Given the mind that in
compiling such a list would at once drag in The Odyssey and The
Psalms, and run hastily on to Sir Thomas Browne and Charles Lamb, we
are instinctively conscious that when it reaches, with its arbitrary
divining rod, our own unlucky age, it will skip quite lightly over
Thackeray; wave an ambiguous hand in the direction of Meredith, and
sit solemnly down to make elaborate mention of all the published works
of Walter Pater, Thomas Hardy and Mr. Henry James.
It seems to me that nothing is more necessary, in regard to the advice
to be given to young and ardent people, in the matter of their
reading, than some sort of communication of the idea--and it is not an
easy idea to convey--that there is in this affair a subtle fusion
desirable between one's natural indestructible prejudices, and a
certain high authoritative standard; a standard which we may name, for
want of a better word, "classical taste," and which itself is the
resultant amalgam of all the finest personal reactions of all the
finest critical senses, winnowed out, as it were, and austerely
purged, by the washing of the waves of time.
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