until I have read Richardson, or Gibbon, for an hour each day."
Thus proving that you regard a classic as a pill, the swallowing of which
merits jam! And the more modern a classic is, the more it resembles
the stuff of the year and the less it resembles the classics
of the centuries, the more easy and enticing do you find that classic.
Hence you are glad that George Eliot, the Brontës, Thackeray,
are considered as classics, because you really *do* enjoy them.
Your sentiments concerning them approach your sentiments concerning
a "rattling good story" in a magazine.


I may have exaggerated--or, on the other hand, I may have understated--
the unsatisfactory characteristics of your particular case,
but it is probable that in the mirror I hold up you recognise
the rough outlines of your likeness. You do not care to admit it;
but it is so. You are not content with yourself. The desire to be
more truly literary persists in you. You feel that there is something
wrong in you, but you cannot put your finger on the spot.
Further, you feel that you are a bit of a sham. Something within you
continually forces you to exhibit for the classics an enthusiasm
which you do not sincerely feel. You even try to persuade yourself
that you are enjoying a book, when the next moment you drop it
in the middle and forget to resume it. You occasionally buy classical works,
and do not read them at all; you practically decide that it is enough
to possess them, and that the mere possession of them gives you a *cachet*.
The truth is, you are a sham. And your soul is a sea of uneasy remorse.
You reflect: "According to what Matthew Arnold says, I ought to be
perfectly mad about Wordsworth's *Prelude*. And I am not. Why am I not?
Have I got to be learned, to undertake a vast course of study,
in order to be perfectly mad about Wordsworth's *Prelude*?