THE ART OF READING.
"The true University of these days," says a great scholar of our century,
Thomas Carlyle, "is a collection of books, and all education is to teach
us how to read."
If there were any volume, out of the multitude of books about books that
have been written, which could illuminate the pathway of the unskilled
reader, so as to guide him into all knowledge by the shortest road, what
a boon that book would be!
When we survey the vast and rapidly growing product of the modern
press,--when we see these hosts of poets without imagination, historians
without accuracy, critics without discernment, and novelists without
invention or style, in short, the whole prolific brood of writers who do
not know how to write,--we are tempted to echo the sentiment of
Wordsworth:--
"The intellectual power, through words and things,
Goes sounding on a dim and perilous way."
The most that any one can hope to do for others is to suggest to them a
clue which, however feeble, has helped to guide his uncertain footsteps
through the labyrinthian maze of folly and wisdom which we call
literature.
The knowledge acquired by a Librarian, while it may be very wide and very
varied, runs much risk of being as superficial as it is diversified.
There is a very prevalent, but very erroneous notion which conceives of a
librarian as a kind of animated encyclopaedia, who, if you tap him in any
direction, from A to Z, will straightway pour forth a flood of knowledge
upon any subject in history, science, or literature. This popular ideal,
however fine in theory, has to undergo what commercial men call a heavy
discount when reduced to practice. The librarian is a constant and busy
worker in far other fields than exploring the contents of books. His day
is filled with cataloguing, arranging and classifying them, searching
catalogues, selecting new books, correspondence, directing assistants,
keeping library records, adjusting accounts, etc., in the midst of which
he is constantly at the call of the public for books and information.
What time has he, wearied by the day's multifarious and exacting labors,
for any thorough study of books? So, when anyone begins an inquiry with,
"You know everything; can you tell me,"--I say: "Stop a moment;
omniscience is not a human quality; I really know very few things, and am
not quite sure of some of them." There are many men, and women, too, in
almost every community, whose range of knowledge is more extended than
that of most librarians.
The idea, then, that because one lives perpetually among books, he
absorbs all the learning that they contain, must be abandoned as a
popular delusion. To know a little upon many subjects is quite compatible
with not knowing much about any one. "Beware of the man of one book," is
an ancient proverb, pregnant with meaning. The man of one book, if it is
wisely chosen, and if he knows it all, can sometimes confound a whole
assembly of scholars. An American poet once declared to me that all
leisure time is lost that is not spent in reading Shakespeare. And we
remember Emerson's panegyric upon Plato's writings, borrowing from the
Caliph Omar his famous (but apocryphal) sentence against all books but
the Koran: "Burn all the libraries, for their value is in this book." So
Sheffield, duke of Buckingham:
"Read Homer once, and you can read no more,
For all books else appear so tame, so poor,
Verse will seem prose, but still persist to read,
And Homer will be all the books you need."
Of course I am far from designing to say anything against the widest
study, which great libraries exist to supply and to encourage; and all
utterances of a half-truth, like the maxim I have quoted, are
exaggerations. But the saying points a moral--and that is, the supreme
importance of thoroughness in all that we undertake. The poetical
wiseacre who endowed the world with the maxim, "A little learning is a
dangerous thing," does not appear to have reflected upon the logical
sequence of the dictum, namely: that if a little learning upon any
subject is dangerous, then less must be still more dangerous.
* * * * *
The art of reading to the best advantage implies the command of adequate
time to read. The art of having time to read depends upon knowing how to
make the best use of our days. Days are short, and time is fleeting, but
no one's day ever holds less than 24 hours. Engrossing as one's
occupation may be, it need never consume all the time remaining from
sleep, refreshment and social intercourse. The half hour before
breakfast, the fifteen minutes waiting for dinner, given to the book you
wish to read, will soon finish it, and make room for another. The busiest
men I have known have often been the most intelligent, and the widest
readers. The idle person never knows how to make use of odd moments; the
busy one always knows how. Yet the vast majority of people go through
life without ever learning the great lesson of the supreme value of
moments.
