Lectures on Dramatic Art

Excerpt

“Were I to pray for a taste which should stand me in stead under every
variety of circumstances, and be a source of happiness and cheerfulness to
me during life, and a shield against its ills, however things might go
amiss and the world frown upon me, it would he a taste for reading.... 
Give a man this taste, and the means of gratifying it, and you can hardly
fail of making him a happy man; unless, indeed, you put into his hands a
most perverse selection of Books.  You place him in contact with the best
society in every period of history,—­with the wisest, the wittiest, the
tenderest, the bravest, and the purest characters who have adorned
humanity.  You make him a denizen of all nations, a contemporary of all
ages.  The world has been created for him.”—­SIR JOHN HERSCHEL. Address
on the opening of the Eton Library, 1833.