the electric cylinder till it yields you, for your toy to play with, that subtle fire in which our earth was forged; you know of the nations that have towered high in the world, and the lives of the men who have saved whole empires from oblivion. What more will you ever learn?" Here is the author in epitome, and a whole treatise on education in a few words. Such a man he had grown to be as one might have expected from the boy whom his mother had taught to love Homer and sit firm in the saddle. Conceive, too, when the day came on which the man at last found himself going "southward to that very plain between Troy and the tents of the Greeks," how the reality of that very sea-view which had bounded the sight of the Greeks "visibly acceded to him and rolled full in upon his brain." Conceive the keen delight of such a lover in verifying Homer when the map and the poet disagreed concerning the place from whence it was possible for Jove to overlook the scene of action before Ilion, from above the island of Samothrace:

"Samothrace, according to the map, appeared to be not only out of all seeing distance from the Troad, but to be entirely shut out from it by the intervening Imbros, which is a larger island, stretching its length athwart the line of sight from Samothrace to Troy. Piously allowing that the eagle eye of Jove might have seen the strife even from his own Olympus, I still felt that if a station were to be chosen from which to see the fight, Old Homer. . . would have meant to give the Thunderer a station within the reach of men's eyes from the plains of Troy. I think this testing of the poet's words by map and compass may have shaken a little of my faith in the completeness of his knowledge. Well, now I had come; there to the south was Tenedos, and here at my side was Imbros, all right, and according to the map-but aloft over Imbros, aloft in a far-away heaven, was Samothrace, the watch-tower

of Jove! Now, then, I believed, now I knew Homer had passed along here."

For me, also, when I read this, Homer had "passed along here,"-Homer and more than Homer; I breathed that atmosphere which binds the remotest past with the most living present, I stood at the mystic point where the world of reality and the outlying world of imagination touch and cleave.

Loitering the other day in another library, my attention was arrested by long shelves full of volumes labeled Masterpieces of Literature. This, then, was a street of palaces; here lived, as I recognized when I opened door after door of their dwellings, the world's greatest orators, the world's greatest poets, the world's greatest essayists, and so on with the list of royal names. He who held one of these volumes in his hand gripped the essence of a dozen great personalities, an essence whose intangible revelation we call genius.

I have never asked what genius is; if it were possible to pull it in pieces, to resolve it into its component parts, no power on our globe could put it together again. It is not the subtle forces that grow within us, but the flame that transfuses them, of which genius is born,and who, of his own choosing or not choosing, shall light that flame?

Yet these mighty creatures may be, and some of them, indeed, are, mine own familiar friends. They live, uncomplaining, on my bookshelves and are even so far my servants that they must, at will, answer to my mood. When I desire "words six cubits long," I may open the doors of that sombre-hued Milton who ought, indeed, to be clothed in royal purple- and make him scatter garlands of wild-flowers for me, or join with Dante in discoursing on heaven and hell. I can compel Demosthenes to break forth into eloquence, Plato to argue and expound, Shakespeare to probe the human heart, Montaigne and Walt Whitman to “celebrate themselves;" yet no one of these

will ever wholly resolve for me the secret of his mystery. The angel with the flaming sword ever keeps watch over the closed gate.

It is not, however, into the concealments of the frankly great that one hopes to penetrate; one may be content to leave the gods on their pedestals, and yet not able to refrain from poking and prodding the lesser divinities in the hope of discovering what spark has touched their clod. Would Pope be rated a " prince of poets" if he wrote in our day? Would Prior, Gay, Crabbe, and their like make themselves remembered? Would a modern Hannah More find admirers to hand her name down to coming generations?

One reads sheaves of criticism on the work of modern writers; this one shows immense promise; this may be the poet, the essayist, the novelist, for whom the world is waiting; yet in a short year, or maybe two, the reading public has almost forgotten the names of the gifted ones. Who knows what shall live? What constitutes the final court of appeal?

For, in spite of individual differences of opinion, there is such a court, and its deliberate verdict stands. My neighbor, who is a person of good literary judgment, when she wishes to be truly happy, seeks an easy chair, and a volume of Trollope's novels. I have tried the same recipe for content, but find it only productive of soporific influences and boredom. Yet the court is with her; this is standard fiction. Another neighbor - this is a bookish corner - finds sweetness and light in Henry James. In such verdict she has so many supporters that, as one who desires to think herself not wholly lacking, I involve myself every now and then in spasmodic struggles to believe that this skillful hairsplitter and myself speak the same language.

The conversations between his characters seem to be written in English, but are they? It was only the other day that I brought home The Ambassadors in another vain attempt to nail Mr. James's

colors to my mast. The writer of The Upton Letters has aptly said that when he reads Mr. James's writings he " never knows who has got the ball." In The Ambassadors one was not - at least I was not left in any such dilemma. It was obvious to me from the first that Chad had the ball. Chad, as I conceived him, was no such mysterious creature as he seemed to loom in the mind of his creator. He held the ball by no merit of his own, but simply because the interference was too poor to deprive him of it. Yet when Chad talked, or Strether talked, or Maria talked, or anybody talked, however comprehensible each or any one might have been with his mouth shut, in conversation one lost them irrevocably. Occasionally Mr. James himself got confused during these conversational mysteries and recovered himself from the quagmire by making somebody remark, "Chad is wonderful," or "Maria is wonderful," or in more point-blank fashion, You are wonderful." And so they were wonderful, each and all—but why ?

