Modern achievement Author:Edward Everett Hale Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: WHY TO READ Forming Opinions of Books By MATTHEW BROWNE SINCE we are so made we can never do an injustice either to a person or a thing without harming ... more »ourselves in the act, it were to be wished that we could deal justly with, among otner matters, our books. Books may be called intermediate between persons and things. When we have paid for them we may, if we please, do as we will with our own; but it is at our peril that we do them wrong. The friend who has dined off our mutton and our wine probably costs us as much as our book did; but though we are at liberty, or, at all events, take the liberty, to criticise our friends after they are gone home, we do not feel entitled to be unjust or indiscriminating in what we say of them. And we rarely approve each other in judging hastily. " Perhaps we had better see him again, my dear; we might like him better next time "—are not these household words? Then, besides the rashness of short acquaintance, there are errors of inaptitude, of inexperience, of rude indocility, of misplaced reliance, and so forth, which could never be exhaustively classified or described. A few hints may, however, be useful. (l) I am not at all afraid of urging overmuch the propriety of frequent, very frequent, reading of the same book. The book remains the same, but the reader changes, and the value of reading lies in the collision of minds. It may be taken for granted that no conceivable amount of readingcould ever put me into the position with respect to his book —I mean as to intelligence only—in which the author strove to place me. I may read him a hundred times, and not catch the precise right point of view; though I may hit it the hundred and first. The driest and hardest book that ever was contains an interest over and above what can be picked o...« less