The excellence of a book and its value as a book depend upon two
factors, which are usually, though not always, united in varied
proportions: first, that it should put something of value to the reader,
whether of value as a discovery and an enlargement of wisdom or of value
as a new emphasis laid upon old and sound morals; secondly, that this
thing added or renewed in human life should be presented in such a
manner as to give permanent aesthetic pleasure.
That is not a first-rate book which, while it is admirably written,
teaches something false or something evil; nor is that a first-rate book
which, though it discover a completely new thing, or emphasize the most
valuable department of morals, is so constructed as to be unreadable.
Now it will not be denied that as far as these two factors are
concerned--and I repeat they are almost always found in combination--the
position of the Book has dwindled almost to nothingness. One could give
examples of almost every kind: one could show how poetry, no matter how
appreciated or praised, no longer sells. One could show--and this is one
of the worst signs of all--how men will buy by the hundred thousand
anything at all which has the hall mark of an established reputation,
quite careless as to their love of it or their appetite for it. One
could further show how more than one book of permanent value in English
life has been discovered in our generation outside England, and has been
as it were thrust upon the English public by foreign opinion.
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