Project Gutenberg's Confessions of a Book-Lover, by Maurice Francis Egan

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Title: Confessions of a Book-Lover

Author: Maurice Francis Egan

Release Date: December 24, 2007 [EBook #24003]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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CONFESSIONS OF A
BOOK-LOVER

BY

MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN

[Illustration]

GARDEN CITY NEW YORK

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

1922

COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES

AT

THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

IN MEMORY OF

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

A MAN OF ACTION
IN LOVE WITH BOOKS

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. MY BOYHOOD READING 1
Early Recollections.
The Bible.
Essays and Essayists.

II. POETS AND POETRY 76
France--Of Maurice de Gu['e]rin.
Dante.
English and American Verse.

III. CERTAIN NOVELISTS 134

IV. LETTERS, BIOGRAPHIES, AND MEMOIRS 156

V. BOOKS AT RANDOM 205

CONFESSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER

CHAPTER I

MY BOYHOOD READING

_Early Recollections_

To get the best out of books, I am convinced that you must begin to love
these perennial friends very early in life. It is the only way to know
all their "curves," all those little shadows of expression and small
lights. There is a glamour which you never _see_ if you begin to read
with a serious intention late in life, when questions of technique and
grammar and mere words begin to seem too important.

Then you have become too critical to feel through all Fenimore Cooper's
verbiage the real lakes and woods, or the wild fervour of romance
beneath dear Sir Walter's mat of words. You lose the unreclaimable
flavour of books. A friend you may irretrievably lose when you lose a
friend--if you are so