correspondent who wrote in great perplexity. This unhappy man was
quite miserable because he found that his own views of the
masterpieces of literature differed from those generally expressed;
his modesty prevented him from setting himself up in opposition to the
opinions of others, and he frankly asked, "Is there anything answering
to colour-blindness which may exist in the mind as regards
literature?" The absurd but felicitous inquiry took my fancy greatly,
and I resolved to examine the problem with care. In particular my
perturbed friend alluded to certain movements in modern criticism. He
cannot admire Shelley, yet he finds Shelley placed above Byron and
next to Shakspere; he reads a political poem by a modern master, and
discovers to his horror that he fails to understand what it is all
about. Moreover, this very free critic cannot abide Browning and the
later works of Tennyson; nor can he admire Mr. Swinburne. This is
dreadful; but worse remains behind. With grief and terror this
penitent declares that he cannot tolerate "The Pilgrim's Progress" or
"Don Quixote"; and he goes on to say, "How much of Milton seems trash,
also Butler, very much of Wordsworth, and all Southey's Epics!" Then,
with a wail of despair, he says, "These works have stood the test of
time. Am I colour-blind?" Now this gentleman's state of mind is far
more common than he supposes; only few people care to confess even to
their bosom-friends that they do not accept public opinion--or rather
the opinions of authority. The age has grown contemptible from cant,
and traditions which are perhaps highly respectable in their place are
thrust upon us in season and out of season. Regarding matters of fact
there is no room for differences of opinion when once the fact is
established; and regarding problems in elementary morality we perceive
the same surety. No one in his senses thinks of denying that America
exists; no one would think of saying that it is wrong to do unto
others as we would they should do unto us; but, when we come to
questions of taste, we have to deal with subtleties so complex that we
are forced to deny any one's right to dogmatise. If a man says, "I
enjoy this book," that is well; but if he adds, "You are a fool if you
do not enjoy it too," he is guilty of folly and impertinence. These
dogmatists have given rise to much hypocrisy. By all means let them
hold their opinions; but at the same time let them make no claims upon
us. Our beloved old friend Doctor Johnson had many views about
literature which now appear to us cramped and strange, but we should
examine his sayings with respect. When however it is found that the
old man used to foam and bellow at persons who did not approve of his
paradoxes, one is slightly inclined--in spite of reverence for his
moral strength--to set him down as a nuisance, and to wonder how
people managed to put up with him at times. In reading the
conversations and essays of the moralist we constantly meet with
passages which we should think over temperately were it not that we
are informed by the critic or his biographer that only fools would
venture to question Johnson's wisdom and insight.
Take the famous article on Milton. Speaking of "Lycidas," Johnson
coolly observes, "In this poem there is no nature, for there is no
truth; there is no art, for there is nothing new. Its form is that of
a pastoral--easy, vulgar, and therefore disgusting; whatever images it
can supply are easily exhausted, and its inherent improbability always
forces dissatisfaction on the mind. He who thus grieves will excite no
sympathy; he who thus praises will confer no honour." Now this is
blunt, positive speech, and no one would mind it much if it were left
alone by ignorant persons; but it is a trifle exasperating when
Johnson's authority is brought forward at second hand in order to
convince us that a poem in which many people delight is disgusting.
Again, the dictator said that a passage in Congreve's "Morning Bride"
was finer than anything in Shakspere. Very good; let Johnson's opinion
stand so far as he is concerned, but let us also consider the passage--
"How reverend is the face of this tall pile,
Whose ancient pillars rear their marble heads
To bear aloft its arched and ponderous roof,
By its own weight made steadfast and immovable,
Looking tranquillity! It strikes an awe
And terror on my aching sight."
This is the stuff which is called "noble" and "magnificent" and
"impressive" by people who fail to see that Johnson was merely amusing
himself, as he often did, by upholding a fallacy. The lines from
Congreve are bald and utterly commonplace; they have no positive
quality; and when some of us think of such gems as "When daisies pied
and violets blue," or, "To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow," or
even the description of the Dover cliff, not to mention the thousands
of other gems in Shakspere's great dramas, we feel inclined to be
angry when we are asked to admire Congreve's stilted nonsense. There
is much to be objected to in Shakspere. I hold that a man who wrote
such a dull play as "Pericles" would nowadays be scouted; but the
incomparable poet should not be belittled by even a momentary
comparison with Congreve.
