regard to the form, the peculiar character of a book depends
upon the _person_ who wrote it. It may treat of matters which are
accessible to everyone and well known; but it is the way in which they
are treated, what it is that is thought about them, that gives the
book its value; and this comes from its author. If, then, from this
point of view a book is excellent and beyond comparison, so is its
author. It follows that if a writer is worth reading, his merit rises
just in proportion as he owes little to his matter; therefore, the
better known and the more hackneyed this is, the greater he will be.
The three great tragedians of Greece, for example, all worked at the
same subject-matter.

So when a book is celebrated, care should be taken to note whether it
is so on account of its matter or its form; and a distinction should
be made accordingly.

Books of great importance on account of their matter may proceed from
very ordinary and shallow people, by the fact that they alone have had
access to this matter; books, for instance, which describe journeys in
distant lands, rare natural phenomena, or experiments; or historical
occurrences of which the writers were witnesses, or in connection
with which they have spent much time and trouble in the research and
special study of original documents.

On the other hand, where the matter is accessible to everyone or very
well known, everything will depend upon the form; and what it is
that is thought about the matter will give the book all the value
it possesses. Here only a really distinguished man will be able to
produce anything worth reading; for the others will think nothing but
what anyone else can think. They will just produce an impress of
their own minds; but this is a print of which everyone possesses the
original.

However, the public is very much more concerned to have matter than
form; and for this very reason it is deficient in any high degree of
culture. The public shows its preference in this respect in the most
laughable way when it comes to deal with poetry; for there it devotes
much trouble to the task of tracking out the actual events or personal
circumstances in the life of the poet which served as the occasion of
his various works; nay, these events and circumstances come in the end
to be of greater importance than the works themselves; and rather than
read Goethe himself, people prefer to read what has been written about
him, and to study the legend of F