And after a first reading he will not throw it aside,
but will keep it by him, with his Shakespeare and his Homer,
and will take it up many and many a time, when the world is dark
and his spirits are low, and be straightway cheered and refreshed.
Yet this work has been allowed to lie wholly neglected, unmentioned,
and apparently unregretted, for nearly half a century.
The reader must not imagine that he is to find in it wisdom,
brilliancy, fertility of invention, ingenuity of construction,
excellence of form, purity of style, perfection of imagery,
truth to nature, clearness of statement, humanly possible situations,
humanly possible people, fluent narrative, connected sequence of events
--or philosophy, or logic, or sense. No; the rich, deep, beguiling charm
of the book lies in the total and miraculous ABSENCE from it of all
these qualities--a charm which is completed and perfected by the
evident fact that the author, whose naive innocence easily and surely
wins our regard, and almost our worship, does not know that they
are absent, does not even suspect that they are absent. When read
by the light of these helps to an understanding of the situation,
the book is delicious--profoundly and satisfyingly delicious.
I call it a book because the author calls it a book, I call it a work
because he calls it a work; but, in truth, it is merely a duodecimo
pamphlet of thirty-one pages.
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