odels of style. We are perfectly conscious, as we
proceed, that they are not to be trusted as authorities, and perhaps it
is so on the very account which renders them irresistibly attractive.
Some of the most celebrated literary compositions in our language are
more or less strongly imbued with the spirit of partisanship or a leaven
of constitutional bias; yet we like to have them by us to steal
half-an-hour's delight, just as we resort sometimes to alluring but
dangerous stimulants. We have in our mind, not volumes of fiction, not
even the historical novel, but serious narratives purporting to describe
the annals of our country and the lives of our countrymen and
countrywomen. We take them up and we lay them down with pleasure, and it
is agreeable to feel that they are not far away; and they will not do us
greater harm, if we combine an acquaintance with their deficiencies and
faults as well as with their beauties, than the fascinating associates
with whom we exchange civilities in the drawing-room or at the club, and
with whose haunts and opinions we are alike unconcerned. Of the romances
under the soberer names of history, biography, and criticism, which
abound in all the literatures of nearly all times, we are at liberty to
credit as much or as little as we choose; but in how many instances we
should regret to lose, or not to have inherited, these; and the personal
partiality which constitutes the blemish here and there equally
constitutes the merit.

What makes us return again and again to certain books in all
literatures, forgetful of chronology and biographical dictionaries?
What draws us irresistibly for the twentieth time to works of such
different origin and character as Herodotus, Caesar, Aulus Gellius,
Browne's _Urn-Burial_ and _Religio Medici_, Pepys's _Diary_, Defoe's
_Robinson Crusoe_, Boswell's _Life of Johnson_, and a handful of
authors nearer to our own day? Is it not their breadth, catholicism,
and sincerity? Is it not precisely those qualities which no sublunar
systems of computing time can affect or delimit? If we take
successively in hand the _Odyssey_, the _Arabian Nights_, the
_Canterbury Tales_, _Don Quixote_, _Gil Blas de Santillane_, and
_Robinson Crusoe_, do we without some reflection realise that between
the first and the last in order of production thousands of years
intervened? Most of the romances of chivalry and the _Faery Queen_
strike us as more antiquated than Homer, assuredly more so