“You, who taught us to love our Walter Scott next to our “Christian Year,” and who gave us half-crowns for rehearsing him when other children were learning the Robin’s Petition, what think you of this poor boy Leonard knowing few of the novels and none of the poems? No wonder the taste of the day is grovelling lower and lower, when people do not begin with the pure high air of his world! To take up one of his works after any of our present school of fiction is like getting up a mountain side after a feverish drawing-room or an offensive street. If it were possible to know the right moment for a book to be really tasted”
Complete Novels of Charlotte Mary Yonge