Page:On Reading in Relation to Literature.djvu/18

Rh heart thousands of years ago. Very anciently also there was a Greek story-teller who wrote a little story about a boy and girl in the country, called Daphnis and Chloe. It was a little story, telling in the simplest language possible how that boy and girl fell in love with each other, and did not know why, and all the innocent things they said to each other, and how grown-up people kindly laughed at them and taught them some of the simplest laws of life. What a trifling subject, some might think. But that story, translated into every language in the world, still reads like a new story to us; and every time we re-read it, it appears still more beautiful, because it teaches a few true and tender things about innocence and the feeling of youth. It never can grow old, any more than the girl and boy whom it describes. Or, to descend to later times, about three hundred years ago a French priest conceived the idea of writing down the history of a student who had been charmed by a wanton woman, and led by her into many scenes of disgrace and pain. This little book, called Manon Lescaut, describes for us the society of a vanished time, a time when people wore swords and powdered their hair, a time when everything was as different as possible from the life of to-day. But the story is just as true of our own time as of any time in civilization; the pain and the sorrow affect us just as if they were our own; and the woman, who is not really bad, but only weak and selfish, charms the reader almost as much as she charmed her victim, until the tragedy ends. Here again is one of the world's great books that cannot die. Or, to take one more example out of a possible hundred, consider the stories of Hans Andersen. He conceived the notion that moral truths and social philosophy could be better taught through little fairy tales and child stories than in almost any other way; and with the help of hundreds of old-fashioned tales, he made a new series of wonderful stories that have become a part of