appreciating supreme perfection in
literature will be disputed by none; yet the great bulk of his vast
literary industry was expended upon the lives and writings of authors
whose lives Mr. Harrison would desire us to forget, and whose writings
almost wring from him the wish that the art of printing had never been
discovered.

I am even bold enough to hazard the conjecture (I trust he will forgive
me) that Mr. Harrison's life may be quoted against Mr. Harrison's
theory. I entirely decline to believe, without further evidence, that
the writings whose vigor of style and of thought have been the delight
of us all are the product of his own system. I hope I do him no wrong,
but I cannot help thinking that if we knew the truth, we should find
that he followed the practice of those worthy physicians who, after
prescribing the most abstemious diet to their patients, may be seen
partaking freely, and to all appearances safely, of the most succulent
and the most unwholesome of the forbidden dishes.

It has to be noted that Mr. Harrison's list of the books which deserve
perusal would seem to indicate that in his opinion, the pleasures to be
derived from literature are chiefly pleasures of the imagination. Poets,
dramatists, and novelists form the chief portion of the somewhat meagre
fare which is specifically permitted to his disciples. Now, though I
have already stated that the list is not one of which any person is
likely to assert that it contains books which ought to be excluded, yet,
even from the point of view of what may be termed aesthetic enjoyment,
the field in which we are allowed to take our pleasures seems to me
unduly restricted.

Contemporary poetry, for instance, on which Mr. Harrison bestows a good
deal of hard language, has and must have, for the generation which
produces it, certain qualities not likely to be possessed by any other.
Charles Lamb has somewhere declared that a pun loses all its virtues as
soon as the momentary quality of the intellectual and social atmosphere
in which it was born has changed its character. What is true of this,
the humblest effort of verbal art, is true in a different measure and
degree of all, even of the highest, forms of literature. To some extent
every work requires interpretation to generations who are separated by
differences of thought or education from the age in which it was
originally produced. That this is so with every book which depends for
its interest upon feeli