Let us suppose that you determine to devote two hours every day to
reading. That is equivalent to more than seven hundred hours a year, or
to three months of working time of eight hours a day. What could you not
do in three months, if you had all the time to yourself? You could almost
learn a new language, or master a new science; yet this two hours a day,
which would give you three months of free time every year, is frittered
away, you scarcely know how, in aimless matters that lead to nothing.
A famous writer of our century, some of whose books you have
read,--Edward Bulwer Lytton,--devoted only four hours a day to writing;
yet he produced more than sixty volumes of fiction, poetry, drama and
criticism, of singular literary merit. The great naturalist, Darwin, a
chronic sufferer from a depressing malady, counted two hours a fortunate
day's work for him; yet he accomplished results in the world of science
which render his name immortal.
Be not over particular as to hours, or the time of day, and you will soon
find that all hours are good for the muse. Have a purpose, and adhere to
it with good-humored pertinacity. Be independent of the advice and
opinions of others; the world of books, like the world of nature, was
made for you; possess it in your own way. If you find no good in ancient
history or in metaphysics, let them alone and read books of art, or
poetry, or biography, or voyages and travels. The wide domain of
knowledge and the world of books are so related, that all roads cross and
converge, like the paths that carry us over the surface of the globe on
which we live. Many a reader has learned more of past times from good
biographies, than from any formal history; and it is a fact that many owe
to the plays of Shakespeare and the novels of Walter Scott nearly all the
knowledge which they possess of the history of England and Scotland.
It is unhappily true that books do not teach the use of books. The art of
extracting what is important or instructive in any book, from the mass
of verbiage that commonly overlays it, cannot be learned by theory.
Invaluable as the art of reading is, as a means of enlightenment, its
highest uses can only be obtained by a certain method of reading, which
will separate the wheat from the chaff. Different readers will, of
course, possess different capacities for doing this. Young or
undisciplined minds can read only in one way,--and that way is, to
mentally pronounce every word, and dwell equally upon all the parts of
every sentence. This comes naturally in the first instance, from the mere
method of learning to read, in which every word is a spoken symbol, and
has to be sounded, whether it is essential to the sense, or not. This
habit of reading, which may be termed the literal method, goes with most
persons through life. Once learned, it is very hard to unlearn. There are
multitudes who cannot read a newspaper, even, without dwelling upon every
word, and coming to a full stop at the end of every sentence. Now this
method of reading, while it may be indispensable to all readers at some
time, and to some readers at all times, is too slow and fruitless for the
student who aims to absorb the largest amount of knowledge in the
briefest space of time. Life is too short to be wasted over the rhetoric
or the periods of an author whose knowledge we want as all that concerns
us.
Doubtless there are classes of literature in which form or expression
predominates, and we cannot read poetry, for example, or the drama, or
even the higher class of fiction, without lingering upon the finer
passages, to get the full impression of their beauty. In reading works of
the imagination, we read not for ideas alone, but for expression also,
and to enjoy the rhythm and melody of the verse, if it be poetry, or, if
prose, the finished rhetoric, and the pleasing cadence of the style. It
is here that the literary skill of an accomplished writer, and all that
we understand by rhetoric, becomes important, while in reading for
information only, we may either ignore words and phrases entirely, or
subordinate them to the ideas which they convey. In reading any book for
the knowledge it contains, I should as soon think of spelling out all the
words, as of reading out all the sentences. Just as, in listening to a
slow speaker, you divine the whole meaning of what he is about to say,
before he has got half through his sentence, so, in reading, you can
gather the full sense of the ideas which any sentence contains, without
stopping to accentuate the words.
