uthor whom we have chosen
for our favourite, we may in this intimacy possibly resemble him. It is
to be feared that, if we do not form such a permanent attachment, we may
be acquiring knowledge, while our enervated taste becomes less and less
lively. Taste embalms the knowledge which otherwise cannot preserve
itself. He who has long been intimate with one great author will always
be found to be a formidable antagonist; he has saturated his mind with
the excellences of genius; he has shaped his faculties insensibly to
himself by his model, and he is like a man who ever sleeps in armour,
ready at a moment! The old Latin proverb reminds us of this fact, _Cave
ab homine unius libri_: Be cautious of the man of one book!

Pliny and Seneca give very safe advice on reading: that we should read
much, but not many books--but they had no "monthly list of new
publications!" Since their days others have favoured us with "Methods of
Study," and "Catalogues of Books to be Read." Vain attempts to
circumscribe that invisible circle of human knowledge which is
perpetually enlarging itself! The multiplicity of books is an evil for
the many; for we now find an _helluo librorum_ not only among the
learned, but, with their pardon, among the unlearned; for those who,
even to the prejudice of their health, persist only in reading the
incessant book-novelties of our own time, will after many years acquire
a sort of learned ignorance. We are now in want of an art to teach how
books are to be read, rather than not to read them: such an art is
practicable. But amidst this vast multitude still let us be "the man of
one book," and preserve an uninterrupted intercourse with that great
author with whose mode of thinking we sympathise, and whose charms of
composition we can habitually retain.

It is remarkable that every great writer appears to have a predilection
for some favourite author; and, with Alexander, had they possessed a
golden casket, would have enshrined the works they so constantly turned
over. Demosthenes felt such delight in the history of Thucydides, that,
to obtain a familiar and perfect mastery of his style, he re-copied his
history eight times; while Brutus not only was constantly perusing
Polybius, even amidst the most busy periods of his life, but was
abridging a copy of that author on the last awful night of his
existence, when on the following day he was to try his fate against
Antony and Octavius. Selim the Second had the Comm