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 short biographies of him by Canon Ainger in the _Dictionary of National Biography_, in Chambers's _Encyclopædia_, and in Chambers's _Cyclopædia of English Literature_. If you have none of these (but you ought to have the last), there are Mr. E.V. Lucas's exhaustive _Life_ (Methuen, 7s. 6d.), and, cheaper, Mr. Walter Jerrold's _Lamb_ (Bell and Sons, 1s.); also introductory studies prefixed to various editions of Lamb's works. Indeed, the facilities for collecting materials for a picture of Charles Lamb as a human being are prodigious. When you have made for yourself such a picture, read the _Essays of Elia_ the light of it. I will choose one of the most celebrated, _Dream Children: A Reverie_. At this point, kindly put my book down, and read _Dream Children_. Do not say to yourself that you will read it later, but read it now. When you have read it, you may proceed to my next paragraph.