The more one reads of the very moderns, the more one falls in love with the ancients. Take the peerless Horatius Flaccus, for instance. Do you think anybody would read his Odes and Epodes and love him as we do if he insisted that we should "sit under him" and assumed a pulpit manner? This is as near as he ever comes to teaching us anything:
Lenit albescens animos capillus
Litium et rixae cupidos protervae;
Non ego hoc ferrem calidus juventa,
Consule Planco.
Even Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who loved himself very much, showed in his translations of "The Odes and Epodes" that he could almost love something as well as himself. It does not become
me to recommend books—everybody to his own taste!—but I should like to say that for those whose Latin has become only a faint perfume of attar of roses, like that which is said to cling faintly to one of the desks of Marie Antoinette at Versailles, the translations of our dear Horatius by Lord Lytton is a very precious aid to a knowledge of one of the most charming and most wise of pagan poets.
Horace says:
Postumus, Postumus, the years glide by us,
Alas! no piety delays the wrinkles,
Nor old age imminent,
Nor the indomitable hand of Death.
We might have, in spite of the awful examples of Mr. Wells and the other preachers, who ought to confine themselves to finer things, desired that Horace should have gone further and told us what kind of books we ought to read in our old age. His choice was naturally limited; it was impossible for him to buy a book every week, or every month. The publishers were not so active in those days. But he might have indicated the kind of book that old age might read, in order to renew its youth. I have tried "Robinson Crusoe,"—the unequalled
—and "Swiss Family Robinson"; but they seem too grown up for me now. I have taken to "King Solomon's Mines" and "Treasure Island" and that perfect gem of excitement and illusion, "The Mutineers," by Charles Boardman Hawes. I read it, and I'm young again. I trust that some enterprising bookseller will unblushingly compile a library for the old, and begin it with "The Mutineers!" The main difficulty with the Old or the Near Old is that the fear of shocking the Young makes them such hypocrites. They pretend that they like Mr. Wells and the other preachers; they express intense interest in new and ponderous books, in the presence of Youth—when they ought to yawn frankly and bury themselves in romances. But if the Old really want to save their faces, and at the same time enjoy glimpses of that fountain of youth which we long for at every age, let them acquire two books—Clifford Smyth's "The Gilded Man" and "The Quest of El Dorado," by Dr. J. A. Zahm, whose nom de plume was H. J. Mozans. There you have the real stuff. Together, these two books are a combination of just what the Old need to found dreams on. If a man does not smoke he cannot dream with any facility when he grows
old; and if he has not possessed himself of these two volumes, he cannot have acquired that basis for dreams which the energetic Aged greatly need. "The Gilded Man" is frankly a romance, and yet, strangely enough, a romance of facts, and "The Quest of El Dorado" is the only volume in the English language when it deals with the El Dorado; it has all the most attractive qualities of a romance.
But they are not enough. To them I add, "Bob, Son of Battle," which the author of "Alice For Short," discovered late in life. It is the greatest animal-human story ever written, for Owd Bob is nobly human, and the Black Killer devilishly human, and yet they are dogs; not fabulous dogs, invented by clever writers. A great book! It is too thrilling; it reminds of "Wuthering Heights"; I shall, therefore, read this evening some of Henry Van Dyke's Canadian stories, and end the day with "Pride and Prejudice."