yourself to yourself. You do not exist in order to honour literature
by becoming an encyclopædia of literature. Literature exists for your
service. Wherever you happen to be, that, for you, is the centre of
literature.

Still, for your own sake you must confine yourself for a long time
to recognised classics, for reasons already explained. And though you
should not follow a course, you must have a system or principle. Your
native sagacity will tell you that caprice, left quite unfettered,
will end by being quite ridiculous. The system which I recommend is
embodied in this counsel: Let one thing lead to another. In the sea of
literature every part communicates with every other part; there are no
land-locked lakes. It was with an eye to this system that I originally
recommended you to start with Lamb. Lamb, if you are his intimate, has
already brought you into relations with a number of other prominent
writers with whom you can in turn be intimate, and who will be
particularly useful to you. Among these are Wordsworth, Coleridge,
Southey, Hazlitt, and Leigh Hunt. You cannot know Lamb without knowing
these men, and some of them are of the highest importance. From the
circle of Lamb's own work you may go off at a tangent at various
points, according to your inclination. If, for instance, you are drawn
towards poetry, you cannot, in all English literature, make a better
start than with Wordsworth. And Wordsworth will send you backwards
to a comprehension of the poets against whose influence Wordsworth
fought. When you have understood Wordsworth's and Coleridge's _Lyrical
Ballads_, and Wordsworth's defence of them, you will be in a position
to judge poetry in general. If, again, your mind hankers after an
earlier and more romantic literature, Lamb's _Specimens of English
Dramatic Poets Contemporary with Shakspere_ has already, in an
enchanting fashion, piloted you into a vast gulf of "the sea which is