Jonathan Swift - "The Journal to Stella"

Roy Rockwood - "Through Space to Mars"

William Gilmore Simms - "The Life of Francis Marion"

Steven Sills - "Corpus of a Siam Mosquito"

LITERARY TASTE

A >> ARNOLD BENNETT >> LITERARY TASTE



This etext was produced by Peter Hayes (p.hayes@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au).

Notes on the text.

Literary Taste was first published in August 1909. I have worked from
a copy of the "seventh edition" of February 1914. The text was
keyed in manually and then scanned; the two versions so produced were then
compared using ms word's "track changes" tool and brought into agreement.

Ambiguity arises concerning the intended hyphenation of six words
in the original printed text--hill-side, super-eminently, re-birth,
school-master, red-gauntlet, hood-winking--which in it are made to run
over two lines. I have attempted to hyphenate these words (or not to do so)
as I think Bennett would have done, guided in these judgments in part
by "A New English Dictionary" (1928), the most authoritative
English dictionary published up until Bennett's death in 1931.

Of the three occurrences of the name "Newnes's Thin-Paper Classics",
Bennett hyphenates only one; I have hyphenated all three.

In the list for poets of "Period I", the entry for Beaumont and Fletcher
contains an apparent typo, which I have corrected (or altered, at least).
For those interested, the original entry for these authors
contained no colon before the edition name (Canterbury Poets),
and italicised the word 'Plays' only, leaving the words 'a Selection'
in plain type.

The book's only footnote has been placed in brackets immediately after
the chapter title to which Bennett appended it.





LITERARY TASTE

HOW TO FORM IT

WITH DETAILED INSTRUCTIONS FOR COLLECTING A COMPLETE LIBRARY
OF ENGLISH LITERATURE

BY ARNOLD BENNETT



CONTENTS

CHAPTER I THE AIM
CHAPTER II YOUR PARTICULAR CASE
CHAPTER III WHY A CLASSIC IS A CLASSIC
CHAPTER IV WHERE TO BEGIN
CHAPTER V HOW TO READ A CLASSIC
CHAPTER VI THE QUESTION OF STYLE
CHAPTER VII WRESTLING WITH AN AUTHOR
CHAPTER VIII SYSTEM IN READING
CHAPTER IX VERSE
CHAPTER X BROAD COUNSELS
CHAPTER XI AN ENGLISH LIBRARY: PERIOD I
CHAPTER XII AN ENGLISH LIBRARY: PERIOD II
CHAPTER XIII AN ENGLISH LIBRARY: PERIOD III
CHAPTER XIV MENTAL STOCKTAKING



Chapter I

THE AIM

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 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."


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. 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
*sine qua non* 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.


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.


Let me explain. Of course, in the ordinary acceptation of the word,
she was not miraculous. Your faithful friend had 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 he had been blind
to the miracle of that girl.


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!


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. *Their* lives are one long ecstasy
of denying that the world is a dull place. Is it nothing to 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 hill-side,
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.


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 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.



Chapter II

YOUR PARTICULAR CASE

The attitude of the average decent person towards the classics
of his own tongue is one of distrust--I had almost said, of fear.
I will not take the case of Shakespeare, for Shakespeare
is "taught" in schools; that is to say, the Board of Education
and all authorities pedagogic bind themselves together
in a determined effort to make every boy in the land a lifelong enemy
of Shakespeare. (It is a mercy they don't "teach" Blake.)
I will take, for an example, Sir Thomas Browne, as to whom
the average person has no offensive juvenile memories.
He is bound to have read somewhere that the style of Sir Thomas Browne
is unsurpassed by anything in English literature. One day he sees
the *Religio Medici* in a shop-window (or, rather, outside a shop-window,
for he would hesitate about entering a bookshop), and he buys it,
by way of a mild experiment. He does not expect to be enchanted
by it; a profound instinct tells him that Sir Thomas Browne
is "not in his line"; and in the result he is even less enchanted
than he expected to be. He reads the introduction, and he glances
at the first page or two of the work. He sees nothing but words.
The work makes no appeal to him whatever. He is surrounded by trees,
and cannot perceive the forest. He puts the book away.
If Sir Thomas Browne is mentioned, he will say, "Yes, very fine!"
with a feeling of pride that he has at any rate bought and inspected
Sir Thomas Browne. Deep in his heart is a suspicion
that people who get enthusiastic about Sir Thomas Browne
are vain and conceited *poseurs*. After a year or so,
when he has recovered from the discouragement caused
by Sir Thomas Browne, he may, if he is young and hopeful,
repeat the experiment with Congreve or Addison. Same sequel!
And so on for perhaps a decade, until his commerce with the classics
finally expires! That, magazines and newish fiction apart,
is the literary history of the average decent person.


