With this pilot of his own genius, let the
student read one, or let him read many, he will read advantageously.
Dr. Johnson said, "Whilst you stand deliberating which book your son
shall read first, another boy has read both: read anything five
hours a day, and you will soon be learned."
Nature is much our friend in this matter. Nature is always
clarifying her water and her wine. No filtration can be so perfect.
She does the same thing by books as by her gases and plants. There
is always a selection in writers, and then a selection from the
selection. In the first place, all books that get fairly into the
vital air of the world were written by the successful class, by the
affirming and advancing class, who utter what tens of thousands feel,
though they cannot say. There has already been a scrutiny and choice
from many hundreds of young pens, before the pamphlet or political
chapter which you read in a fugitive journal comes to your eye. All
these are young adventurers, who produce their performance to the
wise ear of Time, who sits and weighs, and ten years hence out of a
million of pages reprints one. Again it is judged, it is winnowed by
all the winds of opinion, and what terrific selection has not passed
on it, before it can be reprinted after twenty years, and reprinted
after a century!--it is as if Minos and Rhadamanthus had indorsed
the writing.
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