You do not know the secret ways of yourself: that is all. A
continuance of interest must inevitably bring you to the keenest
joys. But, of course, experience may be acquired judiciously or
injudiciously, just as Putney may be reached _via_ Walham Green or
_via_ St. Petersburg.
CHAPTER IV
WHERE TO BEGIN
I wish particularly that my readers should not be intimidated by the
apparent vastness and complexity of this enterprise of forming the
literary taste. It is not so vast nor so complex as it looks. There
is no need whatever for the inexperienced enthusiast to confuse and
frighten himself with thoughts of "literature in all its branches."
Experts and pedagogues (chiefly pedagogues) have, for the purpose of
convenience, split literature up into divisions and sub-divisions--such
as prose and poetry; or imaginative, philosophic, historical; or
elegiac, heroic, lyric; or religious and profane, etc., _ad infinitum_.
But the greater truth is that literature is all one--and indivisible.
The idea of the unity of literature should be well planted and fostered
in the head. All literature is the expression of feeling, of passion,
of emotion, caused by a sensation of the interestingness of life. What
drives a historian to write history? Nothing but the overwhelming
impression made upon him by the survey of past times.
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