he drunkard
dreams of flying, and fancies the stars themselves left below him, while
he is really lying in the gutter. There are those, and numbers of those,
who in reading seek no more than to be cheated in a similar way. Indeed,
to acknowledge a disagreeable fact, there is a very great deal of reading
in our day that is simply a substitute for the potations and "heavy-handed
revel" of our Saxon ancestors. In both cases it is a spurious exaltation
of feeling that is sought; in both cases those who for a moment seem to
themselves larks ascending to meet the sun are but worms eating earth.

This celestial lightness, which constitutes the last praise and causes the
purest benefit of books, comes not of any manner of writing; no mere
vivacity, though that of a French writer of memoirs, though that of Arsene
Houssaye himself, can compass it; by no knack or talents is it to be
attained. Perfect style has, indeed, many allurements, and is of exceeding
price; but it is no chariot of Elijah, nevertheless. Was ever style more
delightful, of its kind, than Dryden's? Was ever style more heavy and
monotonous than that of Swedenborg in his theological works? But I have
read Dryden, not indeed without pleasure in his masterly exquisite ease
and sureness of statement and his occasional touches of admirable good
sense, yet with no slightest liberation of spirit, with no degree, greater
or less, of that magical and marvellous evocation, of inward resource,
whose blessed surprise now and then in life makes for us angelic moments,
and feelingly persuades us that our earth also is a star and in the sky.
On the other hand, I once read Swedenborg's "Angelic Wisdom concerning the
Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom" with such enticement, such afflatus,
such quickening and heightening of soul, as I cannot describe without
seeming excessive. Until half through the book, I turned every page with
the feeling that before another page I might see the chasm between the
real and phenomenal worlds fairly bridged over. Of course, it disappointed
me in the end; but what of that? To have kindled and for a time sustained
the expectation which should render possible such disappointment was a
benefit that a whole Bodleian Library might fail to confer. These benefits
come to us not from the writer as such, but from the man behind the
writer. He who dwells aloft amid the deathless orient imaginations of the
human race, easily inhabiting their atmosphere as his na