in the University of Matrimony. (T. Fisher Unwin.)

TO READ OR NOT TO READ
(_Pall Mall Gazette_, February 8, 1886.)

Books, I fancy, may be conveniently divided into three classes:

1. Books to read, such as Cicero's _Letters_, Suetonius, Vasari's _Lives
of the Painters_, the _Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini_, Sir John
Mandeville, Marco Polo, St. Simon's _Memoirs_, Mommsen, and (till we get
a better one) Grote's _History of Greece_.

2. Books to re-read, such as Plato and Keats: in the sphere of poetry,
the masters not the minstrels; in the sphere of philosophy, the seers not
the _savants_.

3. Books not to read at all, such as Thomson's _Seasons_, Rogers's
_Italy_, Paley's _Evidences_, all the Fathers except St. Augustine, all
John Stuart Mill except the essay on _Liberty_, all Voltaire's plays
without any exception, Butler's _Analogy_, Grant's _Aristotle_, Hume's
_England_, Lewes's _History of Philosophy_, all argumentative books and
all books that try to prove anything.

The third class is by far the most important. To tell people what to
read is, as a rule, either useless or harmful; for, the appreciation of
literature is a question of temperament not of teaching; to Parnassus
there is no primer and nothing that one can learn is ever worth learning.
But to tell people what not to read is a very different matter, and I
venture to recommend it as a mission to the University Extension Scheme.

Indeed, it is one that is eminently needed in this age of ours, an age
that reads so much, that it has no time to admire, and writes so much,
that it has no time to think. Whoever will select out of the chaos of
our modern curricula 'The Worst Hundred Books,' and publish a list of
them, will confer on the rising generation a real and lasting benefit.

After expressing these views I suppose I should not offer any suggestions
at all with regard to 'The Best Hundred Books,' but I hope you will allow
me the pleasure of being inconsistent, as I am anxious to put in a claim
for a book that has been strangely omitted by most of the excellent
judges who have contributed to your columns. I mean the _Greek
Anthology_. The beautiful poems contained in this collection seem to me
to hold the same position with regard to Greek dramatic literature as do
the delicate little figurines of Tanagra to the Phidian marbles, and to
be quite as necessary for the complete understanding of the Greek spirit.

I am also amazed to