I

Let us attempt to-day, Gentlemen, picking up the scent where we
left at the conclusion of my first lecture, to hunt the Art of
Reading (as I shall call it), a little further on the line of
common-sense; then to cast back and chase on a line somewhat more
philosophical. If these lines run wide and refuse to unite, we
shall have made a false cast: if they converge and meet, we shall
have caught our hare and may proceed, in subsequent lectures, to
cook him.

Well, the line of common-sense has brought us to this point--
that, man and this planet being such as they are, for a man to
read all the books existent on it is impossible; and, if
possible, would be in the highest degree undesirable. Let us, for
example, go back quite beyond the invention of printing and try
to imagine a man who had read all the rolls destroyed in the
Library of Alexandria by successive burnings. (Some reckon the
number of these MSS at 700,000.) Suppose, further, this man to be
gifted with a memory retentive as Lord Macaulay's. Suppose lastly
that we go to such a man and beg him to repeat to us some chosen
one of the fifty or seventy lost, or partially lost, plays of
Euripides. It is incredible that he could gratify us.

There was, as I have said, a great burning at Alexandria in 47
B.C., when Caesar set the fleet in the harbour on fire to prevent
its falling into the hands of the Egyptians. The flames spread,
and the great library stood but 400 yards from the quayside, with