So that when a book becomes famous one should carefully distinguish
whether it is so on account of its matter or its form.

Quite ordinary and shallow men are able to produce books of very great
importance because of their _matter_, which was accessible to them
alone. Take, for instance, books which give descriptions of foreign
countries, rare natural phenomena, experiments that have been made,
historical events of which they were witnesses, or have spent both time
and trouble in inquiring into and specially studying the authorities for
them.

On the other hand, it is on _form_ that we are dependent, where the
matter is accessible to every one or very well known; and it is what has
been thought about the matter that will give any value to the
achievement; it will only be an eminent man who will be able to write
anything that is worth reading. For the others will only think what is
possible for every other man to think. They give the impress of their
own mind; but every one already possesses the original of this
impression.

However, the public is very much more interested in matter than in form,
and it is for this very reason that it is behindhand in any high degree
of culture. It is most laughable the way the public reveals its liking
for matter in poetic works; it carefully investigates the real events or
personal circumstances of the poet's life which served to give the
_motif_ of his works; nay, finally, it finds these more interesting than
the works themselves; it reads more about Goethe than what has been
written by Goethe, and industriously studies the legend of Faust in
preference to Goethe's _Faust_ itself. And when B�rger said that "people
would make learned expositions as to who Leonora really was," we see