literature thus had a halo of home about it, and the halo never faded
throughout life. From the pages of the book in after years the father's
loving voice still spoke to his child. But when it comes to the author, I
have doubts whether it be at all good to have him near you when you read
his book. You may take an unfair advantage of him, and reject his book,
because you find the writer personally antipathetic. Or he may take an
unfair advantage of you, and control you by his personal fascination. You
remember the critic of Demosthenes, who remarked to him of a certain
oration, "When I first read your speech, I was convinced, just as the
Athenians were; but when I read it again, I saw through its fallacies."
"Yes," rejoined Demosthenes, "but the Athenians heard it only once." A book
you read more than once: for you possess only what you understand. I do not
doubt that the best readers are those who move least in literary circles,
who are unprejudiced one way or the other by their personal likes or
dislikes of literary men. How detestable are personal paragraphs about
authors--often, alas! autobiographical titbits. We expect a little more
reticence: we expect the author to say what he has to say in his book, and
not in his talks about his book and himself. We expect him to express
himself and suppress himself. "Respect the books," says Judah the Pious,
"or you show disrespect to the writer." No, not to the writer, but to the
soul whose progeny the book is, to the living intellect that bred it, in
Milton's noble phrase, to "an Immortality rather than a life." "Many a
man," he says, "lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the
precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on
purpose to a life beyond life."

It is a sober truth that, of the books we chiefly love, we know least about
the authors. Perpetrating probably the only joke in his great Bodleian
Catalogue, Dr. Steinschneider enters the Bible under the heading _Anonyma_.
We are nowadays so concerned to know whether Moses or another wrote the