----How sweetly and honestly one said to me the other day, "I hate
books!" A gentleman,--singularly free from affectations,--not learned,
of course, but of perfect breeding, which is often so much better
than learning,--by no means dull, in the sense of knowledge of the
world and society, but certainly not clever either in the arts or
sciences,--his company is pleasing to all who know him. I did not
recognize in him inferiority of literary taste half so distinctly as
I did simplicity of character and fearless acknowledgment of his
inaptitude for scholarship. In fact, I think there are a great many
gentlemen and others, who read with a mark to keep their place, that
really "hate books," but never had the wit to find it out, or the
manliness to own it.
[_Entre nous_, I always read with a mark.]
We get into a way of thinking as if what we call an "intellectual man"
was, as a matter of course, made up of nine-tenths, or thereabouts,
of book-learning, and one-tenth himself. But even if he is actually
so compounded, he need not read much. Society is a strong solution
of books. It draws the virtue out of what is best worth reading, as
hot water draws the strength of tea-leaves. If I were a prince, I
would hire or buy a private literary tea-pot, in which I would steep
all the leaves of new books that promised well.
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