The Birmingham age-herald., 1916-08-27

Best Books would cause among the literati says:
 There is scarcely any question, the sudden explosion of which out of clear sky, excites more charming perturbation in the mind of a man-professionally as they say, "of letters'-than the question, so often tossed disdainfully off from young and ardent lips, as to what one should read" if one has--quite strangely and accidentally-read hitherto absolutely nothing at all.''
 "One does not trust youth enough, that is in short what is the matter with our educational method, in this part of it. at least which concerns what one is to read" One leases oneself too much, and ones infants, too, poor darlings, with what might be called the "scholas- ic-veneration-cult;'' the cult, namely, of becoming a superior person by reading the best authors. It comes back, after all, to what your young person emphatical- ly is, in himself, independent of all this acquiring. If he has the responsive chord, the answering vibration, he may well SOL LlOT0 llLdSlIldlIN6 SllIluluS ITOUl all the Upanishads and Nieblungen- lieds in the world. It is matter of the ina gination, and to the question: what is one to read?" the best reply must always be the most personal: "Whatever profoundly and permanently stimulates your imagination The list of books which follows In this volume constitutes In itself in the mere perusal of the titles, such a potential stimulation. A reader who demands, for instance, why George Eliot is omitted, and Oliver Onions in cluded. is brought face to face with that essential right of personal choice in these high matters, which is not only the foun- .dation of all thrilling interest in litera- ture, but the very ground and soil of all-powerful literary creation. The se- cret of the art of literary taste, may it not be found to be nothing else than the secret of the art of life itself-I mean the capacity for discovering the real fa- tality, the real predestined direction of ones intrinsic nature and the refusal, when this is found, to waste ones ener- gies in alien paths and irreveent junk etings?
 A list of books of the kind appended here, becomes. by the very reason of its shameless subjectivity a challenge to the intelligence pursuing it-a challenge that is bound in some degree to another to fling such reader back upon his own inveterate prejudices; to fling him back upon them with a sense that it is his affair reasonably to justify them.''
 From quite another point of view, however, might the appended list find its excuse-I mean as being a typical choice," MT. Powys continues. 'In other words the natural choice of a certain minority of minds who, while disagreeing in most essentials, in this one important essential find them- selves in singular harmony. And this minority of minds with the especial prejudices and predilections indicated in this list, undoubtedly has a real and definite existence; there are such peo- pie, and any list of books which they made would exclude the writers here excluded. and include the writers here included, though in particular in- stances the motives of the choice might differ. For purely physiological req sons then-as a kind of human docu- ment in criticism, shall we say?-such a list comes to have value; nor can the value be anything but enhanced by the obvious fact that in this par ticular company there are several quite prominent and popular writers. both ancient and modern, signal 1ed, as 1t were, if not penalized. by their sur prising absence.
 "A further value might be discov- cred for our exclusive catalogue in the interest of noting-and this interest might well appeal to those who would themselves have selected quite a dif- ferent list--the curious way certain books and writers have of hanging in- evitably together, and necessarily inn plying one another.
 Thus 1t appears that the type of mind-it would be presumptuous to call it the best type of mind-which prefers Euripides to Sophocles. and Heine to Schiller, prefers also Emily Bronte to Charlotte Bronte, and Oliver Onions to Compton Mackenzie. Given the mind that in compiling such a list would at once drag in The Odyssey and The Psalms, and run hastily on to Sir Thomas Browne and Charles Lamb, we are instinctively conscious that when it reaches. with it's arbitrary divining rod, our own unlucky age, it will skip quite lightly over Thackeray; wave an ambiguous hand in the direction of Meredith, and sit solemnly down to make elaborate mention of all inc pub- lished works of Walter Pater, Thomas Hardy and MT. Henry James,"
 Continuing, Mir. Powys says:
 '"The absurd idea that one gets wise by reading books is probably at the bot tom of the abominable pedantry that thrusts so many tiresome pieces of antiquity down the throats of youth rI,h.as.a is aliS1aaasa for s,si=