Chapter M: DRAYTON. To Henry Reynolds

It is good to have translations, because they serve as a comment, so far as the judgement of one man goes.--J. SELDEN.

TO MY WORTHY AND HONOURED FRIEND MASTER GEORGE CHAPMAN

Whose work could this be, Chapman, to refine
Old Hesiod's ore, and give it thus! but thine,
Who hadst before wrought in rich Homer's mine.

What treasure hast thou brought us! and what store
Still, still, dost thou arrive with at our shore,
To make thy honour and our wealth the more!

If all the vulgar tongues that speak this day
Were asked of thy discoveries, they must say,
To the Greek coast thine only knew the way.

Such passage hast thou found, such returns made,
As now of all men, it is called thy trade,
And who make thither else, rob or invade.

BEN JONSON.

WHEN TRANSLATIONS ARE TO BE PREFERRED

The reason the classics are not read is because there still lingers a tradition, handed down from the eighteenth century, that it is useless to read them unless in the original. A tone of sarcastic contempt is maintained towards the person who shall presume to peruse Xenophon not in the original Greek, or Virgil not in the original Latin.

In the view of these critics it is the Greek, it is the Latin, that is valuable, not the contents of the volume. Shakespeare, however, the greatest genius of England, thought otherwise. It is known that his ideas of Grecian and Roman history were derived from somewhat rude translations, yet it is acknowledged that the spirit of the ancient warriors and of the ancient luxury lives in his _Antony and Cleopatra_, and nowhere in all the ancient writers is there a poem breathing the idea of Aphrodite like his _Venus and Adonis_. The example of so great a genius may shield us in an effort to free the modern mind from this eighteenth-century incubus.

The truth is, the classics are much better understood in a good translation than in the original. To obtain a sufficient knowledge of Greek, for instance, to accurately translate is almost the work of a lifetime. Concentration upon this one pursuit gradually contracts the general perceptions, and it has often happened that an excellent scholar has been deficient in common knowledge, as shown by the singular character of his own notes. But his work of translation in itself is another matter.

It is a treasure; from it poets derive their illustrations; dramatists their plots; painters their pictures. A young mind full of intelligence, coming to such a translation, enters at once into the spirit of the ancient writer. A good translation is thus better than the original.--R. JEFFERIES. _The Dewy Morn._

'THAT SILLY VANITY OF IMPERTINENT CITATIONS'

'Twas this vain idolizing of authors which gave birth to that silly vanity of impertinent citations, and inducing authority in things neither requiring nor deserving it. That saying was much more observable, _That men have beards and women none_, because quoted from Beza; and that other, _Pax res bona est_, because brought in with a 'said St. Austin'. But these ridiculous fooleries, to your more generous discerners, signify nothing but the pedantry of the affected sciolist. 'Tis an inglorious acquist to have our heads or volumes laden as were Cardinal Campeius his mules, with old and useless baggage.--J. GLANVILL. _The Vanity of Dogmatizing._

QUOTATION

In quoting of books, quote such authors as are usually read; others you may read for your own satisfaction, but not name them.

Quoting of authors is most for matter of fact; and then I write them as I would produce a witness; sometimes for a free expression, and then I give the author his due, and gain myself praise by reading him.

To quote a modern Dutchman where I may use a classic author, is as if I were to justify my reputation, and I neglect all persons of note and quality that know me, and bring the testimonial of the scullion in the kitchen.--J. SELDEN. _Table Talk._

MERIT IN QUOTATION

Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it.... We are as much informed of a writer's genius by what he selects as by what he originates. We read the quotation with his eyes, and find a new and fervent sense; as a passage from one of the poets, well recited, borrows new interest from the rendering. As the journals say, 'the italics are ours.' The profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader. The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it. The passages of Shakespeare that we most prize were never quoted until within this century; and Milton's prose, and Burke, even, have their best fame within it. Every one, too, remembers his friends by their favourite poetry or other reading.

Observe, also, that a writer appears to more advantage in the pages of another book than in his own. In his own, he waits as a candidate for your approbation; in another's he is a lawgiver.--R. W. EMERSON. _Quotation and Originality._

WHAT SHAKESPEARE HATH LEFT US

Soul of the age!
The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage,
My Shakespeare, rise! I will not lodge thee by
Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie
A little further, to make thee a room:
Thou art a monument without a tomb,
And art alive still, while thy book doth live,
And we have wits to read, and praise to give.

That I not mix thee so my brain excuses;
I mean, with great but disproportioned Muses.
For, if I thought my judgement were of years,
I should commit thee, surely, with thy peers.
And tell how far thou didst our Lyly outshine
Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowe's mighty line.

And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,
From thence, to honour thee, I will not seek
For names; but call forth thundering Aeschylus,
Euripides, and Sophocles to us,
Paccuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead,
To life again, to hear thy buskin tread
And shake a stage; or when thy sock was on,
Leave thee alone, for the comparison
Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome
Sent forth; or since did from their ashes come.

Triumph, my Britain! Thou hast one to show
To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe.
He was not of an age, but for all time!
And all the Muses still were in their prime,
When, like Apollo, he came forth to warm
Our ears, or, like a Mercury, to charm.
Nature herself was proud of his designs,
And joyed to wear the dressing of his lines,
Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit
As, since, she will vouchsafe no other wit.
The merry Greek, tart Aristophanes,
Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please;
But antiquated and deserted lie,
As they were not of Nature's family.

Yet must I not give Nature all! Thy art,
My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part.
For though the Poet's matter Nature be
His art doth give the fashion. And that he
Who casts to write a living line, must sweat
(Such as thine are), and strike the second heat
Upon the Muses' anvil, turn the same
(And himself with it), that he thinks to frame;
Or for the laurel he may gain a scorn!
For a good Poet's made as well as born;
And such wert thou! Look how the father's face
Lives in his issue; even so, the race
Of Shakespeare's mind and manners brightly shines
In his well-turnèd and true-filèd lines;
In each of which he seems to shake a lance
As brandished at the eyes of Ignorance.
Sweet Swan of Avon! what a sight it were
To see thee in our water yet appear,
And make those flights upon the banks of Thames
That so did take Eliza, and our James!

BEN JONSON.

ON THE PORTRAIT OF SHAKESPEARE

This figure that thou here seest put,
It was for gentle Shakespeare cut,
Wherein the graver had a strife
With Nature, to outdo the life.
Oh, could he but have drawn his wit
As well in brass, as he has hit
His face, the print would then surpass
All that was ever writ in brass.
But, since he cannot, reader, look
Not on his picture, but his book.

BEN JONSON.