And even your case, though you are genuinely preoccupied with thoughts
of literature, bears certain disturbing resemblances to the drab case
of the average person. You do not approach the classics with gusto--
anyhow, not with the same gusto as you would approach a new novel
by a modern author who had taken your fancy. You never murmured
to yourself, when reading Gibbon's *Decline and Fall* in bed:
"Well, I really must read one more chapter before I go to sleep!"
Speaking generally, the classics do not afford you a pleasure
commensurate with their renown. You peruse them with a sense of duty,
a sense of doing the right thing, a sense of "improving yourself,"
rather than with a sense of gladness. You do not smack your lips;
you say: "That is good for me." You make little plans for reading,
and then you invent excuses for breaking the plans. Something new,
something which is not a classic, will surely draw you away
from a classic. It is all very well for you to pretend to agree
with the verdict of the elect that *Clarissa Harlowe* is
one of the greatest novels in the world--a new Kipling, or even
a new number of a magazine, will cause you to neglect
*Clarissa Harlowe*, just as though Kipling, etc., could not be kept
for a few days without turning sour! So that you have to ordain
rules for yourself, as: "I will not read anything else
until I have read Richardson, or Gibbon, for an hour each day."
Thus proving that you regard a classic as a pill, the swallowing of which
merits jam! And the more modern a classic is, the more it resembles
the stuff of the year and the less it resembles the classics
of the centuries, the more easy and enticing do you find that classic.
Hence you are glad that George Eliot, the Brontës, Thackeray,
are considered as classics, because you really *do* enjoy them.
Your sentiments concerning them approach your sentiments concerning
a "rattling good story" in a magazine.


I may have exaggerated--or, on the other hand, I may have understated--
the unsatisfactory characteristics of your particular case,
but it is probable that in the mirror I hold up you recognise
the rough outlines of your likeness. You do not care to admit it;
but it is so. You are not content with yourself. The desire to be
more truly literary persists in you. You feel that there is something
wrong in you, but you cannot put your finger on the spot.
Further, you feel that you are a bit of a sham. Something within you
continually forces you to exhibit for the classics an enthusiasm
which you do not sincerely feel. You even try to persuade yourself
that you are enjoying a book, when the next moment you drop it
in the middle and forget to resume it. You occasionally buy classical works,
and do not read them at all; you practically decide that it is enough
to possess them, and that the mere possession of them gives you a *cachet*.
The truth is, you are a sham. And your soul is a sea of uneasy remorse.
You reflect: "According to what Matthew Arnold says, I ought to be
perfectly mad about Wordsworth's *Prelude*. And I am not. Why am I not?
Have I got to be learned, to undertake a vast course of study,
in order to be perfectly mad about Wordsworth's *Prelude*?
Or am I born without the faculty of pure taste in literature,
despite my vague longings? I do wish I could smack my lips
over Wordsworth's *Prelude* as I did over that splendid story by H. G. Wells,
*The Country of the Blind*, in the *Strand Magazine*!"...
Yes, I am convinced that in your dissatisfied, your diviner moments,
you address yourself in these terms. I am convinced that I have
diagnosed your symptoms.


