NOTES.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 821, 21 May 1910, Page 9

NOTES.

"The public taste in regard to reading," Mr. John Murray, the publisher, considers, "has greatly changed in recent years. People- aro now so accustomed to reading newspapers and periodicals dished up for their amusement that many of them have, not the inclination to sit down and study a book which requires thought and careful reading. Side by side with these careless readers, of whom there is an enormous numbor, there is a constantlygrowing class of really serious students, who ondeavour to master at least one subject to the best of their ability." Theso views ho expressed in an interesting interview in "Great Thoughts."

"My father," said Mr. Murray, "onco wrote to Dean Stanley, returning him a letter, ono or two passages in which he could uot make out. The Dean replied: 'If you cannot make out my writing, I am sure I can't. I thin}* what I meant to, say was this , : and then followed a passage which was not more intelligible than tho original."

"I suppose that everyone will acknowledge that there is the widest possiblo difforeneo between books that interest and instruct and books that really move the soul," writes Dr. W. J. Dawsoiij in tho "Congregationalist." "Were I writing of the first class ray list would be interminable; but the second class, tho dynamic books, must needs be small.

"The dynamic book is rare in any literature. It is usually the product of intense experience in tho author, and it presupposes a certain oondition of mind in the reader. - Thus I can still vividly recollect the immense effect which the poetry of Byron and Shelley had upon my. mind as a boy of fourteen. .Byron proved a transient influence, but Shelley's fascination has continued through a lifetime. Gcorgo Eliot's 'Middlemarch' and 'Tho Mill on tho Floss' were also for mo dynamic books. Their moral effect was profound, and for many years they influenced my thinking and my general view of life."