APPENDIX F 517 



tinually read, and that I care for them neither more nor less than for those 

 I left at home. I took "The Deluge" and "Pan Michael" and "Flight 

 of a Tartar Tribe," because I had just finished "Fire and Sword;" 

 "Moby Dick," because I had been rereading "Omoo" and "Typee;" 

 Gogol's "Taras Bulba," because I wished to get the Cossack view of what 

 was described by Sienkiewicz from the Polish side; some of Maurice 

 Jokai, and "St. Peter's Umbrella" (I am not at all sure about the titles), 

 because my attention at the moment was on Hungary; and the novels of 

 Topelius when I happened to be thinking of Finland. I took Dumas's 

 cycle of romances dealing with the French Revolution, because I had 

 just finished Carlyle's work thereon and I felt that of the two the nov- 

 elist was decidedly the better historian. I took "Salammbo" and "The 

 Nabob" rather than scores of other French novels simply because at the 

 moment I happened to see them and think that I would like to read 

 them. I doubt if I ever took anything of Hawthorne's, but this was cer- 

 tainly not because I failed to recognize his genius. 



Now, all this means that I take with me on any trip, or on all trips 

 put together, but a very small proportion of the books that I like; and 

 that I like very many and very different kinds of books, and do not for 

 a moment attempt anything so preposterous as a continual comparison 

 between books which may appeal to totally different sets of emotions. 

 For instance, one correspondent pointed out to me that Tennyson was 

 "trivial" compared to Browning, and another complained that I had 

 omitted Walt Whitman; another asked why I put Longfellow "on a 

 level" with Tennyson. I believe I did take Walt Whitman on one hunt, 

 and I like Browning, Tennyson, and Longfellow, all of them, without 

 thinking it necessary to compare them. It is largely a matter of personal 

 taste. In a recent English review I glanced at an article on English verse 

 of to-day in which, after enumerating various writers of the first and 

 second classes, the writer stated that Kipling was at the head of the third 

 class of "ballad-mongers;" it happened that I had never even heard 

 of most of the men he mentioned in the first two classes, whereas I should 

 be surprised to find that there was any one of Kipling's poems which 

 I did not already know. I do not quarrel with the taste of the critic in 

 question, but I see no reason why any one should be guided by it. So 

 with Longfellow. A man who dislikes or looks down upon simple poetry, 

 ballad poetry, will not care for Longfellow; but if he really cares for 

 "Chevy Chase," "Sir Patrick Spens," "Twa Corbies," Michael Dray- 



