The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1901-06-25
THE BOOKS THAT ENDURE.

You cannot possibly tell now WudI
to read and what to refuse unless
you adopt Carlyle's two years rule
or Waldo Emerson's one year rule,
not to read any book until one year
after it is published. The press
notices with but few exceptions are
misleading, fulsome in laudation, in
discriminate, excessive and in most
cases false and u~nfaithful. The
publishers gather a few lines or words
from this or that newspaper of cur
rent issues Of novels, and parade
them in bold letters. The novels
they sell so rapidly and by the hun
dred thousands are not much praised
by the true and faithful critics. A
book appears, has a big rush for
three or four months and is showed
aside for another new book praised
beyond all sense. 1t has come to
pass in the last few years that Bal
FAC is a greater genius than Shake
speare and George Sand is Balzac's
equal. And men are not ashamed
to indulge in such s~enseless twaddle.
There is too much rubbish but not
enough reading of the great masters,
the solid and immortal works of the
Greek poets, the Greek philosophers,
the best Latins, the best Italians,
the best Of Germany, a few of the
greatest French authors, and the
nobIest thinkers and most splendid
poets of Great Britain. There is
no chance now of making selections.
There is no literary court of appeals,
no coterie or academy capable of Sc
lecting the best literature for read
ing. The faint is widespread and
the taste uncertain, if we may judge
from some selections we have cen
made some time for others. If you
cannot be aided judiCiOusly and
wisely in selections of books, what
must be done? Must imperfect
tastes be made absolutely vicious
tastes by the poisonous, rotten pabu-
lum upon which it feeds? Must there
be mental ~gangrene? Must the
crude, over, praised, inferior books
be made to forever uSUrp the noble
productions of masters? Why have
the great books survived through
the centuries? Why are Homer and
Aeschylus and Sophocles and Euripi-
des and AristOphanes and the chief
lyric poets of Greece still the de-
light and comfort of the cultured
mind. of the present? What has
kept them alive? 1t is the great
thoughts, the solemn verities, their
universal qualities, the splendid
imagery, the noble ~eloquence, the
poetic ardOr, the commanding music
that have eternized the names of
some of the worlds most famous
and highest endowed sons. And so
it has been with the greatest authors
who have lived since the palmiest
days of Greece. Dante and Petrarch
and Goethe and Schiller and Victor
Hugo and the immOrtals Of the
British isles have lived through the
power, originality, beauty, splendOr
and Importance of their productions.
The trouble now is that the great
writer's are neglected except by the
studious few-by those, who like
Alexander the Great, sleep with
Homer under their pillows, and find.
ing sublime truths and greatideas and
magnificent poetic beauties cast in
the shape of intellectual coin, they
gather it and treasure it as beyond
all price. Old Fuller said that otis
thought and digestion which makes
books s~erviceable." 1t has been said
that "Aeschylus and Aristotle,
Shakespeare and Bacon, are priests
who preach and expound mysteries
of man and the universe" The sub
FINEST of all poets, John Milton, said
you had ''as good kill a man as kill
a good book" And so books have
been praised and treasured by the
wise and inspired of men. What is
to be done then, if people continue
to read the rubbish and neglect the
best and safest? There is no guild
of letters to decide. People will
not discriminate. Mr.. Hunt writes
"Drop your Doyles and your Bar
ries, then your Mary Johnsons and
your Winston Churchills aye and
even your Hardys and your Kiplings
for a while. We will assume that
you know your Shakespeare, but do
you know Chaucer with his fine hu-