SHAKESPEARE'S LIVELONG MONUMENT

What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones,
The labour of an age in pilèd stones,
Or that his hallowed relics should be hid
Under a star-ypointing pyramid?
Dear son of Memory, great heir of Fame,
What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thyself a livelong monument.
For whilst to the shame of slow-endeavouring art,
Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book,
Those Delphic lines with deep impression took,
Then thou our fancy of itself bereaving,
Dost make us marble with too much conceiving;
And so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie,
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.

J. MILTON.

UNDER MR. MILTON'S PICTURE BEFORE HIS 'PARADISE LOST'

Three Poets, in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn.
The first in loftiness of thought surpassed,
The next in majesty, in both the last:
The force of Nature could no farther go;
To make a third she joined the former two.

J. DRYDEN.

UPON MY BROTHER'S BOOK CALLED 'THE GROUNDS, LABOUR AND REWARD OF FAITH'

This lamp filled up, and fired by that blest spirit,
Spent his last oil in this pure heavenly flame;
Laying the grounds, walls, roof of faith: this frame
With life he ends; and now doth there inherit
What here he built, crowned with his laurel merit:
Whose palms and triumphs once he loudly rang,
There now enjoys what here he sweetly sang.

This is his monument, on which he drew
His spirit's image, that can never die;
But breathes in these live words, and speaks to the eye;
In these his winding-sheets he dead doth shew
To buried souls the way to live anew,
And in his grave more powerfully now preacheth.
Who will not learn, when that a dead man teacheth?

P. FLETCHER.

UPON THE BOOK AND PICTURE OF THE SERAPHICAL SAINT TERESA

Live in these conquering leaves: live all the same;
And walk through all tongues one triumphant flame;
Live here, great heart; and love, and die, and kill;
And bleed, and wound, and yield, and conquer still.
Let this immortal life where'er it comes
Walk in a crowd of loves and martyrdoms.
Let mystic deaths wait on't; and wise souls be
The love-slain witnesses of this life of thee.
O sweet incendiary! show here thy art,
Upon this carcass of a hard cold heart;
Let all thy scatter'd shafts of light, that play
Among the leaves of thy large books of day,
Combined against this breast at once break in,
And take away from me myself and sin;
This gracious robbery shall thy bounty be
And my best fortunes such fair spoils of me.
O thou undaunted daughter of desires!
By all thy dower of lights and fires;
By all the eagle in thee, all the dove;
By all thy lives and deaths of love;
By thy large draughts of intellectual day,
And by thy thirsts of love more large than they;
By all thy brim-filled bowls of fierce desire,
By thy last morning's draught of liquid fire;
By the full kingdom of that final kiss
That seized thy parting soul, and sealed thee His;
By all the Heaven thou hast in Him
(Fair sister of the seraphim!);
By all of Him we have in thee;
Leave nothing of myself in me.
Let me so read thy life, that I
Unto all life of mine may die!

R. CRASHAW.

THE SEAT OF AUTHORITY

You despise books; you, whose lives are absorbed in the vanities of ambition, the pursuit of pleasure, or in indolence; but remember that all the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books. All Africa, to the limits of Ethiopia and Nigritia, obeys the book of the Koran, after bowing to the book of the Gospel. China is ruled by the moral book of Confucius, and a great part of India by the Vedah. Persia was governed for ages by the books of one of the Zoroasters.

In a law-suit or criminal process, your property, your honour, perhaps your life, depends on the interpretation of a book which you never read.... You are acquainted with neither Hippocrates nor Boerhaave nor Sydenham; but you place your body in the hands of those who can read them.--VOLTAIRE. _Philosophical Dictionary_: Books.

BOOKS PREFERRED TO PREACHERS

The writings of divines are nothing else but a preaching the Gospel to the eye, as the voice preacheth it to the ear. Vocal preaching hath the pre-eminence in moving the affections, and becometh diversified according to the state of the congregations which attend it: this way the milk cometh warmest from the breast. But books have the advantage in many other respects: you may read an able preacher when you have but a mean one to hear. Every congregation cannot hear the most judicious or powerful preachers: but every single person may read the books of the most powerful and judicious; preachers may be silenced or banished, when books may be at hand: books may be kept at a smaller charge than preachers: we may choose books which treat of that very subject which we desire to hear of; but we cannot choose what subject the preacher shall treat of. Books we may have at hand every day and hour: when we can have sermons but seldom, and at set times. If sermons be forgotten, they are gone. But a book we may read over and over till we remember it; and if we forget it, may again peruse it at our pleasure, or at our leisure. So that good books are a very great mercy to the world.--R. BAXTER. _Christian Directory._

BOOKS OF MORALITY

Books of morality are daily written, yet its influence is still little in the world; so the ground is annually ploughed, and yet multitudes are in want of bread. But, surely, neither the labours of the moralist nor of the husbandman are vain: let them for a while neglect their tasks and their usefulness will be known; the wickedness that is now frequent would become universal, the bread that is now scarce would wholly fail.--S. JOHNSON. _Adventurer_, 137.

THE SECRET INFLUENCE OF BOOKS

Books have always a secret influence on the understanding: we cannot at pleasure obliterate ideas; he that reads books of science, though without any fixed desire of improvement, will grow more knowing; he that entertains himself with moral or religious treatises will imperceptibly advance in goodness; the ideas which are often offered to the mind will at last find a lucky moment when it is disposed to receive them.--S. JOHNSON. _Adventurer_, 137.

DEAD COUNSELLORS ARE SAFEST

It was the maxim, I think, of Alphonsus of Aragon that _dead counsellors are safest_. The grave puts an end to flattery and artifice, and the information that we receive from books is pure from interest, fear, or ambition. Dead counsellors are likewise most instructive, because they are heard with patience and with reverence. We are not unwilling to believe that man wiser than ourselves from whose abilities we may receive advantage without any danger of rivalry or opposition, and who affords us the light of his experience without hurting our eyes by flashes of insolence.--S. JOHNSON. _Rambler_, 87.

THE REAL WORKING EFFECTIVE CHURCH

But to the Church itself, as I hinted already, all is changed, in its preaching, in its working, by the introduction of Books. The Church is the working recognized Union of our Priests or Prophets, of those who by wise teaching guide the souls of men. While there was no Writing, even while there was no Easy-writing, or _Printing_, the preaching of the voice was the natural sole method of performing this. But now with Books!--He that can write a true Book, to persuade England, is not he the Bishop and Archbishop, the Primate of England and of all England? I many a time say, the writers of Newspapers, Pamphlets, Poems, Books, these _are_ the real working effective Church of a modern country. Nay, not only our preaching, but even our worship, is not it too accomplished by means of Printed Books?... Fragments of a real 'Church Liturgy' and 'Body of Homilies', strangely disguised from the common eye, are to be found weltering in that huge froth-ocean of Printed Speech we loosely call Literature! Books are our Church too.

