But I say to you that Literature is not, and should not be, the
preserve of any priesthood. To write English, so as to make
Literature, may be _hard._ But English Literature is _not_ a
mystery, _not_ a Professors' Kitchen.
And the trouble lies, not in the harm professionising does to
schoolmasters and schoolmistresses, but in the harm it does 'in
widest commonalty spread' among men and women who, as Literature
was written for them, addressed to them, ought to find in it, all
their lives through, a retirement from mean occupations, a well
of refreshment, sustainment in the daily drudgery of life, solace
in calamity, an inmate by the hearth, ever sociable, never
intrusive--to be sought and found, to be found and dropped at
will:
Men, when their affairs require,
Must themselves at whiles retire;
Sometimes hunt, and sometimes hawk,
And not ever sit and talk--
to be dropped at will and left without any answering growl of
moroseness; to be consulted again at will and found friendly.
For this is the trouble of _professionising_ Literature. We exile
it from the business of life, in which it would ever be at our
shoulder, to befriend us. Listen, for example, to an extract from
a letter written, a couple of weeks ago, by somebody in the
Charity Commission:
Sir,
With reference to previous correspondence in this matter, I
am to say that in all the circumstances of this case the
Commissioners are of the opinion that it would be desirable
that a public enquiry in connection with the Charity should
be held in the locality.
And the man--very likely an educated man--having written _that,_
very likely went home and read Chaucer, Dante, or Shakespeare, or
Burke for pleasure! That is what happens when you treat
literature as a 'subject,' separable from life and daily
practice.