Literary Taste: How to Form It | Page 3

against the assertion that Rousseau was a scoundrel, one is apt to forget
what literature really is and is for. It is well to remind ourselves that
literature is first and last a means of life, and that the enterprise of
forming one's literary taste is an enterprise of learning how best to use
this means of life. People who don't want to live, people who would
sooner hibernate than feel intensely, will be wise to eschew literature.
They had better, to quote from the finest passage in a fine poem, "sit
around and eat blackberries." The sight of a "common bush afire with
God" might upset their nerves.


CHAPTER II
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