And so, with a dead lift as it were, I got rid of him. He left the room
muttering, 'But to read it through--three times, ten times, for all
one's life?' And I was obliged to confess to myself that such a
prolonged course of study, even of 'Don Quixote,' would have been
wearisome.

Rabelais is another article of our literary faith, that is certainly
subscribed to much more often than believed in. In a certain poem of Mr.
Browning's (_I_ call it the Burial of the Book, since the Latin name he
has given it is unpronounceable, even if it were possible to recollect
it), charmingly humorous, and which is also remarkable for impersonating
an inanimate object in verse as Dickens does in prose, there occur these
lines:

'Then I went indoors, brought out a loaf,
Half a cheese and a bottle of Chablis,
Lay on the grass, and forgot the oaf
Over a jolly chapter of Rabelais.'

Yet I have known some wonder to be expressed (confidentially) as to
where he found the 'jolly chapter,' and the looking for the beauties of
Rabelais to be likened to searching in a huge dung-heap for a few heads
of asparagus.

I have no quarrel with Bias and Company (though they stick at nothing,
and will presently say that I don't care for these books myself), but I
venture to think that they are wrong in making dogmas of what are, after
all, but matters of literary taste; it is their vehemence and
exaggeration which drive the weak to take refuge in falsehood.

A good woman in the country once complained of her stepson, 'He will not
love his learning, though I beats him with a jack-chain;' and from the
application of similar aids to instruction, the same result takes place
in London. Only here we dissemble and pretend to love it. It is partly
in consequence of this that works, not only of acknowledged but genuine
excellence, such as those I have been careful to select, are, though so
universally praised, so little read. The poor student attempts them, but
failing--from many causes no doubt, but also sometimes from the fact of
their not being there--to find those unrivalled beauties which he has
been led to expect in every sentence, he stops short, where he would
otherwise have gone on. He says to himself, 'I have been deceived,' or
'I must be a born fool;' whereas he is wrong in both suppositions. I am
convinced that the want of popularity of Walter Scott among the rising
generation is partly due to this extravagant laudation; and I