Literary Taste: How to Form It: With Detailed Instructions for Collecting a Complete Library of English LiteratureBennett, Arnold
General
Literary Taste: How to Form It: With Detailed Instructions for Collecting a Complete Library of English Literature
Bennett, Arnold
Best books -- Great Britain; Book collecting -- Great Britain; Books and reading -- Great Britain; English literature -- Bibliography
Having disposed, so far as is possible and necessary, of that
formidable question of style, let us now return to Charles Lamb,
whose essay on *Dream Children* was the originating cause
of our inquiry into style. As we have made a beginning of Lamb,
it will be well to make an end of him. In the preliminary stages
of literary culture, nothing is more helpful, in the way
of kindling an interest and keeping it well alight, than
to specialise for a time on one author, and particularly on an author
so frankly and curiously "human" as Lamb is. I do not mean
that you should imprison yourself with Lamb's complete works
for three months, and read nothing else. I mean that you should
regularly devote a proportion of your learned leisure to
the study of Lamb until you are acquainted with all
that is important in his work and about his work. (You may buy
the complete works in prose and verse of Charles and Mary Lamb,
edited by that unsurpassed expert Mr. Thomas Hutchison,
and published by the Oxford University Press, in two volumes
for four shillings the pair!) There is no reason why you should not
become a modest specialist in Lamb. He is the very man for you;
neither voluminous, nor difficult, nor uncomfortably lofty;
always either amusing or touching; and--most important--
himself passionately addicted to literature. You cannot
like Lamb without liking literature in general. And you cannot
read Lamb without learning about literature in general;
for books were his hobby, and he was a critic of the first rank.
His letters are full of literariness. You will naturally
read his letters; you should not only be infinitely diverted by them
(there are no better epistles), but you should receive from them
much light on the works.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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