" But
has he not also said that he would "have a vigilant eye how Bookes
demeane themselves, as well as men; and do sharpest justice on them as
malefactors"?... Yes! they do kill the good book who deliver up their
few and precious hours of reading to the trivial book; they make it dead
for them; they do what lies in them to destroy "the precious life-blood
of a master-spirit, imbalm'd and treasured up on purpose to a life
beyond life;" they "spill that season'd life of man preserv'd and stor'd
up in Bookes." For in the wilderness of books most men, certainly all
busy men, _must_ strictly choose. If they saturate their minds with the
idler books, the "good book," which Milton calls "an immortality rather
than a life," is dead to them: it is a book sealed up and buried.
It is most right that in the great republic of letters there should be
freedom of intercourse and a spirit of equality. Every reader who holds
a book in his hand is free of the inmost minds of men past and present;
their lives both within and without the pale of their uttered thoughts
are unveiled to him; he needs no introduction to the greatest; he
stands on no ceremony with them; he may, if he be so minded, scribble
"doggrel" on his Shelley, or he may kick Lord Byron, if he please, into
a corner.
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