If your taste were classical you would
discover in Lamb a continual fascination; whereas what you in fact do
discover in Lamb is a not unpleasant flatness, enlivened by a vague
humour and an occasional pathos. You ought, according to theory, to be
enthusiastic; but you are apathetic, or, at best, half-hearted. There
is a gulf. How to cross it?
To cross it needs time and needs trouble. The following considerations
may aid. In the first place, we have to remember that, in coming
into the society of the classics in general and of Charles Lamb in
particular, we are coming into the society of a mental superior. What
happens usually in such a case? We can judge by recalling what happens
when we are in the society of a mental inferior. We say things of
which he misses the import; we joke, and he does not smile; what makes
him laugh loudly seems to us horseplay or childish; he is blind to
beauties which ravish us; he is ecstatic over what strikes us as
crude; and his profound truths are for us trite commonplaces. His
perceptions are relatively coarse; our perceptions are relatively
subtle. We try to make him understand, to make him see, and if he is
aware of his inferiority we may have some success. But if he is not
aware of his inferiority, we soon hold our tongues and leave him alone
in his self-satisfaction, convinced that there is nothing to be done
with him.
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