Pentateuch, that we neglect the Pentateuch as though _no one_ had ever
written it. What do we know about the personality of Shakespeare? Perhaps
we are happy in our ignorance. "Sometimes," said Jonathan Swift, "I read a
book with pleasure and detest the author." Most of us would say the same of
Jonathan Swift himself, and all of us, I think, share R.L. Stevenson's
resentment against a book with the portrait of a living author, and in a
heightened degree against an English translation of an ancient Hebrew
classic with the translator's portrait. Sometimes such a translator _is_
the author; his rendering, at all events, is not the classic. A certain
Fidentinus once stole the work of the Roman poet Martial, and read it out
to the assembly as his own; whereupon Martial wrote this epigram,

The book you read is, Fidentinus, mine,
Tho' read so badly, it well may pass for thine.

But even apart from such bad taste as the aforementioned translator's, I do
not like to see portraits of living authors in their books. The author of a
good book becomes your intimate, but it is the author as you know him from
his book, not as you see him in the flesh or on a silver print. I quote
Stevenson again: "When you have read, you carry away with you a memory of
the man himself; it is as though you had touched a loyal hand, looked into
brave eyes, and made a noble friend; there is another bond on you
thenceforward, binding you to life and to the love of virtue."

This line of thought leads me to the further remark, that some part of
the solace derived from books has changed its character since the art of
printing was invented. In former times the personality, if not of the
author, at all events of the scribe, pressed itself perforce upon the
reader. The reader had before him, not necessarily an autograph, but at
all events a manuscript. Printing has suppressed this individuality, and