WHAT THE OTHER HALF READS

Evening Star, Issue 23864, 19 April 1941, Page 4

WHAT THE OTHER HALF READS

Inquiry has been.made by the editorship'ofa quarterly magazine to determine whether 3, place among the socalled classics necessarily indicates merit in authorship. The quarterly asks:’ “ Wouldn't it he a service to humanity to peel the borrowed skins off a few of these diterary lions and reveal them as the very different breed of animal which they really'were?" The question invites others: Why ** borrowed skins ” ? From whom borrowed? Wherefore a service? The quarterly asked a number of moderns to name candidates for the. title of World’s Worst Book,; these replied according to taste and goodnature. Individually, the good-natured had balked at Milton, Goethe, Melville, Longfellow, Shelley, Carlyle, Gibbon, and others for whom humanity at large still has considerable respect. , Of the above names, ' Everyman’s Library, which . sells all told into a million volumes a year, lists Milton’s Goethe’s ‘ Faust,’ Melville’s Moby Dick,’ Longfellow’s ‘ Poems,’ Shelley’s ‘ Poetical Works,’ and Carlyle’s ‘ Sartor Resartus ’ among the ■l5O titles most in demand. There is not so much demand for Gibbon; but the * Decline and Fall ’ (recently recommended to Mussolini by a facetious pnragrapher) comes in six volumes, and the" library finds it worth while to .offer them in a red leather binding at a mdre-than-ordinary cost. The quarterly learned that among the easygoing, > Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy,’ which.is also in Everyman’s 150 most in demand, was harder going than any other oile book. . Instead of earning the surprised gratitude of humanity,, the investigation seems to have verified the opinion of the Rev. George Crabbe, now more likely of 'inclusion in the new ‘ Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature ’ than in ‘ Everyman’s,’ that Books cannot always please, however good; Minds are not ever craving for their ■ food; '' Dr Johnson, whose ,‘ Rambler ’ one correspondent nominated for second worst book, admired Crabbe’s poetry; and, for all one knows, that correspondent, if he happened upon Crabbe, might agree with Dr .Johnson. You never can tell;.as is sometimes brought home to you when you try to read a hook enthusiastically recommended by somebody in whose judgment you once had confidence.—‘ Christian Science Monitor.’