Leaving aside the purely literary works, in which form or style is a
predominant element, let us come to books of science, history, biography,
voyages, travels, etc. In these, the primal aim is to convey information,
and thus the style of expression is little or nothing--the thought or the
fact is all. Yet most writers envelop the thought or the fact in so much
verbiage, complicate it with so many episodes, beat it out thin, by so
much iteration and reiteration, that the student must needs learn the art
of skipping, in self-defense. To one in zealous pursuit of knowledge, to
read most books through is paying them too extravagant a compliment. He
has to read between the lines, as it were, to note down a fact here, or a
thought there, or an illustration elsewhere, and leaves alone all that
contributes nothing to his special purpose. As the quick, practiced eye
glances over the visible signs of thought, page after page is rapidly
absorbed, and a book which would occupy an ordinary reader many days in
reading, is mastered in a few hours.
The habit of reading which I have outlined, and which may be termed the
intuitive method, or, if you prefer it, the short-hand method, will more
than double the working power of the reader. It is not difficult to
practice, especially to a busy man, who does with all his might what he
has got to do. But it should be learned early in life, when the faculties
are fresh, the mind full of zeal for knowledge, and the mental habits are
ductile, not fixed. With it one's capacity for acquiring knowledge, and
consequently his accomplishment, whether as writer, teacher, librarian,
or private student, will be immeasureably increased.
Doubtless it is true that some native or intuitive gifts must be
conjoined with much mental discipline and perseverance, in order to reach
the highest result, in this method of reading, as in any other study.
"_Non omnia possumus omnes_," Virgil says; and there are intellects who
could no more master such a method, than they could understand the
binomial theorem, or calculate the orbit of Uranus. If it be true, as has
been epigramatically said, that "a great book is a great evil," let it be
reduced to a small one by the skilful use of the art of skipping. Then,
"he that runs may read" as he runs--while, without this refuge, he that
reads will often assuredly be tempted to run.
What I said, just now, in deprecation of set courses of reading, was
designed for private students only, who so often find a stereotyped
sequence of books barren or uninteresting. It was not intended to
discourage the pursuit of a special course of study in the school, or the
society, or the reading class. This is, in fact, one of the best means of
intellectual progress. Here, there is the opportunity to discuss the
style, the merits, and the characteristics of the author in hand, and by
the attrition of mind with mind, to inform and entertain the whole circle
of readers. In an association of this kind, embracing one or two acute
minds, the excellent practice of reading aloud finds its best results.
Here, too, the art of expression becomes important, how to adapt the
sound to the sense, by a just emphasis, intonation, and modulation of the
voice. In short, the value of a book thus read and discussed, in an
appreciative circle, may be more than doubled to each reader.
It is almost literally true that no book, undertaken merely as task work,
ever helped the reader to knowledge of permanent or material value. How
many persons, struck by Mr. Emerson's exalted praise of the writings of
Plato, have undertaken to go through the Dialogues. Alas! for the vain
ambition to be or to seem learned! After trying to understand the Phaedo,
or falling asleep over the Gorgias, the book has been dropped as hastily
as it was taken up. It was not perceived that in order to enjoy or
comprehend a philosopher, one must have a capacity for ideas. It requires
almost as much intelligence to appreciate an idea as to conceive one. One
will bring nothing home from the most persistent cruise after knowledge,
unless he carries something out. In the realm of learning, we recognize
the full meaning of that Scripture, that to him that hath, shall be
given; and he that hath not, though never so anxious to read and
understand Plato, will quickly return to the perusal of his daily
newspaper.
It were easier, perhaps, in one sense, to tell what not to read, than to
recommend what is best worth reading. In the publishing world, this is
the age of compilation, not of creation. If we seek for great original
works, if we must go to the wholesale merchants to buy knowledge, since
retail geniuses are worth but little, one must go back many years for his
main selection of books. It would not be a bad rule for those who can
read but little, to read no book until it has been published at least a
year or two. This fever for the newest books is not a wholesome condition
of the mind. And since a selection must indispensably be made, and that
selection must be, for the great mass of readers, so rigid and so small,
why should precious time be wasted upon the ephemeral productions of the
hour? What business, for example, has one to be reading Rider Haggard, or
Amélie Rives, or Ian Maclaren, who has never read Homer, or Dante, or
even so much as half-a-dozen plays of Shakespeare?
