On The Art of Reading | Page 3

this instance, are sluggish. However, when he
abandoned study, the cerebral inconveniences disappeared, and have

never returned since.
IV
Now we all know, and understand, and like that man: for the simple
reason that he is every one of us.
You or I (say) have to take the Modern Languages Tripos, Section A
(English), in 1917[1]. First of all (and rightly) it is demanded of us that
we show an acquaintance, and something more than a bowing
acquaintance, with Shakespeare. Very well; but next we have to write a
paper and answer questions on the outlines of English Literature from
1350 to 1832--almost 500 years--, and next to write a paper and show
particular knowledge of English Literature between 1700 and
1785--eighty-five years. Next comes a paper on passages from selected
English verse and prose writings --the Statute discreetly avoids calling
them literature--between 1200 and 1500, exclusive of Chaucer; with
questions on language, metre, literary history and literary criticism:
then a paper on Chaucer with questions on language, metre, literary
history and literary criticism: lastly a paper on writing in the Wessex
dialect of Old English, with questions on the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut,
language, metre and literary history.
Now if you were to qualify yourself for all this as a scholar should, and
in two years, you would certainly deserve to be addressed by Mr
Hamerton as 'A Young Man of Letters who worked Excessively'; and
to work excessively is not good for anyone. Yet, on the other hand, you
are precluded from using, for your 'cerebral inconveniences,' the heroic
remedy exhibited by Mr Hamerton's enterprising tradesman, since on
that method you would not attain to the main object of your laudable
ambition, a Cambridge degree.
But the matter is very much worse than your Statute makes it out. Take
one of the papers in which some actual acquaintance with Literature is
required the Special Period from 1700 to 1785; then turn to your
"Cambridge History of English Literature", and you will find that the
mere bibliography of those eighty-five years occupies something like
five or six hundred pages--five or six hundred pages of titles and

authors in simple enumeration! The brain reels; it already suffers
'cerebral inconveniences.' But stretch the list back to Chaucer, back
through Chaucer to those alleged prose writings in the Wessex dialect,
then forward from 1785 to Wordsworth, to Byron, to Dickens, Carlyle,
Tennyson, Browning, Meredith, even to this year in which literature
still lives and engenders; and the brain, if not too giddy indeed, stands
as Satan stood on the brink of Chaos--
Pondering his voyage; for no narrow frith He had to cross--
and sees itself, with him, now plumbing a vast vacuity, and anon
nigh-foundered, 'treading the crude consistence.'
The whole business of reading English Literature in two years, to know
it in any reputable sense of the word--let alone your learning to write
English--is, in short, impossible. And the framers of the Statute,
recognising this, have very sensibly compromised by setting you to
work on such things as 'the Outlines of English Literature'; which are
not Literature at all but are only what some fellow has to say about it,
hastily summarising his estimates of many works, of which on a
generous computation he has probably read one-fifth; and by
examining you on (what was it all?) 'language, metre, literary history
and literary criticism,' which again are not Literature, or at least (as a
Greek would say in his idiom) escape their own notice being Literature.
For English Literature, as I take it, is _that which sundry men and
women have written memorably in English about Life._ And so I come
to my subject--the art of reading _that,_ which is Literature.
V
I shall take leave to leap into it over another man's back, or, rather over
two men's backs. No doubt it has happened to many of you to pick up
in a happy moment some book or pamphlet or copy of verse which just
says the word you have unconsciously been listening for, almost
craving to speak for yourself, and so sends you off hot-foot on the trail.
And if you have had that experience, it may also have happened to you
that, after ranging, you returned on the track 'like faithful hound
returning,' in gratitude, or to refresh the scent; and that, picking up the

book again, you found it no such wonderful book after all, or that some
of the magic had faded by process of the change in yourself which itself
had originated. But the word was spoken.
Such a book--pamphlet I may call it, so small it was--fell into my hands
some ten years ago; "The Aims of Literary Study"--no very attractive
title--by Dr Corson, a distinguished American Professor (and let me say
that, for something more