<SPAN name="startofbook"></SPAN>
<h1>LITERARY TASTE</h1>
<h2>HOW TO FORM IT</h2>
<h3>WITH DETAILED INSTRUCTIONS FOR</h3>
<h3>COLLECTING A COMPLETE LIBRARY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE</h3>
<h3>BY</h3>
<h2>ARNOLD BENNETT</h2>
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="pageiv" id="pageiv"></SPAN>[pg iv]</span>
<h5><i>First Published</i> 1909</h5>
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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="pagev" id="pagev"></SPAN>[pg v]</span>
<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza">
<p>CHAPTER I</p>
<p>THE AIM <SPAN href="#page1">1</SPAN><br/></p>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<p>CHAPTER II</p>
<p>YOUR PARTICULAR CASE <SPAN href="#page9">9</SPAN><br/></p>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<p>CHAPTER III</p>
<p>WHY A CLASSIC IS A CLASSIC <SPAN href="#page18">18</SPAN><br/></p>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<p>CHAPTER IV</p>
<p>WHERE TO BEGIN <SPAN href="#page26">26</SPAN><br/></p>
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="pagevi" id="pagevi"></SPAN>[pg vi]</span></div>
<div class="stanza">
<p>CHAPTER V</p>
<p>HOW TO READ A CLASSIC <SPAN href="#page34">34</SPAN><br/></p>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<p>CHAPTER VI</p>
<p>THE QUESTION OF STYLE <SPAN href="#page43">43</SPAN><br/></p>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<p>CHAPTER VII</p>
<p>WRESTLING WITH AN AUTHOR <SPAN href="#page59">59</SPAN><br/></p>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<p>CHAPTER VIII</p>
<p>SYSTEM IN READING <SPAN href="#page68">68</SPAN><br/></p>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<p>CHAPTER IX</p>
<p>VERSE <SPAN href="#page76">76</SPAN><br/></p>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<p>CHAPTER X</p>
<p>BROAD COUNSELS <SPAN href="#page91">91</SPAN><br/></p>
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="pagevii" id="pagevii"></SPAN>[pg vii]</span></div>
<div class="stanza">
<p>CHAPTER XI</p>
<p>AN ENGLISH LIBRARY: PERIOD I <SPAN href="#page99">99</SPAN><br/></p>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<p>CHAPTER XII</p>
<p>AN ENGLISH LIBRARY: PERIOD II <SPAN href="#page108">108</SPAN><br/></p>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<p>CHAPTER XIII</p>
<p>AN ENGLISH LIBRARY: PERIOD III <SPAN href="#page114">114</SPAN><br/></p>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<p>CHAPTER XIV</p>
<p>MENTAL STOCKTAKING <SPAN href="#page127">127</SPAN><br/></p>
</div>
</div>
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page1" id="page1"></SPAN></span>
<h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
<h2>THE AIM</h2>
<p>At the beginning a misconception must be removed from the path. Many people, if
not most, look on literary taste as an elegant accomplishment, by acquiring which
they will complete themselves, and make themselves finally fit as members of a
correct society. They are secretly ashamed of their ignorance of literature, in the
same way as they would be ashamed of their ignorance of etiquette at a high
entertainment, or of their inability to ride a horse if suddenly called upon to do
so. There are certain things that a man ought to know, or to know about, and
literature is one of them: such is their idea. They have learnt to dress themselves
with propriety, and to behave with propriety on all occasions; they are fairly "up"
in the questions of the day; by industry <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page2" id="page2"></SPAN></span> and enterprise they are succeeding in their vocations;
it behoves them, then, not to forget that an acquaintance with literature is an
indispensable part of a self-respecting man's personal baggage. Painting doesn't
matter; music doesn't matter very much. But "everyone is supposed to know" about
literature. Then, literature is such a charming distraction! Literary taste thus
serves two purposes: as a certificate of correct culture and as a private pastime. A
young professor of mathematics, immense at mathematics and games, dangerous at chess,
capable of Haydn on the violin, once said to me, after listening to some chat on
books, "Yes, I must take up literature." As though saying: "I was rather forgetting
literature. However, I've polished off all these other things. I'll have a shy at
literature now."</p>
<p>This attitude, or any attitude which resembles it, is wrong. To him who really
comprehends what literature is, and what the function of literature is, this attitude
is simply ludicrous. It is also fatal to the formation of literary taste. <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page3" id="page3"></SPAN></span> People who regard
literary taste simply as an accomplishment, and literature simply as a distraction,
will never truly succeed either in acquiring the accomplishment or in using it
half-acquired as a distraction; though the one is the most perfect of distractions,
and though the other is unsurpassed by any other accomplishment in elegance or in
power to impress the universal snobbery of civilised mankind. Literature, instead of
being an accessory, is the fundamental <i>sine qua non</i> of complete living. I am
extremely anxious to avoid rhetorical exaggerations. I do not think I am guilty of
one in asserting that he who has not been "presented to the freedom" of literature
has not wakened up out of his prenatal sleep. He is merely not born. He can't see; he
can't hear; he can't feel, in any full sense. He can only eat his dinner. What more
than anything else annoys people who know the true function of literature, and have
profited thereby, is the spectacle of so many thousands of individuals going about
under the delusion that they are alive, when, as a fact, they are no nearer being
alive than a bear in winter.</p>
