for him, and inspire an actual friendship as of a
man for a man. His very admiration is the wind which fans and feeds his
hope. The poems themselves assume the properties of flesh and blood."
[1915]

But men have not merely been stimulated to undertake special literary
pursuits by the perusal of particular books; they have been also
stimulated by them to enter upon particular lines of action in the
serious business of life. Thus Henry Martyn was powerfully influenced
to enter upon his heroic career as a missionary by perusing the Lives of
Henry Brainerd and Dr. Carey, who had opened up the furrows in which he
went forth to sow the seed.

Bentham has described the extraordinary influence which the perusal of
'Telemachus' exercised upon his mind in boyhood. "Another book," said
he, "and of far higher character [19than a collection of Fairy Tales, to
which he refers], was placed in my hands. It was 'Telemachus.' In my
own imagination, and at the age of six or seven, I identified my own
personality with that of the hero, who seemed to me a model of perfect
virtue; and in my walk of life, whatever it may come to be, why [19said
I to myself every now and then]--why should not I be a Telemachus?....
That romance may be regarded as THE FOUNDATION-STONE OF MY WHOLE
CHARACTER--the starting-post from whence my career of life commenced.
The first dawning in my mind of the 'Principles of Utility' may, I
think, be traced to it." [1916]

Cobbett's first favourite, because his only book, which he bought for
threepence, was Swift's 'Tale of a Tub,' the repeated perusal of
which had, doubtless, much to do with the formation of his pithy,
straightforward, and hard-hitting style of writing. The delight with
which Pope, when a schoolboy, read Ogilvy's 'Homer' was, most probably,
the origin of the English 'Iliad;' as the 'Percy Reliques' fired the
juvenile mind of Scott, and stimulated him to enter upon the collection
and composition of his 'Border Ballads.' Keightley's first reading of
'Paradise Lost,' when a boy, led to his afterwards undertaking his Life
of the poet. "The reading," he says, "of 'Paradise Lost' for the first
time forms, or should form, an era in the life of every one possessed of
taste and poetic feeling. To my mind, that time is ever present.... Ever
since, the poetry of Milton has formed my constant study--a source of
delight in prosperity, of strength and consolation in adversity."

Good books are thus among the be