o-day? Tastes may change vastly in even a short period, but it is only
fashion, the constant craving for something new:--

'Manners with fortunes, humours turn with climes,
Tenets with books, and principles with times.'

But the books which by common consent have been assigned places in the
library of the immortals can never be out of fashion: for they contain
the essences of human nature.

How then shall we start to make acquaintance with these classics? With
what books shall we begin, with what continue? These are questions which
it is impossible to answer without a knowledge of those qualities so
necessary in recommending books. But at least it is possible to indicate
the general line to be followed. It would be foolish, for example, for
the man whose reading hitherto has consisted entirely of the modern
novels of a circulating library, to turn at once to the Paradise Lost,
Bacon's Essays, or the poems of Wordsworth. He would probably acquire a
distaste for good literature which might never be overcome.

It is like everything else that counts: we set the greatest store by
those things that we have come by through difficulties. The longer the
journey and the more beautiful the scenes we pass through, the greater
our pleasure and subsequent recollection of it. Let us begin our
systematic reading by turning at first to those books which we shall
appreciate immediately. Have novels been our reading hitherto? Then let
us turn at once to some of the greater novelists, both living and dead.
Here the field is wide, and we may quickly find writers to our taste.
Thus we shall gradually work up to some name or names in the list of the
immortals. In the same way we shall approach, step by step, the
essayists, the moralists, the dramatists and (lastly) the poets.

It cannot be emphasised too strongly that Time above all other
considerations decides what we shall read. Moreover, there are passages
in many of the greatest writers that appeal to a man before he has really
arrived at the time of their understanding. So that, reading some such
passage (_e.g._ Addison's description of the Widows' Club in the
'Spectator') as this, and finding the remainder not to his taste, he
concludes that he has discovered the kernel and that the rest can be cast
aside. Practice alone makes perfect: _macte nova virtute, puer, sic itur
ad astra_.

With regard to editions, it were needless to specify them; the great
books of the world ar