I can readily imagine a man of real good sense and cultured taste
objecting to "The Pilgrim's Progress." Why should he not? Millions of
people have read the book, but millions have not; and the fact that
many of the best judges of style love Bunyan offers no reason why the
good tinker should be loved by everybody. As for "Don Quixote," a fine
critic once remarked that he would choose that book if he were to be
imprisoned for life, and if he were also allowed to choose one volume.
Doubtless this gentleman has thrust his dictum concerning the value of
Cervantes's work down the throats of many people who would have liked
to contradict him. If his example were followed by critics
universally, it would doubtless be hard to find in Britain a man
pretending to culture who durst assert that he did not care for "Don
Quixote." In spite of this, the grave terror with which my
correspondent regards his own inability to appreciate a famous book is
more than funny.
Regarding Browning I can only say that, although his worshippers are
aggressive enough, one readily pardons any person who flies from his
poems in disgust. A learned and enthusiastic editor actually gave
"Sordello" up in despair; and even the late Dean Church averred that
he did not understand the poem, though he wrote lengthy studies on it.
To my own knowledge there are men and women who do derive intense
pleasure from Browning, and they are quite right in expressing their
feelings; but they are wrong in attempting to bully the general public
into acquiescence. Certain members of the public say, "Your poet
capers round us in a sort of war-dance; he flicks off our hats with
some muddled paradox, he leaves a line unfinished and hurts us with a
projecting conjunction. We want him to stop capering and grimacing,
and then we shall tell him whether he is good-looking or not." I hold
that the dissenters are right. People with the necessary metaphysical
faculty may understand and passionately enjoy their Browning, but only
too many simple souls have inflicted miserable suffering on themselves
by trying to unravel the meaning of verses at which they never should
have looked.
The fact is that we persistently neglect all true educational
principles in our treatment of literature. Young minds have to be
directed; but in literature, as in mechanics, the tendency of the
force is to move along the lines of least resistance. A dexterous
tutor should watch carefully the slightest tendencies and endeavour to
find out what kind of discipline his charge can best receive. As the
mind gains power it is certain to exhibit particular aptitudes, and
these must be fostered. In the case of a student who is self-taught
the same method must be observed, and a clever reader will soon find
out what is most likely to improve him.
To my thinking some of the attempts made to force certain books on
young folk are shocking and deplorable; for it must be remembered that
in literature, as in the case of bodily nutriment, different foods are
required at different times of life. I have known boys and girls who
were forced to read "Rasselas." Now that allegorical production came
from the mind of a mature, powerful, most melancholy man, and it is
intended to show the barren vanity of human wishes. What an absurd
thing to put in the hands of a buoyant youth! The parents however had
heard that "Rasselas" was a great and moral book, whereupon the
children must be subjected to unavailing torture. It maybe said,
"Would not your hints tend to make people frivolous?" Certainly not,
if my hints are wisely used. Let it be observed that I merely wish to
do away with hypocritical conventions whereby timid men like my
correspondent are subjected to extreme misery and a vast waste of
intellectual power is inflicted on the world. Suppose that some
ridiculous guardian had taken up the modern notions about scientific
culture, and had forced Macaulay to read science alone; should we not
have lost the Essays and the History?
That one consideration alone vividly illustrates my correspondent's
quaint and pregnant inquiry. Macaulay was "colour-blind" to science,
and the most painful times in his happy life were the hours devoted at
Cambridge to mathematical and mechanical formulæ. The genuinely
cultured person is the one who thinks nothing of fashion and yields to
his natural bent as directed by his unerring instinct. A certain
modern celebrity has told us how his early days were wasted; he was
first of all forced to learn Latin and Greek, though his powers fitted
him to be a scientific student, and he was next forced to impart his
own fatal facility to others. Thus his fame came to him late, and the
most precious years of his life were thrown away. He was colour-blind
to certain departments of literature which have gained a mighty
reputation, yet he was obliged by sacred use and wont to act as though
he relished things which he really abhorred. In a minor degree the
same process of lavish waste is going on all around us. The most
utterly incompetent persons of both sexes are those who, in obedience
to convention, have tried to read everything that was sufficiently
bepraised instead of choosing for themselves; in conversation they are
objectionable bores, and it would puzzle the best of thinkers to
discover their precise use in life. Take it once and for all for
granted that no human creature attains fruitful culture unless he
learns his own powers and then resolves to apply them only in the
directions where they tell best; without so much of self-knowledge he
is no more a complete man than he would be were he deficient in
self-reverence and self-control. He must dare to think for himself, or
he will assuredly become a mediocrity, and probably more or less
offensive. All his possible influence on his fellow-creatures must
depart unless he thinks for himself; and he cannot think for himself
unless he is released from insincerity--the insincerity imposed by
usage.
