palmy days, but it is not so precious now; and a great work, so far from being treated as a priceless possession and a companion, is regarded only as an item in the menu furnished for a sort of literary debauch.  A laborious historian spends ten years in studying an important period; he contrives to set forth his facts in a brilliant and exhilarating style, whereupon the word is passed that the history must be read.  People meet, and the usual inquiries are exchanged—­“Have you read Brown on the Union of 1707?” “Yes—­skimmed it through last week.  But have you seen Thomson’s attack on the Apocrypha?” And so the two go on exchanging notes on their respective bundles of literary lumber, but without endeavouring to gain the least understanding of any author’s meaning, and without tasting in the smallest degree any one of the ennobling properties of ripe thought or beautiful workmanship.  The main thing is to be able to say that you have read a book.  What you have got out of it is quite another thing with which no one is concerned; so that in some societies where the pretence of being “literary” is kept up the bewildered outsider feels as though he were listening to the discussion of a library catalogue at a sale.  Timid persons think that they would be looked on lightly if they failed to show an acquaintance with the name at least of any new work; and the consequences of this silly ambition would be very droll did we not know how much loose thought, sham culture, lowering deceit arise from it.  A young man lately made a great success in literature.  For his first book he gained nothing, but lost a good deal; for his second he obtained twenty pounds, after he had lost his eyesight for a time, owing to his toiling by night and day; his third work brought him fame and a fortune.  He happened to be in a bookseller’s shop when a lady entered and said, “What is the price of Mr. Blank’s works?” “Thirty shillings, madam.”  “Oh, that is far too much!  I have to dine with him to-night, and I wanted to skim the books.  But he isn’t worth thirty shillings!” Twenty discourses could not exhaust the full significance of that little speech.  The lady was typical of a class, and her mode of getting ready her table talk is the same which produces confusion, mean sciolism, and mental poverty among too many of those who set up as arbiters of taste.  A somewhat cruel man of letters is said to have led on one of the shallow pretenders in a heartless way until the victim confidently affected knowledge of a plot, descriptions, and characters which had no existence.  The trick was heartless and somewhat dishonest; but the mere fact that it could be played at all shows how far the game of literary racing has done harm.