People who don't want to live, people who
would sooner hibernate than feel intensely, will be wise to eschew
literature. They had better, to quote from the finest passage in a
fine poem, "sit around and eat blackberries." The sight of a "common
bush afire with God" might upset their nerves.
CHAPTER II
YOUR PARTICULAR CASE
The attitude of the average decent person towards the classics of his
own tongue is one of distrust--I had almost said, of fear. I will not
take the case of Shakespeare, for Shakespeare is "taught" in schools;
that is to say, the Board of Education and all authorities pedagogic
bind themselves together in a determined effort to make every boy in
the land a lifelong enemy of Shakespeare. (It is a mercy they don't
"teach" Blake.) I will take, for an example, Sir Thomas Browne, as
to whom the average person has no offensive juvenile memories. He is
bound to have read somewhere that the style of Sir Thomas Browne is
unsurpassed by anything in English literature. One day he sees the
_Religio Medici_ in a shop-window (or, rather, outside a shop-window,
for he would hesitate about entering a bookshop), and he buys it, by
way of a mild experiment. He does not expect to be enchanted by it;
a profound instinct tells him that Sir Thomas Browne is "not in his
line"; and in the result he is even less enchanted than he expected to
be.
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