But a book as good in its way as the
bridge may perish obscurely on the very day of its birth. The art of
their creators is not sufficient to give them more than a moment of life.
Of the books born from the restlessness, the inspiration, and the vanity
of human minds, those that the Muses would love best lie more than all
others under the menace of an early death. Sometimes their defects will
save them. Sometimes a book fair to see may--to use a lofty
expression--have no individual soul. Obviously a book of that sort
cannot die. It can only crumble into dust. But the best of books
drawing sustenance from the sympathy and memory of men have lived on the
brink of destruction, for men's memories are short, and their sympathy
is, we must admit, a very fluctuating, unprincipled emotion.
No secret of eternal life for our books can be found amongst the formulas
of art, any more than for our bodies in a prescribed combination of
drugs. This is not because some books are not worthy of enduring life,
but because the formulas of art are dependent on things variable,
unstable and untrustworthy; on human sympathies, on prejudices, on likes
and dislikes, on the sense of virtue and the sense of propriety, on
beliefs and theories that, indestructible in themselves, always change
their form--often in the lifetime of one fleeting generation.
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