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Here, too, the court is against me; this is standard writing. For my own leisure reading, when I desire to be both soothed and refreshed, I choose Mrs. Oliphant's novels. I think it probable that Anthony Trollope's books, dull as they seem to me, have yet a considerable lease of life because they contain a faithful representation of dullnesses permanently existing in English life and society; Mr. James's writings, with all their ambiguities, possess a core of felicity of style which will preserve itself like a fly in amberclouded amber! I do not know how far Mrs. Oliphant's stories show enduring qualities, just as I do not entirely know why it is that they so endear themselves to me, but I feel sure they will last my time, which is sufficient assurance for a purely selfish reader.

It has frequently been said that if Mrs. Oliphant had not been obliged to write for a maintenance she might have done better work; but though I regret her need I do not personally mourn her lack of

greater opportunity. Her work, just as it is, fills some unformulated yearning of my nature. I do not care for all her stories equally, some of them do not attract me at all, but I care for them in the aggregate enough to wish sincerely that she had written a dozen more. I find them not too tedious, but just tedious enough; not too engrossing, but just engrossing enough. When anxieties and exasperations press, when the world is too much with me, when animate and inanimate things reach the limit of depravity, I retire into Mrs. Oliphant's precincts as David retired to the Cave of Adullam, and by her aid escape from my enemies.

I like especially the Scotch atmosphere of some of her books: The Wizard's Son, for instance, is full of it. I know Loch Houran and Oona's Isle as if I had visited them from childhood, and I have walked on the island terrace in the glowering darkness of the winter evenings with Oona and Lord Erradeen, and seen the mysterious light stream from the ruined tower of Kinlock-houran upon the black glimmer of the water, until my flesh crept most agreeably. It creeps too when I sit in the curtained chamber of the ruined tower itself and wait with its owner for the ghostly appearances and disappearances of his wizard-ancestor.

It is the story of Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde over again, told less adroitly, but also less brutally. And the ghost is not a cheap ghost. Moreover, Mrs. Oliphant's is the happier solution, because in her version of the eternal struggle the spirit of evil is vanquished by the union of two people resolved to work together for good. When I saw my first Scotch twilight I remembered Mrs. Oliphant's description of such an hour in the opening pages of It was a Lover and His Lass, a book which is to me a pure idyl in every page. Lewis Grantly, entering for the first time the Scotch village which had been the family seat of his benefactor, Sir Patrick Murray, comes suddenly upon the great, white, windowless palace which the latter has left unfinished. The

scene is very adroitly managed: the huge barrack of a house, with its rows of glassless windows like so many empty sockets without eyes, is set amidst "avenues of an exotic splendor, tall arancarias, of kin to nothing else that flourishes in Scotland, blue-green pines of a rare species, and around these, in long-drawn circles, lines of level green terraces upon which you can walk for miles." The travelers entered by a gate to which a castellated lodge had been attached, but the place was empty like the castle itself. A slight uncertainty of light, like a film in the air, began to gather as they came in sight of the house, not darkening so much as confusing the silvery clearness of the sky and crystalline air. This was all new to the stranger. He had never been out in such an unearthly, long-continued day. It was like fairy-land or dreamland, he could not tell which. . . . The sky was like an opal descending into purest yellow, remounting into a visionary, faint blue, just touched with gossamer veils of cloud; and into this strange, unearthly light suddenly arose the great white bulk of the palace, with its rows upon rows of hollow eyes looking out into space."

My first Scotch twilight was in Edinburgh, and I saw that same fairylike "uncertainty," and "film of light," falling in the summer evening upon the climbing roofs of the old town. Scott saw it many a time "confusing the silvery clearness of the sky" above the hills beyond Abbotsford. It touches with unearthly glamour the ruined aisles of Dryburgh and the lovely traceries of Melrose's shattered windows; and I never recognized that eerie radiance without remembering Mrs. Oliphant and the idyllic tale in which I had first seen it described a story full of human atmosphere and human interest, a prose poem, though its main attraction lies only in the quiet delineation of character.

In moments of relaxation from the strain of impossibly-gifted heroes and incredibly sophisticated heroines, it gives

one joy to remember Lewis Grantly, not handsome, not brilliant, not self-confident, with no pretensions to having "drunk life to the lees," as is the fashion of the accepted hero; yet not wholly commonplace, after all, unless kindness and sweet patience and sacrifice and honor may be counted everyday virtues. This story of personal preferences in the choice of authors is, perhaps, only important as it bears upon the unity in diversity and diversity in unity of taste among people who would make equal claim to a liking for "good reading." It all bears, also, indirectly, upon the rather intangible something which enters into the vital essence of good reading itself, the quality on the presence or absence of which the final court of appeal bases its decisions. This quality will always be, in a sense, a more or less mysterious possession, because for a time one author seems to have it and yet has it not, and another seems not to have it until one day the generations discover that he has been kept from his rightful place among the immortals only by the failure to recognize what suddenly seems genius unmistakable.

