are Montaigne, Lord Bacon, Addison, Goldsmith, Macaulay, Sir
James Stephen, Cardinal Newman, De Quincey, Charles Lamb, Washington
Irving, Emerson, Froude, Lowell, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. You may spend
many a delightful hour in the perusal of any one of these authors.

We come now to poetry, which some people consider very unsubstantial
pabulum, but which forms one of the most precious and inspiring portions
of the literature of the world. In all ages, the true poet has exercised
an influence upon men's minds that is unsurpassed by that of any other
class of writers. And the reason is not far to seek. Poetry deals with
the highest thoughts, in the most expressive language. It gives utterance
to all the sentiments and passions of humanity in rhythmic and harmonious
verse. The poet's lines are remembered long after the finest compositions
of the writers of prose are forgotten. They fasten themselves in the
memory by the very flow and cadence of the verse, and they minister to
that sense of melody that dwells in every human brain. What the world
owes to its great poets can never be fully measured. But some faint idea
of it may be gained from the wondrous stimulus given through them to the
imaginative power, and from the fact that those sentiments of human
sympathy, justice, virtue, and freedom, which inspire the best poetry of
all nations, become sooner or later incarnated in their institutions.
This is the real significance of the oft-quoted saying of Andrew
Fletcher, that stout Scotch republican of two centuries ago, that if one
were permitted to make all the ballads of a nation, he need not care who
should make the laws.

In the best poetry, the felicity of its expressions of thought, joined
with their rhythmical form, makes it easy for the reader to lay up almost
unconsciously a store in the memory of the noblest poetic sentiments, to
comfort or to divert him in many a weary or troubled hour. Hence time is
well spent in reading over and over again the great poems of the world.
Far better and wiser is this, than to waste it upon the newest trash that
captivates the popular fancy, for the last will only tickle the
intellectual palate for an hour, or a day, and be then forgotten, while
the former will make one better and wiser for all time.

Nor need one seek to read the works of very many writers in order to fill
his mind with images of truth and beauty which will dwell with him
forever. The really great poets in the