age or time, thoughts which rise to the mind as
naturally and spontaneously when the deeper secrets of life
are in question, as proverbs do in its more obvious and
superficial aspects.... Nowhere, indeed, will you find
greater penetration and profundity, or greater refinement
and delicacy than in these essays (of Emerson).... After a
lapse of ten or fifteen years ... no increase of experience
or reflection has enabled me to add or suggest aught by way
of commentary on these great and penetrating observations on
human life that is not either more superficial or less
true.... Until Emerson is understood, no observer of human
life making any pretension to originality can, in my
judgment, consider his reputation safe, or his work free
from the danger of being undermined by this great master of
human thought.

If some scholar on whose judgment we relied were to speak in these terms
of a book that was only to be read in Persian or Icelandic, how
cheerfully we should bend ourselves to the task of learning these
difficult tongues for the sake of the reward--the possession of the
coveted thought. But the writings of Emerson are in our own language and
accessible in the cheapest editions. If to us personally Emerson does
not make this supreme appeal, there are other writers, all at hand, set
apart from the great multitude of lesser spirits by that final weigher
of human talents whom Bacon calls Good Fame. It is not that among the
myriad volumes of a library we must painfully and largely by accident
discover the few of highest worth--scanning each doubtfully as one
searches for an unknown visitor in the crowd alighting from a train. No,
the best books are the best known, the most accessible. Lists of the
ten, the fifty, the one hundred best books are at our disposal, and, if
they do not always represent final judgments, are near enough for
practical purposes. The will to read the best books is all that we need
to supply--the rest has been done for us. And is there anyone who turns
with indifference from the high and free privilege of making the
greatest spirits that have ever lived his bosom friends, his companions
and counselors? If there be such a one, would that I might repeat to him
more of that glorious chant in praise of books that has been sung by the
wise of all ages, from Socrates to Gladstone. I have given a few of
these tributes already; I will clos