I keep
my books at the British Museum and at Mudie's, and it makes me very
angry if any one gives me one for my private library. I once heard
two ladies disputing in a railway carriage as to whether one of them
had or had not been wasting money. "I spent it in books," said the
accused, "and it's not wasting money to buy books." "Indeed, my
dear, I think it is," was the rejoinder, and in practice I agree
with it. Webster's Dictionary, Whitaker's Almanack, and Bradshaw's
Railway Guide should be sufficient for any ordinary library; it will
be time enough to go beyond these when the mass of useful and
entertaining matter which they provide has been mastered.
Nevertheless, I admit that sometimes, if not particularly busy, I
stop at a second-hand bookstall and turn over a book or two from
mere force of habit.
I know not what made me pick up a copy of AEschylus--of course in an
English version--or rather I know not what made AEschylus take up
with me, for he took me rather than I him; but no sooner had he got
me than he began puzzling me, as he has done any time this forty
years, to know wherein his transcendent merit can be supposed to
lie. To me he is, like the greater number of classics in all ages
and countries, a literary Struldbrug, rather than a true ambrosia-
fed immortal. There are true immortals, but they are few and far
between; most classics are as great impostors dead as they were when
living, and while posing as gods are, five-sevenths of them, only
Struldbrugs.
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