ering of knowledge and are never really learned, we can at least
plead in mitigation that we have high and ancient authority for the
practise. In any event no amount of scholarly deprecation has been
able to turn mankind or that portion of mankind which reads books from
the agreeable habit of making volumes of selections and finding in
them much pleasure, as well as improvement in taste and knowledge.
With the spread of education and with the great increase of literature
among all civilized nations, more especially since the invention of
printing and its vast multiplication of books, the making of volumes
of selections comprizing what is best in one's own or in many
literatures is no longer a mere matter of taste or convenience as with
the Greeks, but has become something little short of a necessity in
this world of many workers, comparatively few scholars, and still
fewer intelligent men of leisure. Anthologies have been multiplied
like all other books, and in the main they have done much good and no
harm. The man who thinks he is a scholar or highly educated because he
is familiar with what is collected in a well-chosen anthology, of
course, errs grievously. Such familiarity no more makes one a master
of literature than a perusal of a dictionary makes the reader a master
of style. But as the latter pursuit can hardly fail to enlarge a man's
vocabulary, so the former adds to his knowledge, increases his stock
of ideas, liberalizes his mind and opens to him new sources of
enjoyment.

The Greek habit was to bring together selections of verse, passages
of especial merit, epigrams and short poems. In the main their example
has been followed. From their days down to the "Elegant Extracts in
Verse" of our grandmothers and grandfathers, and thence on to our own
time with its admirable "Golden Treasury" and "Oxford Handbook of
Verse," there has been no end to the making of poetical anthologies
and apparently no diminution in the public appetite for them. Poetry
indeed lends itself to selection. Much of the best poetry of the world
is contained in short poems, complete in themselves, and capable of
transference bodily to a volume of selections. There are very few
poets of whose quality and genius a fair idea can not be given by a
few judicious selections. A large body of noble and beautiful poetry,
of verse which is "a joy forever," can also be given in a very small
compass. And the mechanical attribute of size, it must be reme