Literary Taste: How to Form It | Page 4

magazine.
I may have exaggerated--or, on the other hand, I may have
understated--the unsatisfactory characteristics of your particular case,
but it is probable that in the mirror I hold up you recognise the rough
outlines of your likeness. You do not care to admit it; but it is so. You
are not content with yourself. The desire to be more truly literary
persists in you. You feel that there is something wrong in you, but you
cannot put your finger on the spot. Further, you feel that you are a bit
of a sham. Something within you continually forces you to exhibit for
the classics an enthusiasm which you do not sincerely feel. You even
try to persuade yourself that you are enjoying a book, when the next
moment you drop it in the middle and forget to resume it. You
occasionally buy classical works, and do not read them at all; you
practically decide that it is enough to possess them, and that the mere
possession of them gives you a cachet. The truth is, you are a sham.
And your soul is a sea of uneasy remorse. You reflect: "According to
what Matthew Arnold says, I ought to be perfectly mad about
Wordsworth's Prelude. And I am not. Why am I not? Have I got to be
learned, to undertake a vast course of study, in order to be perfectly
mad about Wordsworth's _Prelude_? Or am I born without the faculty
of pure taste in literature, despite my vague longings? I do wish I could
smack my lips over Wordsworth's Prelude as I did over that splendid
story by H.G. Wells, The Country of the Blind, in the Strand
Magazine!".... Yes, I am convinced that in your dissatisfied, your
diviner moments, you address yourself in these terms. I am convinced
that I have diagnosed your symptoms.
Now the enterprise of forming one's literary taste is an agreeable one; if
it is not agreeable it cannot succeed. But this does not imply that it is an
easy or a brief one. The enterprise of beating Colonel Bogey at golf is

an agreeable one, but it means honest and regular work. A fact to be
borne in mind always! You are certainly not going to realise your
ambition--and so great, so influential an ambition!--by spasmodic and
half-hearted effort. You must begin by making up your mind
adequately. You must rise to the height of the affair. You must
approach a grand undertaking in the grand manner. You ought to mark
the day in the calendar as a solemnity. Human nature is weak, and has
need of tricky aids, even in the pursuit of happiness. Time will be
necessary to you, and time regularly and sacredly set apart. Many
people affirm that they cannot be regular, that regularity numbs them. I
think this is true of a very few people, and that in the rest the objection
to regularity is merely an attempt to excuse idleness. I am inclined to
think that you personally are capable of regularity. And I am sure that if
you firmly and constantly devote certain specific hours on certain
specific days of the week to this business of forming your literary taste,
you will arrive at the goal much sooner. The simple act of resolution
will help you. This is the first preliminary.
The second preliminary is to surround yourself with books, to create for
yourself a bookish atmosphere. The merely physical side of books is
important--more important than it may seem to the inexperienced.
Theoretically (save for works of reference), a student has need for but
one book at a time. Theoretically, an amateur of literature might
develop his taste by expending sixpence a week, or a penny a day, in
one sixpenny edition of a classic after another sixpenny edition of a
classic, and he might store his library in a hat-box or a biscuit-tin. But
in practice he would have to be a monster of resolution to succeed in
such conditions. The eye must be flattered; the hand must be flattered;
the sense of owning must be flattered. Sacrifices must be made for the
acquisition of literature. That which has cost a sacrifice is always
endeared. A detailed scheme of buying books will come later, in the
light of further knowledge. For the present, buy--buy whatever has
received the imprimatur of critical authority. Buy without any
immediate reference to what you will read. Buy! Surround yourself
with volumes, as handsome as you can afford. And for reading, all that
I will now particularly enjoin is a general and inclusive tasting, in order
to attain a sort of familiarity with the look of "literature in all its

branches." A turning over of the pages of a volume of Chambers's
_Cyclopædia of English Literature_, the third for