So every reader’s viewpoint shifts with the years.

Our friend who welcomes George Ade to his inner sanctuary may find as the years go on that his reaction to that contact has altered.  I should not recommend that the author be then be cast into outer darkness.  Once a favorite, always a favorite, for old sake’s sake even if not for present power and influence.  Our private libraries will hold shelf after shelf of these old-time favorites—­milestones on the intellectual track over which we have wearily or joyously traveled.

There will always be a warm spot in my heart and a nook on my private shelf for Oliver Optic and Horatio Alger.  Though I bar them from my library (I mean my Library with a big L) I have no right to exclude them from my private collection of favorites, for once I loved them.  I scarcely know why or how.  If there had been in those far-off days of my boyhood, children’s libraries and children’s librarians, I might not have known them; as it is, they are incidents in my literary past that can not be blinked, shameful though they may be.  The re-reading of such books as these is interesting because it shows us how far we have traveled since we counted them among our favorites.

Then there is the book that, despite its acknowledged excellence, the reader would not perhaps admit to his inner circle if he read it now for the first time.  It holds its place largely on account of the glamour with which his youth invested it.  It thrills him now as it thrilled him then, but he half suspects that the thrill is largely reminiscent.  I sometimes fancy that as I re-read Ivanhoe and my heart leaps to my mouth when the knights clash at Ashby, the propulsive power of that leap had its origin in the emotions of 1870 rather than those of 1914.  And when some of Dickens’ pathos—­that death-bed of Paul Dombey for instance—­brings the tears again unbidden to my eyes, I suspect, though I scarcely dare to put my suspicion into words, that the salt in those tears is of the vintage of 1875.  I am reading Arnold Bennett now and loving him very dearly when he is at his best; but how I shall feel about him in 1930 or how I might feel if I could live until 2014, is another question.

Then there is the book that, scarce comprehended or appreciated when it was first read, but loved for some magic of expression or turn of thought, shows new beauties at each re-reading, unfolding like an opening rose and bringing to view petals of beauty, wit, wisdom and power that were before unsuspected.  This is the kind of book that one loves most to re-read, for the growth that one sees in it is after all in oneself—­not in the book.  The gems that you did not see when you read it first were there then as they are now.  You saw them not then and you see them now, for your mental sight is stronger—­you are more of a man now than you were then.