Read it through once

It is essential to recognize that the past can be rediscovered only by the presence of a present sensibility that can appreciate it; and that the past has no power to oblige the critic unless it can be made to speak to him as an immediate reality. The critic who is merely scholastic, who is devoted to antiquarian research, may have a vast knowledge of the history of literature, but he may be quite incapable of judging what is great in that literature, because greatness requires the concurrence of a contemporary taste. The study of the past, therefore, should be pursued, not for the sake of possessing knowledge as a collection of facts, but for the sake of understanding how the present can be enlightened by the past. The critic's duty to tradition involves a continual process of assimilation and selection, a discrimination that preserves what is valuable and discards what is accidental.