Milton is best for one mood
and Pope for another. Because a man likes Whitman or Browning or Lowell
he should not feel himself debarred from Tennyson or Kipling or Korner
or Heine or the Bard of the Dimbovitza. Tolstoy's novels are good at one
time and those of Sienkiewicz at another; and he is fortunate who can
relish "Salammbo" and "Tom Brown" and the "Two Admirals" and "Quentin
Durward" and "Artemus Ward" and the "Ingoldsby Legends" and "Pickwick"
and "Vanity Fair." Why, there are hundreds of books like these, each one
of which, if really read, really assimilated, by the person to whom
it happens to appeal, will enable that person quite unconsciously to
furnish himself with much ammunition which he will find of use in the
battle of life.
A book must be interesting to the particular reader at that particular
time. But there are tens of thousands of interesting books, and some of
them are sealed to some men and some are sealed to others; and some stir
the soul at some given point of a man's life and yet convey no message
at other times. The reader, the booklover, must meet his own needs
without paying too much attention to what his neighbors say those needs
should be. He must not hypocritically pretend to like what he does not
like.
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