One Hundred Best Books | Page 3

sort of communication of the idea--and it is not an easy idea to
convey--that there is in this affair a subtle fusion desirable between
one's natural indestructible prejudices, and a certain high authoritative
standard; a standard which we may name, for want of a better word,
"classical taste," and which itself is the resultant amalgam of all the
finest personal reactions of all the finest critical senses, winnowed out,
as it were, and austerely purged, by the washing of the waves of time. It
will be found, as a matter of fact, that this latter element in the motives
of our choice works as a rule negatively rather than positively, while
the positive and active force in our appreciations remains, as it ought to
remain, our own inviolable and quite personal bias. The winnowed
taste of the ages, acquired by us as a sort of second nature, warns us
what to avoid, while our own nerves and palate, stimulated to an ever
deepening subtlety, as our choice narrows itself down, tells us what
passionately and spontaneously we must snatch up and enjoy.
It will be noted that in what we have tried to indicate as the only
possible starting-point for adventurous criticism, there has been a
constant assumption of a common ground between sensitive people; a
common sensual and psychic language, so to speak, to which appeals
may be made, and through which intelligent tokens may be exchanged.

This common ground is not necessarily--one is reluctant to introduce
metaphysical speculation--any hidden "law of beauty" or "principle of
spiritual harmony." It is, indeed, as far as we can ever know for certain,
only "objective" in the sense of being essentially human; in the sense,
that is, of being something that inevitably appeals to what, below
temperamental differences, remains permanent and unchanging in us.
"Nature," as Leonardo says, "is the mistress of the higher intelligences";
and Goethe, in his most oracular utterances, recalls us to the same truth.
What imagination does, and what the personal vision of the individual
artist does, is to deal successfully and masterfully with this "given," this
basic element. And this basic element, this permanent common ground,
this universal human assumption, is just precisely what, in popular
language, we call "Nature"; that substratum of objective reality in the
appearances of things, which makes it possible for diversely
constructed temperaments to make their differences effective and
intelligible.
There could be no recognizable differences, no conversation, in fact, if,
in the impossible hypothesis of the absence of any such common
language, we all shouted at one another "in vacuo" and out of pure
darkness. It is from their refusal to recognize the necessity for
something at least relatively objective in what the individual
imagination works upon, that certain among modern artists, if not
among modern poets, bewilder and puzzle us. They have a right to
make endless experiments--every original mind has that--but they
cannot let go their hold on some sort of objective solidity without
becoming inarticulate, without giving vent to such unrelated and
incoherent cries as overtake one in the corridors of Bedlam. "Nature is
the mistress of the higher intelligencies," and though the individual
imagination is at liberty to treat Nature with a certain creative contempt,
it cannot afford to depart altogether from her, lest by relinquishing the
common language between men and men, it should simply flap its
wings in an enchanted circle, and utter sounds that are not so much
different from other sounds, as outside the region where any sound
carries an intelligible meaning.
The absurd idea that one gets wise by reading books is probably at the
bottom of the abominable pedantry that thrusts so many tiresome pieces
of antiquity down the throats of youth. There is no talisman for getting

wise--some of the wisest in the world never open a book, and yet their
native wit, so heavenly-free from "culture," would serve to challenge
Voltaire. Lovers of books, like other infatuated lovers, best know the
account they find in their exquisite obsessions. None of the
explanations they give seem to cover the field of their enjoyment. The
thing is a passion; a sort of delicate madness, and like other passions,
quite unintelligible to those who are outside. Persons who read for the
purpose of making a success of their added erudition, or the better to
adapt themselves--what a phrase!--to their "life's work," are, to my
thinking, like the wretches who throw flowers into graves. What
sacrilege, to trail the reluctances and coynesses, the shynesses and
sweet reserves of these "furtivi amores" at the heels of a wretched
ambition to be "cultivated" or learned, or to "get on" in the world!
Like the kingdom of heaven and all other high and sacred things, the
choicest sorts of books only reveal the perfume of their rare essence