ABSTRACT
The most influential books, and the truest in their influence, are works of fiction. It is in books more specifically didactic that the people can follow out the effect, and distinguish and weigh and compare. A book which has been very influential upon the people fell early into the author hands, and so may stand first, though the author think its influence was only sensible later on. The dispassionate gravity, the noble forgetfulness of self, the tenderness of others, that are there expressed and were practised on so great a scale in the life of its writer, make this book a book quite by itself. Not all men can read all books; it is only in a chosen few that any man will find his appointed food; and the fittest lessons are the most palatable, and make themselves welcome to the mind.
