because I know two men, both of them distinguished in public life, who
find real recreation and spend leisure time when they have it in reading
and writing philosophy. They are both living and I have not their
permission to mention their names, but as I admire them I mention their
recreation, though with an admiration entirely untinged by envy. An
Oxford professor is alleged to have said that every one should know
enough philosophy to find that he can do without it. I do not go quite
so far as that. When I was an undergraduate at Oxford I read Plato
because I was made to read it. After I left Oxford I read Plato again to
see if I liked it. I did like it so much that I have never found the
same pleasure in other philosophical writers. I hope you will not think
that I am talking flippantly. I am talking very seriously--about
recreation, and I feel bound to mention philosophy in connection with it
out of respect to my friends, but I do not lay much stress upon it as a
means of recreation.

I come now to the main source of literary recreation in reading: the
great books of all time on which one generation after another has set
the seal of excellence so that we know them certainly to be worth
reading. There is a wide and varied choice, and it is amongst the old
books that the surest and most lasting recreation is to be found. Some
one has said, "Whenever a new book comes out read an old one." We need
not take that too literally, but we should give the old and proved books
the preference. Some one, I think it was Isaac Disraeli, said that he
who did not make himself acquainted with the best thoughts of the
greatest writers would one day be mortified to observe that his best
thoughts are their indifferent ones, and it is from the great books that
have stood the test of time that we shall get, not only the most lasting
pleasure, but a standard by which to measure our own thoughts, the
thoughts of others, and the excellence of the literature of our own day.