We usually confine our reading to books upon subjects in which we are interested, but this is a mistake. It is often more repaying to read a good book on a new subject about which one does not care two straws than a poor one on a subject in which our interests are already engaged. One may come to care about the new one. If the proverb L’appetit vient en mangeant is true of the pleasures of the table, it is still more true of the pleasures of reading. We can become interested in almost anything once we begin to know something about it. Teak and hard-wood trees, Roman pottery, the Man in the Iron Mask, the history of the fork, the habits of earwigs, the trade routes of the Phoenicians, are subjects which, though they seem to appeal to different tastes, may end by interesting the same person, once he or she has taken the preliminary plunge. We do not profit half enough by the flexibility of our interests; if we did, we should not so often find ourselves complaining in a library crammed with books that we can find nothing to read.

Should sailors in books talk like sailors or like parrots? (I exclude, of course, parrots that have lived with sailors.) The question may appear frivolous: it comprises, I believe, one of the central problems of criticism. It is not necessary that an author should make his characters talk as they would talk in real life: it is entirely necessary that he should make us believe they are talking as they would talk in real life. Consider the difference in technique, in this matter, between Meredith and Hardy.