as much as you please. Explanatory criticism is very useful; nearly
as useful as pondering for oneself on what one has read! Explanatory
criticism may throw one single gleam that lights up the entire
subject.

My second consideration (in aid of crossing the gulf) touches the
quality of the pleasure to be derived from a classic. It is never a
violent pleasure. It is subtle, and it will wax in intensity, but
the idea of violence is foreign to it. The artistic pleasures of
an uncultivated mind are generally violent. They proceed from
exaggeration in treatment, from a lack of balance, from attaching too
great an importance to one aspect (usually superficial), while quite
ignoring another. They are gross, like the joy of Worcester sauce on
the palate. Now, if there is one point common to all classics, it is
the absence of exaggeration. The balanced sanity of a great mind makes
impossible exaggeration, and, therefore, distortion. The beauty of a
classic is not at all apt to knock you down. It will steal over you,
rather. Many serious students are, I am convinced, discouraged in the
early stages because they are expecting a wrong kind of pleasure. They
have abandoned Worcester sauce, and they miss it. They miss the coarse
_tang_. They must realise that indulgence in the _tang_ means the
sure and total loss of sensitiveness--sensitiveness even to the _tang_
itself. They cannot have crudeness and fineness together. They must
choose, remembering that while crudeness kills pleasure, fineness ever
intensifies it.




CHAPTER VIII