I have sometimes thought that this feverish exchange of opinions received a fatal impetus from that curious epidemic rife in England a few years ago, and known as the “Lists of a Hundred Books.” Never before had such an admirable opportunity been offered to people to put on what are commonly called “frills,” and it must be confessed they made the most of it. The Koran, the Analects of Confucius, Spinoza, Herodotus, Demosthenes, Xenophon, Lewis’s History of Philosophy, the Saga of Burnt Njal, Locke’s Conduct of the Understanding,--such, and such only, were the works unflinchingly urged upon us by men whom we had considered, perhaps, as human as ourselves, whom we might almost have suspected of solacing their lighter moments with an occasional study of Rider Haggard or Gaboriau. If readers could be made by the simple process of deluging the world with good counsel, these arbitrary lists would have marked a new intellectual era. As it was, they merely excited a lively but unfruitful curiosity. “Living movements,” Cardinal Newman reminds us, “do not come of committees.” I knew, indeed, one impetuous student who rashly purchased the Grammar of Assent because she saw it in a list; but there was a limit even to her ardor, for eighteen months afterwards the leaves were still uncut. It is a striking proof of Mr. Arnold’s inspired rationality that, while so many of his countrymen were instructing us in this peremptory fashion, he alone, who might have spoken with authority, declined to add his name and list to the rest. It was an amusing game, he said, but he felt no disposition to play it.
Some variations of this once popular pastime have lingered even to our day. Lists of the best American authors, lists of the best foreign authors, lists of the best ten books published within a decade, have appeared occasionally in our journals, while a list of books which prominent people intended or hoped to read “in the near future” filled us with respect for such heroic anticipations. Ten-volume works of the severest character counted as trifles in these prospective studies. For the past year, it is true, the World’s Fair has given a less scholastic tone to newspaper discussions. We hear comparatively little about the Analects of Confucius, and a great deal about the White City, and the Department of Anthropology. Perhaps it is better to tell the public your impressions of the Fair than to confide to it your favorite authors. One revelation is as valuable as the other, but it is possible, with caution, to talk about Chicago in terms that will give general satisfaction. It is not possible to express literary, artistic, or national preferences without exposing one’s self to vigorous reproaches from people who hold different views. I was once lured by a New York periodical into a number of harmless confidences, unlikely, it seemed to me, to awaken either interest or indignation. The questions asked were of the mildly searching order, like those which delighted the hearts of children, when I was a very little girl, in our “Mental Photograph Albums.” “Who is your favorite character in fiction?” “Who is your favorite character in history?” “What do you consider the finest attribute of man?” Having amiably responded to a portion of these inquiries, I was surprised and flattered, some weeks later, at seeing myself described in a daily paper--on the strength, too, of my own confessions--as irrational, morbid, and cruel; excusable only on the score of melancholy surroundings and a sickly constitution. And the delightful part of it was that I had apparently revealed all this myself. “Do not contend in words about things of no consequence,” counsels St. Teresa, who carried with her to the cloister wisdom enough to have kept all of us poor worldlings out of trouble.