A book must be interesting to the particular reader at that particular time.  But there are tens of thousands of interesting books, and some of them are sealed to some men and some are sealed to others; and some stir the soul at some given point of a man’s life and yet convey no message at other times.  The reader, the booklover, must meet his own needs without paying too much attention to what his neighbors say those needs should be.  He must not hypocritically pretend to like what he does not like.  Yet at the same time he must avoid that most unpleasant of all the indications of puffed-up vanity which consists in treating mere individual, and perhaps unfortunate, idiosyncrasy as a matter of pride.  I happen to be devoted to Macbeth, whereas I very seldom read Hamlet (though I like parts of it).  Now I am humbly and sincerely conscious that this is a demerit in me and not in Hamlet; and yet it would not do me any good to pretend that I like Hamlet as much as Macbeth when, as a matter of fact, I don’t.  I am very fond of simple epics and of ballad poetry, from the Nibelungenlied and the Roland song through “Chevy Chase” and “Patrick Spens” and “Twa Corbies” to Scott’s poems and Longfellow’s “Saga of King Olaf” and “Othere.”  On the other hand, I don’t care to read dramas as a rule; I cannot read them with enjoyment unless they appeal to me very strongly.  They must almost be AEschylus or Euripides, Goethe or Moliere, in order that I may not feel after finishing them a sense of virtuous pride in having achieved a task.  Now I would be the first to deny that even the most delightful old English ballad should be put on a par with any one of scores of dramatic works by authors whom I have not mentioned; I know that each of these dramatists has written what is of more worth than the ballad; only, I enjoy the ballad, and I don’t enjoy the drama; and therefore the ballad is better for me, and this fact is not altered by the other fact that my own shortcomings are to blame in the matter.  I still read a number of Scott’s novels over and over again, whereas if I finish anything by Miss Austen I have a feeling that duty performed is a rainbow to the soul.  But other booklovers who are very close kin to me, and whose taste I know to be better than mine, read Miss Austen all the time—­and, moreover, they are very kind, and never pity me in too offensive a manner for not reading her myself.

Aside from the masters of literature, there are all kinds of books which one person will find delightful, and which he certainly ought not to surrender just because nobody else is able to find as much in the beloved volume.  There is on our book-shelves a little pre-Victorian novel or tale called “The Semi-Attached Couple.”  It is told with much humor; it is a story of gentlefolk who are really gentlefolk; and to me it is altogether delightful.  But outside the members of my own family I have never met a human being who had even heard of it, and I don’t suppose I ever shall meet one.  I often enjoy a story by some living author so much that I write to tell him so—­or to tell her so; and at least half the time I regret my action, because it encourages the writer to believe that the public shares my views, and he then finds that the public doesn’t.