If he prefers
_Graustark_ to _Macbeth_, all people, including his dearest friends,
will go on their way and leave him to his choice. If he says he cannot
read Shakespeare, Massinger, Milton, or Wordsworth, he does no violence
to the reputation of these writers, but merely defines and classifies
himself.
=Authors as companions.=--Having learned or sensed these distinctions,
he elects to consort with Burns, Keats, Shelley, Southey, Homer, Dante,
Virgil, Hawthorne, Scott, Maupassant, Goethe, Schiller, and George
Eliot. In such society he never has occasion to explain or apologize for
his companions. He reads their books in the open and gains a feeling of
elation and exaltation. When he would see life in the large, he sits
before the picture of Jean Valjean. When he would see integrity and
fidelity in spite of suffering, he sits before the portrait of Job. When
he would see men of heroic size, he has the characters of Homer file by.
If he would see the panorama of the emotions of the human soul, he
selects Hugo as his guide. If he would laugh, he reads _Tam O'Shanter_;
if he would weep, he reads of the death of Little Nell. If he would see
real heroism, he follows Sidney Carton to the scaffold, or Esther into
the presence of the King. He goes to Shelley's _Skylark_ to find beauty,
Burns's _Highland Mary_ to find tenderness, Hawthorne's _Scarlet Letter_
to find tragedy, and the _Book of Job_ to find sublimity.
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