ROOSEVELT—"CRITIC.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 864, 9 July 1910, Page 11

ROOSEVELT—"CRITIC.

Some time back w© reprinted, tho list of "best books" drawn up by Dr. Eliot, of- Columbia' University. Writing in'tho 1 "Outlook" Mr. Roosvelt says the list' 1 is ail excellent one, "but this is, I am sure, all that Mr. Eliot has tried to do. His is in most respects an excellent list, but it is of course in no sense a list of the best books for all people, or for all places and times. The question is largely one of the personal equation. Some'of-the books which Mr. Eliot includes . I would Bot put in a live-foot library, nor yet in a fifty-foot libfary; and lie includes various good books which are at least no better than many thousands (I speak literally) which he leaves out. This is of no consequonco so long as it is frank-ly-conceded that any such list must represent only the individual's personal preferences, that it is merely a list of good books, and that there can be no such thing as a li-st of the best books. -It would be useless even to attempt to make a list with such pretensions unless the library were to extend to many thousand volumes, for there are many voluminous writers most of whosi writings no educated man ought to be willing to spare. For instance, Mr. Eliot evidently does not care for hisCory'; at least lie includes no historians :is such. Now, personally I would'not ii-Mude, as Mr. Eliot does,, third or fourth-rate plays, such as those of Drvden, filiclJey, Browning, awl Byron (wlio-sc greatness as poets does not rest oil ail exceedingly slender foundation as these dl-amas supply), and nt the stain-;- time completely emit Gibbon and • Thucydides, or even Xenopl-.on and Nap:e:\ Jlacsulay and. '.Scc-it nr( . practically omitted from Mr. Eliot's list; they are the two nineteenth-century authors that I should mc-st regret to lose. Mr. Eliot includes 'Aeneid' and leaves out tho 'Ilia-d'j'to my mind this- is like including Pope and leaving-out- Shakespeare. In the same way, Emerson's 'English .Traits' is included, and Holmes's 'Autocrat' excluded—an . in-

comprehensible choico from , my standpoint. So with tho poets and novelists. It is a more matter of personal taste: whether one prefers giving a separate volume to Burns or to Wordsworth or to Browning; it certainly.represents 110 principle of selection.