On all sides, are we not driven to the conclusion that, of the things which man can do or make here below, by far the most momentous, wonderful and worthy are the things we call Books! Those poor bits of rag-paper with black ink on them;--from the Daily Newspaper to the sacred Hebrew BOOK, what have they not done, what are they not doing!--For indeed, whatever be the outward form of the things (bits of paper, as we say, and black ink), is it not verily, at bottom, the highest act of man's faculty that produces a Book? It is the _Thought_ of man; the true thaumaturgic virtue; by which man works all things whatsoever. All that he does, and brings to pass, is the vesture of a Thought. This London City, with all its houses, palaces, steam-engines, cathedrals, and huge immeasurable traffic and tumult, what is it but a Thought, but millions of Thoughts made into One;--a huge immeasurable Spirit of a THOUGHT, embodied in brick, iron, smoke, dust, Palaces, Parliaments, Hackney Coaches, Katherine Docks, and the rest of it! Not a brick was made but some man had to _think_ of the making of that brick.--The thing we called 'bits of paper with traces of black ink', is the _purest_ embodiment a Thought of man can have. No wonder it is, in all ways, the activest and noblest.--T. CARLYLE. _Heroes and Hero-Worship._

BOOKS AS SIGN-POSTS

The modern scholars have their usual recourse to the Universities of their countries; some few, it may be, to those of their neighbours; and this in quest of books rather than men for their guides, though these are living and those in comparison but dead instructors, which, like a hand with an inscription, can point out the straight way upon the road, but can neither tell you the next turnings, resolve your doubts, or answer your questions, like a guide that has traced it over, and perhaps knows it as well as his chamber. And who are these dead guides we seek in our journey? They are at best but some few authors that remain among us of a great many that wrote in Greek and Latin from the age of Hippocrates to that of Marcus Antoninus, which reaches not much above six hundred years.--SIR W. TEMPLE. _Ancient and Modern Learning._

THE NEED OF A GUIDE TO BOOKS

The colleges, whilst they provide us with libraries, furnish no professor of books; and, I think, no chair is so much wanted. In a library we are surrounded by many hundreds of dear friends, but they are imprisoned by an enchanter in these paper and leathern boxes; and, though they know us, and have been waiting two, ten, or twenty centuries for us,--some of them,--and are eager to give us a sign, and unbosom themselves, it is the law of their limbo that they must not speak until spoken to; and as the enchanter has dressed them, like battalions of infantry, in coat and jacket of one cut, by the thousand and ten thousand, your chance of hitting on the right one is to be computed by the arithmetical rule of Permutation and Combination,--not a choice out of three caskets, but out of half a million caskets all alike. But it happens in our experience, that in this lottery there are at least fifty or a hundred blanks to a prize. It seems, then, as if some charitable soul, after losing a great deal of time among the false books, and alighting upon a few true ones which made him happy and wise, would do a right act in naming those which have been bridges or ships to carry him safely over dark morasses and barren oceans, into the heart of sacred cities, into palaces and temples. This would be best done by those great masters of books who from time to time appear,--the Fabricii, the Seldens, Magliabecchis, Scaligers, Mirandolas, Bayles, Johnsons, whose eyes sweep the whole horizon of learning. But private readers, reading purely for love of the book, would serve us by leaving each the shortest note of what he found.--R. W. EMERSON. _Books._

THE TRUE UNIVERSITY OF THESE DAYS

To look at Teaching, for instance. Universities are a notable, respectable product of the modern ages. Their existence too is modified, to the very basis of it, by the existence of Books. Universities arose while there were yet no Books procurable; while a man, for a single Book, had to give an estate of land. That, in those circumstances, when a man had some knowledge to communicate, he should do it by gathering the learners round him, face to face, was a necessity for him. If you wanted to know what Abelard knew, you must go and listen to Abelard. Thousands, as many as thirty thousand, went to hear Abelard and that metaphysical theology of his. And now for any other teacher who had also something of his own to teach, there was a great convenience opened: so many thousands eager to learn were already assembled yonder; of all places the best place for him was that. For any third teacher it was better still; and grew ever the better, the more teachers there came. It only needed now that the King took notice of this new phenomenon; combined or agglomerated the various schools into one school; gave it edifices, privileges, encouragements, and named it _Universitas_, or School of all Sciences: the University of Paris, in its essential characters, was there. The model of all subsequent Universities; which down even to these days, for six centuries now, have gone on to found themselves. Such, I conceive, was the origin of Universities. It is clear, however, that with this simple circumstance, facility of getting Books, the whole conditions of the business from top to bottom were changed. Once invent Printing, you metamorphosed all Universities, or superseded them! The Teacher needed not now to gather men personally round him, that he might _speak_ to them what he knew: print it in a Book, and all learners far and wide, for a trifle, had it each at his own fireside, much more effectually to learn it!--Doubtless there is still peculiar virtue in Speech; even writers of Books may still, in some circumstances, find it convenient to speak also,--witness our present meeting here! There is, one would say, and must ever remain while man has a tongue, a distinct province for Speech as well as for Writing and Printing. In regard to all things this must remain; to Universities among others. But the limits of the two have nowhere yet been pointed out, ascertained; much less put in practice: the University which would completely take-in that great new fact, of the existence of Printed Books, and stand on a clear footing for the Nineteenth Century as the Paris one did for the Thirteenth, has not yet come into existence. If we think of it, all that a University, or final highest School, can do for us, is still but what the first School began doing--teach us to _read_. We learn to _read_, in various languages, in various sciences; we learn the alphabet and letters of all manner of Books. But the place where we are to get knowledge, even theoretic knowledge, is the Books themselves! It depends on what we read, after all manner of Professors have done their best for us. The true University of these days is a Collection of Books.--T. CARLYLE. _Heroes and Hero-Worship._

OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE: TWO EPIGRAMS

The King observing with judicious eyes
The state of both his Universities,
To one he sent a regiment: for why?
That learned body wanted loyalty.
To the other he sent books, as well discerning
How much that loyal body wanted learning.

J. TRAPP.

THE ANSWER

The King to Oxford sent his troop of horse,
For Tories own no argument but force;
With equal care to Cambridge books he sent,
For Whigs allow no force but argument.

SIR W. BROWNE.

Books will speak plain, when counsellors blanch.--F. BACON, LORD VERULAM. _Of Counsell._

AGAINST WRITERS THAT CARP AT OTHER MEN'S BOOKS

The readers and the hearers like my books,
And yet some writers cannot them digest;
But what care I? for when I make a feast,
I would my guests should praise it, not the cooks.

SIR J. HARINGTON.

