Ch. 14 - A Gossip On A Novel of Dumas's

THE books that we re-read the oftenest are not always those that we
admire the most; we choose and we re-visit them for many and
various reasons, as we choose and revisit human friends. One or
two of Scott's novels, Shakespeare, Moliere, Montaigne, THE EGOIST,
and the VICOMTE DE BRAGELONNE, form the inner circle of my
intimates. Behind these comes a good troop of dear acquaintances;
THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS in the front rank, THE BIBLE IN SPAIN not
far behind. There are besides a certain number that look at me
with reproach as I pass them by on my shelves: books that I once
thumbed and studied: houses which were once like home to me, but
where I now rarely visit. I am on these sad terms (and blush to
confess it) with Wordsworth, Horace, Burns and Hazlitt. Last of
all, there is the class of book that has its hour of brilliancy -
glows, sings, charms, and then fades again into insignificance
until the fit return. Chief of those who thus smile and frown on
me by turns, I must name Virgil and Herrick, who, were they but

"Their sometime selves the same throughout the year,"

must have stood in the first company with the six names of my
continual literary intimates. To these six, incongruous as they
seem, I have long been faithful, and hope to be faithful to the day
of death. I have never read the whole of Montaigne, but I do not
like to be long without reading some of him, and my delight in what
I do read never lessens. Of Shakespeare I have read all but
RICHARD III, HENRY VI., TITUS ANDRONICAS, and ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS
WELL; and these, having already made all suitable endeavour, I now
know that I shall never read - to make up for which unfaithfulness
I could read much of the rest for ever. Of Moliere - surely the
next greatest name of Christendom - I could tell a very similar
story; but in a little corner of a little essay these princes are
too much out of place, and I prefer to pay my fealty and pass on.
How often I have read GUY MANNERING, ROB ROY, OR REDGAUNTLET, I
have no means of guessing, having begun young. But it is either
four or five times that I have read THE EGOIST, and either five or
six that I have read the VICOMTE DE BRAGELONNE.

Some, who would accept the others, may wonder that I should have
spent so much of this brief life of ours over a work so little
famous as the last. And, indeed, I am surprised myself; not at my
own devotion, but the coldness of the world. My acquaintance with
the VICOMTE began, somewhat indirectly, in the year of grace 1863,
when I had the advantage of studying certain illustrated dessert
plates in a hotel at Nice. The name of d'Artagnan in the legends I
already saluted like an old friend, for I had met it the year
before in a work of Miss