One hears with dismay that about three-fourths of the books drawn from
our popular libraries are novels. Now, while such aimless reading, merely
to be amused, is doubtless better than no reading at all, it is
unquestionably true that over-much reading of fiction, especially at an
early age, enervates the mind, weakens the will, makes dreamers instead
of thinkers and workers, and fills the imagination with morbid and unreal
views of life. Yet the vast consumption of novels is due more to the
cheapness and wide diffusion of such works, and the want of wise
direction in other fields, than to any original tendency on the part of
the young. People will always read the most, that which is most put
before them, if only the style be attractive. The mischief that is done
by improper books is literally immeasureable. The superabundance of cheap
fictions in the markets creates and supplies an appetite which should be
directed by wise guidance into more improving fields. A two-fold evil
follows upon the reading of every unworthy book; in the first place, it
absorbs the time which should be bestowed upon a worthy one; and
secondly, it leaves the mind and heart unimproved, instead of conducing
to the benefit of both. As there are few books more elevating than a
really good novel, so there are none more fruitful of evil than a bad
one.
And what of the newspaper? it may be asked. When I consider for how much
really good literature we are beholden to the daily and weekly press, how
indispensable is its function as purveyor of the news of the world, how
widely it has been improved in recent years, I cannot advise quarreling
with the bridge that brings so many across the gulf of ignorance. Yet the
newspaper, like the book, is to be read sparingly, and with judgment. It
is to be used, not abused. I call that an abuse which squanders the
precious and unreturning hours over long chronicles of depravity. The
murders, the suicides, the executions, the divorces, the criminal trials,
are each and all so like one another that it is only a wanton waste of
time to read them. The morbid style in which social disorders of all
kinds are written up in the sensational press, with staring headlines to
attract attention, ought to warn off every healthy mind from their
perusal. Every scandal in society that can be brought to the surface is
eagerly caught up and paraded, while the millions of people who lead
blameless lives of course go unnoticed and unchronicled. Such journals
thus inculcate the vilest pessimism, instead of a wholesome and honest
belief in the average decency of human nature. The prolixity of the
narrative, too, is always in monstrous disproportion to its importance.
"Does not the burning of a metropolitan theatre," says a great writer,
"take above a million times as much telling as the creation of a world?"
Here is where the art of skipping is to be rigorously applied. Read the
newspaper by headlines only,--skipping all the murders, all the fires,
all the executions, all the crimes, all the news, except the most
important and immediately interesting,--and you will spend perhaps
fifteen or twenty minutes upon what would otherwise occupy hours. It is
no exaggeration to say that most persons have spent time enough over the
newspapers, to have given them a liberal education.
As all readers cannot have the same gifts, so all cannot enjoy the same
books. There are those who can see no greatness in Shakespeare, but who
think Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy sublime. Some will eagerly devour
every novel of Miss Braddon's, or "The Duchess," or the woman calling
herself "Ouida," but they cannot appreciate the masterly fictions of
Thackeray. I have known very good people who could not, for the life of
them, find any humor in Dickens, but who actually enjoyed the strained
wit of Mrs. Partington and Bill Nye. Readers who could not get through a
volume of Gibbon will read with admiration a so-called History of
Napoleon by Abbott. And I fear that you will find many a young lady of
to-day, who is content to be ignorant of Homer and Shakespeare, but who
is ravished by the charms of "Trilby" or the "Heavenly Twins." But taste
in literature, as in art, or in anything else, can be cultivated. Lay
down the rule, and adhere to it, to read none but the best books, and you
will soon lose all relish for the poor ones. You can educate readers into
good judges, in no long time, by feeding them on the masterpieces of
English prose and poetry. Surely, we all have cause to deprecate the
remorseless flood of fictitious literature in which better books are
drowned.