A CRITIC

is one that has spelt over a great many of books, and his observation is the orthography. He is the surgeon of old authors, and heals the wounds of dust and ignorance. He converses much in fragments and _Desunt multa_'s, and if he piece it up with two lines, he is more proud of that book than the author. He runs over all sciences to peruse their syntaxes, and thinks all learning comprised in writing Latin. He tastes styles, as some discreeter palaters do wine; and tells you which is genuine, which sophisticate and bastard. His own phrase is a miscellany of old words, deceased long before the Caesars, and entombed by Varro, and the modernest man he follows is Plautus. He writes _Omneis_ at length, and _quicquid_, and his gerund is most inconformable. He is a troublesome vexer of the dead, which after so long sparing must rise up to the judgement of his castigations. He is one that makes all books sell dearer, whilst he swells them into folios with his comments.--J. EARLE. _Microcosmographie_.

STYLE _v._ SENSE

Others for language all their care express,
And value books, as women men, for dress:
Their praise is still,--the style is excellent:
The sense, they humbly take upon content.
Words are like leaves; and where they most abound,
Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.

A. POPE. _Essay on Criticism_.

WHERE FOOLS RUSH IN

The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read,
With loads of learned lumber in his head,
With his own tongue still edifies his ears,
And always listening to himself appears.
All books he reads, and all he reads assails,
From Dryden's _Fables_ down to D'Urfey's _Tales_.
With him, most authors steal their works, or buy;
Garth did not write his own _Dispensary_.
Name a new play, and he's the poet's friend,
Nay, showed his faults--but when would poets mend?
No place so sacred from such fops is barred,
Nor is Paul's church more safe than Paul's churchyard.
Nay, fly to altars; there they'll talk you dead:
For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

A. POPE. _Essay on Criticism._

LITERARY HYPOCRISY

There are some subjects of which almost all the world perceive the futility; yet all combine in imposing upon each other as worthy of praise. But chiefly this imposition obtains in literature, where men publicly contemn what they relish with rapture in private, and approve abroad what has given them disgust at home.--O. GOLDSMITH. _Letters from a Citizen of the World._

IN THE SEAT OF THE SCORNER

They who are in the habit of passing sentence upon books,--and what ignoramus in our days does not deem himself fully qualified for sitting in the seat of the scorner?--are apt to think that they have condemned a work irretrievably, when they have pronounced it to be unintelligible. Unintelligible to whom? To themselves, the self-constituted judges. So that their sentence presumes their competency to pronounce it: and this, to every one save themselves, may be exceedingly questionable.

It is true, the very purpose for which a writer publishes his thoughts, is, that his readers should share them with him. Hence the primary requisite of a style is its intelligibleness: that is to say, it must be capable of being understood. But intelligibleness is a relative quality, varying with the capacity of the reader. The easiest book in a language is inaccessible to those who have never set foot within the pale of that language. The simplest elementary treatise in any science is obscure and perplexing, until we become familiar with the terminology of that science. Thus every writer is entitled to demand a certain amount of knowledge in those for whom he writes, and a certain degree of dexterity in using the implements of thought....

When a man says he sees nothing in a book, he very often means that he does not see himself in it: which, if it is not a comedy or a satire, is likely enough.--A. W. and J. C. HARE. _Guesses at Truth._

THE FINAL VERDICT UPON BOOKS

They who make up the final verdict upon every book are not the partial and noisy readers of the hour when it appears; but a court as of angels, a public not to be bribed, not to be entreated, and not to be overawed, decides upon every man's title to fame. Only those books come down which deserve to last. Gilt edges, vellum, and morocco, and presentation copies to all the libraries, will not preserve a book in circulation beyond its intrinsic date. It must go with all Walpole's Noble and Royal Authors to its fate. Blackmore, Kotzebue, or Pollock may endure for a night, but Moses and Homer stand for ever. There are not in the world at any one time more than a dozen persons who read and understand Plato: never enough to pay for an edition of his works; yet to every generation these come duly down, for the sake of those few persons, as if God brought them in his hand. 'No book,' said Bentley, 'was ever written down by any but itself.' The permanence of all books is fixed by no effort friendly or hostile, but by their own specific gravity, or the intrinsic importance of their contents to the constant mind of man.--R. W. EMERSON. _Spiritual Laws._

Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book.--R. W. EMERSON. _Goethe._

THE CRITICS' INFLUENCE ON THE PUBLIC

The opinion of the great body of the reading public is very materially influenced even by the unsupported assertions of those who assume a right to criticize. Nor is the public altogether to blame on this account. Most even of those who have really a great enjoyment in reading are in the same state, with respect to a book, in which a man who has never given particular attention to the art of painting is with respect to a picture. Every man who has the least sensibility or imagination derives a certain pleasure from pictures. Yet a man of the highest and finest intellect might, unless he had formed his taste by contemplating the best pictures, be easily persuaded by a knot of connoisseurs that the worst daub in Somerset House was a miracle of art.

Just such is the manner in which nine readers out of ten judge of a book. They are ashamed to dislike what men who speak as having authority declare to be good.--LORD MACAULAY. _Mr. Robert Montgomery's Poems._

TASTE IN LITERATURE AND ART

I know many persons who have the purest taste in literature, and yet false taste in art, and it is a phenomenon which puzzles me not a little; but I have never known any one with false taste in books, and true taste in pictures. It is also of the greatest importance to you, not only for art's sake, but for all kinds of sake, in these days of book deluge, to keep out of the salt swamps of literature, and live on a little rocky island of your own, with a spring and a lake in it, pure and good. I cannot, of course, suggest the choice of your library to you: every several mind needs different books; but there are some books which we all need, and assuredly, if you read Homer, Plato, Aeschylus, Herodotus, Dante, Shakespeare, and Spenser, as much as you ought, you will not require wide enlargement of shelves to right and left of them for purposes of perpetual study.--J. RUSKIN. _The Elements of Drawing._

'There is no book so bad,' said the bachelor, 'but something good may be found in it.'--CERVANTES.

THE FILIAL PIETY OF BOOKS

Nor is there any paternal fondness which seems to savour less of absolute instinct, and which may be so well reconciled to worldly wisdom, as this of authors for their books. These children may most truly be called the riches of their father, and many of them have with true filial piety fed their parent in his old age; so that not only the affection but the interest of the author may be highly injured by those slanderers whose poisonous breath brings his book to an untimely end.

