I40 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



"Oh for a booke and a shady nooke, 

 Eyther in doors or out, 

 With the green leaves whispering overhead, 

 Or the street cryers all about. 



"Where I may read all at my ease 

 Both of the new and old, 

 For a jolly good booke wherein to looke, 

 Is better to me than gold." 



Not to speak of good old books, to be had in the stalls for a song, of 

 the newspapers, which contain not a little good reading matter, espe- 

 cially in their Sunday editions, or of the innumerable magazines better 

 and worse, there are editions of nearly all the world's literary master- 

 pieces which are low-priced enough for the poorest and at the same time 

 elegant enough for all but the most fastidious. You can find low-cost 

 library editions and five-cent pocket editions, well printed, on good 

 paper, with readably large type, suitable for all the demands of any 

 undergoing the pangs of literary thirst. Not alone the masterpieces are 

 so represented; but thousands of less pretentious though very useful 

 books. Good reading matter is almost thrust upon us now. 



This vast literary treasury contains riches from every gold-bearing 

 region of the earth. The best specimens of antique and of foreign letters 

 are there, having been translated into our tongue, in most cases, by 

 capable scholars, and thus rendered accessible to such as read only in 

 English. The best works of Plato and Aristotle, of Cicero, one of the 

 world's greatest literators, of Boccaccio, Petrarch and Dante, of Leibnitz 

 and Kant, Schiller and Goethe, indeed of all the mightiest German, 

 Italian and French vn-iters, can not only be read by us all at our leisure 

 but can be owmed by nearly all who would wish to own them. 



This is no argument against learning foreign languages. Not every 

 good product of foreign pens has been Englished. To become ac- 

 quainted with the most recent best things written abroad you must read 

 the originals. It is true, further, that no translation ever made or ever 

 possible can carry with it across the chasm separating tongue from 

 tongue the entire meaning, or the delicate shades of moaning, or the 

 rich stylistic aroma, of a true literary work. It is nevertheless a bene- 

 diction of the first order that in so many cases where we can not consult 

 a literary original, we can possess ourselves of the authors main 

 thoughts. Petrarch and likewise Keats read Homer in translation. If 

 we can not topographically survey a country, scanning intimately its 

 by-ways, it is worth a great deal to be able to travel leisurely its 

 highways. 



Besides the cheap edition and the translation, tliere is the free li- 

 brary. Those who are or think they are too poor to purchase much liter- 

 ary material, can, in any considerable center of population, find and 



