of
"standard authors," seem to swim in a sort of blurred mist before our
eyes, and even, some of them at least, to nod and beckon and put out
their tongues. After a while, however, the shock of first excitement
diminishing, that solemn goblin Responsibility lifts up its head, and
though we bang at it and shoo it away, and perhaps lock it up, the
pure sweet pleasure of our seductive enterprise, the "native hue," as
the poet says, of our "resolution" is henceforth "sicklied o'er with
the pale cast of thought," and the fine design robbed of its freshest
dew.

As a matter of fact, much deeper contemplations and maturer
ponderings, only tend, in the long run, to bring us back to our
original starting-point. It is just this very bugbear of
Responsibility which in the consciences and mouths of grown-up persons
sends the bravest of our youth post-haste to confusion--so impinging
and inexorable are the thing's portentous horns. It is indeed after
these maturer considerations that we manage to hit upon the right key
really capable of impounding the obtrusive animal; the idea, namely,
of indicating to our youthful questioner the importance of aesthetic
austerity in these regions--an austerity not only no less exclusive,
but far more exclusive than any mandate drawn from the Decalogue.

The necessary matter, in other words, at the beginning of such a
tremendous adventure as this blowing wind into the sails of a newly
built little schooner, or sometimes even of a poor rain-soaked
harbor-rotten brig, bound for the Fortunate Islands, is the
inspiration of the right mood, the right tone, the right temper, for
the splendid voyage. It is not enough simply to say "acquire aesthetic
severity." With spoils so inexhaustible offered to us on every side,
some more definite orientation is desirable. Such an orientation,
limiting the enormous scope of the enterprise, within the sphere of
the possible, can only be wisely found in a person's own individual
taste; but since such a taste is, obviously, in a measure "acquired,"
the compiler of any list of books must endeavor, by a frank and almost
shameless assertion of _his_ taste, to rouse to a divergent
reciprocity the latent taste, still embryotic, perhaps, and quite
inchoate, of the young person anxious to make some sort of a start.
Such a neophyte in the long voyage--a voyage not without its reefs and
shoals--will be much more stirringly provoked to steer with a bold
firm hand, even by the a