res_, is, I am
inclined to think, the reason why to so many men the library of great
authors is for ever locked. After a lengthy course of 'light' reading,
they take up, all at once, some such work as 'Bacon's Essays' or the
'Paradise Lost,' determined 'to give the classics a chance.' They wade
conscientiously through a good many pages, and then retire beaten, simply
because they have failed to recognise that in reading, as in every other
business, profession, craft, or pursuit, PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT. Who is
there, outside Olympus, that can master any of these at sight? It is only
by a continuous and continual course of reading that one comes at length
to appreciate these great masters. 'The proper appreciation of the great
books of the world is the reward of lifelong study. You must work up to
them, and unconsciously you will become trained to find great qualities
in what the world has decided is great.'[26]

'That's all very well,' says the newspaper-reader, taking the word
'study' in its first dictionary sense; 'but I, for one, haven't got
time--or inclination--for this lifelong application.' And yet, I reply,
you have both time and inclination to apply yourself assiduously to
newspapers, magazines, and suchlike reading. If you read at all, why not
read good healthy stuff, which will be of permanent use to you in your
journey through the world? Why devour garbage when rich meats are
constantly about you? 'To stuff our minds with what is simply trivial,
simply curious, or that which at best has but a low nutritive power, this
is to close our minds to what is solid and enlarging and spiritually
sustaining.'[27] Look at it which way you will, the man who purposely
neglects the great books deliberately closes the channels of knowledge
flowing to his brain, sentences himself to intellectual exile, bolts and
bars in his own face the only door which can lead him into the society of
the wisest and greatest men this world has known.

And what are the great books of the world? They are those which, from
their native excellences, have been approved by generations of wise men
as beneficial _for mankind_--not for their generation alone. Times change
and manners with them, but countless centuries are powerless to effect
the slightest change in man's essence. Do not the characters in the
oldest book in the world still live in our everyday life, and are not
they possessed of the very thoughts and reasonings that are our portion
t