The good old days were the days, seemingly, when the critics had their way and ran things with a high hand; they made or unmade books and authors.  They killed Chatterton, just as, some years later, they hastened the death of Keats.  For a time they were all-powerful.  It was not until the end of the eighteenth century that these professional tyrants began to lose their grip, and when Byron took up the lance against them their doom was practically sealed.

Who would care a picayune in these degenerate days what Dr. Warburton said pro or con a book?  It was Warburton (then Bishop of Gloucester) who remarked of Granger’s ``Biographical History of England’’ that it was ``an odd one.’’ This was as high a compliment as he ever paid a book; those which he did not like he called sad books, and those which he fancied he called odd ones.

The truth seems to be that through the diffusion of knowledge and the multiplicity and cheapness of books people generally have reached the point in intelligence where they feel warranted in asserting their ability to judge for themselves.  So the occupation of the critic, as interpreted and practised of old, is gone.

Reverting to the practice of lamenting the degeneracy of humanity, I should say that the fashion is by no means a new one.  Search the records of the ancients and you will find the same harping upon the one string of present decay and former virtue.  Herodotus, Sallust, Caesar, Cicero, and Pliny take up and repeat the lugubrious tale in turn.

Upon earth there are three distinct classes of men:  Those who contemplate the past, those who contemplate the present, those who contemplate the future.  I am of those who believe that humanity progresses, and it is my theory that the best works of the past have survived and come down to us in these books which are our dearest legacies, our proudest possessions, and our best-beloved companions.

XV

A BOOK THAT BRINGS SOLACE AND CHEER

One of my friends had a mania for Bunyan once upon a time, and, although he has now abandoned that fad for the more fashionable passion of Napoleonana, he still exhibits with evident pride the many editions of the ``Pilgrim’s Progress’’ he gathered together years ago.  I have frequently besought him to give me one of his copies, which has a curious frontispiece illustrating the dangers besetting the traveller from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City.  This frontispiece, which is prettily illuminated, occurs in Virtue’s edition of the ``Pilgrim’s Progress’’; the book itself is not rare, but it is hardly procurable in perfect condition, for the reason that the colored plate is so pleasing to the eye that few have been able to resist the temptation to make away with it.

For similar reasons it is seldom that we meet with a perfect edition of Quarles’ ``Emblems’’; indeed, an ``Emblems’’ of early publication that does not lack the title-page is a great rarity.  In the ``good old days,’’ when juvenile books were few, the works of Bunyan and of Quarles were vastly popular with the little folk, and little fingers wrought sad havoc with the title-pages and the pictures that with their extravagant and vivid suggestions appealed so directly and powerfully to the youthful fancy.