Time is the best critic, and the better for his intolerance of any inferiority. And fortunate for literature that he is thus choice and exacting. Books, like character, are works of time, and must run the gauntlet of criticism to gain enduring celebrity. The best books may sometimes wait for their half century, or longer, for appreciative readers--create their readers; the few ready to appreciate these at their issue being the most enlightened of their time, and they diffuse the light to their circle of readers. The torch of truth thus transmitted sheds its light over hemispheres,--the globe at last. "Hail! native language, that with sinews weak Didst move my first endeavoring tongue to speak, And mad'st imperfect words with childish trips Half unpronounced slide through my infant lips, Driving dull silence from the portal door Where he had mutely sat two years before-- Here I salute thee, and thy pardon ask That now I use thee in my latter task. Now haste thee strait to do me once a pleasure, And from thy wardrobe bring thy chiefest treasure, Not those new-fangled toys, and trimming slight, Which takes our late fantastics with delight, But cull those richest robes, and gay'st attire, Which deepest spirits and choicest wits admire." Thus wrote Milton at the age of nineteen, and made his college illustrious and the language afterwards. Yet the purest English is not always spoken or written by graduates of universities. Speech is the fruit of breeding and of character, and one shall find sometimes in remote rural districts the language spoken in its simplicity and purity, especially by sprightly boys and girls who have not been vexed with their grammars and school tasks. Ours is one of the richest of the spoken tongues; it may not be the simplest in structure and ease of attainment; yet this last may be facilitated by simple and natural methods of studying it. Taught by masters like Ascham or Milton, students might acquire the art of speaking and of writing the language in its purity and elegance, as did these great masters in their day. Ascham lays down this sensible rule: "He that will write well in any tongue, must follow this advice of Aristotle: '_to speak as the common people do, to think as wise men do, and so should every man understand him, and the judgment of wise men about him_.'" George Chapman, the translator of Homer, thus speaks of the scholarly pedantries of his time, of which ours affords too many examples:-- "For as great clerks can use no English words, Because (alas! great clerks) English affords, Say they, no height nor copy,--a rude tongue, Since 'tis their native,--but, in Greek and Latin Their wits are rare, for thence true poesy sprung, Through which, truth knows, they have but skill to chat in, Compared with what they might have in their own."