If he is of those who talk about "this age of shams,"
"this age without ideals," "this hysterical age," and this
heaven-knows-what-age--

Then that man, though he reads undisputed classics for twenty hours a day,
though he has a memory of steel, though he rivals Porson in scholarship
and Sainte-Beuve in judgment, is not receiving from literature
what literature has to give. Indeed, he is chiefly wasting his time.
Unless he can read differently, it were better for him if he sold
all his books, gave to the poor, and played croquet.
He fails because he has not assimilated into his existence
the vital essences which genius put into the books that have merely
passed before his eyes; because genius has offered him faith, courage,
vision, noble passion, curiosity, love, a thirst for beauty,
and he has not taken the gift; because genius has offered him
the chance of living fully, and he is only half alive, for it is only
in the stress of fine ideas and emotions that a man may be
truly said to live. This is not a moral invention, but a simple fact,
which will be attested by all who know what that stress is.


What! You talk learnedly about Shakespeare's sonnets!
Have you heard Shakespeare's terrific shout:

Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy.

And yet, can you see the sun over the viaduct at Loughborough Junction