a healthy boy generally reads these
plays for the first time. From such
a reading one will get information and
refreshment; more than one English
statesman has confessed that he owed
his knowledge of certain periods of
English history largely to Shakes-
peare. On the other hand, one may
read these plays for the joy of the
art that is in them, and for the
enrichment which comes from con-
tact with the deep and tumultuous
life which throbs through them; and
this is the kind of reading which
produces culture, the reading which
means enlargement and ripening.

The feeling for literature, like the
feeling for art in general, is not only
susceptible of cultivation, but very
quickly responds to appeals which
are made to it by noble or beautiful
objects. It is essentially a feeling,

[[66]]

p065 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p066w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p067

v?