Great Books Once Read

Great Books Once Read

The great books of the world we have once read; we take them as read; we believe that we read them; at least, we believe that we know them. But to how few of us are they the daily mental food! For once that we take down our Milton, and read a book of that “voice,” as Wordsworth says, “whose sound is like the sea,” we take up fifty times a magazine with something about Milton, or about Milton’s grandmother, or a book stuffed with curious facts about the houses in which he lived, and the juvenile ailments of his first wife.

—Frederic Harrison (1831-1923)

The Choice of Books. Chicago, IL: R. R. Donnelley’s Sons Co. 1891. pp. 106-07.