We are always being told that we should go directly to life for real knowledge, not get it at second hand from books. And this is no doubt true enough for certain impressions. What it means to be hungry, for instance, cannot be learned from the printed page; nor can vivid impressions of nature be gained in that way. But I suspect that we can learn more about other men and women from books than from direct intercourse with them. In a book the writer has, presumably, set out to say something long meditated, and has deleted all excrescences in the saying. Such chatter as we indulge in, and listen to, when, instead, we talk directly with our neighbours!--aimless, pointless, its rare bright spots extinguished in a sea of words! Read the court stenographer’s record of any trial, where, at least, the questions and answers are supposed to be held rigidly to a certain subject, and then consider what the dictagraph report of any purposeless conversation would be like! But that is by the way. The important point is that one learns a little about others from books because from any worthwhile book one learns a little about oneself. Just as surely as in a novel, an essay, or a poem the writer reveals himself, so surely do I in reading it reveal myself, weighing the author’s opinions, likening them to or contrasting them with my own, and, to the extent of that self-revelation, perceiving his. Thus, it is better to read difficult books than easy ones, not as puritanism teaches, because whatever is unpleasant is good for us, but because the fact that a book is difficult for me means that in my response to it I am forced down into obscure and unknown regions of myself. On the other hand, there are for every one, I suppose, certain books that he is permanently unable to read, certain authors who remain for him as unknowable as any one met in flesh-and-blood. I, for example, simply cannot read _Lavengro_ or get to know Borrow. Nowhere in me is there any response to his thoughts and emotions. It is true that I feel a vivid distaste for his style, which perhaps ought to be something to start on; but it does not seem to be enough to melt my icy indifference to the man and his work. I can learn nothing of myself from _Lavengro_, and so I can learn nothing of Borrow. It is a pity. My world might be by just so much the richer, less black-and-white.