We are capable of believing, not only that we love books which
we do not love, but that we have read books which we have
not read. A lifelong intimacy with their titles, a partial
acquaintance with modern criticism, a lively recollection of
many familiar quotations--these things come in time to be
mistaken for a knowledge of the books themselves. Perhaps in
youth it was our ambitious purpose to storm certain bulwarks of
literature; but we were deterred by their unpardonable length.
It is a melancholy truth, which may as well be acknowledged
at the start, that many of the books best worth reading are
very, very long, and that they can not, without mortal hurt,
be shortened. Nothing less than a shipwreck on a desert island
in company with Froissart’s “Chronicles” would give us leisure
to peruse this glorious narrative, and it is useless to hope
for such a happy combination of chances. We might, indeed, be
wrecked--that is always a possibility--but the volume saved
dripping from the deep would be “Soldiers of Fortune,” or
“Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch.”--AGNES REPPLIER,
“Compromises.”
(274)