The study of literature is a mysterious process. It is not, generally speaking, the literature which is mysterious, but the way it is treated in some schools and universities. In some schools and some universities, it must be said, for there is still a decent spread of sane people in these establishments. But when no less a person than Professor Marilyn Butler tells us that, of the hundreds of candidates she interviewed, in her Oxford days, most of those from state schools 'had not done any work before 1900, except Shakespeare,' there is reason to be worried. We can forget Shakespeare, in this context; he has at least the merit that he sometimes writes for television. It is the more obscure figures who are the difficulty. I suppose the argument against producing them for the inspection of the young must be their notorious lack of relevance. But relevance to what? Broadly speaking, the 'relevant' is what fits in neatly with what we know already, and so there is no danger of giving rise to thought, or of provoking any tremor not already licensed by the media.

Older writers are naturally rather more dangerous. One and all they suffer from the draw-back of having lived before the universal enlightenment of the 20th century. They not only wore funny clothes; their heads were stuffed with extraordinary prejudices. Some even imagined they could have social superiors, as well as inferiors, and the sorry state of society in their times gave a certain ...