V.
THE SURFEIT OF BOOKS.
Sir John Lubbock once spoke to a company of working-men, and gave them
some advice on the subject of reading. Sir John is the very type of
the modern cultured man; he has managed to learn something of
everything. Finance is of course his strong point; but he stands in
the first rank of scientific workers; he is a profound political
student; and his knowledge of literature would suffice to make a great
reputation for any one who chose to stand before the world as a mere
literary specialist alone. This consummate all-round scholar picked
out one hundred books which he thought might be read with profit, and,
after reciting his appalling list, he cheerfully remarked that any
reader who got through the whole set might consider himself a
well-read man. I most fervently agree with this opinion. If any
student in the known world contrived to read, mark, learn, and
inwardly digest Sir John's hundred works, he would be equipped at all
points; but the trouble is that so few of us have time in the course
of our brief pilgrimage to master even a dozen of the greatest books
that the mind of man has put forth. Moreover, if we could swallow the
whole hundred prescribed by our gracious philosopher, we should really
be very little the better after performing the feat. A sort of
literary indigestion would ensue, and the mind of the learned sufferer
would rest under a perpetual nightmare until charitable oblivion
dulled the memory of the enormous mass of talk. Sir John thinks we
should read Confucius, the Hindoo religious poetry, some Persian
poetry, Thucydides, Tacitus, Cicero, Homer, Virgil, a little--a very
little--Voltaire, Molière, Sheridan, Locke, Berkeley, George Lewes,
Hume, Shakspere, Bunyan, Spenser, Pope, Fielding, Macaulay,
Marivaux--Alas, is there any need to pursue the catalogue to the
bitter end? Need I mention Gibbon, or Froude, or Lingard, or Freeman,
or the novelists? To my mind the terrific task shadowed forth by the
genial orator was enough to scare the last remnant of resolution from
the souls of his toil-worn audience. A man of leisure might skim the
series of books recommended; but what about the striving citizens
whose scanty leisure leaves hardly enough time for the bare recreation
of the body? Is it not a little cruel to tell them that such and such
books are necessary to perfect culture, when we know all the while
that, even if they went without sleep, they could hardly cover such an
immense range of study? Many men and women yearn after the higher
mental life and are eager for guidance; but their yearnings are apt to
be frozen into the stupor of despair if we raise before them a
standard which is hopelessly unattainable by them. I should not dream
of approving the saying of Lord Beaconsfield: "Books are fatal; they
are the curse of the human race. Nine-tenths of existing books are
nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense."
Lord Beaconsfield did not believe in the slap-dash words which he put
into the mouth of Mr. Phoebus, nor did he believe that the greatness
of the English aristocracy arises from the facts that "they don't read
books, and they live in the open air." The great scoffer once read for
twelve hours every day during an entire year, and his general
knowledge of useful literature was quite remarkable. But, while
rejecting epigrammatic fireworks, I am bound to say that the habit of
reading has become harmful in many cases; it is a sort of intellectual
dram-drinking, and it enervates the mind as alcohol enervates the
body. If a man's function in life is to learn, then by all means let
him be learned. When Macaulay took the trouble to master thousands of
rubbishy pamphlets, poems, plays, and fictions, in order that he might
steep his mind in the atmosphere of a particular period in history, he
was quite justified. The results of his research were boiled down into
a few vivid emphatic pages, and we had the benefit of his labour. When
Carlyle spent thirteen mortal years in grubbing among musty German
histories that nearly drove him mad with their dulness, the world
reaped the fruit of his dreary toil, and we rejoiced in the witty,
incomparable life of Frederick II. When poor Emanuel Deutsch gave up
his brilliant life to the study of the obscurest chapters in the
Talmud, he did good service to the human race, for he placed before us
in the most lucid way a summary of the entire learning of a wondrous
people. It was good that these men should fulfil their function; it
was right on their part to read widely, because reading was their
trade. But there must be division of labour in the vast society of
human beings, and any man who endeavours to neglect this principle,
and who tries to fill two places in the social economy, does so at his
peril.
Living cheek by jowl with us, there are hundreds and thousands of
persons who are ruining their minds by a kind of literary debauch.
