uance 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.

A classic is a work which gives pleasure to the minority which is
intensely and permanently interested in literature. It lives on
because the minority, eager to renew the sensation of pleasure, is
eternally curious and is therefore engaged in an eternal process of
rediscovery. A classic does not survive for any ethical reason. It
does not survive because it conforms to certain canons, or because
neglect would not kill it. It survives because it is a source of
pleasure, and because the passionate few can no more neglect it than
a bee can neglect a flower. The passionate few do not read "the right
things" because they are right. That is to put the cart before the
horse. "The right things" are the right things solely because the
passionate few _like_ reading them. Hence--and I now arrive at my
point--the one primary essential to literary taste is a hot interest
in literature. If you have that, all the rest will come. It matters
nothing that at present you fail to find pleasure in certain classics.
The driving impulse of your interest will force you to acquire
experience, and experience will teach you the use of the means of
pleasure. You do not know the secret ways of yourself: that is all. A
continuance of interest must inevitably bring you to the keenest
joys. But, of course, experience may be acquired judiciously or
injudiciously, just as Putney may be reached _via_ Walham Green or
_via_ St. Petersburg.

CHAPTER IV

WHERE TO BEGIN

I wish particularly that my readers should not be intimidated by the
apparent vastness and complexity of this enterprise of forming the
literary taste. It is not so vast nor so complex as it looks. There
is no need whatever for the inexperienced enthusiast to confuse and
frighten himself with thoughts of "literature in all its branches."
Experts and pedagogues (chiefly pedagogues) have, for the purpose of
convenience, split literature up into divisions and sub-divisions--such
as prose and poetr