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Aristophanes,
Theocritus, Boccaccio, Cervantes, Moliere are often as light as the
driven foam; but they are not light enough for the general reader. Their
humour is too bright and lovely for the groundlings. They are, alas!
"classics," somewhat apart from our everyday ways; they are not banal
enough for us; and so for us they slumber "unknown in a long night,"
just _because_ they are immortal poets, and are not scribblers of
to-day.
When will men understand that the reading of great books is a faculty to
be acquired, not a natural gift, at least not to those who are spoiled
by our current education and habits of life? _Ceci tuera cela_,[28] the
last great poet might have said of the first circulating library. An
insatiable appetite for new novels makes it as hard to read a
masterpiece as it seems to a Parisian boulevardier to live in a quiet
country. Until a man can truly enjoy a draft of clear water bubbling
from a mountain side, his taste is in an unwholesome state. And so he
who finds the Heliconian spring insipid should look to the state of his
nerves.


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