always very much a lie, hides as much of life as it displays.
It is men who hold another truth, or, as it seems to us, perhaps, a
dangerous lie, who can extend our restricted field of knowledge, and
rouse our drowsy consciences. Something that seems quite new, or that
seems insolently false or very dangerous, is the test of a reader. If
he tries to see what it means, what truth excuses it, he has the gift,
and let him read. If he is merely hurt, or offended, or exclaims upon
his author's folly, he had better take to the daily papers; he will
never be a reader.

And here, with the aptest illustrative force, after I have laid down
my part-truth, I must step in with its opposite. For, after all, we
are vessels of a very limited content. Not all men can read all books;
it is only in a chosen few that any man will find his appointed food;
and the fittest lessons are the most palatable, and make themselves
welcome to the mind. A writer learns this early, and it is his chief
support; he goes on unafraid, laying down the law; and he is sure at
heart that most of what he says is demonstrably false, and much of a
mingled strain, and some hurtful, and very little good for service;
but he is sure besides that when his words fall into the hands of any
genuine reader, they will be weighed and winnowed, and only that which
suits will be assimilated; and when they fall into the hands of one
who cannot intelligently read, they come there quite silent and
inarticulate, falling upon deaf ears, and his secret is kept as if he
had not written.

NOTES

This article first appeared in the _British Weekly_ for 13 May 1887,
forming Stevenson's contribution to a symposium on this subject by
some of the celebrated writers of the day, including Gladstone,
Ruskin, Hamerton; and others as widely different as Archdeacon Farrar
and Rider Haggard. In the same year (1887) the papers were all
collected and published by the _Weekly_ in a volume, with the title
_Books Which Have Influenced Me_. This essay was later included in the
complete editions of Stevenson's _Works_ (Edinburgh ed., Vol. XI,
Thistle ed., Vol. XXII).

[Note 1: First published in the _British Weekly_, May 13, 1887.]

[Note 2: Of the _British Weekly_.]

[Note 3: _The most influential books ... are works of fiction_. This
statement is undoubtedly true, if we use the word "fiction" in the
sense understood here by Stevenson. It is curious, however, to note
the rise in dignity of "wo