528 APPENDIX F 



not long afterwards destroyed at a stroke. But Malory's book and 

 others were then extant ; and yet Montaigne, in full accord with 

 the educated taste of his day, saw in them nothing that was not 

 ridiculous. His choice of Ovid as representing a culture and 

 wisdom immeasurably greater and more serious, shows how much 

 the judgment of the " posterity " of the sixteenth century differed 

 froui that of the nineteenth, in which the highest literary thought 

 was deeply influenced by the legends of Arthurs knights, and 

 hardly at all by anything Ovid wrote. Dante offers an even more 

 striking instance. If" posterity's "judgment could ever be accepted 

 as final, it would seem to be when delivered by a man like Dante in 

 speaking of the men of his own calling who had been dead from 

 one to two thousand years. Well, Dante gives a list of the six 

 greatest poets. One of them, he modestly mentions, is himself, 

 and he was quite right. Then come Virgil and Homer, and then 

 Horace, Ovid, and Luccm .' Nowadays we simply could not under- 

 stand such a choice, which omits the mighty Greek dramatists 

 (with whom in the same canto Dante shows his acquaintance), and 

 includes one poet whose works come about in the class of the 

 " Colunjbiad." 



With such an example before us, let us be modest about 

 dogmatizing overmuch. The ingenuity exercised in choosing the 

 " Hundred Best Books" is all right if accepted as a mere amuse- 

 ment, giving something of the pleasure derived from a missing- word 

 puzzle. But it does not mean much more. There are very many 

 thousands of good books ; some of them meet one man's needs, 

 some another's ; and any list of such books should simply be 

 accepted as meeting a given individuaTs needs under given con- 

 ditions of time and surroundings. 



KnAiiroi^M, March 15, 1910. 



