But I confess that I should
like to cross-examine you. If in conversation with you, on the
subject (let us say) of heredity, a subject to which you had
devoted a good deal of study, I took it for granted that you had
read Ommany's Approximations, would you make it quite clear to me
that you had not read it? Or would you let me carry on the
discussion on the assumption that you knew it well; would you,
even, in answer to a direct question, say shamefacedly that
though you had not--er--actually read it, you--er--knew about it,
of course, and had--er--read extracts from it? Somehow I think
that I could lead you on to this; perhaps even make you say that
you had actually ordered it from your library, before I told you
the horrid truth that Ommany's Approximations was an invention of
my own.
It is absurd that we (I say "we," for I include you now) should
behave like this, for there is no book over which we need be
ashamed, either to have read it or not to have read it. Let us,
therefore, be frank. In order to remove the unfortunate
impression of myself which I have given you, I will confess that
I have only read three of Scott's novels, and begun, but never
finished, two of Henry James'. I will also confess --and here I
am by way of restoring that unfortunate impression--that I do
quite well in Scottish and Jacobean circles on those five books.
For, if a question arises as to which is Scott's masterpiece, it
is easy for me to suggest one of my three, with the air of one
who has chosen it, not over two others, but over twenty.
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