It doesn't matter in the
slightest degree where you begin. Begin wherever the fancy takes you
to begin. Literature is a whole.
There is only one restriction for you. You must begin with an
acknowledged classic; you must eschew modern works. The reason for
this does not imply any depreciation of the present age at the expense
of past ages. Indeed, it is important, if you wish ultimately to have
a wide, catholic taste, to guard against the too common assumption
that nothing modern will stand comparison with the classics. In every
age there have been people to sigh: "Ah, yes. Fifty years ago we had
a few great writers. But they are all dead, and no young ones are
arising to take their place." This attitude of mind is deplorable, if
not silly, and is a certain proof of narrow taste. It is a surety that
in 1959 gloomy and egregious persons will be saying: "Ah, yes. At
the beginning of the century there were great poets like Swinburne,
Meredith, Francis Thompson, and Yeats. Great novelists like Hardy and
Conrad. Great historians like Stubbs and Maitland, etc., etc. But they
are all dead now, and whom have we to take their place?" It is not
until an age has receded into history, and all its mediocrity has
dropped away from it, that we can see it as it is--as a group of men
of genius.
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