Be not dismayed at the vast multitude of books, nor fear that, with your
small leisure, you will never be able to master any appreciable share of
them. Few and far between are the great books of the world. The works
which it is necessary to know, may be comprised in a comparatively small
compass. The rest are to be preserved in the great literary
conservatories, some as records of the past, others as chronicles of the
times, and not a few as models to be avoided. The Congressional Library
at Washington is our great National conservatory of books. As the library
of the government--that is, of the whole people,--it is inclusive of all
the literature which the country produces, while all the other libraries
are and must be more or less exclusive. No National Library can ever be
too large. In order that the completeness of the collection shall not
fail, and to preserve the whole of our literature, it is put into the
Statute of Copyright, as a condition precedent of the exclusive right to
multiply copies of any book, that it shall be deposited in the Library of
Congress. Apprehension is sometimes expressed that our National Library
will become overloaded with trash, and so fail of its usefulness. 'Tis a
lost fear. There is no act of Congress requiring all the books to be
read. The public sense is continually winnowing and sifting the
literature of every period, and to books and their authors, every day is
the day of judgment. Nowhere in the world is the inexorable law of the
survival of the fittest more rigidly applied than in the world of books.
The works which are the most frequently re-printed in successive ages are
the ones which it is safe to stand by.
Books may be divided into three classes: 1st, acquaintances; 2d, friends;
and 3d, intimates.
It is well enough to have an acquaintance with a multitude of books, as
with many people; though in either case much time should not be given to
merely pleasant intercourse, that leads to no result. With our literary
friends, we can spend more time, for they awaken keen interest, and are
to be read with zest, and consequently with profit. But for our chosen
intimates, our heart-companions, we reserve our highest regard, and our
best hours. Choice and sacred is the book that makes an era in the life
of the reader; the book which first rouses his higher nature, and awakens
the reason or the imagination. Such a volume will many a one remember;
the book which first excited his own thought, made him conscious of
untried powers, and opened to his charmed vision a new world.
Such a book has Carlyle's Sartor Resartus been to many; or the play of
Hamlet, read for the first time; or the Faust of Goethe; or the
Confessions of St. Augustine; or an essay of Emerson; or John Ruskin; or
the Divine Comedy of Dante; or even an exquisite work of fiction, like
John Halifax, or Henry Esmond. What the book is that works such miracles
is never of so much importance as the epoch in the mind of the reader
which it signalizes. It were vain to single out any one writer, and say
to all readers--"Here is the book that must indispensably be read;" for
the same book will have totally different effects upon different minds,
or even upon the same mind, at different stages of development.
When I have been asked to contribute to the once popular _symposia_ upon
"Books which have helped me,"--I have declined, for such catalogues of
intellectual aids are liable to be very misleading. Thus, if I were to
name the book which did more than most others for my own mind, I should
say that it was the Emile of Rousseau, read at about the age of
seventeen. This work, written with that marvellous eloquence which
characterises all the best productions of Jean Jacques, first brought me
acquainted with those advanced ideas of education which have penetrated
the whole modern world. Yet the Emile would probably appear to most of my
readers trite and common-place, as it would now to me, for the reason
that we have long passed the period of development when its ideas were
new to us.
But the formative power of books can never be over-rated: their subtle
mastery to stimulate all the germs of intellectual and moral life that
lie enfolded in the mind. As the poet sings--
"Books are not seldom talismans and spells."
Why should they not be so? They furnish us the means, and the only
means, whereby we may hold communion with the master-spirits of all ages.
