Foundation."

If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at: [email protected]

*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.12.12.00*END*

This etext was produced by Peter Hayes ([email protected]).

Notes on the text.

Literary Taste was first published in August 1909. I have worked from a copy of the "seventh edition" of February 1914. The text was keyed in manually and then scanned; the two versions so produced were then compared using ms word's "track changes" tool and brought into agreement.

Ambiguity arises concerning the intended hyphenation of six words in the original printed text—hill-side, super-eminently, re-birth, school-master, red-gauntlet, hood-winking—which in it are made to run over two lines. I have attempted to hyphenate these words (or not to do so) as I think Bennett would have done, guided in these judgments in part by "A New English Dictionary" (1928), the most authoritative English dictionary published up until Bennett's death in 1931.

Of the three occurrences of the name "Newnes's Thin-Paper Classics",
Bennett hyphenates only one; I have hyphenated all three.

In the list for poets of "Period I", the entry for Beaumont and Fletcher contains an apparent typo, which I have corrected (or altered, at least). For those interested, the original entry for these authors contained no colon before the edition name (Canterbury Poets), and italicised the word 'Plays' only, leaving the words 'a Selection' in plain type.

The book's only footnote has been placed in brackets immediately after the chapter title to which Bennett appended it.

LITERARY TASTE

HOW TO FORM IT

WITH DETAILED INSTRUCTIONS FOR COLLECTING A COMPLETE LIBRARY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE

BY ARNOLD BENNETT

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I THE AIM CHAPTER II YOUR PARTICULAR CASE CHAPTER III WHY A CLASSIC IS A CLASSIC CHAPTER IV WHERE TO BEGIN CHAPTER V HOW TO READ A CLASSIC CHAPTER VI THE QUESTION OF STYLE CHAPTER VII WRESTLING WITH AN AUTHOR CHAPTER VIII SYSTEM IN READING CHAPTER IX VERSE CHAPTER X BROAD COUNSELS CHAPTER XI AN ENGLISH LIBRARY: PERIOD I CHAPTER XII AN ENGLISH LIBRARY: PERIOD II CHAPTER XIII AN ENGLISH LIBRARY: PERIOD III CHAPTER XIV MENTAL STOCKTAKING

Chapter I

THE AIM

At the beginning a misconception must be removed from the path. Many people, if not most, look on literary taste as an elegant accomplishment, by acquiring which they will complete themselves, and make themselves finally fit as members of a correct society. They are secretly ashamed of their ignorance of literature, in the same way as they would be ashamed of their ignorance of etiquette at a high entertainment, or of their inability to ride a horse if suddenly called upon to do so. There are certain things that a man ought to know, or to know about, and literature is one of them: such is their idea. They have learnt to dress themselves with propriety, and to behave with propriety on all occasions; they are fairly "up" in the questions of the day; by industry and enterprise they are succeeding in their vocations; it behoves them, then, not to forget that an acquaintance with literature is an indispensable part of a self-respecting man's personal baggage. Painting doesn't matter; music doesn't matter very much. But "everyone is supposed to know" about literature. Then, literature is such a charming distraction! Literary taste thus serves two purposes: as a certificate of correct culture and as a private pastime. A young professor of mathematics, immense at mathematics and games, dangerous at chess, capable of Haydn on the violin, once said to me, after listening to some chat on books, "Yes, I must take up literature." As though saying: "I was rather forgetting literature. However, I've polished off all these other things. I'll have a shy at literature now."

This attitude, or any attitude which resembles it, is wrong. To him who really comprehends what literature is, and what the function of literature is, this attitude is simply ludicrous. It is also fatal to the formation of literary taste. People who regard literary taste simply as an accomplishment, and literature simply as a distraction, will never truly succeed either in acquiring the accomplishment or in using it half-acquired as a distraction; though the one is the most perfect of distractions, and though the other is unsurpassed by any other accomplishment in elegance or in power to impress the universal snobbery of civilised mankind. Literature, instead of being an accessory, is the fundamental *sine qua non* of complete living. I am extremely anxious to avoid rhetorical exaggerations. I do not think I am guilty of one in asserting that he who has not been "presented to the freedom" of literature has not wakened up out of his prenatal sleep. He is merely not born. He can't see; he can't hear; he can't feel, in any full sense. He can only eat his dinner. What more than anything else annoys people who know the true function of literature, and have profited thereby, is the spectacle of so many thousands of individuals going about under the delusion that they are alive, when, as a fact, they are no nearer being alive than a bear in winter.

I will tell you what literature is! No—I only wish I could. But I can't. No one can. Gleams can be thrown on the secret, inklings given, but no more. I will try to give you an inkling. And, to do so, I will take you back into your own history, or forward into it. That evening when you went for a walk with your faithful friend, the friend from whom you hid nothing— or almost nothing…! You were, in truth, somewhat inclined to hide from him the particular matter which monopolised your mind that evening, but somehow you contrived to get on to it, drawn by an overpowering fascination. And as your faithful friend was sympathetic and discreet, and flattered you by a respectful curiosity, you proceeded further and further into the said matter, growing more and more confidential, until at last you cried out, in a terrific whisper: "My boy, she is simply miraculous!" At that moment you were in the domain of literature.

Let me explain. Of course, in the ordinary acceptation of the word, she was not miraculous. Your faithful friend had never noticed that she was miraculous, nor had about forty thousand other fairly keen observers. She was just a girl. Troy had not been burnt for her. A girl cannot be called a miracle. If a girl is to be called a miracle, then you might call pretty nearly anything a miracle…. That is just it: you might. You can. You ought. Amid all the miracles of the universe you had just wakened up to one. You were full of your discovery. You were under a divine impulsion to impart that discovery. You had a strong sense of the marvellous beauty of something, and you had to share it. You were in a passion about something, and you had to vent yourself on somebody. You were drawn towards the whole of the rest of the human race. Mark the effect of your mood and utterance on your faithful friend. He knew that she was not a miracle. No other person could have made him believe that she was a miracle. But you, by the force and sincerity of your own vision of her, and by the fervour of your desire to make him participate in your vision, did for quite a long time cause him to feel that he had been blind to the miracle of that girl.

You were producing literature. You were alive. Your eyes were unlidded, your ears