The Reprints Of Good Old Authors, Too, Which May Be Had For A Few Pennies Now, Are So Edited Away That All The Golden Ring Of The Metal Is Clipped Out Of Them.

Overlaid with notes, and analyses, and critical exegesis, the original throb of the author's heart has disappeared from these polished bones.

Just to suggest the book that would please the country reader, look for a moment at those works which came into existence at the very first dawn of printing - those volumes with strongly drawn and Durer-like illustrations, very rough, and without perspective, but whose meaning is at once understood, and which somehow convey what I may call a genuine impression. Any countryman would tell you at once that the illustrations of half the books of the present day are mere vamped-up shallowness, drawn from a city man's mind in a city room by gaslight. You must consider that the countryman who lives out of doors, and always with nature, is, as regards his reading, very much in the same mental position as the people who lived four hundred years ago - in the days when costly and rare manuscripts, few and far between, chained to the desk, were just being superseded by printed books at a fifth the price, which could be actually bought and carried home. Till quite lately so few books have circulated in country places that they may be said to have been like these old manuscripts. The early printed books were simply the manuscripts printed, and that is why they remain to this day the finest specimens of typography, quite incomparable and not to be approached by present-day printers.

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