Literary Taste: How to Form It | Page 8

ones are arising to
take their place." This attitude of mind is deplorable, if not silly, and is
a certain proof of narrow taste. It is a surety that in 1959 gloomy and
egregious persons will be saying: "Ah, yes. At the beginning of the
century there were great poets like Swinburne, Meredith, Francis
Thompson, and Yeats. Great novelists like Hardy and Conrad. Great
historians like Stubbs and Maitland, etc., etc. But they are all dead now,
and whom have we to take their place?" It is not until an age has
receded into history, and all its mediocrity has dropped away from it,
that we can see it as it is--as a group of men of genius. We forget the
immense amount of twaddle that the great epochs produced. The total
amount of fine literature created in a given period of time differs from
epoch to epoch, but it does not differ much. And we may be perfectly
sure that our own age will make a favourable impression upon that
excellent judge, posterity. Therefore, beware of disparaging the present
in your own mind. While temporarily ignoring it, dwell upon the idea
that its chaff contains about as much wheat as any similar quantity of
chaff has contained wheat.
The reason why you must avoid modern works at the beginning is
simply that you are not in a position to choose among modern works.
Nobody at all is quite in a position to choose with certainty among
modern works. To sift the wheat from the chaff is a process that takes
an exceedingly long time. Modern works have to pass before the bar of
the taste of successive generations. Whereas, with classics, which have
been through the ordeal, almost the reverse is the case. Your taste has
to pass before the bar of the classics. That is the point. If you differ
with a classic, it is you who are wrong, and not the book. If you differ
with a modern work, you may be wrong or you may be right, but no
judge is authoritative enough to decide. Your taste is unformed. It
needs guidance, and it needs authoritative guidance. Into the business
of forming literary taste faith enters. You probably will not specially

care for a particular classic at first. If you did care for it at first, your
taste, so far as that classic is concerned, would be formed, and our
hypothesis is that your taste is not formed. How are you to arrive at the
stage of caring for it? Chiefly, of course, by examining it and honestly
trying to understand it. But this process is materially helped by an act
of faith, by the frame of mind which says: "I know on the highest
authority that this thing is fine, that it is capable of giving me pleasure.
Hence I am determined to find pleasure in it." Believe me that faith
counts enormously in the development of that wide taste which is the
instrument of wide pleasures. But it must be faith founded on
unassailable authority.


CHAPTER V
HOW TO READ A CLASSIC
Let us begin experimental reading with Charles Lamb. I choose Lamb
for various reasons: He is a great writer, wide in his appeal, of a highly
sympathetic temperament; and his finest achievements are simple and
very short. Moreover, he may usefully lead to other and more complex
matters, as will appear later. Now, your natural tendency will be to
think of Charles Lamb as a book, because he has arrived at the stage of
being a classic. Charles Lamb was a man, not a book. It is extremely
important that the beginner in literary study should always form an idea
of the man behind the book. The book is nothing but the expression of
the man. The book is nothing but the man trying to talk to you, trying
to impart to you some of his feelings. An experienced student will
divine the man from the book, will understand the man by the book, as
is, of course, logically proper. But the beginner will do well to aid
himself in understanding the book by means of independent
information about the man. He will thus at once relate the book to
something human, and strengthen in his mind the essential notion of the
connection between literature and life. The earliest literature was
delivered orally direct by the artist to the recipient. In some respects

this arrangement was ideal. Changes in the constitution of society have
rendered it impossible. Nevertheless, we can still, by the exercise of the
imagination, hear mentally the accents of the artist speaking to us. We
must so exercise our imagination as to feel the man behind the book.
Some biographical information about Lamb should be acquired. There
are excellent