course, by examining it and honestly trying to understand it. But this
process is materially helped by an act of faith, by the frame of mind
which says: "I know on the highest authority that this thing is fine,
that it is capable of giving me pleasure. Hence I am determined to
find pleasure in it." Believe me that faith counts enormously in
the development of that wide taste which is the instrument of wide
pleasures. But it must be faith founded on unassailable authority.

CHAPTER V

HOW TO READ A CLASSIC

Let us begin experimental reading with Charles Lamb. I choose Lamb for
various reasons: He is a great writer, wide in his appeal, of a highly
sympathetic temperament; and his finest achievements are simple and
very short. Moreover, he may usefully lead to other and more complex
matters, as will appear later. Now, your natural tendency will be to
think of Charles Lamb as a book, because he has arrived at the
stage of being a classic. Charles Lamb was a man, not a book. It is
extremely important that the beginner in literary study should always
form an idea of the man behind the book. The book is nothing but the
expression of the man. The book is nothing but the man trying to talk
to you, trying to impart to you some of his feelings. An experienced
student will divine the man from the book, will understand the man by
the book, as is, of course, logically proper. But the beginner will do
well to aid himself in understanding the book by means of independent
information about the man. He will thus at once relate the book to
something human, and strengthen in his mind the essential notion of
the connection between literature and life. The earliest literature
was delivered orally direct by the artist to the recipient. In some
respects this arrangement was ideal. Changes in the constitution of
society have rendered it impossible. Nevertheless, we can still, by
the exercise of the imagination, hear mentally the accents of the
artist speaking to us. We must so exercise our imagination as to feel
the man behind the book.

Some biographical information about Lamb should be acquired. There are
excellent short biographies of him by Canon Ainger in the _Dictionary
of National Biography_, in Chambers's _Encyclopaedia_, and in
Chambers's _Cyclopaedia of English Literature_. If you have none of
these (but you ought to have the last), there are Mr. E.V. Lucas's
exhaustive _Life_ (Methuen, 7s. 6d.), and, cheaper, Mr. Walter