The secret of the art of literary taste, may it not
be found to be nothing else than the secret of the art of life
itself--I mean the capacity for discovering the real fatality, the
real predestined direction of one's intrinsic nature and the refusal,
when this is found, to waste one's energies in alien paths and
irrelevant junketings?
A list of books of the kind appended here, becomes, by the very reason
of its shameless subjectivity, a challenge to the intelligence
perusing it--a challenge that is bound, in some degree or another, to
fling such a reader back upon his own inveterate prejudices; to fling
him back upon them with a sense that it is his affair reasonably to
justify them.
From quite another point of view, however, might the appended list
find its excuse--I mean as being a typical choice; in other words, the
natural choice of a certain particular minority of minds, who, while
disagreeing in most essentials, in this one important essential find
themselves in singular harmony. And this minority of minds, of minds
with the especial prejudices and predilections indicated in this list,
undoubtedly has a real and definite existence; there are such people,
and any list of books which they made would exclude the writers here
excluded, and include the writers here included, though in particular
instances, the motives of the choice might differ.
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