contain names which were found in none of the others; in the latter case, it is very unlikely that any list would contain a name which was not also mentioned in several. "If I were confined to a score of English books," said Southey, "Sir Thomas Browne would, I think, be one of them; nay, probably it would be one if the selection were cut down to twelve. My library, if reduced to these bounds, would consist of Shakespeare, Chaucer, Spenser, and Milton; Jackson, Jeremy Taylor, and South; Isaac Walton, Sydney's "Arcadia,” Fuller's "Church History," and Sir Thomas Browne; and what a wealthy and well-stored mind would that man have, what an inexhaustible reservoir, what a Bank of England to draw upon for profitable thoughts and delightful associations, who should have fed upon them." Some of the names in the above list will strike the reader as curious. Jackson, South, and even Fuller's "Church History" and Sydney's "Arcadia" are not books which can be ranked among general favourites. But Southey found in them the mental food best adapted to his constitution, and therefore preferred them to others of greater intrinsic merit and much wider popularity. In books, as in other things, tastes differ very much. Not a few, whether they are honest enough to confess it or not, agree with worthy George III. in thinking that Shakespeare often wrote "sad stuff;" some people, by no means deficient in abilities, can read "Pickwick" without a laugh or even a smile; Macaulay, Mr. Trevelyan tells us, was so disgusted with the unconventional style of Ruskin and Carlyle that he refused even to look at their works.

It is, therefore, not at all surprising that when a young reader takes up a book which, he has heard, is enrolled in the list of English classics, he should not unfrequently find little in it to please him, and thus be tempted to think that it has been overrated. But if, as in the case we suppose, the book is one which has stood the test of time, he may be sure he is wrong. "Nature," writes Emerson, "is much our friend in

1 Doubtless from inadvertence, Southey mentions only eleven writers. Who the twelfth was affords matter for curious speculation.

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this matter. Nature is always clarifying her water and her wine; no filtration can be so perfect. She does the same thing by books as by her gases and plants. There is always a selection in writers, and then a selection from the selection. In the first place, all books that get fairly into the open air of the world were written by the successful class, by the affirming and advancing class, who utter what tens of thousands feel. though they cannot say. There has already been a scrutiny and choice from many hundreds of young pens before the pamphlet or political chapter which you read in a fugitive journal comes to your eye. All these are young adventurers, who produce their performances to the wise ear of Time, who sits and weighs, and ten years hence out of a million of pages reprints one. Again, it is judged, it is winnowed by all the winds of opinion-and what terrific selection has not passed on it before it can be reprinted after twenty years-and reprinted after a century! It is as if Minos and Rhadamanthus had indorsed the writing. 'Tis therefore an economy of time to read old and famed books. Nothing can be preserved which is not good." We might almost add that whatever has not been preserved is not good. Those whose duty or inclination leads them to wander in literary bypaths sometimes come across forgotten writers in whom they find a certain tone of manner or feeling which gives them, in their eyes, more attractiveness than is possessed by writers whose praises are echoed by thousands. But all attempts to resuscitate such books fail as utterly as attempts to lower the position of books which have been accepted as classical. The opinion of the majority of readers during many years is better than that of any individual reader, or any small coterie of readers, however high their gifts or attainments may be.

It often happens that wider knowledge and culture lead one who at first was unable to recognise the merits of a classical author to see his error and acquiesce in the general verdict. In the case of our older authors, there are preliminary difficulties of style and language, which must, at the cost of some trouble, be vanquished before they can be read with pleasure.

The practice of "dipping into" an author and reading bit here and there is productive of a great deal of literary heterodoxy. It is, for example, a not uncommon remark that articles, of which the writers are never heard of, but which are as good as any in the Spectator or Tatler, appear in our newspapers every day. No doubt there is a very large amount of talent now employed in newspaper-writing; nevertheless our average journalists are not Steeles or Addisons. The reason, in most cases, why newspaper articles are thought equal to the Spectator is because the former deal with living subjects, subjects which are interesting people at the moment, while the latter, having been written more than a century and a half ago, has an antique flavour about it. The Spectator cannot be appreciated but by those who, not content with dipping into it here and there, have read at least a considerable portion of it, and thus gained such a knowledge of the manners and opinions which prevailed when it was written as to be able to enter into the spirit of the work. A newspaper article, referring to matters occupying the minds of all, may be perused with pleasure without any preparation.

