are some who appear to suppose that
the "best" are known only to experts in an esoteric way, who may reveal
to inquirers what schoolboys and betting-men describe as "tips." There
are no "tips" in literature; the "best" authors are never dark horses;
we need no "crammers" and "coaches" to thrust us into the presence of
the great writers of all time. "Crammers" will only lead us wrong. It is
a thing far easier and more common than many imagine, to discover the
best. It needs no research, no learning, and is only misguided by
recondite information. The world has long ago closed the great assize of
letters and judged the first places everywhere. In such a matter the
judgment of the world, guided and informed by a long succession of
accomplished critics, is almost unerring. When some Zoilus finds
blemishes in Homer, and prefers, it may be, the work of some Apollonius
of his own discovering, we only laugh. There may be doubts about the
third and fourth rank; but the first and the second are hardly open to
discussion. The gates which lead to the Elysian fields may slowly wheel
back on their adamantine hinges to admit now and then some new and
chosen modern. But the company of the masters of those who know, and in
especial degree of the great poets, is a roll long closed and complete,
and they who are of it hold ever peaceful converse together.

Hence we may find it a useful maxim that, if our reading be utterly
closed to the great poems of the world, there is something amiss with
our reading. If you find Milton, Dante, Calderon, Goethe, so much
"Hebrew-Greek" to you; if your Homer and Virgil, your Moliere and Scott,
rest year after year undisturbed on their shelves beside your school
trigonometry and your old college text-books; if you have never opened
the _Cid, the Nibelungen, Crusoe_, and _Don Quixote_ since you were a
boy, and are wont to leave the Bible and the Imitation for some wet
Sunday afternoon--know, friend, that your reading can do you little real
good. Your mental digestion is ruined or sadly out of order. No doubt,
to thousands of intelligent educated men who call themselves readers,
the reading through a Canto of _The Purgatorio_, or a Book of the
_Paradise Lost_, is a task as irksome as it would be to decipher an
ill-written manuscript in a language that is almost forgotten. But,
although we are not to be always reading epics, and are chiefly in the
mood for slighter things, to be absolutely unable to read Milt