Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book

[171] month, and by taking a book of the ‘Iliad’ before dinner, and a book of the ‘Odyssey’ after dinner, he just finished his pleasant task. On rainy days, when he could not walk, he threw in the Homeric hymns; he moreover read a newspaper once a week, and occasionally ran through a few pages of Virgil and Cicero, just to satisfy himself that it was a waste of time for any one who could read Greek to look at anything else. Simple and perennial felicity! no vacillation, no variableness or shadow of turning; no doubting between literature or science, still less between this or that department of literature. Since all advisers bid us read only the best books, why not follow their counsel, and keep to Aeschylus and Homer?

Who could have foreseen, in Dr. Popkin's day, the vast expansion of modern literatures, which, after exhausting all the Latin races, keeps opening upon us new treasure-houses elsewhere; so that Mr. Howells would bid us all learn Russian and Mr. Boyesen the Scandinavian tongues. Who could have foreseen the relentless Max Miller, marshalling before us by dozens the Oriental religions; and Mr. Fitzgerald concentrating