Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Pleasures of Reading: An Address Delivered at St. Andrews University December 10, 1887
I care not at all though the cataract of printed stuff, as Mr Harrison calls it, should ?ow and still ?ow on until the catalogues of our libraries should make libraries them selves. I am prepared, indeed, to express sympathy almost amounting to approbation for any one who would check all writing which was not intended for the printer. I pay no tribute of grateful admiration to those who have oppressed mankind with the dubious blessing of the penny post. But the ground of the distinction is plain. We are always obliged to read our letters, and are sometimes obliged to answer them. But who obliges us to wade through the piled -up lumber of an ancient library, or to skim more than we like off the frothy foolishness poured forth in ceaseless stream by our circulating libraries? Dead dunces do not importune us Grub Street does not ask for a reply by return of post. Even their liv ing successors need hurt no one who possesses.
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