Lastly, the slanderer of a book is, in truth, the slanderer of the author ... neither can any one give the names of sad stuff, horrid nonsense, &c., to a book, without calling the author a blockhead; which, though in a moral sense it is a preferable appellation to that of villain, is, perhaps, rather more injurious to his worldly interest.--H. FIELDING. _Tom Jones._

THE MOTE AND THE BEAM

To complain in print of the multitude of books seems to me a self-accusing vanity, whilst the querulous reprehenders add to the cause of complaint and transgress themselves in that which they seem to wish amended. 'Tis true, the births of the press are numerous, nor is there less variety in the humours and fancies of perusers, and while the number of the one exceeds not the diversity of the other some will not think that too much which others judge superfluous. The genius of one approves what another disregardeth. And were nothing to pass the press but what were suited to the universal gusto, farewell, typography!... I seek no applause from the disgrace of others, nor will I, huckster-like, discredit any man's ware to recommend mine own. I am not angry that there are so many books already (bating only the anomalies of impiety and irreligion), nor will I plead the necessity of publishing mine from feigned importunities.--J. GLANVILL. _The Vanity of Dogmatizing._

The foolishest book is a kind of leaky boat on the sea of wisdom; some of the wisdom will get in, anyhow.--O. W. HOLMES. _The Poet at the Breakfast-Table._

CENSORSHIP

Popish books teach and inform; what we know, we know much out of them. The fathers, church story, school-men, all may pass for popish books; and if you take away them, what learning will you leave? Besides, who must be judge? The customer or the waiter? If he disallows a book it must not be brought into the kingdom; then Lord have mercy upon all scholars! These puritan preachers, if they have anything good, they have it out of popish books, though they will not acknowledge it, for fear of displeasing the people. He is a poor divine that cannot sever the good from the bad.--J. SELDEN. _Table Talk_.

THE IMPRIMATUR

Learning hath of late years met with an obstruction in many places which suppresses it from flourishing or increasing, in spite of all its other helps, and that is the inquisition upon the press, which prohibits any book from coming forth without an imprimatur; an old relic of popery, only necessary for the concealing of such defects of government which of right ought to be discovered and amended.--C. BLOUNT. _A Just Vindication of Learning_, 1693.

A GREAT BOOK IS A GREAT EVIL

[Greek: Méga biblíon méga kakón]

A man who publishes his works in a volume has an infinite advantage over one who communicates his writings to the world in loose tracts and single pieces. We do not expect to meet with anything in a bulky volume till after some heavy preamble, and several words of course, to prepare the reader for what follows: nay, authors have established it as a kind of rule, that a man ought to be dull sometimes, as the most severe reader makes allowances for many rests and nodding-places in a voluminous writer. This gave occasion to the famous Greek proverb which I have chosen for my motto, _That a great book is a great evil_....

An essay writer must practise in the chemical method and give the virtue of a full draught in a few drops. Were all books reduced thus to their quintessence, many a bulky author would make his appearance in a penny-paper: there would be scarce such a thing in nature as a folio: the works of an age would be contained on a few shelves, not to mention millions of volumes that would be utterly annihilated....

When knowledge, instead of being bound up in books, and kept in libraries and retirements, is thus obtruded upon the public; when it is canvassed in every assembly, and exposed upon every table; I cannot forbear reflecting upon that passage in the Proverbs, 'Wisdom crieth without, she uttereth her voice in the streets.'--J. ADDISON. _Spectator_, 124.

A LITTLE BOOK THE MOST EXCELLENT

For books we shall generally find that the most excellent in any art or science have been still the smallest and most compendious; and this not without ground, for it is an argument that the author was a master of what he wrote, and had a clear notion and a full comprehension of the subject before him. For the reason of things lies in a little compass, if the mind could at any time be so happy as to light upon it. Most of the writings and discourses in the world are but illustration and rhetoric, which signifies as much as nothing to a mind eager in pursuit after the causes and philosophical truth of things.... The truth is, there could be no such thing as art or science, could not the mind of man gather the general natures of things out of the heap of numberless particulars, and then bind them up into such short aphorisms or propositions, that so they may be made portable to the memory, and thereby become ready and at hand for the judgement to apply and make use of as there shall be occasion.--R. SOUTH. _Sermon against long extempore prayers._

There are many books written by many men, from which two truths only are discoverable by the readers; namely, that the writers thereof wanted two things,--principle and preferment.--C. C. COLTON. _Lacon._

BOOKS WITH ONE IDEA IN THEM

An amusing catalogue might be made of books which contain but one good passage. They would be a sort of single-speech Hamiltons; if Balaam's palfrey might not be thought a more apt counterpart to them. Killigrew's play of the Parson's Wedding, which in length of massy dullness exceeds many books, is remarkable for one little spark of liveliness. The languishing fine lady of the piece exclaims most characteristically, upon coming in tired with walking: 'I am glad I am come home, for I'm e'en as weary with this walking. For God's sake, whereabouts does the pleasure of walking lie? I swear I have often sought it till I was weary, and yet I could ne'er find it.'--Charron on Wisdom, a cumbrous piece of formality, which Pope's eulogium lately betrayed me into the perusal of, has one splendid passage, page 138, (I think) English translation. It contrasts the open honours with which we invest the sword, as the means of putting man out of the world, with the concealing and retiring circumstances that accompany his introduction into it. It is a piece of gorgeous and happy eloquence.--What could Pope mean by that line,--'sage Montaigne, or more sage Charron?' Montaigne is an immense treasure-house of observation, anticipating all the discoveries of succeeding essayists. You cannot dip in him without being struck with the aphorism, that there is nothing new under the sun. All the writers on common life since him have done nothing but echo him. You cannot open him without detecting a _Spectator_ or starting a _Rambler_; besides that his own character pervades the whole, and binds it sweetly together. Charron is a mere piece of formality, scholastic dry bones, without sinew or living flesh.--C. LAMB. _Table Talk._

BOOKS OF ONE THOUGHT

Few books have more than one thought: the generality indeed have not quite so many. The more ingenious authors of the former seem to think that, if they once get their candle lighted, it will burn on for ever. Yet even a candle gives a sorry, melancholy light unless it has a brother beside it, to shine on it and keep it cheerful. For lights and thoughts are social and sportive: they delight in playing with and into each other. One can hardly conceive a duller state of existence than sitting at whist with three dummies: and yet many of our prime philosophers have seldom done anything else.--A. W. and J. C. HARE. _Guesses at Truth._

INDUCTIVE CRITICISM

A heedy reader shall often discover in other men's compositions perfections far differing from the author's meaning, and such as haply he never dreamed of, and illustrateth them with richer senses and more excellent constructions.--MONTAIGNE.

READING BETWEEN LINES

In hours of high mental activity we sometimes do the book too much honour, reading out of it better things than the author wrote,--reading, as we say, between the lines. You have had the like experience in conversation: the wit was in what you heard, not in what the speakers said. Our best thought came from others. We heard in their words a deeper sense than the speakers put into them, and could express ourselves in other people's phrases to finer purpose than they knew.--R. W. EMERSON. _Quotation and Originality._

PURPLE PATCHES

There are some fine passages, I am told, in that book.

Are there? Then beware of them. Fine passages are mostly _culs de sac_. For in books also does one see

Rich windows that exclude the light
And passages that lead to nothing.

