that the Tivoli's frontage wouldn't, because it couldn't, be so bad as
that which we had just, for the first time, seen.

For me there was another, a yet stronger, balm. And I went as though I
trod on air, my heart singing within me. For I had not, after all, to
resume my task of writing that letter to The Times.



BOOKS WITHIN BOOKS
1914.

They must, I suppose, be classed among biblia abiblia [Greek]. Ignored
in the catalogue of any library, not one of them lurking in any
uttermost cavern under the reading-room of the British Museum, none of
them ever printed even for private circulation, these books written by
this and that character in fiction are books only by courtesy and good
will.

But how few, after all, the books that are books! Charles Lamb let his
kind heart master him when he made that too brief list of books that
aren't. Book is an honourable title, not to be conferred lightly. A
volume is not necessarily, as Lamb would have had us think, a book
because it can be read without difficulty. The test is, whether it was
worth reading. Had the author something to set forth? And had he the
specific gift for setting it forth in written words? And did he use
this rather rare gift conscientiously and to the full? And were his
words well and appropriately printed and bound? If you can say Yes to
these questions, then only, I submit, is the title of `book' deserved.
If Lamb were alive now, he certainly would draw the line closer than