It includes most of the books about
the Southwest that people in general would agree on as
making good reading.
I have never had any idea of writing or teaching about
my own section of the country merely as a patriotic duty.
Without apologies, I would interpret it because I love it,
because it interests me, talks to me, appeals to my imagination,
warms my emotions; also because it seems to me that
other people living in the Southwest will lead fuller and
richer lives if they become aware of what it holds. I once
thought that, so far as reading goes, I could live forever on
the supernal beauty of Shelley's "The Cloud" and his soaring
lines "To a Skylark," on the rich melancholy of Keats's "Ode
to a Nightingale," on Cyrano de Bergerac's ideal of a free
man, on Wordsworth's philosophy of nature--a philosophy
that has illuminated for me the mesquite flats and oak-
studded hills of Texas--on the adventures in Robert Louis
Stevenson, the flavor and wit of Lamb's essays, the eloquent
wisdom of Hazlitt, the dark mysteries of Conrad, the gaieties
of Barrie, the melody of Sir Thomas Browne, the urbanity
of Addison, the dash in Kipling, the mobility, the mightiness,
the lightness, the humor, the humanity, the everything of
Shakespeare, and a world of other delicious, high, beautiful,
and inspiring things that English literature has bestowed
upon us.
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