A. W. and J. C. HARE. _Guesses at Truth._

There's more ado to interpret interpretations than to interpret things, and more books upon books than upon any other subject. We do but inter-glose ourselves. All swarmeth with commentaries; of authors there is great penury.--MONTAIGNE.

THE ROYAL ROAD

ERASMUS. I am told there is a certain compendious art, that will help a man to accomplish himself with all the liberal sciences by a very little labour.

DESIDERIUS. What is that you talk of? Did you ever see the book?

ERASMUS. I did see it, and that was all, having nobody to instruct me in the use of it.

DESIDERIUS. What was the subject of the book?

ERASMUS. It treated of various forms of dragons, lions, leopards; and various circles, and words written in them, some in Greek, some in Latin, and some in Hebrew and other barbarous languages.

DESIDERIUS. Pray, in how many days' time did the title-page promise you the knowledge of the arts and sciences?

ERASMUS. In fourteen.

DESIDERIUS. In truth, a very noble promise. But did you ever know anybody that has become learned by that notable art?

ERASMUS. No.

DESIDERIUS. No, nor nobody ever did, or ever will, till we can see an alchemist grow rich.

ERASMUS. Why, is there no such art then? I wish with all my heart there was.

DESIDERIUS. Perhaps you do, because you would not be at the pains which are required to become learned.

ERASMUS. You are right.

DESIDERIUS. It seemed meet to the Divine Being that the common riches, gold, jewels, silver, palaces, and kingdoms should be bestowed on the slothful and undeserving; but the true riches, and such as are properly our own, must be gotten by labour.

ERASMUS. _Colloquies: The Notable Art._

READERS AND WRITERS

Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason;--they made no such demand on those who wrote them. Those works therefore are the most valuable, that set our thinking faculties in the fullest operation.--C. C. COLTON. _Lacon._

STUDIES

Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight, is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgement and disposition of business; for expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs come best from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies, is sloth; to use them too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgement wholly by their rules, is the humour of a scholar: they perfect nature, and are perfected by experience: for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that would be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books; else distilled books are, like common distilled waters, flashy things. Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man; and, therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not. Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend: _Abeunt studia in mores_; nay, there is no stand or impediment in the wit, but may be wrought out by fit studies: like as diseases of the body may have appropriate exercises; bowling is good for the stone and reins, shooting for the lungs and breast, gentle walking for the stomach, riding for the head and the like; so if a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again; if his wit be not apt to distinguish or find difference, let him study the schoolmen, for they are _Cymini sectores_. If he be not apt to beat over matters, and to call up one thing to prove and illustrate another, let him study the lawyers' cases: so every defect of the mind may have a special receipt.--F. BACON, LORD VERULAM. _Essays._

HOW TO SPEND OUR DAYS

After some while meditation, I walk up to my masters and companions, my books: and, sitting down amongst them, with the best contentment, I dare not reach forth my hand to salute any of them till I have first looked up to heaven, and craved favour of Him to whom all my studies are duly referred, without whom I can neither profit nor labour. After this, out of no over-great variety, I call forth those which may best fit my occasions; wherein I am not too scrupulous of age: sometimes I put myself to school, to one of those ancients, whom the Church hath honoured with the name of Fathers, whose volumes I confess not to open without a secret reverence of their holiness and gravity: sometimes to those latter doctors, which want nothing but age to make them classical: always to God's Book. That day is lost whereof some hours are not improved in those divine monuments: others I turn over out of choice; these out of duty.--JOSEPH HALL. (Letter to Lord Denny.)

THE CHOICE OF BOOKS

In study there must be an expulsive virtue to shun all that is erroneous; and there is no science but is full of such stuff, which by direction of tutor and choice of good books must be excerned. Do not confound yourself with multiplicity of authors; two is enough upon any science, provided they be plenary and orthodox; _Philosophy_ should be your substantial food, _Poetry_ your banqueting stuff; _Philosophy_ hath more of reality in it than any Knowledge, the _Philosopher_ can fathom the deep, measure mountains, reach the stars with a staff, and bless heaven with a girdle.

But among these Studies you must not forget the _unicum necessarium_; on Sundays and Holidays let _Divinity_ be the sole object of your speculation, in comparison whereof all other knowledge is but cobweb-learning.--J. HOWELL. _Familiar Letters._

CHEWING THE CUD

Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking makes what we read ours. We are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collections; unless we chew them over again they will not give us strength and nourishment.... The memory may be stored, but the judgement is little better, and the stock of knowledge not increased, by being able to repeat what others have said or produce the arguments we have found in them. Such a knowledge as this is but knowledge by hearsay, and the ostentation of it is at best but talking by rote, and very often upon weak and wrong principles. For all that is to be found in books is not built upon true foundations, nor always rightly deduced from the principles it is pretended to be built on.... The mind is backward in itself to be at the pains to trace every argument to its original, and to see upon what basis it stands, and how firmly; but yet it is this that gives so much the advantage to one man more than another in reading. The mind should, by severe rules, be tied down to this at first uneasy task; use and exercise will give it facility. So that those who are accustomed to it, readily, as it were with one cast of the eye, take a view of the argument, and presently, in most cases, see where it bottoms. Those who have got this faculty, one may say, have got the true key of books, and the clue to lead them through the mizmaze of variety of opinions and authors to truth and certainty. This young beginners should be entered in, and showed the use of, that they might profit by their reading.... This way of thinking on and profiting by what we read will be a clog and rub to any one only in the beginning; when custom and exercise has made it familiar, it will be dispatched in most occasions, without resting or interruption in the course of our reading.--J. LOCKE. _Conduct of the Understanding._

THE SUFFICIENCY OF HOMER

Read Homer once, and you can read no more;
For all books else appear so mean, so poor,
Verse will seem prose, but still persist to read,
And Homer will be all the books you need.

J. SHEFFIELD, DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.
_Essay on Poetry._

HOMER AND VIRGIL

Be Homer's works your study and delight,
Read them by day, and meditate by night;
Thence form your judgement, thence your maxims bring,
And trace the Muses upward to their spring.
Still with itself compared, his text peruse;
And let your comment be the Mantuan Muse.
When first young Maro in his boundless mind
A work to outlast immortal Rome designed,
Perhaps he seemed above the critic's law,
And but from Nature's fountains scorned to draw:
But when to examine every part he came,
Nature and Homer were, he found, the same.
Convinced, amazed, he checks the bold design;
And rules as strict his laboured work confine,
As if the Stagirite o'erlooked each line.
Learn hence for ancient rules a just esteem:
To copy nature is to copy them.

