The pressure of a tremendous faith circles and clamps together these little songs. It makes little difference at what point on the surface Jack Horner sticks in his thumb, he cannot avoid smacking his lips over the delectable fruit he is certain to draw forth. Woolf's style is controlled: warmth is a conspicuous feature, but it is tempered warmth.

It a bit too far he was prone to err on the other side his writing became, often, precieuse.

Within living memory Stevenson was the last to display the same thing markedly. One is carried back to Sir Philip Sidney among the Elizabethans and to Sir Thomas Browne. Everywhere is evident her affection for words and sentences paragraphs are put together and pages builded with a warmth of interest in the process which Is that the author experienced enjoyment with every line she wrote. Be his fellow-worker and accomplice.Īnd attempting to be her fellow-worker and accomplice is the one certain way to obtain the greatest amount of enjoyment from this 'Common Reader,' for if there is anything that stands out from Virginia Woolf's pages more than another, it If we could banish all preconceptions, when we read, that would be an admirable beginning. Most commonly wee come to books (writes Virginia Woolf) with blurred and divided minds.

Granting which, there may be added a few words. The interrogation, it is pointed out, is to emphasize the fact that in the main one must answer the question for one's self. There are some twenty or more papers within the covers of the volume, the last one of which bears the questioning title, 'How Should One Read a Book?' Sterne, Dorothy Wordsworth and Hazlitt among the ancients. The paper on Thomas Hardy cones nearest to the present day. Not all of the papers in the collection at hand are new, and some of then first appeared in American periodicals. The common reader again has the opportunity to rejoice with Mrs. 'I rejoice to concur with theĬommon reader,' wrote Dr. A keenly discerning critic of books and men, as proved by her first 'Common Reader,' her deserved reputation is enhanced by the second of these collections. Mong the foremost stylists of the present day, Virginia Woolf is also among those whose words are more than ordinarily worth one's

The second common reader