DE GUSTIBUS

In a speech in England at King's College, Cambridge, Hugh Walpole recently declared that only six books in the world deserved the name of Literature. This analysts of all the written words of man is reminiscent of a similar attempt on the part of William Lyons Phelps who, as would be expected, compiled his list in much the same manner as a Victorian Sunday School mistress might have edited a "Bible For Young People."

In an age when the amount of printed matter has approached Gargantuan proportions a segregation of good literature from bad has its place. However, beyond certain definite limits it do not particularly useful for anyone but the critic Books, like experience, are different in the minds of the individual reader. The opinion of any one man on the relative merits of every volume that has ever been published can be of little assistance and importance to the average intelligent reader. Analyses of this sort lead into the land of vague generalization where perhaps the traveller might find some of the characters of Mr. Walpole wandering in search of the rose-water sentimentalities of Mr. Phelps.