A. POPE. _Essay on Criticism._

READ WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Read boldly, and unprejudiced peruse
Each favourite modern, e'en each ancient Muse.
With all the comic salt and tragic rage,
The great stupendous genius of our stage,
Boast of our island, pride of humankind,
Had faults to which the boxes are not blind;
His frailties are to every gossip known,
Yet Milton's pedantries not shock the town.
Ne'er be the dupe of names, however high,
For some outlive good parts, some misapply.
Each elegant _Spectator_ you admire,
But must you therefore swear by Cato's fire?
Masks for the court, and oft a clumsy jest
Disgraced the Muse that wrought the _Alchemist_.
'But to the ancients'--Faith! I am not clear,
For all the smooth round type of Elzevir,
That every work which lasts in prose or song
Two thousand years deserves to last so long:
For--not to mention some eternal blades
Known only now in academic shades,
(Those sacred groves where raptured spirits stray,
And in word-hunting waste the livelong day)
Ancients whom none but curious critics scan,--
Do read Messala's praises if you can.
Ah! who but feels the sweet contagious smart
While soft Tibullus pours his tender heart?
With him the Loves and Muses melt in tears,
But not a word of some hexameters!
'You grow so squeamish and so devilish dry
You'll call Lucretius vapid next.' Not I:
Some find him tedious, others think him lame,
But if he lags his subject is to blame.
Rough weary roads through barren wilds he tried,
Yet still he marches with true Roman pride;
Sometimes a meteor, gorgeous, rapid, bright,
He streams athwart the philosophic night.
Find you in Horace no insipid odes?--
He dared to tell us Homer sometimes nods;
And but for such a critic's hardy skill
Homer might slumber unsuspected still.

J. ARMSTRONG. _Taste._

READING ACCORDING TO INCLINATION

He [Dr. Johnson] said, that for general improvement, a man should read whatever his immediate inclination prompts him to; though, to be sure, if a man has a science to learn, he must regularly and resolutely advance. He added, 'what we read with inclination makes a much stronger impression. If we read without inclination, half the mind is employed in fixing the attention; so there is but one half to be employed on what we read.' He told us, he read Fielding's _Amelia_ through without stopping. He said, 'If a man begins to read in the middle of a book, and feels an inclination to go on, let him not quit it, to go to the beginning. He may perhaps not feel again the inclination.'

Dr. Johnson advised me to-day, to have as many books about me as I could; that I might read upon any subject upon which I had a desire for instruction at the time. 'What you read _then_ (said he) you will remember; but if you have not a book immediately ready, and the subject moulds in your mind, it is a chance if you again have a desire to study it.' He added, 'If a man never has an eager desire for instruction, he should prescribe a task for himself. But it is better when a man reads from immediate inclination.'

Another admonition of his was, never to go out without some little book or other in the pocket. 'Much time,' added he, 'is lost by waiting, by travelling, &c., and this may be prevented, by making use of every possible opportunity for improvement.'--J. BOSWELL. _Life of Johnson._

READ FEW BOOKS WELL

Read few books well. We forget names and dates; and reproach our memory. They are of little consequence. We feel our limbs enlarge and strengthen; yet cannot tell the dinner or the dish that caused the alteration. Our minds improve though we cannot name the author and have forgotten the particulars.

Read all books through; and bad books most carefully, lest you should lose one good thought, being determined never to look into them again. A man may read a great deal too much.--J. HORNE TOOKE. _Recollections of S. Rogers._

BOOKS AS FRUITFUL TREES

Under a strong persuasion that little of real value is derived by persons in general from a wide and various reading; but still more deeply convinced as to the actual mischief of unconnected and promiscuous reading, and that it is sure, in a greater or less degree, to enervate even where it does not likewise inflate; I hope to satisfy many an ingenious mind, seriously interested in its own development and cultivation, how moderate a number of volumes, if only they be judiciously chosen, will suffice for the attainment of every wise and desirable purpose; that is, in addition to those which he studies for specific and professional purposes. It is saying less than the truth to affirm that an excellent book (and the remark holds almost equally good of a Raphael as of a Milton) is like a well-chosen and well-tended fruit-tree. Its fruits are not of one season only. With the due and natural intervals, we may recur to it year after year, and it will supply the same nourishment and the same gratification, if only we ourselves return to it with the same healthful appetite.--S. T. COLERIDGE. _Prospectus to a Course of Lectures._

READING SEVERAL BOOKS AT A TIME

The advice I would give to any one who is disposed really to read for the sake of knowledge is, that he should have two or three books in course of reading at the same time. He will read a great deal more in that time and with much greater profit. All travels are worth reading, as subsidiary to reading, and in fact essential parts of it: old or new, it matters not--something is to be learnt from all. And the custom of making brief notes of reference to everything of interest or importance would be exceedingly useful.--R. SOUTHEY (Letter to Henry Taylor).

WHEN AND WHERE TO READ

Much depends upon _when_ and _where_ you read a book. In the five or six impatient minutes, before the dinner is quite ready, who would think of taking up the _Fairy Queen_ for a stop-gap, or a volume of Bishop Andrewes' sermons?

Milton almost requires a solemn service of music to be played before you enter upon him. But he brings his music, to which, who listens, had need bring docile thoughts, and purged ears.

Winter evenings--the world shut out--with less of ceremony the gentle Shakespeare enters. At such a season, the _Tempest_, or his own _Winter's Tale_.--

These two poets you cannot avoid reading aloud--to yourself, or (as it chances) to some single person listening. More than one--and it degenerates into an audience.

Books of quick interest, that hurry on for incidents, are for the eye to glide over only. It will not do to read them out. I could never listen to even the better kind of modern novels without extreme irksomeness.

A newspaper, read out, is intolerable.--C. LAMB. _Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading._

SMALL AUTHORS DANGEROUS

It is dangerous to have any intercourse or dealing with small authors. They are as troublesome to handle, as easy to discompose, as difficult to pacify, and leave as unpleasant marks on you, as small children. Cultivate on the other hand the society and friendship of the higher; first that you may learn to reverence them, which of itself is both a pleasure and a virtue, and then that on proper occasions you may defend them against the malevolent, which is a duty. And this duty cannot be well and satisfactorily performed with an imperfect knowledge, or with an inadequate esteem.--W. S. LANDOR. _Imaginary Conversations: Barrow and Newton._

BOOKS THAT PROVOKE THOUGHT

It is wholesome and bracing for the mind, to have its faculties kept on the stretch. It is like the effect of a walk in Switzerland upon the body. Reading an Essay of Bacon's, for instance, or a chapter of Aristotle or of Butler, if it be well and thoughtfully read, is much like climbing up a hill, and may do one the same sort of good.... For my own part, I have ever gained the most profit and the most pleasure also, from the books which have made me think the most: and, when the difficulties have once been overcome, these are the books which have struck the deepest root, not only in my memory and understanding, but likewise in my affections. For this point too should be taken into account. We are wont to think slightly of that, which it costs us a slight effort to win. When a maiden is too forward, her admirer deems it time to draw back. Whereas whatever has associated itself with the arousal and activity of our better nature, with the important and memorable epochs in our lives, whether moral or intellectual, is,--to cull a sprig from the beautiful passage in which Wordsworth describes the growth of Michael's love for his native hills--

Our living being, even more
Than our own blood,--and could it less?--retains
Strong hold on our affections, is to us
A pleasurable feeling of blind love,
The pleasure which there is in life itself.

