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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.

I am not prepared to lay down a complete list, but I am prepared to hint at one. If I had to help a crude but willing taste, I would handle its reading as follows: —

First Period

Reading made up exclusively of recent novels, good, well-written, thoughtful novels, not too startling in form or contents. I would begin on novels because anybody can read a novel, and because the first cleansing operation is to induce the subject to read good novels instead of bad ones. Here is a preliminary list: —

Tony-Bungay (Wells)

Kipps (Wells)

The Custom of the Country (Wharton)

The Old Wives' Tale (Bennett)

The Man of Property (Galsworthy)