y of literature; and they do not happen to have a
taste for literature. This is a great mistake.

Of course it is impossible, or at any rate very difficult, properly to
study anything whatever without the aid of printed books. But if you
desire to understand the deeper depths of bridge or of boat-sailing you
would not be deterred by your lack of interest in literature from
reading the best books on bridge or boat-sailing. We must, therefore,
distinguish between literature, and books treating of subjects not
literary. I shall come to literature in due course.

Let me now remark to those who have never read Meredith, and who are
capable of being unmoved by a discussion as to whether Mr. Stephen
Phillips is or is not a true poet, that they are perfectly within their
rights. It is not a crime not to love literature. It is not a sign of
imbecility. The mandarins of literature will order out to instant
execution the unfortunate individual who does not comprehend, say, the
influence of Wordsworth on Tennyson. But that is only their impudence.
Where would they be, I wonder, if requested to explain the influences
that went to make Tschaikowsky's "Pathetic Symphony"?

There are enormous fields of knowledge quite outside literature which
will yield magnificent results to cultivators. For example (since I
have just mentioned the most popular piece of high-class music in
England to-day), I am reminded that the Promenade Concerts begin in
August. You go to them. You smoke your cigar or cigarette (and I
regret to say that you strike your matches during the soft bars of the
"Lohengrin" overture), and you enjoy the music. But you say you cannot
play the piano or the fiddle, or even the banjo; that you know nothing
of music.

What does that matter? That you have a genuine taste for music is
proved by the fact that, in order to fill his hall with you and your
peers, the conductor is obliged to provide programmes from which bad
music is almost entirely excluded (a change from the old Covent Garden
days!).

Now surely your inability to perform "The Maiden's Prayer" on a piano
need not prevent you from making yourself familiar with the
construction of the orchestra to which you listen a couple of nights a
week during a couple of months! As things are, you probably think of
the orchestra as a heterogeneous mass of instruments producing a
confused agreeable mass of sound. You do not listen for details
because you have never t