Year: 1873

Almost every circle is blessed with


the egotist. who exercises kind of dicta.


torship over it. Are you iu mistake as to


a matter of fact? He can not suffer you


to proceed till you are corrected. Have
you a word on the end of your tongue ?
He at once comes to your relief. Do


you talk bad grammar. He quotes


rules and gives examples like peda-


gogue. Does he discover that there is a


link wanting in the chain of your argu-


ment? He bids you stay till he has


supplied it. Do you drop a word to


which he has devoted much research {?


He asks you whether you know its


primitive Specification, and straight way


inficts upon the circle long philologi-


cal disquisition. When you relate an


incident which you suppose new and af-


fecting, your friend listens without emo


ton. When you have done he observes


that he heard the same long ago. and


adds very material circumstance which


you omitted. he is never taken by sur


prise, and it is impossible, TO give HIM


any information. And yet he never


takes the lead in conversation, nor adj


vances an original thought. It is his


business to come after, and pick up the


words which others let slip in a running
talk, or to check their impetuosity, that
he may point out TO them their missteps.
Hed he lived in the days of Solomon,
he would have hattered the ROYAL sage
with an intimation that some of his pro-
verbs were but plagiarism or, had he
been contemporary of Solomon s father,
would have felt himself bound to give
the slayer of Goliath some lessons on
the use of the sling, and limited TO the
sweet singer of Israel his private opinion
that the shepherd bard did not perfect
ly understand the use of the harp.
Ruskin Comforts the Bibliomaniac. |


1 say we have despised literature. |
What do we, as a nation, care about |
books ? How much do yon think we |
spend altogether on our Libraries, pub
lie or private, as compared with what |
we spend on our horses If q man |
spends lavishly on his library, you call |
him mad-a bibliomaniac. But you
never call one a horsemaniac, though |
men ruin themselves every day by their
horses and you do not hear of people
running themselves by their books. Or,
to go lower still, how much do you
think the contents of the book-shelves
of the United Kingdom, public and pri-
vate, would fetch as compared with the
contents of its wine-cellars ? What po-
sition would its expenditures on litera-
ture take as compared with its expend
itures on luxurious eating? We talk of
food for the mind as of food for the
body now a good book contains such
food inexhaustibly-it is provision for
life, and for the best part of us yet
how long would most people look at the
best book before they would give the
price of large turbot for it Though
they have been men who have pinched
their stomachs and barred their backs
to buy book, whose libraries were
cheaper to them, think, in the end,
than most mems dinners are. We are
few of us put to such trial, and more
the pity /; for, indeed, a precious thing
is all the more precious to us if it has
been won by work or economy and if
public libraries were half as costly as
public dinners, or books cost the tenth
part of what bracelets do, even foolish
men and women might sometimes sus-
pect there was good in reading, as well as
in munching and sparkling whereas the
very cheapness of literature is making |
even wiser people forget that if a book
is worth reading it is worth buying