Since literary men are the most interesting of all heroes to other makers of books, it is natural that the lives of the masters of literature should have been written in greater abundance and usually with greater skill and charm than the lives of any other class of men. A good way, perhaps the best way, to study literature is to read the lives of a dozen or a score of great writers. An ambitious youth, determined to lay the foundations of a knowledge of literature, might begin to read in any order the biographies in the series called _English Men of Letters_. From that series I should cross out William Black’s “Goldsmith” and substitute Forster’s or Washington Irving’s “Life of Goldsmith”; I should also omit Leslie Stephen’s “George Eliot” and read instead the “Life and Letters” by J. W. Cross. It would be as well to pass by Mr. Henry James’s “Hawthorne” in favor of the biography by Mr. George E. Woodberry in _American Men of Letters_. It will not be wise even for the enthusiastic reader of literature to confine his reading in biography to the lives of men of letters. There is such a thing as being too much interested in bookish persons. Men of action have led more eventful lives than most writers, and their biographers are likely therefore to have more of a story to tell. Whenever you find yourself interested in any man, when some reference to him rouses your curiosity, read his biography. In general it is better to read about him in a complete “Life,” even if it is a bulky one in a forbidding number of volumes. You are not obliged to read it all. It is better to roam for half an hour through Boswell than to read a short life of Johnson. This is a day of pellet books, handy volumes, and popular compendiums; we need to learn again the use and delight of a little reading in big books, in which we can dwell for long or short periods. We need, also, to get over the idea that only learned persons and special students can go to original documents. A boy of fifteen will have more fun turning over the state papers and letters and addresses of Washington and Jefferson and Lincoln than in reading a short encyclopedia article on one of those great men. Just try it the next time you happen to be wandering aimlessly in a public library and see if you do not stumble on something interesting. The whole “Dictionary of National Biography” is not so much worth owning and, except for purposes of reference, not so much worth reading as half as many volumes of first-hand biography.