ed at as superficial. It is
all that we know, or need to know, about scores of authors. One may never
study higher mathematics, but it may be good for him to know that Lagrange
was a French author who wrote on analytical mechanics, that Euclid was a
Greek geometer, and that Hamilton invented quaternions. All this and
vastly more may be impressed on the mind by an hour in the mathematical
alcove of a library of moderate size. And it will do no harm to a boy to
know that Benvenuto Cellini wrote his autobiography, even if the
inevitable perusal of the book is delayed for several years, or that
Felicia Hemans, James Thomson, and Robert Herrick wrote poetry,
independently of familiarity with their works, or that "Lamia" is not
something to eat or "As you like it" a popular novel. Information of this
kind is almost impossible to acquire from lists or from oral statement,
whereas a moment's handling of a book in the concrete may fix it in the
mind for good and all. So far, we have not supposed that even a word of
the contents has been read. What, now, if a sentence, a stanza, a
paragraph, a page, passes into the brain through the eye? Those who
measure literary effect by the thousand words or by the hour are making a
great mistake. The lightning flash is over in a fraction of a second, but
in that time it may reveal a scene of beauty, may give the traveller
warning of the fatal precipice, or may shatter the farmer's home into
kindling wood. Intellectual lightning may strike the "browser" as he
stands there book in hand before the shelf. A word, a phrase, may sear
into his brain--may turn the current of his whole life. And even if no
such epoch-making words meet his eye, in how brief a time may he read,
digest, appreciate, some of the gems of literature! Leigh Hunt's "Jennie
kissed me" would probably take about thirty seconds; on a second reading
he would have it by heart--the joy of a life-time. How many meaty epigrams
would take as long? The whole of Gray's "Elegy" is hardly beyond the
browser's limit.

In an editorial on the Harvard Classics in the "Chicago evening post",
(April 22), we read, "the cultural tabloid has very little virtue;... to
gain everything that a book has to give one must be submerged in it,
saturated and absorbed". This is very much like saying, "there is very
little nourishment in a sandwich; to get the full effect of a luncheon you
must eat everything on the table". It is a truism to say that you can no