"ELEGANT EXTRACTS."

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 787, 9 April 1910, Page 9

"ELEGANT EXTRACTS."

The Masters of Literature" series now being issued inspires an English critic to. make some interesting observations. ( pn.the reading of "extracts." The'series; he says, is a good one, and, moreover, such authors as Scott, Defoe, ■ and Fielding lend themselves better, than most others to being exhibited in samples. "Nevertheless, even in their case it is doubtful if a reader who approaches them for the first time in a book of extracts is ever likely to do full justice to their work. For one thing, it is a principle which every experienced Teader will accept that a passage redd detached from its context gives less pleasure than when.read in situ, A reader "who comes' 'upon a purple, patch in its natural place finds his ;way to it through..matter which puts his mind, in the proper key for appreciating it,':and when it does'come it is with a thrill of surprise. It is an adventure," and he has.the pleasure of having discovered a beauty for himsolf instead of having, it thrust'upon ins attention by someone who has been over the ground beforo him. Further, granted that in a negligible minority of cases the reader may be induced by the excellence of some extract to go back to the source whence the extract was drawn, what will happen? This, that lie will find that everything in the volume is on.a lower level of excellence than the passage that took his fancy, and that the passage itself,- when in due course he hits upon it, so far from communicating a pleasurable thrill, will have some of the-insipidity of a twicetold tale. <It'follows that he will never have received- from the book pleasure it might have given, and that accordingly ho never will rate it at its true value. If, on the other hand, it is said that the books in question will serve as a sort of printed commonplacebook, compiled from books already read from some library, it can only bo rejoined that he is a poor reader who, in these days of cheap printing, is contented with less than the authors themselves, i