Now the enterprise of forming one's literary taste is an agreeable one;
if it is not agreeable it cannot succeed. But this does not imply
that it is an easy or a brief one. The enterprise of beating Colonel Bogey
at golf is an agreeable one, but it means honest and regular work.
A fact to be borne in mind always! You are certainly not going to realise
your ambition--and so great, so influential an ambition!--by spasmodic
and half-hearted effort. You must begin by making up your mind adequately.
You must rise to the height of the affair. You must approach
a grand undertaking in the grand manner. You ought to mark the day
in the calendar as a solemnity. Human nature is weak, and has need
of tricky aids, even in the pursuit of happiness. Time will be
necessary to you, and time regularly and sacredly set apart.
Many people affirm that they cannot be regular, that regularity numbs them.
I think this is true of a very few people, and that in the rest
the objection to regularity is merely an attempt to excuse idleness.
I am inclined to think that you personally are capable of regularity.
And I am sure that if you firmly and constantly devote certain specific hours
on certain specific days of the week to this business of forming
your literary taste, you will arrive at the goal much sooner.
The simple act of resolution will help you. This is the first preliminary.


The second preliminary is to surround yourself with books,
to create for yourself a bookish atmosphere. The merely physical side
of books is important--more important than it may seem to the inexperienced.
Theoretically (save for works of reference), a student has need for
but one book at a time. Theoretically, an amateur of literature
might develop his taste by expending sixpence a week, or a penny a day,
in one sixpenny edition of a classic after another sixpenny edition
of a classic, and he might store his library in a hat-box or a biscuit-tin.
But in practice he would have to be a monster of resolution to succeed
in such conditions. The eye must be flattered; the hand must be flattered;
the sense of owning must be flattered. Sacrifices must be made
for the acquisition of literature. That which has cost a sacrifice
is always endeared. A detailed scheme of buying books will come later,
in the light of further knowledge. For the present, buy--buy whatever
has received the *imprimatur* of critical authority. Buy without any
immediate reference to what you will read. Buy! Surround yourself
with volumes, as handsome as you can afford. And for reading,
all that I will now particularly enjoin is a general and inclusive tasting,
in order to attain a sort of familiarity with the look
of "literature in all its branches." A turning over of the pages
of a volume of Chambers's *Cyclopædia of English Literature*,
the third for preference, may be suggested as an admirable and
a diverting exercise. You might mark the authors that flash
an appeal to you.



Chapter III

WHY A CLASSIC IS A CLASSIC

The large majority of our fellow-citizens care as much about literature
as they care about aeroplanes or the programme of the Legislature.
They do not ignore it; they are not quite indifferent to it.
But their interest in it is faint and perfunctory; or, if their interest
happens to be violent, it is spasmodic. Ask the two hundred thousand persons
whose enthusiasm made the vogue of a popular novel ten years ago
what they think of that novel now, and you will gather
that they have utterly forgotten it, and that they would no more dream
of reading it again than of reading Bishop Stubbs's *Select Charters*.
Probably if they did read it again they would not enjoy it--not because
the said novel is a whit worse now than it was ten years ago;
not because their taste has improved--but because they have not had
sufficient practice to be able to rely on their taste as a means
of permanent pleasure. They simply don't know from one day to the next
what will please them.


In the face of this one may ask: Why does the great and universal fame
of classical authors continue? The answer is that the fame
of classical authors is entirely independent of the majority.
Do you suppose that if the fame of Shakespeare depended on
the man in the street it would survive a fortnight?
The fame of classical authors is originally made, and it is maintained,
by a passionate few. Even when a first-class author has enjoyed
immense success during his lifetime, the majority have never
appreciated him so sincerely as they have appreciated second-rate men.
He has always been reinforced by the ardour of the passionate few.
And in the case of an author who has emerged into glory after his death
the happy sequel has been due solely to the obstinate perseverance
of the few. They could not leave him alone; they would not.
They kept on savouring him, and talking about him, and buying him,
and they generally behaved with such eager zeal, and they were so
authoritative and sure of themselves, that at last the majority
grew accustomed to the sound of his name and placidly agreed
to the proposition that he was a genius; the majority really did not
care very much either way.


