New at IWP Books: Joaquim Nabuco on Camoens and The Lusiads, addresses delieverd at Yale, Vassar and Cornell in 1908 and 1909. Nabuco was the Brazilian Ambassador to the US at the time.

“Modern reading is so indiscriminate that the popularity of an author is no test of his intrinsic value. One had better not touch Homer, or Dante, or Camoens, if one has contracted the habit of reading to kill time. To enjoy their company we need the contrary habit of reading to treasure up our passing hours in undying recollections. To read the great authors of the past is a duty for all who are real particles of the human intelligence. If one lets his taste for the writings of the day absorb him, he overlooks that sacred duty of watching over the precious deposits of the human mind, of keeping fresh and retentive the memory of our race, of increasing its touch with the past the more it drifts away from us. A humanity, wholly interested in the present, losing gradually its memory, unable to enjoy what should be its greatest pleasure: that of living anew by recollection in its ages of art and poetry and legend, would be a sad sight, however great the material development around it. Any shrinking of human imagination would be fatal to mind and heart, however great might be the increase of discovery.”