Perhaps my dearest and best friend outside of Shakespeare is
D'Artagnan - the elderly D'Artagnan of the VICOMTE DE
BRAGELONNE. I know not a more human soul, nor, in his way, a
finer; I shall be very sorry for the man who is so much of a
pedant in morals that he cannot learn from the Captain of
Musketeers. Lastly, I must name the PILGRIM'S PROGRESS, a
book that breathes of every beautiful and valuable emotion.
But of works of art little can be said; their influence is
profound and silent, like the influence of nature; they mould
by contact; we drink them up like water, and are bettered,
yet know not how. It is in books more specifically didactic
that we can follow out the effect, and distinguish and weigh
and compare. A book which has been very influential upon me
fell early into my hands, and so may stand first, though I
think its influence was only sensible later on, and perhaps
still keeps growing, for it is a book not easily outlived:
the ESSAIS of Montaigne. That temperate and genial picture
of life is a great gift to place in the hands of persons of
to-day; they will find in these smiling pages a magazine of
heroism and wisdom, all of an antique strain; they will have
their 'linen decencies' and excited orthodoxies fluttered,
and will (if they have any gift of reading) perceive that
these have not been fluttered without some excuse and ground
of reason; and (again if they have any gift of reading) they
will end by seeing that this old gentleman was in a dozen
ways a finer fellow, and held in a dozen ways a nobler view
of life, than they or their contemporaries.
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