202 OCTOBER 



the same kind. But the impression is as strong as 

 ever, irrational as it may be. 



I used to spend many happy days with an uncle 

 who was a scholar and delighted in books, but 

 whose limited clerical stipend forbade his indulging 

 his tastes in this direction. He was once, however, 

 within my remembrance guilty of a frightful extra- 

 vagance, and this great event for him and for me 

 took place when I was about twelve years old. 

 The carpenter, undertaker, upholsterer, and general 

 utility man of the village in which he lived was 

 possessed, in the way of business, of a large quantity 

 of waste paper, mostly in the form of books, and 

 my uncle, yielding to a guilty and long-combated 

 desire, bought a hundredweight of this book stuff 

 for the sum of one sovereign. Stealthily was it 

 carted across the road in a wheelbarrow to his study 

 window, to be guiltily handed in to him at dead of 

 night; but the tale of its discovery and of my aunt's 

 righteous anger may not be told here. Suffice it to 

 say that the purchase was a joy to him and to me 

 for years. I had my choice of what I would, and I 

 still cherish an eighteenth - century copy of The 

 Compleat Angler, thumbed in my childhood by me 

 as much as by any of its former owners. But the 

 greatest joy of all was an old metrical translation of 

 Euripides, which I have long since lost. Many of 

 my childish days were made happy by it, and I 

 would give a good deal to possess it now. I 

 wonder if I should find in it the same magical 

 charm that I found then. I trow not. It was only 

 a translation, and although the best, as Goethe says, 

 can always be translated, even the best must seem 



