Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/144

140  Oh for a booke and a shady nooke, Eyther in doors or out, With the green leaves whispering overhead, Or the street cryers all about.

Where I may read all at my ease Both of the new and old, For a jolly good booke wherein to looke, Is better to me than gold."

Not to speak of good old books, to be had in the stalls for a song, of the newspapers, which contain not a little good reading matter, especially in their Sunday editions, or of the innumerable magazines better and worse, there are editions of nearly all the world's literary masterpieces which are low-priced enough for the poorest and at the same time elegant enough for all but the most fastidious. You can find low-cost library editions and five-cent pocket editions, well printed, on good paper, with readably large type, suitable for all the demands of any undergoing the pangs of literary thirst. Not alone the masterpieces are so represented; but thousands of less pretentious though very useful books. Good reading matter is almost thrust upon us now.

This vast literary treasury contains riches from every gold-bearing region of the earth. The best specimens of antique and of foreign letters are there, having been translated into our tongue, in most cases, by capable scholars, and thus rendered accessible to such as read only in English. The best works of Plato and Aristotle, of Cicero, one of the world's greatest literators, of Boccaccio, Petrarch and Dante, of Leibnitz and Kant, Schiller and Goethe, indeed of all the mightiest German, Italian and French writers, can not only be read by us all at our leisure but can be owned by nearly all who would wish to own them.

This is no argument against learning foreign languages. Not every good product of foreign pens has been Englished. To become acquainted with the most recent best things written abroad you must read the originals. It is true, further, that no translation ever made or ever possible can carry with it across the chasm separating tongue from tongue the entire meaning, or the delicate shades of moaning, or the rich stylistic aroma, of a true literary work. It is nevertheless a benediction of the first order that in so many cases where we can not consult a literary original, we can possess ourselves of the authors main thoughts. Petrarch and likewise Keats read Homer in translation. If we can not topographically survey a country, scanning intimately its by-ways, it is worth a great deal to be able to travel leisurely its highways.

Besides the cheap edition and the translation, there is the free library. Those who are or think they are too poor to purchase much literary material, can, in any considerable center of population, find and