wrote and the same reads. We read the verses of one of the great
English poets, of Chaucer,[33] of Marvell,[34] of Dryden,[35] with the
most modern joy,--with a pleasure, I mean, which is in great part
caused by the abstraction of all _time_ from their verses. There is
some awe mixed with the joy of our surprise, when this poet, who lived
in some past world, two or three hundred years ago, says that which
lies close to my own soul, that which I also had well-nigh thought and
said. But for the evidence thence afforded to the philosophical
doctrine of the identity of all minds, we should suppose some
pre-established harmony, some foresight of souls that were to be, and
some preparation of stores for their future wants, like the fact
observed in insects, who lay up food before death for the young grub
they shall never see.

I would not be hurried by any love of system, by any exaggeration of
instincts, to underrate the Book. We all know that as the human body
can be nourished on any food, though it were boiled grass and the
broth of shoes, so the human mind can be fed by any knowledge. And
great and heroic men have existed who had almost no other information
than by the printed page. I only would say that it needs a strong head
to bear that diet. One must be an inventor to read well. As the
proverb says, "He that would bring home the wealth of the Indies must
carry out the wealth of the Indies." There is then creative reading as
well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and
invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with
manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense
of our author is as broad as the world. We then see, what is always
true, that as the seer's hour of vision is short and rare among heavy
days and months, so is its record, perchance, the least part of his
volume. The discerning will read, in his Plato[36] or Shakespeare,