ction, one of the two mutually-contradicting qualities is of
far less importance than the other. If you refer literature to the
standards of life, common-sense will at once decide which quality
should count heaviest in your esteem. You will be in no danger of
weighing a mere maladroitness of manner against a fine trait of
character, or of letting a graceful deportment blind you to a
fundamental vacuity. When in doubt, ignore style, and think of the
matter as you would think of an individual.

CHAPTER VII

WRESTLING WITH AN AUTHOR

Having disposed, so far as is possible and necessary, of that
formidable question of style, let us now return to Charles Lamb, whose
essay on _Dream Children_ was the originating cause of our inquiry
into style. As we have made a beginning of Lamb, it will be well to
make an end of him. In the preliminary stages of literary culture,
nothing is more helpful, in the way of kindling an interest and
keeping it well alight, than to specialise for a time on one author,
and particularly on an author so frankly and curiously "human" as
Lamb is. I do not mean that you should imprison yourself with Lamb's
complete works for three months, and read nothing else. I mean that
you should regularly devote a proportion of your learned leisure to
the study of Lamb until you are acquainted with all that is important
in his work and about his work. (You may buy the complete works in
prose and verse of Charles and Mary Lamb, edited by that unsurpassed
expert Mr. Thomas Hutchison, and published by the Oxford University
Press, in two volumes for four shillings the pair!) There is no reason
why you should not become a modest specialist in Lamb. He is the very
man for you; neither voluminous, nor difficult, nor uncomfortably
lofty; always either amusing or touching; and--most important--himself
passionately addicted to literature. You cannot like Lamb without
liking literature in general. And you cannot read Lamb without
learning about literature in general; for books were his hobby, and he
was a critic of the first rank. His letters are full of literariness.
You will naturally read his letters; you should not only be infinitely
diverted by them (there are no better epistles), but you should
receive from them much light on the works.

It is a course of study that I am suggesting to you. It means a
certain amount of sustained effort. It means slightly more resolution,
more pertinacity, and more expenditure