They bring us acquainted with the best thoughts which the human mind has
produced, expressed in the noblest language. Books create for us the
many-sided world, carry us abroad, out of our narrow provincial horizons,
and reveal to us new scenery, new men, new languages, and new modes of
life. As we read, the mind expands with the horizon, and becomes broad as
the blue heaven above us. With Homer, we breathe the fresh air of the
pristine world, when the light of poetry gilded every mountain top, and
peopled the earth with heroes and demigods. With Plutarch, we walk in
company with sages, warriors, and statesmen, and kindle with admiration
of their virtues, or are roused to indignation at their crimes. With
Sophocles, we sound the depths of human passion, and learn the sublime
lesson of endurance. We are charmed with an ode of Horace, perfect in
rhythm, perfect in sentiment, perfect in diction, and perfect in moral;
the condensed essence of volumes in a single page. We walk with Dante
through the nether world, awed by the tremendous power with which he
depicts for us the secrets of the prison house. With Milton, we mount
heaven-ward, and in the immortal verse of his minor poems, finer even
than the stately march of Paradise Lost, we hear celestial music, and
breathe diviner air. With that sovereign artist, Shakespeare, full
equally of delight and of majesty, we sweep the horizon of this complex
human life, and become comprehensive scholars and citizens of the world.
The masters of fiction enthrall us with their fascinating pages, one
moment shaking us with uncontrollable laughter, and the next, dissolving
us in tears. In the presence of all these emanations of genius, the wise
reader may feed on nectar and ambrosia, and forget the petty cares and
vexations of to-day.
There are some books that charm us by their wit or their sweetness,
others that surprise and captivate us by their strength: books that
refresh us when weary: books that comfort us when afflicted: books that
stimulate us by their robust health: books that exalt and refine our
natures, as it were, to a finer mould: books that rouse us like the sound
of a trumpet: books that illumine the darkest hours, and fill all our day
with delight.
It is books that record the advance and the decline of nations, the
experience of the world, the achievements and the possibilities of
mankind. It is books that reveal to us ideas and images almost above
ourselves, and go far to open for us the gates of the invisible. "A river
of thought," says Emerson, "is continually flowing out of the invisible
world into the mind of man:" and we may add that books contain the most
fruitful and permanent of the currents of that mighty river.
I am not disposed to celebrate the praises of all books, nor to recommend
to readers of any age a habit of indiscriminate reading: but for the
books which are true helpers and teachers, the thoughts of the best
poets, historians, publicists, philosophers, orators,--if their value is
not real, then there are no realities in the world.
Very true is it, nevertheless, that the many-sided man cannot be
cultivated by books alone. One may learn by heart whole libraries, and
yet be profoundly unacquainted with the face of nature, or the life of
man. The pale student who gives himself wholly to books pays the penalty
by losing that robust energy of character, that sympathy with his kind,
that keen sense of the charms of earth and sky, that are essential to
complete development. "The world's great men," says Oliver Wendell
Holmes, "have not commonly been great scholars, nor its scholars great
men." To know what other men have said about things is not always the
most important part of knowledge. There is nothing that can dispense us
from the independent use of our own faculties. Meditation and observation
are more valuable than mere absorption; and knowledge itself is not
wisdom. The true way to use books is to make them our servants--not our
masters. Very helpful, cheering, and profitable will they become, when
they fall naturally into our daily life and growth--when they tally with
the moods of the mind.
The habits and methods of readers are as various as those of authors.
Thus, there are some readers who gobble a book, as Boswell tells us Dr.