They endeavour to follow on the footsteps of the specialists; they
struggle to learn a little of everything, and they end by knowing
nothing. They commit mental suicide: and, although no disgrace
attaches to this species of self-murder, yet disgrace is not the only
thing we have to fear in the course of our brief pilgrimage. We emerge
from eternity, we plunge into eternity; we have but a brief space to
poise ourselves in the light ere we drop into the gulf of doom, and
our duty is to be miserly over every moment and every faculty that is
vouchsafed to us. The essentials of thought and knowledge are
contained in a very few books, and the most toilsome drudge who ever
preached a sermon, drove a rivet, or swept a floor may become
perfectly educated by exercising a wise self-restraint, by resolutely
refusing to be guided by the ambitious advice of airy cultured
persons, and by mastering a few good books to the last syllable. Mr.
Ruskin is one of our greatest masters of English, and his supremacy as
a thinker is sufficiently indicated by Mazzini's phrase--"Ruskin has
the most analytic mind in Europe." No truer word was ever spoken than
this last, for, in spite of his dogmatic disposition, Mr. Ruskin does
utter the very transcendencies of wisdom. Now this glorious writer of
English, this subtlest of thinkers, was rigidly kept to a very few
books until he reached manhood. Under the eye of his mother he went
six times through the Bible, and learned most of the Book by heart.
This in itself was a discipline of the most perfect kind, for the
translators of the Bible had command of the English tongue at the time
when it was at its noblest. Then Mr. Ruskin read Pope again and again,
thus unconsciously acquiring the art of expressing meaning with a
complete economy of words. In the evening he heard the Waverley Novels
read aloud until he knew the plot, the motive, the ultimate lesson of
all those beautiful books. When he was fourteen years old, he read one
or two second-rate novels over and over again; and even this was good
training, in that it showed him the faults to be avoided. Before his
boyhood was over, he read his Byron with minute attention, and once
more he was introduced to a master of expression. Byron is a little
out of fashion now, alas! and yet what a thinker the man was! His
lightning eye pierced to the very heart of things, and his intense
grip on the facts of life makes his style seem alive. No wonder that
the young Ruskin learned to think daringly under such a master! Now
many people fancy that our great critic must be a man of universal
knowledge. What do they think of this narrow early training? The use
and purport of it all are plain enough to us, for we see that the
gentle student's intellect was kept clear of lumber; his thoughts were
not battened down under mountains of other men's, and, when he wanted
to fix an idea, he was not obliged to grope for it in a rubbish heap
of second-hand notions. Of course he read many other authors by slow
degrees; but, until his manhood came, his range was restricted. The
flawless perfection of his work is due mainly to his mother's sedulous
insistence on perfection within strict bounds. Again, and keeping
still to authors, Charles Dickens knew very little about books. His
keen business-like intellect perceived that the study of life and of
the world's forces is worth more than the study of letters, and he
also kept himself clear of scholarly lumber. He read Fielding,
Smollett, Gibbon, and, in his later life, he was passionately fond of
Tennyson's poetry; but his greatest charm as a writer and his success
as a social reformer were both gained through his simple power of
looking at things for himself without interposing the dimness that
falls like a darkening shadow on a mind that is crammed with the
conceptions of other folk. Look at the practical men! Nasmyth scarcely
read at all; Napoleon always spoke of literary persons as
"ideologists;" Stephenson was nineteen before he mastered his Bible;
Mahomet was totally uneducated; Gordon was content with the Bible,
"Pilgrim's Progress," and Thomas à Kempis; Hugh Miller became an
admirable editor without having read twoscore books in his lifetime.
Go right through the names on the roll of history, and it will be
found that in all walks of life the men who most influenced their
generation despised superfluous knowledge. They learned thoroughly all
that they thought it necessary to learn within a very limited compass;
they learned, above all, to think; and they then were ready to speak
or act without reference to any authority save their own intellect. If
we turn to the great book-men, we find mostly a deplorable record of
failure and futility. Their lives were passed in making useless
comments on the works of others. Look at the one hundred and eighty
volumes of the huge catalogue in which are inscribed the names of
Shakspere's commentators. Most of these poor laborious creatures were
learned in the extreme, and yet their work is humiliating to read, so
gross is its pettiness, so foolish is its wire-drawn scholarship. Over
all the crowd of his interpreters the royal figure of the poet towers
in grand unlearned simplicity. He knew Plutarch, and he thought for
himself; his commentators knew everything, and did not think at all.
