nown. 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 Brontes, 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