Page:Poems, Alexander Pushkin, 1888.djvu/46

40 this estimate of the influence of one great book exaggerated, let him try to live for one week in succession wholly in the spirit of the one book that to him is the book (I will not quarrel with him if it be Smiles instead of St. Matthew, or Malthus's Essay on Population instead of the Gospel of St. John, or even our modern realistic Gospel of dirt), and let him see what will come of it.

21. Shakespeare, Milton, Carlyle, Ruskin, Emerson, Scott, Goldsmith, Irving, Johnson, Addison, furnish a library which is really enough for the life-time of any one who takes life seriously, and comes to these masters, not as a conceited lord waiting for amusement,—as a judge, in short,—but as a beggar, an humble learner, hoping to carry away from them not the tickle of pleasure, but the life-giving sustenance. To make letters a source of amusement is but to dig for iron with a spade of gold. Amusement is indeed often necessary, just as roasting eggs is often necessary; but who would travel to a volcano for the sake of roasting his eggs? No, the masters in letters are not sent to us for our amusement; they are sent to us to give the one answer to each of us, which at the peril of our lives we must sooner or later receive,—the answer to the question: How