k should teach us either
to enjoy life or endure it. "Give us enjoyment!" "Teach us endurance!"
Hearken to the ceaseless demand and the perpetual prayer of an ever
unsatisfied and always suffering humanity!

How is a book to answer the ceaseless demand?

Self-forgetfulness is the essence of enjoyment, and the author who would
confer pleasure must possess the art, or know the trick, of destroying
for the time the reader's own personality. Undoubtedly the easiest way
of doing this is by the creation of a host of rival personalities--hence
the number and the popularity of novels. Whenever a novelist fails, his
book is said to flag; that is, the reader suddenly (as in skating) comes
bump down upon his own personality, and curses the unskillful author. No
lack of characters, and continual motion, is the easiest recipe for a
novel, which like a beggar should always be kept "moving on." Nobody
knew this better than Fielding, whose novels, like most good ones, are
full of inns.

When those who are addicted to what is called "improving reading"
inquire of you petulantly why you cannot find change of company and
scene in books of travel, you should answer cautiously that when books
of travel are full of inns, atmosphere, and motion, they are as good as
any novel; nor is there any reason in the nature of things why they
should not always be so, though experience proves the contrary.

The truth or falsehood of a book is immaterial. George Borrow's 'Bible
in Spain' is, I suppose, true; though now that I come to think of it in
what is to me a new light, one remembers that it contains some odd
things. But was not Borrow the accredited agent of the British and
Foreign Bible Society? Did he not travel (and he had a free hand) at
their charges? Was he not befriended by our minister at Madrid, Mr.
Villiers, subsequently Earl of Clarendon in the peerage of England? It
must be true: and yet at this moment I would as lief read a chapter of
the 'Bible in Spain' as I would 'Gil Bias'; nay, I positively would give
the preference to Senor Giorgio. Nobody can sit down to read Borrow's
books without as completely forgetting himself as if he were a boy in
the forest with Gurth and Wamba.

Borrow is provoking and has his full share of faults, and though the
owner of a style, is capable of excruciating offences. His habitual use
of the odious word "individual" as a noun-substantive (seven times in
three pages of 'The Romany Rye') elicits the fre