adequate warning of the dangers and disappointments which await
the unwary and the sanguine. The enterprise in which you are engaged
is not facile, nor is it short. I think I have sufficiently predicted
that you will have your hours of woe, during which you may be
inclined to send to perdition all writers, together with
the inventor of printing. But if you have become really friendly
with Lamb; if you know Lamb, or even half of him; if you have formed
an image of him in your mind, and can, as it were, hear him brilliantly
stuttering while you read his essays or letters, then certainly
you are in a fit condition to proceed and you want to know
in which direction you are to proceed. Yes, I have caught
your terrified and protesting whisper: "I hope to heaven
he isn't going to prescribe a Course of English Literature,
because I feel I shall never be able to do it!" I am not.
If your object in life was to be a University Extension Lecturer
in English literature, then I should prescribe something
drastic and desolating. But as your object, so far as
I am concerned, is simply to obtain the highest and most tonic form
of artistic pleasure of which you are capable, I shall not prescribe
any regular course. Nay, I shall venture to dissuade you
from any regular course. No man, and assuredly no beginner,
can possibly pursue a historical course of literature
without wasting a lot of weary time in acquiring mere knowledge
which will yield neither pleasure nor advantage. In the choice of reading
the individual must count; caprice must count, for caprice is often
the truest index to the individuality. Stand defiantly on your own feet,
and do not excuse 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.