But though increased knowledge and wider culture generally lead one to acquiesce in received opinions regarding the value of authors, they do not always do so. Every critic, however large his range and however keen his discernment, occasionally meets in with works of great fame of which he cannot appreciate the merit. He may, indeed, be able to perceive the qualities which cause others to admire them, but they are written in a vein which he cannot bring himself to like the tone of sentiment running through them, or the style in which they are written, is repugnant to his nature. The fact that this is so, generally leads to a plentiful indulgence in what Mr. James Payn has so happily christened "sham admiration in literature." People praise books which they have never been able to read, or which they have only read at the cost of much labour and weariness, not because they like them themselves, but simply because they have heard others praise them. It is melancholy to reflect how

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much of our current criticism upon classical authors is of this nature, consisting of mere windy rhetoric, not of the unbiassed and honest expression of the critic's real opinions. The practice is both an unprofitable and a dishonest one. Much more is to be learned from the genuine opinions of an able man, even though these opinions be erroneous, than from the repetition of conventional critical dicta. Johnson's "Lives of the Poets" contain many incorrect critical judgments; but does any one suppose that the work would have been of more value if, instead of relating in manly and straightforward fashion the opinions of his own powerful, if somewhat narrow, understanding, he had merely repeated the "orthodox" criticisms on such writers as Milton and Gray? Even Jeffrey's articles on Wordsworth-those standing examples of blundering criticism—are much more useful and interesting to the intelligent reader than the thrice-repeated laudatory criticisms. which are now so often uttered by countless insincere devotees of the poet of the Lakes. Every student of literature should make an honest effort to form opinions for himself, and not take up too much with borrowed criticism. Critical essays, books of literary history, books of select extracts, are all very useful as aids to the study of great writers, but they ought not, as is too often the case, to be made a substitute for the study of the writers themselves. Infinitely more is to be learned from the reading of "Hamlet" than from the reading of a hundred studies on that drama. If, after having made a fair attempt to peruse some author whose works are in high repute, the reader finds that he is engaged in a field of literature which presents no attractions to him; that he is studying a writer with whom he has no sympathy, who strikes no respondent chord in his own nature; the best course for him is to abandon the vain attempt to like what he does not like, to admire what he really does not admire. Shakespeare's famous lines—

"No profit goes where is no pleasure ta'en,

In brief, sir, study what you most affect,"

convey thoroughly sound advice, provided, of course, that

proper pains be taken to extend one's culture as widely as possible, and that opinions regarding the profitableness or unprofitableness of studying certain authors be not formed without due deliberation. In the study of literature, as in other studies, interest advances as knowledge increases; very frequently books which to the tyro seem "weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable," are those which he afterwards comes to regard as among his most cherished intellectual possessions.

A very attractive and instructive way of studying literature is to select some great book or some great author as a nucleus round which to group one's knowledge of the writers of a period. If, for example, one studies that universally delightful book, Boswell's "Life of Johnson," and follows up the clues which its perusal suggests, a very competent knowledge of a large part of the literature of the eighteenth century may De acquired. Boswell's frequent cutting allusions to his rival, Sir John Hawkins, naturally induce us to read that worthy's Life of the "great lexicographer," in which, amid much trash and tedious moralising, many curious and suggestive details are to be found. In a similar way, his obvious dislike of Mrs. Piozzi draws attention to that lively lady's entertaining gossip; while the glimpses he gives of the life and conversation of most of the celebrated writers of the period, such as Burke, Goldsmith, Robertson, Hume, inspire us with a desire to become acquainted with their writings and with the particulars of their lives. Or if Pope be taken as the vantage-ground from which to survey the literary landscape around, how easily and pleasantly are we introduced to the acquaintance, not only of the greater figures of the time,--Addison, Swift, Bolingbroke, Arbuthnot, and others, but of the smaller fry, the ragged denizens of Grub Street, so mercilessly satirised in the "Dunciad." No one can know Dryden thoroughly without picking up, almost imperceptibly it may be, an immense fund of information about the many curious literary products of the Restoration; and few more interesting literary studies could be suggested than, taking Shakespeare as a centre, to mark wherein he differed from his predecessors and