Lost_ itself we do not read.

I am not presumptuous enough to assert that the larger part of modern
literature is not worth reading in itself, that the prose is not
readable, entertaining, one may say highly instructive. Nor do I pretend
that the verses which we read so zealously in place of Milton's are not
good verses. On the contrary, I think them sweetly conceived, as musical
and as graceful as the verse of any age in our history. A great deal of
our modern literature is such that it is exceedingly difficult to
resist it, and it is undeniable that it gives us real information. It
seems perhaps unreasonable to many to assert that a decent readable book
which gives us actual instruction can be otherwise than a useful
companion and a solid gain. Possibly many people are ready to cry out
upon me as an obscurantist for venturing to doubt a genial confidence in
all literature simply as such. But the question, which weighs upon me
with such really crushing urgency is this: What are the books that in
our little remnant of reading time it is most vital for us to know? For
the true use of books is of such sacred value to us that to be simply
entertained is to cease to be taught, elevated, inspired by books;
merely to gather information of a chance kind is to close the mind to
knowledge of the urgent kind.

Every book that we take up without a purpose is an opportunity lost of
taking up a book with a purpose--every bit of stray information which we
cram into our heads without any sense of its importance, is for the most
part a bit of the most useful information driven out of our heads and
choked off from our minds. It is so certain that information, i.e., the
knowledge, the stored thoughts and observations of mankind, is now grown
to proportions so utterly incalculable and prodigious, that even the
learned whose lives are given to study can but pick up some crumbs that