There are certain books which are standard, and as it were planted in the British soil, before which the great majority of us bow the knee and doff the cap with a reverence that, in its ignorance, reminds one of fetish worship, and, in its affectation, of the passion for High Art.  The works without which, we are told at book auctions, ’no gentleman’s library can be considered complete,’ are especially the objects of this adoration.  The ‘Rambler,’ for example, is one of them.  I was once shut up for a week of snowstorms in a mountain inn, with the ‘Rambler’ and one other publication.  The latter was a Shepherd’s Guide, with illustrations of the way in which sheep are marked by their various owners for the purpose of identification:  ’Cropped near ear, upper key bitted far, a pop on the head and another at the tail head, ritted, and with two red strokes down both shoulders,’ etc.  It was monotonous, but I confess that there were times when I felt it some comfort in having that picture-book to fall back upon, to alternate with the ‘Rambler.’

The essay, like port wine, I have noticed, requires age for its due appreciation.  Leigh Hunt’s ‘Indicator’ comprises some admirable essays, but the general public have not a word to say for them; it may be urged that that is because they had not read the ‘Indicator’ But why then do they praise the ‘Rambler’ and Montaigne?  That comforting word, ‘Mesopotamia,’ which has been so often alluded to in religious matters, has many a parallel in profane literature.

A good deal of this mock worship is of course due to abject cowardice.  A man who says he doesn’t like the ‘Rambler,’ runs, with some folks, the risk of being thought a fool; but he is sure to be thought that, for something or another, under any circumstances; and, at all events, why should he not content himself, when the ‘Rambler’ is belauded, with holding his tongue and smiling acquiescence?  It must be conceded that there are a few persons who really have read the ‘Rambler,’ a work, of course, I am merely using as a type of its class.  In their young days it was used as a schoolbook, and thought necessary as a part of polite education; and as they have read little or nothing since, it is only reasonable that they should stick to their colours.  Indeed, the French satirist’s boast that he could predicate the views of any man with regard to both worlds, if he were only supplied with the simple data of his age and his income, is quite true in the general with regard to literary taste.  Given the age of the ordinary individual—­that is to say of the gentleman ’fond of books, but who has really no time for reading’—­and it is easy enough to guess his literary idols.  They are the gods of his youth, and, whether he has been ’suckled in a creed outworn’ or not, he knows no other.  These persons, however, rarely give their opinion about literary matters, except on compulsion; they are harmless and truthful.  The tendency of society in general, on the other hand, is not only to praise the ‘Rambler’ which they have not read, but to express a noble scorn for those who have read it and don’t like it.