Persons who
read for the purpose of making a success of their added erudition, or
the better to adapt themselves--what a phrase!--to their "life's
work," are, to my thinking, like the wretches who throw flowers into
graves. What sacrilege, to trail the reluctances and coynesses, the
shynesses and sweet reserves of these "furtivi amores" at the heels of
a wretched ambition to be "cultivated" or learned, or to "get on" in
the world!
Like the kingdom of heaven and all other high and sacred things, the
choicest sorts of books only reveal the perfume of their rare essence
to those who love them for themselves in pure disinterestedness. Of
course they "mix in," these best-loved authors, with every experience
we encounter; they throw around places, hours, situations, occasions,
a quite special glamour of their own, just as one's more human
devotions do; but though they float, like a diffused aroma, round
every circumstance of our days, and may even make tolerable the
otherwise intolerable hours of our impertinent "life's work," we do
not love them because they help us here or help us there; or make us
wiser or make us better; we love them because they are what they are,
and we are what we are; we love them, in fact, for the beautiful
reason which the author of that noble book--a book not in our present
list, by the way, because of something obstinately tough and tedious
in him--I mean Montaigne's Essays--loved his sweet friend Etienne.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25