Matthew Arnold. At any rate, everybody has heard of them; and,” he continued, “listen to this.” He then proceeded to read out some of the notices, adding that it was difficult, if he might say so without offence, to reconcile what his friend, the preceding speaker, had said with what was said in these notices. He was a little staggered--for, though a simple, he was a shrewd man--when the very remarkable similarity between Mr. A’s eulogies of Mr. B and Mr. B’s eulogies of Mr. A was pointed out to him, and when, in reference to anonymous testimony, he was reminded that one voice may have many echoes. It was generally felt, more especially as Mr. A or Mr. B had, we believe, more than one acquaintance among the committee, that the debate was taking rather an embarrassing turn. The question was then put to the vote, and the monographs were carried by a majority of three to one. What occurred at this meeting is occurring every day, variously modified, wherever the choice of books is in question, whether in public libraries or in educational institutions. A literature, the sole credentials of which are derived from those who produce and circulate it, is gradually superseding that of our classics. We seem in truth to be losing all sense of the essential distinction between the writings of the average man of letters and those of the masters. OUR LITERARY GUIDES III. BOOKS WORTH READING[20] [Footnote 20: _Books Worth Reading._ A Plea for the Best and an Essay towards Selection, with Short Introductions. By Frank W. Raffety, London.] Were it not for its melancholy significance, this would be one of the most amusing books which it has ever been our fortune to meet with. Of Mr. Frank W. Raffety we have not the honour to know anything, except what we have gathered from this little volume and from its title-page. But he must be a singularly interesting gentleman. His enthusiasm for books, his portentous ignorance of them; his strenuous desire to improve the popular taste by pleading for the best, his instinctive tendency to make in all cases for the worst; his sublime intolerance of everything in literature which falls short of excellence, his more than sublime indifference to the commonest rules of grammar and syntax in expressing that intolerance; the _naïveté_, the frankness, the recklessness with which he displays his incompetence for the task which he has undertaken--in these qualifications and accomplishments Mr. Raffety is not perhaps alone, but he has certainly no superior.