his passage in "The Pilgrim's Progress"--as the
pilgrims passed down that valley?

Now as they were going along and talking, they espied a
Boy feeding his Father's Sheep. The Boy was in very mean
Cloaths, but of a very fresh and well-favoured
Countenance, and as he sate by himself he Sung. Hark, said
Mr Greatheart, to what the Shepherd's Boy saith.

Well, it was a very pretty song, about Contentment.

He that is down need fear no fall
He that is low, no Pride:
He that is humble ever shall
Have God to be his Guide.

But I care less for its subject than for the song. Though life
condemn him to live it through in the Valley of Humiliation, I
want to hear the Shepherd Boy singing.

[Footnote 1: The reference given is _Zeitschr. f. Ethnologie_,
XIX. 30 ff.]

LECTURE V

ON READING FOR EXAMINATIONS

WEDNESDAY, MAY 9, 1917

I

You, Gentlemen, who so far have followed with patience this
course of lectures, advertised, maybe too ambitiously, as 'On the
Art of Reading,' will recall to your memory, when I challenge it
across the intervals of Vacation, that three propositions have
been pretty steadily held before you.

The _first_: (bear me out) that, man's life being of the length
it is, and his activities multifarious as they are, out of the
mass of printed matter already loaded and still being shot upon
this planet, he _must_ make selection. There is no other way.

The _second_: that--the time and opportunity being so brief, the
mass so enormous, and the selection therefore so difficult--he
should select the books that are best for him, and take them
_absolutely,_ not frittering his time upon books written about
and around the best: that--in their order, of course--the primary
masterpieces shall come first, and the secondary second, and so
on; and mere chat about any of them last of all.

My _third_ proposition (perhaps more discutable) has been that,
the human soul's activities being separated, so far as we can
separate them, into _What Does, What Knows, What Is_--to _be_
such-and-such a man ranks higher than either _knowing_ or _doing_
this, that, or the other: that it transcends all man's activity
upon phenomena, even a Napoleon's: all his housed store of
knowledge, though it be a Casaubon's or a Mark Pattison's: that
only by learning to _be_ can we understand or reach, as we have
an instinct to reach, to our right place in the scheme of things:
and that, any way,