19 JUNE 1886, Page 27

The Book-Lover : a Guide to the Best Reading. By

James Baldwin, Ph.D. (Patnam's Sons, London.)—Sinoe the rather hopeless attempt recently made to decide upon the one hundred volumes best worthy the reading, several small guides have been printed for the direction of hesitating readers. It cannot be said that they are useless at a time when books and magazines in countless numbers combine to mystify, impoverish, or over-stimulate the mind. Mr. Baldwin's advice is to " choose a speciality and follow it with an eye single to it alone," but such advice is not suited for readers generally, and it may be doubted whether it would be an intellectual benefit to any one if followed too closely. Some discursiveness must be permitted, unless pedantry is preferable to wisdom. What is needed, is that the tendency to roam at large in the field of literature should not be suffered to grow rampant. Again, the danger of regarding the works of great poets simply as class-books needed for examinations, is a fruitful source of mischief in our day, and there are scores of young people who study with elaborate painstaking Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton, without the least appreciation of their worth as poets. The only way to gain a real taste for literature is to read the greatest writers not as the annotator reads them, but with a mind open to receive impressions from noble thoughts, and from "the lovely music of pure words." Emerson's advice, quoted by Mr. Baldwin, "Never read any but famed books," is neither possible nor desirable ; but the reader who has once learned to love the great classics of his country or of the world, will return to them again and again. And his admiration of these master-spirits will enable him to estimate at its due value contemporary literature. Some of that also is, no doubt, destined to be venerable and illustrious. The choice of books, for the young especially, is more then over difficult, and in regard to stories, it is well known that, by young and old, a third-rate tale, if new, is preferred to the finest work of fiction that has survived its nonage. On this point Mr. Baldwin writes sensibly, and when as an American he laments the literary dyspepsia common in the States, and observes that the children there are encouraged to read anything that comes to hand, provided only that it is entertaining, he points to an evil quite as evident, it is to be feared, in our own country.