5 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



" Oh ! but he was not quite sure ; he was rather doubtful, he said, 

 about one of the books." 



" Not the Bible, I do hope ? " said I fervently. 



" No, about the other. He was not quite sure but that, instead of 

 ' Gil Bias,' he ought to have selected ' Don Quixote.' Now, really that 

 seems to me worse than ' Gil Bias.' " 



" You mean less excellent," I rejoined ; " you are too young to 

 appreciate the full signification of ' Don Quixote.' " 



The scoundrel murmured, " Do you mean to tell me that people 

 read it when they are old ? " but I pretended not to hear him. " We 

 do not all of us," I went on, " know what is good for us. Sancho Pan- 

 za's physician " 



" Oh ! I know that physician well, papa. I sometimes think, if it 

 had not been for that physician, perhaps " 



" Hush ! " I exclaimed authoritatively ; " let us have no flippancy, 

 I beg." And so, with a dead lift, as it were, I got rid of him. He 

 left the room muttering, " But to read it through three times, ten 

 times, for all one's life ? " And I was obliged to confess to myself 

 that such a prolonged course of study, even of " Don Quixote," would 

 have been wearisome. 



Rabelais is another article of our literary faith that is certainly 

 subscribed to much more often than believed in. In a certain poem of 

 Mr. Browning's (I call it the " Burial of the Book," since the Latin 

 name he has given it is unpronounceable, even if it were possible to 

 recollect it), charmingly humorous, and w T hich is also remarkable for 

 impersonating an inanimate object in verse as Dickens does in prose, 

 there occur these lines : 



" Then I went indoors, brought out a loaf, 

 Half a cheese and a bottle of Chablis, 

 Lay on the grass, and forgot the oaf 

 Over a jolly chapter of Rabelais." 



Yet I have known some wonder to be expressed (confidentially) as to 

 where he found the "jolly chapter," and the looking for the beauties 

 of Rabelais to be likened to searching in a huge bed of manure for a 

 few heads of asparagus. 



I have no quarrel with Bias and Company (though they stick at 

 nothing, and will presently say that I don't care for these books 

 myself), but I venture to think that they are wrong in making dog- 

 mas of what are, after all, but matters of literary taste ; it is their 

 vehemence and exaggeration which drive the weak to take refuge in 

 falsehood. 



A good woman in the country once complained of her step-son, 

 "He will not love his learning, though I beats him with a jack- 

 chain " ; and from the application of similar aids to instruction the 

 same result takes place in London. Only here we dissemble and pre- 