If you would fertilize the mind, the plough must be driven over and through it. The gliding of wheels is easier and rapider, but only makes it harder and more barren. Above all, in the present age of light reading, that is, of reading hastily, thoughtlessly, indiscriminately, unfruitfully, when most books are forgotten as soon as they are finished, and very many sooner, it is well if something heavier is cast now and then into the midst of the literary public. This may scare and repel the weak: it will rouse and attract the stronger, and increase their strength by making them exert it. In the sweat of the brow is the mind as well as the body to eat its bread.--A. W. and J. C. HARE. _Guesses at Truth._

RULES FOR READING

The best rule of reading will be a method from nature, and not a mechanical one of hours and pages. It holds each student to a pursuit of his native aim, instead of a desultory miscellany. Let him read what is proper to him, and not waste his memory on a crowd of mediocrities. As whole nations have derived their culture from a single book,--as the Bible has been the literature as well as the religion of large portions of Europe,--as Hafiz was the eminent genius of the Persians, Confucius of the Chinese, Cervantes of the Spaniards; so, perhaps, the human mind would be a gainer, if all the secondary writers were lost--say, in England, all but Shakespeare, Milton, and Bacon--through the profounder study so drawn to those wonderful minds. With this pilot of his own genius, let the student read one, or let him read many, he will read advantageously....

The three practical rules, then, which I have to offer, are,--1. Never read any book that is not a year old. 2. Never read any but famed books. 3. Never read any but what you like; or, in Shakespeare's phrase,

No profit goes where is no pleasure ta'en:
In brief, sir, study what you most affect.

Montaigne says, 'Books are a languid pleasure;' but I find certain books vital and spermatic, not leaving the reader what he was: he shuts the book a richer man. I would never willingly read any others than such.--R. W. EMERSON. _Books._

A DIET OF BOOKS

I would not be hurried by any love of system, by any exaggeration of instincts, to underrate the Book. We all know, that, as the human body can be nourished on any food, though it were boiled grass and the broth of shoes, so the human mind can be fed by any knowledge. And great and heroic men have existed, who had almost no other information than by the printed page. I only would say, that it needs a strong head to bear that diet. One must be an inventor to read well. As the proverb says, 'He that would bring home the wealth of the Indies must carry out the wealth of the Indies.' There is, then, creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labour and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world. We then see, what is always true, that, as the seer's hour of vision is short and rare among heavy days and months, so is its record, perchance, the least part of his volume. The discerning will read, in his Plato or Shakespeare, only that least part,--only the authentic utterances of the oracle; all the rest he rejects, were it never so many times Plato's and Shakespeare's.--R. W. EMERSON. _The American Scholar._

A COURSE OF READING

Let us turn our attention to the intellectual advantages accompanying the pursuit, since the proper function of books is in the general case associated with intellectual culture and occupation. It would seem that, according to a received prejudice or opinion, there is one exception to this general connexion, in the case of the possessors of libraries, who are under a vehement suspicion of not reading their books. Well, perhaps it is true in the sense in which those who utter the taunt understand the reading of a book. That one should possess no books beyond his power of perusal--that he should buy no faster than as he can read straight through what he has already bought--is a supposition alike preposterous and unreasonable. 'Surely you have far more books than you can read,' is sometimes the inane remark of the barbarian who gets his books, volume by volume, from some circulating library or reading club, and reads them all through, one after the other, with a dreary dutifulness, that he may be sure that he has got the value of his money.

It is true that there are some books--as Homer, Virgil, Horace, Milton, Shakespeare, and Scott--which every man should read who has the opportunity--should read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.... But is one next to read through the sixty and odd folio volumes of the Bollandist _Lives of the Saints_, and the new edition of the Byzantine historians, and the State Trials, and the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, and Moreri, and the Statutes at large, and the _Gentleman's Magazine_ from the beginning, each separately, and in succession? Such a course of reading would certainly do a good deal towards weakening the mind, if it did not create absolute insanity.

But in all these just named, even in the Statutes at large, and in thousands upon thousands of other books, there is precious honey to be gathered by the literary busy bee, who passes on from flower to flower. In fact, 'a course of reading,' as it is sometimes called, is a course of regimen for dwarfing the mind, like the drugs which dog-breeders give to King Charles spaniels to keep them small. Within the span of life allotted to man there is but a certain number of books that it is practicable to read through, and it is not possible to make a selection that will not, in a manner, wall in the mind from a free expansion over the republic of letters. The being chained, as it were, to one intellect in the perusal straight on of any large book, is a sort of mental slavery superinducing imbecility. Even Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_, luminous and comprehensive as its philosophy is, and rapid and brilliant the narrative, will become deleterious mental food if consumed straight through without variety. It will be well to relieve it occasionally with a little Boston's _Fourfold State_, or Hervey's _Meditations_, or Sturm's _Reflections for Every Day in the Year_, or _Don Juan_, or Ward's _History of Stoke-Upon-Trent_.--J. H. BURTON. _The Book-Hunter._

OF READING

Read not Milton, for he is dry; nor Shakespeare, for he
wrote of common life:
Nor Scott, for his romances, though fascinating, are yet
intelligible:
Nor Thackeray, for he is a Hogarth, a photographer who
flattereth not:
Nor Kingsley, for he shall teach thee that thou shouldest
not dream, but do.
Read incessantly thy Burke; that Burke who, nobler than
he of old,
Treateth of the Peer and Peeress, the truly Sublime and
Beautiful:
Likewise study the 'creations' of 'the Prince of modern
Romance';
Sigh over Leonard the Martyr, and smile on Pelham the
puppy:
Learn how 'love is the dram-drinking of existence';
And how we 'invoke, in the Gadara of our still closets,
The beautiful ghost of the Ideal, with the simple wand of
the pen.'
Listen how Maltravers and the orphan 'forgot all but
love',
And how Devereux's family chaplain 'made and unmade
kings':
How Eugene Aram, though a thief, a liar, a murderer,
Yet, being intellectual, was amongst the noblest of mankind.
So shalt thou live in a world peopled with heroes and
master-spirits;
And if thou canst not realize the Ideal, thou shalt at least
idealize the Real.