Consequently his criticism has been more popular than Matthew
Arnold's. As an example of this freer, more varied critical style,
let us cite the opening paragraphs of the lecture "Of Queens' Gardens"--in
"Sesame and Lilies":
From "Sesame and Lilies."
It will be well . . that I should shortly state to you my general
intention. . . The questions specially proposed to you in my former
lecture, namely How and What to Read, rose out of a far deeper one,
which it was my endeavor to make you propose earnestly to yourselves,
namely, Why to Read I want you to feel, with me, that whatever advantage
we possess in the present day in the diffusion of education and of
literature, can only be rightly used by any of us when we have
apprehended clearly what education is to lead to, and literature to
teach. I wish you to see that both well directed moral training and
well chosen reading lead to the possession of a power over the
ill-guided and illiterate, which is, according to the measure of it, in
the truest sense kingly;* conferring indeed the purest kingship that can
exist among men. Too many other kingships (however distinguished by
visible insignia or material power) being either spectral, or tyrannous;
spectral---that is to say, aspects and shadows only of royalty, hollow
as death, and which only the "likeness of a kingly crown have on;"
or else tyrannous---that is to say, substituting their own will for the
law of justice and love by which all true kings rule.
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