Sparks are flying all about the
place, and it will be not less than a miracle if something combustible
and indestructible in you does not take fire.
I have only one cautionary word to utter. You may be saying to
yourself: "So long as I stick to classics I cannot go wrong." You can
go wrong. You can, while reading naught but very fine stuff, commit
the grave error of reading too much of one kind of stuff. Now there
are two kinds, and only two kinds. These two kinds are not prose and
poetry, nor are they divided the one from the other by any differences
of form or of subject. They are the inspiring kind and the informing
kind. No other genuine division exists in literature. Emerson, I
think, first clearly stated it. His terms were the literature of
"power" and the literature of "knowledge." In nearly all great
literature the two qualities are to be found in company, but one
usually predominates over the other. An example of the exclusively
inspiring kind is Coleridge's _Kubla Khan_. I cannot recall any
first-class example of the purely informing kind. The nearest approach
to it that I can name is Spencer's _First Principles_, which, however,
is at least once highly inspiring. An example in which the inspiring
quality predominates is _Ivanhoe_; and an example in which the
informing quality predominates is Hazlitt's essays on Shakespeare's
characters.
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