'Almost as Though One Were Inventing Them'

“[I]t's such a pleasure to write down splendid words--almost as though one were inventing them.”

A reader complains that I quote others too often and, sometimes, at too great a length. I consider quotation an act of courtesy, the least I can do. Great writers have said many things better and more memorably than I. It would be rude to elbow them aside and start bloviating on my own. Besides, the lineage of blogging, in my understanding, traces straight back to the commonplace book.

The line quoted above, for instance, was written by George Lyttleton (1883-1962), a longtime housemaster and English teacher at Eton. His correspondent is Rupert Hart-Davis (1907-1999), a publisher and editor best remembered for editing The Collected Letters of Oscar Wilde (1962). Hart-Davis had been Lyttleton’s student at Eton in 1925-26. They met again at a dinner party in 1955 and started a regular exchange of letters that continued until Lyttleton’s death in 1962. The Lyttelton/Hart-Davis Letters was published in six volumes between 1978 and 1984. I read them about eight years ago.

Hart-Davis wrote the passage at the top when dismissing Lyttelton’s apology for the “tediously otiose” act of quoting Dr. Johnson. I’d be out of business if I couldn’t quote Johnson. That’s how the literary tradition works. Reading isn’t an obligatory, mechanical act, undertaken to earn a degree or impress the rubes. We read to live, to grow, to become ourselves. We’re not in this life alone. Here is Lyttleton, Hart-Davis’ senior by twenty-four years:

“Do you ever get things quite wrong? Because here is the perfect defense: `What is obvious is not always known, what is known is not always present. Sudden fits of inadvertency will surprise vigilance; slight avocations will seduce attention. And casual eclipses of the mind will darken learning.’ Isn’t it perfect? Johnson, of course.”

Lyttleton is quoting from the “Preface” to A Dictionary of the English Language (1755), with its characteristically Johnsonian tone of mingled humility and audacity. Lyttleton's letters are laced with casual references to Johnson’s life and work. Johnson owned a piece of him, as great writers often do. His allusions are never stuffy or deployed in a show-off manner. They amount to the small talk of civilized men. In 1960, Hart-Davis suggests his former teacher reread The Bridge at San Luis Rey (1927) by Thornton Wilder. Lyttleton replies to his former student: “I shall certainly read San Luis Rey again. I remember greatly liking it, and it is high time for a re-reading—on the whole life’s greatest pleasure” – a pleasure sealed when the re-reader quotes the memorable bits.