The beauty of a
classic is not at all apt to knock you down. It will steal over you,
rather. Many serious students are, I am convinced, discouraged in the
early stages because they are expecting a wrong kind of pleasure. They
have abandoned Worcester sauce, and they miss it. They miss the coarse
_tang_. They must realise that indulgence in the _tang_ means the
sure and total loss of sensitiveness--sensitiveness even to the _tang_
itself. They cannot have crudeness and fineness together. They must
choose, remembering that while crudeness kills pleasure, fineness ever
intensifies it.
CHAPTER VIII
SYSTEM IN HEADING
You have now definitely set sail on the sea of literature. You are
afloat, and your anchor is up. I think I have given adequate warning
of the dangers and disappointments which await the unwary and the
sanguine. The enterprise in which you are engaged is not facile, nor
is it short. I think I have sufficiently predicted that you will
have your hours of woe, during which you may be inclined to send to
perdition all writers, together with the inventor of printing. But if
you have become really friendly with Lamb; if you know Lamb, or even
half of him; if you have formed an image of him in your mind, and can,
as it were, hear him brilliantly stuttering while you read his essays
or letters, then certainly you are in a fit condition to proceed and
you want to know in which direction you are to proceed.
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