It is among the books then, and not among the readers, that we
must do our selecting. But how? On what principle or principles?
Sometime in the days of my youth, a newspaper, "The Pall Mall
Gazette," then conducted by W. T. Stead, made a conscientious
effort to solve the riddle by inviting a number of eminent men to
compile lists of the Hundred Best Books. Now this invitation
rested on a fallacy. Considering for a moment how personal a
thing is Literature, you will promptly assure yourselves that
there is--there can be--no such thing as the Hundred Best Books.
If you yet incline to toy with the notion, carry it on and
compile a list of the Hundred Second-best Books: nay, if you
will, continue until you find yourself solemnly, with a brow
corrugated by responsibility, weighing the claims (say) of
Velleius Paterculus, Paul and Virginia and Mr Jorrocks to
admission among the Hundred Tenth-best Books. There is, in fact
no positive hierarchy among the classics. You cannot appraise the
worth of Charles Lamb against the worth of Casaubon: the worth of
Hesiod against the worth of Madame de Sévigné: the worth of
Théophile Gautier against the worth of Dante or Thomas Hobbes or
Macchiavelli or Jane Austen. They all wrote with pens, in ink,
upon paper: but you no sooner pass beyond these resemblances than
your comparison finds itself working in impari materia.
Also why should the Best Books be 100 in number, rather than 99
or 199? And under what conditions is a book a Best Book? There
are moods in which we not only prefer Pickwick to the Rig-Vedas
or Sakuntalà, but find that it does us more good. In our day
again I pay all respect to Messrs Dent's "Everyman's Library." It
was a large conception vigorously planned. But, in the nature of
things, Everyman is going to arrive at a point beyond which he
will find it more and more difficult to recognise himself: at a
point, let us say, when Everyman, opening a new parcel, starts to
doubt if, after all, it wouldn't be money in his pocket to be
Somebody Else.
X
And yet, may be, "The Pall Mall Gazette" was on the right scent.
For it was in search of masterpieces: and, however we teach, our
trust will in the end repose upon masterpieces, upon the great
classics of whatever Language or Literature we are handling: and
these, in any language are neither enormous in number and mass,
nor extraordinarily difficult to detect, nor (best of all)
forbidding to the reader by reason of their own difficulty. Upon
a selected few of these--even upon three, or two, or one--we may
teach at least a surmise of the true delight, and may be some
measure of taste whereby our pupil will, by an inner guide, be
warned to choose the better and reject the worse when we turn him
loose to read for himself.
To this use of masterpieces I shall devote my final lecture.
[Footnote 1: Charles Reade notes this in "The Cloister and the
Hearth," chap. LXI.]
[Footnote 2: The loose and tautologous style of this Preface is
worth noting. Likely enough Browne wrote it in a passion that
deprived him of his habitual self-command. One phrase alone
reveals the true Browne--that is, Browne true to himself: 'and
time that brings other things to light, should have satisfied me
in the remedy of its oblivion.']