ous thing likely to swell the
store of Aristotle's knowledge.

Yet set them up in a line and survey them--these wearers of crowns and
these wielders of scepters--and how pitiable are they in the paucity
and vanity of their accomplishments! What knew they of the true
happiness of human life? They and their courtiers are dust and
forgotten.

Judge Methuen and I shall in due time pass away, but our
courtiers--they who have ever contributed to our delight and
solace--our Horace, our Cervantes, our Shakespeare, and the rest of the
innumerable train--these shall never die. And inspired and sustained
by this immortal companionship we blithely walk the pathway illumined
by its glory, and we sing, in season and out, the song ever dear to us
and ever dear to thee, I hope, O gentle reader:

Oh, for a booke and a shady nooke,
Eyther in doore or out,
With the greene leaves whispering overhead,
Or the streete cryes all about;
Where I maie reade all at my ease
Both of the newe and old,
For a jollie goode booke whereon to looke
Is better to me than golde!

VI

MY ROMANCE WITH FIAMMETTA

My bookseller and I came nigh to blows some months ago over an edition
of Boccaccio, which my bookseller tried to sell me. This was a copy in
the original, published at Antwerp in 1603, prettily rubricated, and
elaborately adorned with some forty or fifty copperplates illustrative
of the text. I dare say the volume was cheap enough at thirty dollars,
but I did not want it.

My reason for not wanting it gave rise to that discussion between my
bookseller and myself, which became very heated before it ended. I
said very frankly that I did not care for the book in the original,
because I had several translations done by the most competent hands.
Thereupon my bookseller ventured that aged and hackneyed argument which
has for centuries done the book trade such effective service--namely,
that in every translation, no matter how good that translation may be,
there is certain to be lost a share of the flavor and spirit of the
meaning.

"Fiddledeedee!" said I. "Do you suppose that these translators who
have devoted their lives to the study and practice of the art are not
competent to interpret the different shades and colors of meaning
better than the mere dabbler in foreign tongues? And then, again, is
not human life too short for the lover of books to spend his precious
time digging out the recondite a