Johnson used to gobble his dinner--eagerly, and with a furious appetite,
suggestive of dyspepsia, and the non-assimilation of food. Then there are
slow readers, who plod along through a book, sentence by sentence,
putting in a mark conscientiously where they left off to-day, so as to
begin at the self-same spot to-morrow; fast readers, who gallop through a
book, as you would ride a flying bicycle on a race; drowsy readers, to
whom a book is only a covert apology for a nap, and who pretend to be
reading Macaulay or Herbert Spencer only to dream between the leaves;
sensitive readers, who cannot abide the least noise or interruption when
reading, and to whose nerves a foot-fall or a conversation is an
exquisite torture; absorbed readers, who are so pre-occupied with their
pursuit that they forget all their surroundings--the time of day, the
presence or the voices of others, the hour for dinner, and even their own
existence; credulous readers, who believe everything they read because it
is printed in a book, and swallow without winking the most colossal
lying; critical and captious readers, who quarrel with the blunders or
the beliefs of their author, and who cannot refrain from calling him an
idiot or an ass--and perhaps even writing him down so on his own pages;
admiring and receptive readers, who find fresh beauties in a favorite
author every time they peruse him, and even discover beautiful swans in
the stupidest geese that ever cackled along the flowery meads of
literature; reverent readers, who treat a book as they would treat a
great and good man, considerately and politely, carefully brushing the
dust from a beloved volume with the sleeve, or tenderly lifting a book
fallen to the floor, as if they thought it suffered, or felt harm;
careless and rough readers, who will turn down books on their faces to
keep the place, tumble them over in heaps, cram them into shelves never
meant for them, scribble upon the margins, dogs-ear the leaves, or even
cut them with their fingers--all brutal and intolerable practices,
totally unworthy of any one pretending to civilization.
To those who have well learned the art of reading, what inexhaustible
delights does the world of books contain! With Milton, "to behold the
bright countenance of truth, in the quiet and still air of delightful
studies;" to journey through far countries with Marco Polo; to steer
across an unknown sea with Columbus, or to brave the dangers of the
frozen ocean with Nansen or Dr. Kane; to study the manners of ancient
nations with Herodotus; to live over again the life of Greece and Rome
with Plutarch's heroes; to trace the decline of empires with Gibbon and
Mommsen; to pursue the story of the modern world in the pages of Hume,
Macaulay, Thiers and Sismondi, and our own Prescott, Motley, and
Bancroft; to enjoy afresh the eloquence of Demosthenes, and the polished
and splendid diction of Cicero; to drink in the wisdom of philosophers,
and to walk with Socrates, Plato and the stoics through the groves of
Academia; to be kindled by the saintly utterances of prophets and
apostles, St. Paul's high reasoning of immortality, or the seraphic
visions of St. John; to study the laws that govern communities with the
great publicists, or the economy of nations with Adam Smith and Stuart
Mill; with the naturalists, to sound the depths of the argument as to the
origin of species and the genesis of man; with the astronomers, to leave
the narrow bounds of earth, and explore the illimitable spaces of the
universe, in which our solar system is but a speck; with the
mathematicians, to quit the uncertain realm of speculation and
assumption, and plant our feet firmly on the rock of exact science:--to
come back anon to lighter themes, and to revel in the grotesque humor of
Dickens, the philosophic page of Bulwer, the chivalric romances of Walter
Scott, the ideal creations of Hawthorne, the finished life-pictures of
George Eliot, the powerful imagination of Victor Hugo, and the masterly
delineations of Thackeray; to hang over the absorbing biographies of Dr.
Franklin, Walter Scott and Dr. Johnson; to peruse with fresh delight the
masterpieces of Irving and Goldsmith, and the best essays of Hazlitt, De
Quincey, Charles Lamb, and Montaigne; to feel the inspiration of the
great poets of all ages, from Homer down to Tennyson; to read
Shakespeare--a book that is in itself almost a university:--is not all
this satisfaction enough for human appetite, however craving, solace
enough for trouble, however bitter, occupation enough for life, however
long?
There are pleasures that perish in the using; but the pleasure which the
art of reading carries with it is perennial. He who can feast on the
intellectual spoils of centuries need fear neither poverty nor hunger. In
the society of those immortals who still rule our spirits from their
urns, we become assured that though heaven and earth may pass away, no
true thought shall ever pass away.
The great orator, on whose lips once hung multitudes, dies and is
forgotten; the great actor passes swiftly off the stage, and is seen no
more; the great singer, whose voice charmed listening crowds by its
melody, is hushed in the grave; the great preacher survives but a single
generation in the memory of men; all we who now live and act must be, in
a little while, with yesterday's seven thousand years:--but the book of
the great writer lives on and on, inspiring age after age of readers, and
has in it more of the seeds of immortality than anything upon earth.