What causes the passionate few to make such a fuss about literature?
There can be only one reply. They find a keen and lasting pleasure
in literature. They enjoy literature as some men enjoy beer. The
recurrence of this pleasure naturally keeps their interest in
literature very much alive. They are for ever making new researches,
for ever practising on themselves. They learn to understand
themselves. They learn to know what they want. Their taste becomes
surer and surer as their experience lengthens. They do not enjoy
to-day what will seem tedious to them to-morrow. When they find a book
tedious, no amount of popular clatter will persuade them that it is
pleasurable; and when they find it pleasurable no chill silence of the
street-crowds will affect their conviction that the book is good and
permanent. They have faith in themselves. What are the qualities in a
book which give keen and lasting pleasure to the passionate few?
This is a question so difficult that it has never yet been completely
answered. You may talk lightly about truth, insight, knowledge,
wisdom, humour, and beauty. But these comfortable words do not really
carry you very far, for each of them has to be defined, especially the
first and last.
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