The quality which makes a thing live does not necessarily seem to be related to any widespread need for or appreciation of the thing itself. I turned the pages just now of an article on the writings of Richard Crashaw, from which I learn that two at least of Crashaw's poems "belong to the highest order of lyrical writing." This poet began writing about 1632. His works still live, though probably nine-tenths of the people of this generation never heard of him, and former generations have gone contentedly to their graves without realizing that he belonged either to the "best ten" or "best hundred" lyrical authorities. Chaucer continues to be a “well of English undefiled," and the mere fact that comparatively few persons ever seek his fountain at the source does not remove his name from "Fame's eternal beadroll." The verdict once authoritatively

delivered, an author's wealth apparently remains wealth, whether there be many or few to share his hoards; and this catholicity of range gives one comfortable liberty to pick and chose.

The lines of individual discrimination, moreover, are frequently interesting. This is why the varying literary tastes of my neighbors have a value for me. One likes to try in how many other minds one can obtain a foothold. My neighbor who admires James reads, as a rule, little modern literature, but she is at home in Latin and English classics. In current fiction, an Italian novel would interest her more than an English one. My neighbor who reads Trollope enjoys a generous range of desultory reading. Each sends me home stimulated to fresh fields of research.

I overheard one man telling another on a railway train the other day that the second chorus of the Antigone was to him the finest poetry in the world. He was a stalwart-seeming man, meditative, but with a spark in his eye. I marked him, because the Antigone does not appeal to weaklings. When I reached a library I looked his second chorus up and liked the mouth-filling words of it, — robust, like their admirer,—though the third chorus would suit my individual taste just as well. I shall probably never see that man again, but, nevertheless, I am grateful to him for giving me, in passing, a foothold in his territory. Whether we meet or not, we both dwell within the confines of that area of good reading where genius finds its home.

I have, of late, in current literature, chanced upon several groupings of the heroines of fiction with whom a man might desire permanent friendship, and found Diana of the Crossways included in each group. It is to me an interesting interpretation of the mind of man that Diana should recur so frequently. My own objection to her if I know myself

is not the obvious feminine jealousy of superior wit and beauty, so much as the dissatisfaction one is entitled to feel

with a lady who claims so much and performs so little. I have never been able to distinguish between Diana's aphorisms and her epigrams, and it is only when they are labeled that I know her jokes when I see them. Surely no other Irishman or Irishwoman was ever guilty of such laborious witticisms as those with which Diana and Dan Merion convulsed their audiences. Yet Diana must be a creation of genius or she could not thus impose herself upon the affections of discerning men.

Every now and then some sort of ordeal of selection is proposed, in which people are inveigled into making mention of the one book or five books or ten books with which each would be most content to retire to a solitary island; a scheme, by the way, which seems to me to offer almost the only environment for genuine reading which our century can afford. I have often thought that I would like to pick out fifty or more representative types of all classes and conditions of men, and start them off for their respective islands, every man fitted out with five volumes embodying his own deliberate and unbiased choice.

The list of books would be an illuminating one, and the results, if each exile could be secluded for six months with his chosen library, might be even more illuminating. There are moments when I long to take four exhausting and exhaustive classics under my own arm, sneak a volume of Mrs. Oliphant beneath my apron, and go into banishment myself; and then if I could hide three of my giants and grind over the other one until its essence became brain of my brain and soul of my soul, I might emerge a wiser and a better woman.

But even if I possessed the wisdom which the thorough digestion of one monumental author would give me, I fear I should still make the boundaries of

my possible area of good reading nebulous ones and, with my full permission, many unrecognized ghosts would wander there. I should admit every man who has ever left the impress of an indisputably individual personality upon his book, and in that event the Abbé Barthélemy and the writer of Glimpses and Gatherings would be keeping the borders with Mr. Pepys, Benvenuto Cellini, the fishful Isaak Walton, and the melancholy Burton. It may be that the Reverend Mr. Drew would have to play in the outfield, but he would still be within seeing distance of Montaigne pitching "hot balls" to Walt Whitman.

The poet who has written only one sure-enough" poem would be there; nor would I deny admittance to him who has produced a single living line or, perhaps, only a phrase which the world has taken and made its own. I am not sure that I should close the gate on the first cave-dweller who used a symbol for an idea. If I swelled this number with every writer whose outpourings have ever given a stimulating uplift to any humblest reader, I should, perchance, be opening the way for much queer company; such catholicity, however, would surely entitle one to fling wide a side-entrance for those longing souls who have been gifted with the chaotic elements but not the visible flame of immortality. It is true my company would be select only as life is select, and no other how; but the kingdom of which I dream would be too narrow if it did not afford room for the whole tissue and fabric of valiant living. The high dramatists have always found use for a chorus, and in supplying that need one may remember that aspiration sometimes counts almost more than achievement. The final test of success, whatever the "practical" world may⚫ say to the contrary, does not altogether consist in "getting there."