How many green daffodil heads, trying to
burst their painful way through the heavy earth of a dull life, has Mr
Bennett trampled on? Is it impossible to find some one who is (as Mr
Bennett certainly is), capable of the highest artistic appreciation and
of high literary achievement, and who will, for a moment, put himself in
the place of the people he is addressing? Is it impossible for an adult
to remember that as a boy he hated the classics? Has he forgotten that
as a young man he could be charmed, but educated only by means of a
machine like the one they use for stuffing geese? The people we want to
introduce to literature are, nearly all of them, people who work; some
earn thirty shillings a week, and ponder a great deal on how to live on
it; some earn hundreds a year and are not much better off; all are
occupied with material cares, their work, their games, their gardens,
their loves; nearly all are short of time, and expend on work, transit,
and meals, ten to twelve hours a day. They read in tubes and omnibuses,
in the midst of awful disturbance and overcrowding; also they are deeply
corrupted by the daily papers, where nothing over a column is ever
printed, where the news are conveyed in paragraphs and headlines, so
that they never have to concentrate, and find it difficult to do so;
they are corrupted too by the vulgarity and sensationalism which are the
bones and blood of the magazines, until they become unable to think
without stimulants.

It is no use saying those people are lost. They are not lost, but they
have gone astray, or rather, nobody has ever tried to turn their faces
the right way. Certainly Mr Arnold Bennett does nothing for them. If
they could read _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ they would,
but they cannot. People cannot plunge into old language, old
atmospheres; they have no links with these things; their imagination is
not trained to take a leap; many try, and nearly all fail because their
literary leaders go to sleep, or march them into bogs. No crude mind can
jump into ancient literature; modern literature alone can help it,
namely cleanse its _nearest_ section, and prepare it for further strain.
The limits of literary taste can, in each person, be carried as far as
that person's intellectual capacity goes, but only _by degrees_. In
other words, limit your objective instead of failing at a large
operation.

I am not prepared to lay down a complete list, but I am prepared to hint