Compare the supreme poet's ignorance with the other men's extravagant
erudition! Think of the men whom I may call book-eaters! Dr. Parr was
a driveller; Porson was a sort of learned pig who routed up truffles
in the classic garden; poor Buckle became, through stress of books, a
shallow thinker; Mezzofanti, with his sixty-four languages and
dialects, was perilously like a fool; and more than one modern
professor may be counted as nothing else but a vain, over-educated
boor.
Another word, which may seem like heresy. I contend that the main
object of reading--after a basis of solid culture has been
acquired--is to gain amusement. No one was ever the worse for reading
good novels, for human fortunes will always interest human beings. I
would say keep clear of Sir John Lubbock's terrific library, and seek
a little for pleasure. You have authoritative examples before you.
Prince Bismarck, once the arbiter of the world, reads Miss Braddon and
Gaboriau; Professor Huxley, the greatest living biologist, reads
novels wholesale; the grim Moltke read French and English romances;
Macaulay used fairly to revel in the hundreds of stories that he read
till he knew them by heart. With these and a hundred other examples
before us, the humblest and most laborious in the community may
without scruple read the harmless tales of fictitious joys and
sorrows, after they have secured that narrow minute training which
alone gives grasp and security to the intellect.
VI.
PEOPLE WHO ARE "DOWN"
If any one happens to feel ashamed when he notices the far-off
resemblances between the lower animals and man's august self, he will
probably feel the most acute humiliation should he take an occasional
walk through a great rookery, such as that in Richmond Park. The black
cloud of birds sweeps round and round, casting a shadow as it goes;
the air is full of a solemn bass music softened by distance, and the
twirling fleets of strange creatures sail about in answer to obvious
signals. They are an orderly community, subject to recognised law, and
we might take them for the mildest and most amusing of all birds; but
wait, and we shall see something fit to make us think. Far off on the
clear gray sky appears a wavering speck which rises and falls and
sways from side to side in an extraordinary way. Nearer and nearer the
speck comes, until at last we find ourselves standing under a rook
which flies with great difficulty. The poor rascal looks most
disreputable, for his tail has evidently been shot away, and he is
wounded. He drops on to a perch, but not before he has run the
gauntlet of several lines of sharp eyes. The poor bird sits on his
branch swinging weakly to and fro, humping up his shoulders in
woebegone style. There is a rustle among the flock, a sharp exchange
of caws, and one may almost imagine the questions and answers which
pass. Circumstances prevent us from knowing the rookish system of
nomenclature; but we may suppose the wounded fellow to be called
Ishmael. Caw number one says, "Did you notice anything queer about
Ishmael as he passed?" "Yes. Why, he's got no tail!" "He'll be rather
a disgrace to the family if he tries to go with us into Sussex on
Tuesday." "Frightful! He's been fooling about within range of some
farming lout's gun. The lazy, useless wretch never did know the
difference between a gun and a broom!" "Serves him right! Let's speak
to the chief about him." The chief considers the matter solemnly and
sorrowfully, and then may be understood to say, "Sorry Ishmael's in
trouble, but we can't acknowledge him. There's an end of the matter.
You Surrey crow, take a dozen of our mates, and drive that Ishmael
away." The wounded bird knows his doom. He fumbles his way through the
branches, and flies off zig-zag and low; but the flight soon mob him.
They laugh at him, and one can positively tell that they are
chattering in derision. Presently one of them buffets him; and that is
the signal for a general assault. Quick as lightning, one of the black
cowards makes a vicious drive with his iron beak, and flies off with a
triumphant caw; another and another squawk at the wretch, and then
stab him, until at last, like a draggled kite, Ishmael sinks among the
ferns and passes away, while the assassins fly back and tell how they
settled the fool who could not keep the shot out of his carcass. If
the observer sees this often, his disposition to moralise may become
very importunate, for he sees an allegory of human life written in
black specks on that sky that broods so softly, like a benediction,
over the fair world. One may easily bring forward half a score of
similar instances from the animal kingdom. A buffalo falls sick, and
his companions soon gore and trample him to death; the herds of deer
act in the same way; and even domestic cattle will ill-treat one of
their number that seems ailing. The terrible "rogue" elephant is
always one that has been driven from his herd; the injury rankles in
him, and he ends by killing any weaker living creature that may cross
his path. Again, watch a poor crow that is blown out to sea. So long
as his flight is strong and even, he is unmolested; but let him show
signs of wavering, or, above all, let him try to catch up with a
steamship that is going in the teeth of the wind, and the fierce gulls
slay him at once.