completely as to the Lake School before I am a year older."
Without this precautionary steeling of the resolution
the risk of a humiliating collapse into futility is enormously magnified.


My third counsel is: Buy a library. It is obvious that you cannot read
unless you have books. I began by urging the constant purchase of books--
any books of approved quality, without reference to their
immediate bearing upon your particular case. The moment has now come
to inform you plainly that a bookman is, amongst other things,
a man who possesses many books. A man who does not possess
many books is not a bookman. For years literary authorities have been
favouring the literary public with wondrously selected
lists of "the best books"--the best novels, the best histories,
the best poems, the best works of philosophy--or the hundred best
or the fifty best of all sorts. The fatal disadvantage of such lists
is that they leave out large quantities of literature which is
admittedly first-class. The bookman cannot content himself
with a selected library. He wants, as a minimum, a library
reasonably complete in all departments. With such a basis acquired,
he can afterwards wander into those special byways of book-buying
which happen to suit his special predilections. Every Englishman
who is interested in any branch of his native literature,
and who respects himself, ought to own a comprehensive and inclusive
library of English literature, in comely and adequate editions.
You may suppose that this counsel is a counsel of perfection.
It is not. Mark Pattison laid down a rule that he who desired
the name of book-lover must spend five per cent. of his income on books.
The proposal does not seem extravagant, but even on a smaller percentage
than five the average reader of these pages may become the owner,