practice, we shall equip ourselves better by seeking, so far as we may,
how the thing is done than by standing at gaze before this or that
masterpiece and murmuring 'Isn't that beautiful! How in the world, now...!'

I am told that these lectures are criticised as tending to make you
conceited: to encourage in you a belief that you can do things, when it
were better that you merely admired. Well I would not dishearten you by
telling to what a shred of conceit, even of hope, a man can be reduced
after twenty-odd years of the discipline. But I can, and do, affirm that
the farther you penetrate in these discoveries the more sacred the
ultimate mystery will become for you: that the better you understand the
great authors as exemplars of practice, the more certainly you will
realise what is the condescension of the gods.

Next time, then, we will attempt an enquiry into the capital difficulty
of Prose.




LECTURE V.

INTERLUDE: ON JARGON

Thursday, May 1


We parted, Gentlemen, upon a promise to discuss the capital difficulty of
Prose, as we have discussed the capital difficulty of Verse. But,
although we shall come to it, on second thoughts I ask leave to break the