GLEANINGS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18897, 20 December 1924, Page 26 (Supplement)

GLEANINGS.

Books are infinite; tliey Ore unexacting; they can be taken up and put down at pleasure: they need no partner to secure their enjoyment ; they interfere with nothing. . . . We arc all persons who have to live our lives.' and who need take no shame in endeavouring to live them in as great and as varied an amount of honest and wholesome enjoyment as possible. .And to that end. which I,venture to think not in the very least a low or contemptible end. con- I sidered from the point of view of ary j national religion, philosophy or aesthetic/ I know of no such valuable means on the intellectual side as the study of litera- j ture. . No living French writer has to me the charm of M. France. I would give oil I am worth, and a great deal more, io lie ' .able to write (if not. always to think) like him. But if I am asked to vote for him'as a writer absolutely of the fhitclass, I am afraid I must refuse. To detect the character of any man or writer one cannot do better than ti.ke the reports of his enemies.- Uy stripping these of malignity and exaggeration, by substituting the quality for the defect and the mean for the excess, such un- • favourable accounts, unless they come from wholly untrustworthy and :neow< petont sources, may be made to yield a much larger amount of truth thai) the amiable but often vague and random language of partisans.—From Collected Essays; by Prof. Saintsbury.