ON THE EE-EEADING OF BOOKS 221 



least to a greater extent than is any other phase 

 of art ? It is the same with perfumes, flavors, col- 

 ors : they never lose their first freshness to us. But 

 a book or a poem we absorb and exhaust more or 

 less, — that is, as to its intellectual content ; and if 

 we return to it, it is probably for some charm or 

 quality that is to the spirit what music or perfume or 

 color is to the senses, or what a congenial companion 

 is to our social instincts. We shall not go back 

 to a book that does not in some way, apart from its 

 mere intellectual service, relate itself to our lives. 



Time tries all things, and surely does it sift out 

 the false and fugitive in books. Contemporary judg- 

 ment is usually unreliable. It is like trial by jury, 

 the local and accidental play so large a part in the 

 verdict. The next age, or the next, forms the higher 

 court of appeal. In the same way a man's future 

 self corrects or sets aside his verdict of to-day. If in 

 later life he reaffirms his first opinion, the chances are 

 that time is on his side. There is, of course, a sense 

 or a degree in which any book that one has once read 

 becomes a sucked orange ; but some books become 

 much more so than others. I doubt if many of us 

 find books that, like a few people, become dearer to 

 us as time passes, and to which we always return 

 with increasing interest. And the reason is that one's 

 mental and spiritual outlook is not uniformly the 

 same, while his social and human wants, such as his 

 need of food and warmth, do remain about the same. 

 One in a measure absorbs the book and puts it be- 

 hind him. It is like a place he has visited : he has 



