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