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BOOKS WHICH HAVE INFLUENCED ME {14}
The Editor {15} has somewhat insidiously laid a trap for his
correspondents, the question put appearing at first so innocent,
truly cutting so deep. It is not, indeed, until after some
reconnaissance and review that the writer awakes to find himself
engaged upon something in the nature of autobiography, or, perhaps
worse, upon a chapter in the life of that little, beautiful brother
whom we once all had, and whom we have all lost and mourned, the
man we ought to have been, the man we hoped to be. But when word
has been passed (even to an editor), it should, if possible, be
kept; and if sometimes I am wise and say too little, and sometimes
weak and say too much, the blame must lie at the door of the person
who entrapped me.
The most influential books, and the truest in their influence, are
works of fiction. They do not pin the reader to a dogma, which he
must afterwards discover to be inexact; they do not teach him a
lesson, which he must afterwards unlearn. They repeat, they
rearrange, they clarify the lessons of life; they disengage us from
ourselves, they constrain us to the acquaintance of others; and
they show us the web of experience, not as we can see it for
ourselves, but with a singular change--that monstrous, consuming
ego of ours being, for the nonce, struck out. To be so, they must
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