236 LIFE OF SIR JOHN LUBBOCK ch. 



accurate — the interesting point is Lord Avebury's 

 answer. " I wonder," he said, " whether it has 

 been translated into more than The Pleasures of 

 Life ? " 



This is the book, this which has been so many 

 times interpreted into a strange tongue as to 

 defeat the destruction of the Tower of Babel, 

 of which the publishers could write thus tenta- 

 tively, cautiously, doubtfully ; and I must say 

 that had I been their reader for the occasion, it 

 is just in such a way that I should have made 

 my report on the book. With Sir John Lubbock's 

 name on the title-page, it was perhaps just worth 

 publishing — yes. Without a well-known name 

 to help it along — no. The result bore striking 

 witness to the wonderful gift of Sir John for 

 knowing " what the public wants." He had 

 been so much in touch with the reading public, 

 by the many addresses and lectures that he had 

 delivered, that his opportunities in this direction, 

 perhaps, were greater than those of publishers 

 or their readers, but even he was astonished 

 by the extraordinary popularity which the book 

 achieved. Within a comparatively short while 

 it sold to the extent of a hundred thousand 

 copies, and it sells still in I do not quite know 

 how many languages. And of almost all his 

 books it was probably the one that was com- 

 piled with the least mental effort. Already we 

 have noticed Sir John's way of reading a 

 book, never without a slip of paper in it, which 

 served as a marker of his place, and at the same 

 time as a sheet on which he might make note of 

 passages which caught his attention, either copy- 



