h he
preferred the Inferno; in his middle life he rose to the calm heights of
the Purgatorio; and he used to say with a smile that perhaps the time
would come when he should be fitted to appreciate the Paradiso. Highly
interesting is John Ruskin's tribute to Sir Walter Scott:

It is one of the griefs of my old age that I know Scott by
heart, but still, if I take up a volume of him, it is not
laid down again for the next hour.

Beside this we may place Goethe's testimony, also written in old age:

We read many, too many, poor things, thus losing our time
and gaining nothing. We should only read what we can admire,
as I did in my youth, and as I now do with Sir Walter Scott.
I have now begun "Rob Roy," and I shall read all his
romances in succession. All is great--material, import,
characters, execution; and then what infinite diligence in
the preparatory studies! what truth of detail in the
composition! Here we see what English history is; what an
inheritance to a poet able to make use of it. Walter Scott
is a great genius; he has not his equal; and we need not
wonder at the extraordinary effect he has produced on the
reading world. He gives me much to think of; and I discover
in him a wholly new art with laws of its own.

Of Goethe himself Carlyle confessed that the reading of his works made
him understand what the Methodists mean by a new birth. Those who are
familiar with the speeches and writings of Daniel Webster realize the
inspiration that he owed to the grandeur of Milton. His great rival,
Calhoun, honored everywhere as a statesman, was known in his own home as
"the old man of the Bible." It was the reading of the Bible that
equipped John Bunyan to become the author of "Pilgrim's Progress." The
novelists have not failed to recognize the influence of some single book
on a human life. It was the accidental possession of a folio volume of
Shakespeare--in Blackmore's "Lorna Doone"--that transformed John Ridd
from a hulking countryman to a man of profound acquaintance with the
world. And who does not remember Gabriel Betteridge, the simple-hearted
old steward in Wilkie Collins's "Moonstone," who finds for every
occurrence a text to counsel or console in his favorite "Robinson
Crusoe"?

As the experience of Professor Torrey shows, different books appeal to
us most strongly at different ages. Young men read Shelley, old men
read Words