Well, to begin with, I revert to a point which I tried to
establish in my first lecture; and insist with all my strength
that the first obligation we owe to any classic, and to those
whom we teach, and to ourselves, is to treat it _absolutely_: not
for any secondary or derivative purpose, or purpose recommended
as useful by any manual: but at first solely to interpret the
meaning which its author intended: that in short we should
_trust_ any given masterpiece for its operation, on ourselves and
on others. In that first lecture I quoted to you this most wise
sentence:
That all spirit is mutually attractive, as all matter is
mutually attractive, is an ultimate fact,
and consenting to this with all my heart I say that it matters
very little for the moment, or even for a considerable while,
that a pupil does not perfectly, or even nearly, understand all
he reads, provided we can get the attraction to seize upon him.
He and the author between them will do the rest: our function is
to communicate and trust. In what other way do children take the
ineffaceable stamp of a gentle nurture than by daily attraction
to whatsoever is beautiful and amiable and dignified in their
home? As there, so in their reading, the process must be gradual
of acquiring an inbred monitor to reject the evil and choose the
good. For it is the property of masterpieces that they not only
raise you to
despise low joys, low Gains;
Disdain whatever Cornbury disdains:
they are not only as Lamb wrote of the Plays of Shakespeare
'enrichers of the fancy, strengtheners of virtue, a withdrawing
from all selfish and mercenary thoughts, a lesson of all sweet
and honourable thoughts and actions, to teach you courtesy,
benignity, generosity, humanity'; but they raise your gorge to
defend you from swallowing the fifth-rate, the sham, the
fraudulent. _Abeunt studia in mores._ I cannot, for my part,
conceive a man who has once incorporated the "Phaedo" or the
"Paradiso" or "Lear" in himself as lending himself for a moment
to one or other of the follies plastered in these late stern
times upon the firm and most solid purpose of this nation--the
inanities, let us say, of a Baby-Week. Or, for a more damnable
instance, I think of you and me with Marvell's great Horatian Ode
sunk in our minds, standing to-day by the statue of Charles I
that looks down Whitehall: telling ourselves of 'that memorable
scene' before the Banqueting House, remembering amid old woes all
the glory of our blood and state, recollecting what is due even
to ourselves, standing on the greatest site of our capital, and
turning to see it degraded, as it has been for a week, to a
vulgar raree-show. Gentlemen, I could read you many poor
ill-written letters from mothers whose sons have died for England,
to prove to you we have not deserved _that,_ or the sort of placard
with which London has been plastered,
Dum domus Æneae Capitoli immobile saxum
Accolet.
Great enterprises (as we know) and little minds go ill together.
Someone veiled the statue. That, at least, was well done.
I have not the information--nor do I want it--to make even a
guess who was responsible for this particular outrage. I know the
sort of man well enough to venture that he never had a liberal
education, and, further, that he is probably rather proud of
it. But he may nevertheless own some instinct of primitive
kindliness: and I wish he could know how he afflicts men of
sensitiveness who have sons at the War.