d Lilies_, and
the same idea was doubtless in Sir John Lubbock's mind when he lectured
on the "Hundred Best Books." But Lord Avebury's list had its
limitations, it seems to me, for any one who has an interest in good
literature and guidance to the reading thereof. To give "Scott" as one
book and "Shakspere" as another was I suggest to shirk much
responsibility of selection. Scott is a whole library, Shakspere is yet
another. One may give "Keats" or "Shelley" because they are more limited
in quantity. Even to name novels by Charles Kingsley and Bulwer Lytton
in this select hundred was to demonstrate to men of this generation that
Lord Avebury being of an earlier one had a bias in favour of the books
that we are all outgrowing. To include Mill's _Logic_ is to ignore the
Time Spirit acting on philosophy; to include Tennyson's _Idylls_ its
action on poetry. Mill and Tennyson will always live in literature but
not I think by these books.

But the fact is that there is no possibility of naming the hundred best
books. No one could quarrel with Lord Avebury if he had named these as
his hundred own favourites among the books of the world. Still, it might
have been _his_ hundred; it could not possibly have been any one else's
hundred because every man of education must make his own choice. No! the
naming of the hundred best books for any large, general audience is quite
impossible. All that is possible in such a connexion is to state
emphatically that there are very few books that are equally suitable to
every kind of intellect. Temperament as well as intellectual endowment
make for so much in reading. Take, for example, the _Imitation_ of
_Christ_. George Eliot, although not a Christian, found it
soul-satisfying. Thackeray, as I think a more robust intellect, found it
well nigh as mischievous as did Eugene Sue, whose anathematizations in
his novel _The Wandering Jew_ are remembered by all. Other books that
have been the outcome of piety of mind leave less room for difference of
opinion. Surely Dante's _Divine Comedy_, and Bunyan's _Pilgrim's
Progress_, make an universal appeal. That universal appeal is the point
at which alone guidance is possible. There are great books that can be
read only by the few, but surely the very greatest appeal alike to the
educated and the illiterate, to the man of rich intellectual endowment
and to the man to whom all processes of reasoning are incomprehensible.
_Hamlet_ is a wond