ON THE EE-EEADING OF BOOKS 225 



aloud we teach our children to read as they speak, 

 and thus make the words their own. The same thing 

 holds in writing : the less formal, the less written, 

 the sentences are, or the more they are like familiar 

 speech, the more genuine and real the writing seems, 

 the more it becomes one's own ; but when the form 

 and manner of spoken sentences are very pronounced, 

 they become tiresome when transferred to print. 

 Carlyle will doubtless hold his place in English lit- 

 erature, but he is terribly handicapped in some of 

 his books by his crabbed, raw-boned style. 



What reading man does not re-read Boswell's 

 "Johnson" two or three times in the course of his 

 life ? The charm of this is that it is so much like 

 the spoken word, and so filled with the presence 

 of the living man. Another volume of a similar 

 kind, which I have read three times and dipped into 

 any number of times, is Eckermann's " Conversa- 

 tions with Goethe." It is a pregnant book; in 

 fact, I know no such armory of critical wisdom any- 

 where else as this book contains. Its human in- 

 terest may not be equal to Boswell, though I find 

 this very great ; but as an intellectual excitant it is 

 vastly superior. 



It is a profitable experience for one who read 

 Dickens forty years ago to try to read him now. 

 Last winter I forced myself through the " Tale pf 

 Two Cities." It was a sheer dead pull from start 

 to finish. It all seemed so insincere, such a trans- 

 parent make-believe, a mere piece of acting. My 

 sympathies were hardly once touched. I was not 



