry.