Now there may be some disadvantages in this sort of voracious and undisciplined reading, in which many a famous author has confessedly indulged. But at least it tends toward forming an independent taste and avoiding the slavish echoing of cut-and-dried academic judgments. In an essay entitled "Is it Possible to Tell a Good Book from a Bad One?" Mr. Augustine Birrell remarks pertinently: "To admire by tradition is a poor thing. Far better really to admire Miss Gabblegoose's novels than to pretend to admire Miss Austen's." There is nothing so deadening to the critical faculty as the blind acceptance of text-book and encyclopedic verdicts. No critical estimate of any author, living or dead, is ever quite final. As Anatole France is fond of reminding us, even Homer has not been admired for precisely the same reasons during any two consecutive centuries. "The works that everyone
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