were known, men would be astonished at
the small amount of learning with which a high degree of
culture is compatible. In a moment of enthusiasm I ventured
once to tell my 'English set' that if they could really master
the ninth book of "Paradise Lost," so as to rise to the height
of its great argument and incorporate all its beauties in
themselves, they would at one blow, by virtue of that alone,
become highly cultivated men.... More and more various learning
might raise them to the same height by different paths, but
could hardly raise them higher.

I beg your attention for the exact words: 'to rise to the height
of its great argument and _incorporate all its beauties in
themselves._' There you have it--'to incorporate.' Do you
remember that saying of Wordsworth's, casually dropped in
conversation, but preserved for us by Hazlitt?--'It is in the
highest degree unphilosophic to call language or diction the
dress of our thoughts.... It is the _incarnation_ of our
thoughts.' Even so, I maintain to you, the first business of a
learner in literature is to get complete hold of some undeniable
masterpiece and incorporate it, incarnate it. And, I repeat,
there are a few great works for you to choose from: works
approved for you by ancient and catholic judgment.

IV

But let us take something far simpler than the Ninth Book of
"Paradise Lost" and more direct than any translated masterpiece
can be in its appeal; something of high genius, written in our
mother tongue. Let us take "The Tempest."

Of "The Tempest" we may say confidently:

(1) that it is a literary masterpiece: the last most perfect
'fruit of the noblest tree in our English Forest';

(2) that its story is quite simple; intelligible to a child: (its
basis in fact is fairy-tale, pure and simple--as I tried to show
in a previous lecture);

(3) that in reading it--or in reading "Hamlet," for that matter--
the child has no sense at all of being patronised, of being
'written down to.' And this has the strongest bearing on my
argument. The great authors, as Emerson says, never condescend.
Shakespeare himself speaks to a slip of a boy, and that boy feels
that he _is_ Ferdinand;

(4) that, though Shakespeare uses his loftiest, most accomplished
and, in a sense, his most difficult language: a way of talking it
has cost him a life-time to acquire, in line upon line inviting
the scholar's, prosodist's, poet's most careful study; that
language i