Page:Three Thousand Selected Quotations from Brilliant Writers.djvu/5



HE genius of quotation is abroad. Public speakers, preachers, pleaders, and teachers are wont to enrich their addresses with the bright utterances of brilliant men. If this practice be managed deftly and honestly, there is good in it. The long processes of many years of study are often concentrated into a single paragraph, and often delivered in a figure of surpassing force. Even opinions possess helpfulness in such uses. "Great authorities are arguments," so Daniel Webster used to say.

Attention is arrested, interest is awakened, persuasion is secured, by the mention of some well-known author's name, and the waiting audience grow eager for the sentence which is coming. Even if the purpose be no higher than mere ornamentation, the practice need not be despised. Beauty and utility are not necessarily and always to be divorced. We are told that Samuel Rogers, the opulent poet, owned one of the very few notes of the value of a hundred thousand pounds issued by the Bank of England. He had it framed and hung in his reception room. Beautifully finished, it was as effective for decoration on his wall as any other engraving of the same dimensions; and then it was in itself a fortune. So a writer can light up his disquisition sometimes with the issue of some masterful mind's wealth; it adorns with its shining, it enriches with its worth.

It is not to be understood that I have read all the selections included in this volume. I have but touched the pages here and there, and looked through the index. The work seems to have been done with wide research, with commendable exactness, and with good taste; and I am more than willing to bid the book God-speed.

CHARLES S. ROBINSON.