Everyone will study literature in his own way, keep the attitude which his own nature determines, and for that matter the nature of the individual will determine whether he shall study literature at all. I would make one last suggestion to the eager student: Let your study be diligent and as serious as may be, but do not let it be solemn. I once attended a lecture on literature given to a mixed audience, that is, an audience composed mainly of ladies. The lecture was not bad in its way; it contained a good deal of useful information, but at times it reminded me of the discourses on “terewth” by Mr. Chadband in “Bleak House.” It was the audience that was oppressive. The ladies were not, so far as I could see, entertained, but they had paid their money for a dose of light, literature and culture and they meant to have it. So they sat with looks of solemn determination devotedly taking in every word. Two ladies near me were not solemn; they concealed their restiveness and maintained a respectful but not quite attentive demeanor. As I followed them out, I heard one of them say, “Would not Falstaff have roared to hear himself talked about that way”? I once heard a class rebuked for laughing aloud at something funny in Chaucer. The classroom was a serious place and the professor was working. But Chaucer did not intend to be serious at that moment. On another occasion the professor remarked that it was well that Chaucer had not subjected his genius to the deadening effect of the universities of his time, and it occurred to me then that he would have fared about as well in a medieval university as his poems were faring in a modern one. Of course we take literature seriously; by a kind of paradox we take humorous literature seriously. But solemnity is seldom in place when one is reading or studying books. The hours of hard work and deliberate application which are necessary to a study of literature should be joyous hours, and the only appropriate solemnity is that directly inspired by the poets and prose writers when they are solemn. LIST OF WORKS ON LITERATURE _Supplementary to Chapter XII_ Below are given the titles of a few books helpful to the student of literature and literary history. HIRAM CORSON. _Aims of Literary Study._ FREDERIC HARRISON. _Choice of Books and Other Literary Pieces._ GEORGE EDWARD B. SAINTSBURY. _A Short History of English Literature._ STOPFORD AUGUSTUS BROOKE. _English Literature._ WILLIAM MINTO. _Manual of English Prose Literature._ WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY AND ROBERT MORSS LOVETT. _History of English Literature._ Remarkable among books for schools on account of its excellent literary style. HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE. _History of English Literature._ Philosophical criticism for advanced readers. STOPFORD AUGUSTUS BROOKE. _Early English Literature._ GEORGE EDWARD B. SAINTSBURY. _Elizabethan Literature._ JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS. _Shakespeare’s Predecessors in the English Drama._