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APPENDIX F 
ton's Agincourt,” Scott's ‘"Harlaw," “Eve of St. John" and the Flod- 
den fight in “Marmion," he will be apt to like such poems as the “Saga 
of King Olaf/' “Othere," “The Driving Cloud," “Belisarius," “Helen 
of Tyre," “Enceladus," “The Warden of the Cinque Ports," “Paul 
Revere," and “Simon Danz." I am exceedingly fond of these, and of 
many, many other poems of Longfellow. This does not interfere in the 
least with my admiration for “Ulysses," “The Revenge," “The Palace 
of Art," the little poems in “The Princess," and in fact most of Tenny¬ 
son. Nor does my liking for Tennyson prevent my caring greatly for 
“Childe Roland," “Love Among the Ruins," “Proteus," and nearly all 
the poems that I can understand, and some that I can merely guess 
at, in Browning. I do not feel the slightest need of trying to apply a 
common measuring-rule to these three poets, any more than I find it 
necessary to compare Keats with Shelley, or Shelley with Poe. I enjoy 
them all. 
As regards Mr. Eliot's list, I think it slightly absurd to compare any 
list of good books with any other list of good books in the sense of saying 
that one list is “better" or “worse" than another. Of course a list may 
be made up of worthless or noxious books; but there are so many thousands 
of good books that no list of small size is worth considering if it purports 
to give the “best" books. There is no such thing as the hundred best 
books, or the best five-foot library; but there can be drawn up a very 
large number of lists, each of which shall contain a hundred good books 
or fill a good five-foot library. This is, I am sure, all that Mr. Eliot has 
tried to do. His is in most respects an excellent list, but it is of course 
in no sense a list of the best books for all people, or for all places and 
times. The question is largely one of the personal equation. Some 
of the books which Mr. Eliot includes I would not put in a five-foot 
library, nor yet in a fifty-foot library; and he includes various good books 
which are at least no better than many thousands (I speak literally) 
which he leaves out. This is of no consequence so long as it is frankly con¬ 
ceded that any such list must represent only the individual's personal 
preferences, that it is merely a list of good books, and that there can be no 
such thing as a list of the best books. It would be useless even to 
attempt to make a list with such pretensions unless the library were to 
extend to many thousand volumes, for there are many voluminous writers, 
most of whose writings no educated man ought to be willing to spare. 
For instance, Mr. Eliot evidently does not care for history; at least he 
