Chapter I: Preface

Many books are dry and dusty, there is no juice in them; and many are soon exhausted, you would no more go back to them than to a squeezed orange; but some have in them an unfailing sap, both from the tree of knowledge and from the tree of life.

By companionable books I mean those that are worth taking with you on a journey, where the weight of luggage counts, or keeping beside your bed, near the night-lamp; books that will bear reading often, and the more slowly you read them the better you enjoy them; books that not only tell you how things look and how people behave, but also interpret nature and life to you, in language of beauty and power touched with the personality of the author, so that they have a real voice audible to your spirit in the silence.

Here I have written about a few of these books which have borne me good company, in one way or another,—and about their authors, who have put the best of themselves into their work. Such criticism as the volume contains is therefore mainly in the form of appreciation with reasons for it. The other kind of criticism you will find chiefly in the omissions.

So (changing the figure to suit this cabin by the sea) I send forth my new ship, hoping only that it may carry something desirable from each of the ports where it has taken on cargo, and that it may not be sunk by the enemy before it touches at a few friendly harbours.

HENRY VAN DYKE.

SYLVANORA, _Seal Harbour, Me., August 19, 1922_.

CONTENTS

_I._ _The Book of Books_ 1

_II._ _Poetry in the Psalms_ 33

_III._ _The Good Enchantment of Dickens_ 63

_IV._ _Thackeray and Real Men_ 103

_V._ _George Eliot and Real Women_ 131

_VI._ _The Poet of Immortal Youth (Keats)_ 165

_VII._ _The Recovery of Joy (Wordsworth)_ 189

_VIII._ _“The Glory of the Imperfect” (Browning)_ 233

_IX._ _A Quaint Comrade by Quiet Streams (Walton)_ 289

_X._ _A Sturdy Believer (Samuel Johnson)_ 307

_XI._ _A Puritan Plus Poetry (Emerson)_ 333

_XII._ _An Adventurer in a Velvet Jacket (Stevenson)_ 357

ILLUSTRATIONS

_John Keats_ Frontispiece

Facing page

_Charles Dickens as Captain Bobadil in “Every Man in His Humour”_ 82

_William Makepeace Thackeray_ 120

_William Wordsworth_ 200

_Robert Browning_ 246

_Samuel Johnson_ 314

_Ralph Waldo Emerson_ 340

_Robert Louis Stevenson_ 360

_In the cover design by Margaret Armstrong the books and authors are represented by the following symbolic flowers: Bible—grapes; Psalms—wheat; Dickens—English holly; Thackeray—English rose; George Eliot—ivy; Keats—bleeding-heart; Wordsworth—daffodil; Browning—pomegranate; Izaak Walton—strawberry; Johnson—oak; Stevenson—Scottish bluebell._

THE BOOK OF BOOKS

_An Apologue_

There was once an Eastern prince who was much enamoured of the art of gardening. He wished that all flowers delightful to the eye, and all fruits pleasant to the taste and good for food, should grow in his dominion, and that in growing the flowers should become more fair, the fruits more savoury and nourishing. With this thought in his mind and this desire in his heart, he found his way to the Ancient One, the Worker of Wonders who dwells in a secret place, and made known his request.

“For the care of your gardens and your orchards,” said the Ancient One, “I can do nothing, since that charge has been given to you and to your people. Nor will I send blossoming plants and fruiting trees of every kind to make your kingdom rich and beautiful as by magic, lest the honour of labour should be diminished, and the slow reward of patience despised, and even the living gifts bestowed upon you without toil should wither and die away. But this will I do: a single tree shall be brought to you from a far country by the hands of my servants, and you shall plant it in the midst of your land. In the body of that tree is the sap of life that was from the beginning; the leaves of it are full of healing; its flowers never fail, and its fruitage is the joy of every season. The roots of the tree shall go down to the springs of deep waters; and wherever its pollen is drifted by the wind or borne by the bees, the gardens shall put on new beauty; and wherever its seed is carried by the fowls of the air, the orchards shall yield a richer harvest. But the tree itself you shall guard and cherish and keep as I give it you, neither cutting anything away from it, nor grafting anything upon it; for the life of the tree is in all the branches, and the other trees shall be glad because of it.”

As the Ancient One had spoken, so it came to pass. The land of that prince had great renown of fine flowers and delicious fruits, ever unfolding in new colours and sweeter flavours the life that was shed among them by the tree of trees.