94 LIFE OF SIR JOHN LUBBOCK ch. 



Again, it is sometimes said that any one who read 

 these books straight through, and nothing else, would 

 have his mind choked with indigestible and elementary 

 facts. This seems to me a captious and foolish criticism. 

 My belief is, that any one who read the Odyssey would 

 be led on to further study of Greek History, Mythology, 

 and Literature ; that each of the 100 books would not 

 only be itself a source of instruction and delight, but 

 would be a key which would unlock other treasures. 



Others, indeed, have objected that the books men- 

 tioned are known to every one, at any rate by name ; 

 that they are as household words. Every one, it has 

 been said, knows about Herodotus and Homer, Shake- 

 speare and Milton. There is, no doubt, some truth in 

 this. But even Lord Iddesleigh, as Mr. Lang has pointed 

 out in his Life, had never read Marcus Aurelius, and I 

 may add that he afterwards thanked me warmly for 

 having suggested the Meditations to him. If, then, 

 even Lord Iddesleigh, " probably one of the last English 

 statesmen who knew the literature of Greece and Rome 

 widely and well," had not read Marcus Aurelius, we may 

 well suppose that others also may be in the same position. 

 It is also a curious commentary on what was no doubt an 

 unusually wide knowledge of classical literature that 

 Mr. Lang should ascribe — and probably quite correctly — - 

 Lord Iddesleigh's never having had his attention called 

 to one of the most beautiful and improving books in 

 classical, or, indeed, in any other literature, to the fact 

 that the emperor wrote in " crabbed and corrupt 

 Greek." 



Another objection has been that every one should be 

 left to choose for himself. And so he must. No list 

 can be more than a suggestion. But a great literary 

 authority can hardly, perhaps, realise the difficulty of 

 selection. An ordinary person turned into a library 

 and sarcastically told to choose for himself, has to do 

 so almost at haphazard. He may, perhaps, light upon 

 a book with an attractive title, and after wasting on it 

 much valuable time and patience, find that, instead of 

 either pleasure or profit, he has weakened, or perhaps 

 lost, his love of reading. 



Messrs. Harmsworth are now issuing the books con- 

 tained in my list in a handy and cheap form, selecting 

 themselves the editions which they prefer ; and I believe 



