who would propose Mark Rutherford and the Revelation in Tanner's Lane
as a sound test for a bookman's palate. But . . . de gustibus . . .
!

It is the chief office of the critic, while encouraging all honest
work which either can instruct or amuse, to distinguish between the
books which must be content to pass and the books which must remain
because they have an immortality of necessity.

According to the weightiest of French critics of our time the author
of such a book is one "who has enriched the human mind, who has
really added to its treasures, who has got it to take a step further
. . . who has spoken to all in a style of his own, yet a style which
finds itself the style of everybody, in a style that is at once new
and antique, and is the contemporary of all the ages." Without doubt
Sainte-Beuve has here touched the classical quality in literature as
with a needle, for that book is a classic to be placed beside Homer
and Virgil and Dante and Shakespeare--among the immortals--which has
wisdom which we cannot find elsewhere, and whose form has risen above
the limitation of any single age. While ordinary books are houses
which serve for a generation or two at most, this kind of book is the
Cathedral which towers above the building at its base and can be seen
from afar, in which many generations shall find their peace and
inspiration. While other books are like the humble craft which ply
from place to place along the coast, this book is as a stately
merchantman which compasses the great waters and returns with a
golden argosy.

The subject of the book does not enter into the matter, and on
subjects the bookman is very catholic, and has an orthodox horror of