I
think it one of the great toils of the age. Indolence is a natural
attribute of man, and he dislikes intellectual even more than physical
toil. Most men read, therefore, only such things as require no thought,
and consequently there is a bounty offered for the most frivolous
literary productions....
"Your isolated position prevents your realizing, to its greatest extent,
the evil of this superfluity of books; but if you were constantly
receiving from thirty to forty daily, weekly, and monthly periodicals,
besides one or more ponderous volumes, every week, I cannot but think
that, with all your ambition and thirst for knowledge, you would wish
rather for an Alexandrian conflagration than an increase of books.
"Every man who thinks he has a new thought, or striking thought, thinks
himself justified in writing a volume. Of this I would not complain if
he would have the ingenuousness to inform the reader, in a _nota bene_,
on what page the new idea could be found, so that, if he paid for the
book, he should be spared the trouble of hunting for the kernel in the
bushel of compiled and often incongruous chaff, in which the author has
dexterously hid it.
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