niceties are concerned, which cannot be sharpened into true scholarship.
Yet, even for those afflicted in this way, and with the malady of being
"idle, careless little boys," the ancient classics have a value for which
there is no substitute. There is a charm in finding ourselves--our
common humanity, our puzzles, our cares, our joys, in the writings of men
severed from us by race, religion, speech, and half the gulf of
historical time--which no other literary pleasure can equal. Then there
is to be added, as the university preacher observed, "the pleasure of
despising our fellow-creatures who do not know Greek." Doubtless in that
there is great consolation.

It would be interesting, were it possible, to know what proportion of
people really care for poetry, and how the love of poetry came to them,
and grew in them, and where and when it stopped. Modern poets whom one
meets are apt to say that poetry is not read at all. Byron's Murray
ceased to publish poetry in 1830, just when Tennyson and Browning were
striking their preludes. Probably Mr. Murray was wise in his generation.
But it is also likely that many persons, even now, are attached to
poetry, though they certainly do not buy contemporary verse. How did the
passion come to them? How long did it stay? When did the Muse say good-
bye? To myself, as I have remarked, poetry came with Sir Walter Scott,
for one read Shakespeare as a child, rather in a kind of dream of
fairyland and enchanted isles, than with any distinct consciousness that
one was occupied with poetry. Next to Scott, with me, came Longfellow,
who pleased one as more reflective and tenderly sentimental, while the
reflections were not so deep as to be puzzling. I remember how
"Hiawatha" came out, when one was a boy, and how delightful was the free
forest life, and Minnehaha, and Paupukkeewis, and Nokomis. One did not
then know that the same charm, with a yet fresher dew upon it, was to
meet one later, in the "Kalewala." But, at that time, one had no