greatest of literary pleasures. It is also the least easy to attain and
there are some people who never do attain it. I met some one the other
day who did not care for poetry at all; it gave her no pleasure, no
satisfaction, and only caused her to reflect how much better the
thought, so it seemed to her, could be expressed in prose. In the same
way there are people who care nothing for music. I knew one Englishman
of whom it was said that he knew only two tunes: one was the national
anthem, "God Save the King," and the other wasn't. We cannot help these
people if they do not care for poetry or music, but I may offer you one
or two suggestions founded on my own experience with regard to poetry.
There is much poetry for which most of us do not care, but with a little
trouble when we are young we may find one or two poets whose poetry, if
we get to know it well, will mean very much to us and become part of
ourselves. Poetry does not become intimate to us through the intellect
alone; it comes to us through temperament, one might almost say enters
us through the pores of the skin, and it is as if when we get older our
skin becomes dry and our temperament hard and we can read only with the
head. It is when we are young, before we reach the age of thirty-five,
that we must find out the great poet or poets who have really written
specially for us; and if we are happy enough to find one poet who seems
to express things which we have consciously felt in our own personal
experience, or to have revealed to us things within ourselves of which
we were unconscious until we found them expressed in poetry, we have
indeed got a great possession. The love for such poetry which comes to
us when we are young will not disappear as we get older; it will remain
in us, becoming an intimate part of our own being, and will be an
assured source of strength, consolation, and delight.

There is another branch of literature to which I must make a passing
reference: it is that of philosophy. I am bound to refer to it here