I love that. And Lincoln is a good go to man on that point. Brilliant (and deeply historical) English prose stylist.
Writing /Copying/typing authors is a superb exercise.
Sort of maybe similarly, I remember that Stravinsky always began his day by playing a Bach fugue at his keyboard.
The classics, when we partake of them, will teach us much. And they do in fact help us to get going.
It took me a long time to figure that out. I finally broke down and read Edmund Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution and thought "wow, this is amazing!"
Then a light went off in my head and I thought "yeah, it's a classic"
The thought occurred sometime back: it's narrative that underlies all art. This is the complete antithesis of the reductive tendencies of modernism; there is no such thing as pure art or pure music that can be distilled down to some abstract essence. In other words, song and verse is the root and wellspring of music. If a performer loses that narrative thread, the music goes flat. I've had enough of this arid crap.
I think this connection of music and language acquisition tends to buoy this understanding.
I didn't know that, but it makes sense.