Miss Mitford on the selfishness of authors--A suggestion of Emerson's--A laconic rule of his--Traces of jealousy--And of a more subtle feeling--A contradiction--Necessary to resist the invasion of the present--A certain equilibrium--The opposite of a pedant--The best classics not pedants, but artists. Reading the other day a letter by Miss Mitford, I was reminded of you as the eye is reminded of green when it sees scarlet. You, whose interest in literature has ever kept pace with the time, to whom no new thing is unwelcome if only it is good, are safe from her accusations; but how many authors have deserved them! Miss Mitford is speaking of a certain writer who is at the same time a clergyman, and whom it is not difficult to recognize. "I never," she says, "saw him interested in the slightest degree by the work of any other author, except, indeed, one of his own followers or of his own clique, and then only as admiring or helping him. He has great kindness and great sympathy with working people, or with a dying friend, but I profess to you I am amazed at the utter selfishness of authors. I do not know one single poet who cares for any man's poetry but his own. In general they read no books except such as may be necessary to their own writings--that is to the work they happen to be about, and even then I suspect that they only read the bits that they may immediately want. You know the absolute ignorance in which Wordsworth lived of all modern works; and if, out of compliment to a visitor, he thought it needful to seem to read or listen to two or three stanzas, he gave unhesitating praise to the writer himself, but took especial care not to repeat the praise where it might have done him good--utterly fair and false."