And it is by the passionate few that the renown of genius
is kept alive from one generation to another. These few are always at work.
They are always rediscovering genius. Their curiosity and enthusiasm
are exhaustless, so that there is little chance of genius being ignored.
And, moreover, they are always working either for or against
the verdicts of the majority. The majority can make a reputation,
but it is too careless to maintain it. If, by accident, the passionate few
agree with the majority in a particular instance, they will frequently
remind the majority that such and such a reputation has been made,
and the majority will idly concur: "Ah, yes. By the way,
we must not forget that such and such a reputation exists."
Without that persistent memory-jogging the reputation would quickly fall
into the oblivion which is death. The passionate few only have their way
by reason of the fact that they are genuinely interested in literature,
that literature matters to them. They conquer by their obstinacy alone,
by their eternal repetition of the same statements. Do you suppose
they could prove to the man in the street that Shakespeare
was a great artist? The said man would not even understand
the terms they employed. But when he is told ten thousand times,
and generation after generation, that Shakespeare was a great artist,
the said man believes--not by reason, but by faith. And he too repeats
that Shakespeare was a great artist, and he buys the complete works
of Shakespeare and puts them on his shelves, and he goes to see
the marvellous stage-effects which accompany *King Lear* or *Hamlet*,
and comes back religiously convinced that Shakespeare was a great artist.
All because the passionate few could not keep their admiration
of Shakespeare to themselves. This is not cynicism; but truth.
And it is important that those who wish to form their literary taste
should grasp it.


What causes the passionate few to make such a fuss about literature?
There can be only one reply. They find a keen and lasting pleasure
in literature. They enjoy literature as some men enjoy beer.
The recurrence of this pleasure naturally keeps their interest in literature
very much alive. They are for ever making new researches,
for ever practising on themselves. They learn to understand themselves.
They learn to know what they want. Their taste becomes surer and surer
as their experience lengthens. They do not enjoy to-day
what will seem tedious to them to-morrow. When they find a book tedious,
no amount of popular clatter will persuade them that it is pleasurable;
and when they find it pleasurable no chill silence of the street-crowds
will affect their conviction that the book is good and permanent.
They have faith in themselves. What are the qualities in a book
which give keen and lasting pleasure to the passionate few?
This is a question so difficult that it has never yet
been completely answered. You may talk lightly about truth, insight,
knowledge, wisdom, humour, and beauty. But these comfortable words do not
really carry you very far, for each of them has to be defined,
especially the first and last. It is all very well for Keats
in his airy manner to assert that beauty is truth, truth beauty,
and that that is all he knows or needs to know. I, for one, need to know
a lot more. And I never shall know. Nobody, not even Hazlitt
nor Sainte-Beuve, has ever finally explained why he thought
a book beautiful. I take the first fine lines that come to hand--

The woods of Arcady are dead,
And over is their antique joy--

and I say that those lines are beautiful, because they give me pleasure.
But why? No answer! I only know that the passionate few will, broadly,
agree with me in deriving this mysterious pleasure from those lines.
I am only convinced that the liveliness of our pleasure in those
and many other lines by the same author will ultimately cause
the majority to believe, by faith, that W. B. Yeats is a genius.
The one reassuring aspect of the literary affair is that the passionate few
are passionate about the same things. A continuance of interest does,
in actual practice, lead ultimately to the same judgments.
There is only the difference in width of interest. Some of the passionate few
lack catholicity, or, rather, the whole of their interest is confined
to one narrow channel; they have none left over. These men help specially
to vitalise the reputations of the narrower geniuses: such as Crashaw.
But their active predilections never contradict the general verdict
of the passionate few; rather they reinforce it.

Copyright (c) 2007. topbookz.net. All rights reserved.