Books I Hare Stuck At.

Otago Witness, Issue 2209, 2 July 1896, Page 52

Books I Hare Stuck At.

• I stuck tbree time 3in " The Black Arrow," 1 ' bub perseverance and a stay at a Highland lodge where there were no obher books but "The BUck Arrow ' enabled me to get to finis. Ah my admiration for tho author of "The Black Arrow " is boundless, (hare can be little harm or offt-uce in naming a few other books in which I have stuck. I stuck in " The Manxman," al«o in " Tbe Bandsman," in "David Grieve," in "The Heavenly Twine," not getting deeper into thq bog than paye the first. I was " slogged," *s 'Devonshire folks say,' in "the egoist"; I was tripped up by a man's leg, about which there' was a great deal of very witty wribing. . In "Diaua of the Crossways*' I became clogged aud encumbered, getting out on the home sido. In auother novel of the most conscientious industry I was bogged' about page 87; the name need nob bo mentUmed, as 1 would be the last to ducourtge other pilgrims. I was bogged iv " Dombay and Son," ia "Little Dorrifc," in "Ouc Mutual Fciend," in "The Light that Failed," in "Dawn," and in "Count Hoberb of Paris"; also jn ".Vilette" and "The Professor." 41 D jii Quixobe "is a masterpiece. Granted. But I have ofttn stuck in it, and so did Alexandra Dumas. If anyone can read right through . ~. THE " DIVINA COMMEDIA" OV DANTE - he h3s something to be proud of ; bat the surface of that epic ia crowded with "tie bodies aud the bones of thosa who strove in o'her days to pass," and stuck iv it I Sir or madam, have you read all the poems of. Dante ? Have you ever froae through • ' Paradise Lost " " from kiver. to kivtr " ? .". I decline to nrnke any confession on (hit potiih, .but I have many & time stuck in " The Lord of the Mes " ; also, in '• Rokeby." As to " The Faery Queen," I doubt iE anybody ever did read all ot ib iv our day except Mr Saintsbury. " Eudymion" (Keats'a) very few have read through ; the task ia* not impossible, but it is most TOILSOME AMD DISMAL. That most readers stick in "Don Juan" and " Cbilde Harold " I am tolerably assured ; many fail to panebrate " The Decline aud Fall, of the, Roman Empire,"', and, of course, ll The Anatomy of Melaucholy " is nob meant to be read in a dull, plodding manner from end to end. There b? tbee who have read aIV through Tolstoi's and Mr W. D. Howells's most earnest outpourings, but these men and women musb unite a strenuous habit of application with great natural gifts for study. — Andrew Lang, in the Illustrated London News.