idance of his own
eccentric judgment quite as much as he followed traditional estimate.
Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Milton of course had undisputed possession of
the department devoted to the "Kings of Epic," as he styled them.
Sophocles, Calderon, Corneille, and Shakespeare were all that he
admitted to his list of "Kings of Tragedy." Lope he rejected on literary
grounds, and Goethe because he thought his moral tendency bad. He
rejected Rabelais from his chief humorists, but accepted Cervantes, Le
Sage, Moliere, Swift, Hood, and the then fresh Pickwick of Boz. To these
he added the Georgia Scenes of Mr. Longstreet, insisting that they were
quite equal to Don Quixote. I can only stop to mention one other
department in his Academy. One case was devoted to the "Best Stories,"
and an admirable set they were! I wish that anything of mine were worthy
to go into such company. His purity of feeling, almost ascetic, led him
to reject Boccaccio, but he admitted Chaucer and some of Balzac's, and
Smollett, Goldsmith, and De Foe, and Walter Scott's best, Irving's Rip
Van Winkle, Bernardin St. Pierre's "Paul and Virginia," and "Three
Months under the Snow," and Charles Lamb's generally overlooked
"Rosamund Gray." There were eases for "Socrates and his Friends," and
for other classes. He had amused himself for years in deciding what
books should be "crowned," as he called it, and what not. And then he
had another case, called "The Inferno." I wish there was space to give a
list of this department. Some were damned for dullness and some for
coarseness. Miss Edgeworth's Moral Tales, Darwin's Botanic Garden,
Rollin's Ancient History, and a hideously illustrated copy of the Book
of Martyrs were in the First-class, Don Juan and some French novels in
the second. Tupper, Swinburne, and Walt Whitman he did not know.

In the corner next the donjon chimney was a little room with a small
fireplace. Thus the hermit economized wood, for wood meant time, and
time meant communion with his books. All of his domestic arrangements
were carried on after this frugal fashion. In the little room was a
writing-desk, covered with manuscripts and commonplace books.

"Well, my young friend, you're thrice welcome," said Andrew, who never
dropped his book language. "What will you have? Will you resume your
apprenticeship under Goethe, or shall we canter to Canterbury with
Chaucer? Grand old Dan Chaucer! Or, shall we study magical philosophy
with Roger Bacon--the