expectations on this head may reasonably be stated as just such writers as those above mentioned, plus a fair proportion of the more ephemeral current literature which has not yet been accorded a settled place in literary history. Thus, a reader is surely entitled to demand some of the works of Homer, Virgil, Dante, Goethe, Shakespeare, Burns, Milton and Rousseau among great names; while he may also reasonably hope to find in the same company such lesser lights in all departments of literature as Gibbon, Sappho, Walt Whitman, Hume, Schopenhauer, Huxley, Longfellow, the Brontës, Boswell, Keats, Lingard, Macaulay, Gilbert White, Izaak Walton and Grant Allen.
If it is not a wise and proper policy to commence with the authors generally recognized and acclaimed as the best in the realms of pure literature, what principle can be adopted as a guide to such an immense labyrinth as the field of general literature? Certainly the individual tastes of librarians and committees are not to be accepted as irreproachable standards, nor can one depend absolutely upon the guidance of experts. It seems fair, therefore, to assume that the suggestion made above, as to depending upon what may be termed the selection of posterity, is not unreasonable, nor one difficult to follow if one or two of the best literary histories are compared and selections carefully made. In these days of good and cheap reprints, most of the world's great classics can now be had in modern editions. Many books can also be obtained second-hand, by circulating lists