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page4" id="page4"></SPAN></span>
<p>I will tell you what literature is! No—I only wish I could. But I can't. No
one can. Gleams can be thrown on the secret, inklings given, but no more. I will try
to give you an inkling. And, to do so, I will take you back into your own history, or
forward into it. That evening when you went for a walk with your faithful friend, the
friend from whom you hid nothing—or almost nothing ...! You were, in truth,
somewhat inclined to hide from him the particular matter which monopolised your mind
that evening, but somehow you contrived to get on to it, drawn by an overpowering
fascination. And as your faithful friend was sympathetic and discreet, and flattered
you by a respectful curiosity, you proceeded further and further into the said
matter, growing more and more confidential, until at last you cried out, in a
terrific whisper: "My boy, she is simply miraculous!" At that moment you were in the
domain of literature.</p>
<p>Let me explain. Of course, in the ordinary acceptation of the word, she was not
miraculous. Your faithful friend had <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page5" id="page5"></SPAN></span> never noticed that she was miraculous, nor had about
forty thousand other fairly keen observers. She was just a girl. Troy had not been
burnt for her. A girl cannot be called a miracle. If a girl is to be called a
miracle, then you might call pretty nearly anything a miracle.... That is just it:
you might. You can. You ought. Amid all the miracles of the universe you had just
wakened up to one. You were full of your discovery. You were under a divine impulsion
to impart that discovery. You had a strong sense of the marvellous beauty of
something, and you had to share it. You were in a passion about something, and you
had to vent yourself on somebody. You were drawn towards the whole of the rest of the
human race. Mark the effect of your mood and utterance on your faithful friend. He
knew that she was not a miracle. No other person could have made him believe that she
was a miracle. But you, by the force and sincerity of your own vision of her, and by
the fervour of your desire to make him participate in your vision, did for quite a
long time cause him to feel that <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page6" id="page6"></SPAN></span> he had been blind to the miracle of that girl.</p>
<p>You were producing literature. You were alive. Your eyes were unlidded, your ears
were unstopped, to some part of the beauty and the strangeness of the world; and a
strong instinct within you forced you to tell someone. It was not enough for you that
you saw and heard. Others had to see and hear. Others had to be wakened up. And they
were! It is quite possible—I am not quite sure—that your faithful friend
the very next day, or the next month, looked at some other girl, and suddenly saw
that she, too, was miraculous! The influence of literature!</p>
<p>The makers of literature are those who have seen and felt the miraculous
interestingness of the universe. And the greatest makers of literature are those
whose vision has been the widest, and whose feeling has been the most intense. Your
own fragment of insight was accidental, and perhaps temporary. <i>Their</i> lives are
one long ecstasy of denying that the world is a dull place. Is it nothing to <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page7" id="page7"></SPAN></span> you to learn to
understand that the world is not a dull place? Is it nothing to you to be led out of
the tunnel on to the hillside, to have all your senses quickened, to be invigorated
by the true savour of life, to feel your heart beating under that correct necktie of
yours? These makers of literature render you their equals.</p>
<p>The aim of literary study is not to amuse the hours of leisure; it is to awake
oneself, it is to be alive, to intensify one's capacity for pleasure, for sympathy,
and for comprehension. It is not to affect one hour, but twenty-four hours. It is to
change utterly one's relations with the world. An understanding appreciation of
literature means an understanding appreciation of the world, and it means nothing
else. Not isolated and unconnected parts of life, but all of life, brought together
and correlated in a synthetic map! The spirit of literature is unifying; it joins the
candle and the star, and by the magic of an image shows that the beauty of the
greater is in the less. And, not content with the disclosure of beauty and the
bringing together of all things whatever <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page8" id="page8"></SPAN></span> within its focus, it enforces a moral wisdom by the
tracing everywhere of cause and effect. It consoles doubly—by the revelation of
unsuspected loveliness, and by the proof that our lot is the common lot. It is the
supreme cry of the discoverer, offering sympathy and asking for it in a single
gesture. In attending a University Extension Lecture on the sources of Shakespeare's
plots, or in studying the researches of George Saintsbury into the origins of English
prosody, or in weighing the evidence for and against the assertion that Rousseau was
a scoundrel, one is apt to forget what literature really is and is for. It is well to
remind ourselves that literature is first and last a means of life, and that the
enterprise of forming one's literary taste is an enterprise of learning how best to
use this means of life. People who don't want to live, people who would sooner
hibernate than feel intensely, will be wise to eschew literature. They had better, to
quote from the finest passage in a fine poem, "sit around and eat blackberries." The
sight of a "common bush afire with God" might upset their nerves.</p>
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