Mr. Maurice, in his animated Memoirs, has recently acquainted us with a
fact which may be deemed important in the life of a literary man. He
tells us, "We have been just informed that Sir William Jones
_invariably_ read through every year the works of Cicero, whose life
indeed was the great exemplar of his own." The same passion for the
works of Cicero has been participated by others. When the best means of
forming a good style were inquired of the learned Arnauld, he advised
the daily study of Cicero; but it was observed that the object was not
to form a Latin, but a French style: "In that case," replied Arnauld,
"you must still read Cicero."
A predilection for some great author, among the vast number which must
transiently occupy our attention, seems to be the happiest preservative
for our taste: accustomed to that excellent author whom we have chosen
for our favourite, we may in this intimacy possibly resemble him. It is
to be feared that, if we do not form such a permanent attachment, we may
be acquiring knowledge, while our enervated taste becomes less and less
lively. Taste embalms the knowledge which otherwise cannot preserve
itself. He who has long been intimate with one great author will always
be found to be a formidable antagonist; he has saturated his mind with
the excellences of genius; he has shaped his faculties insensibly to
himself by his model, and he is like a man who ever sleeps in armour,
ready at a moment! The old Latin proverb reminds us of this fact, _Cave
ab homine unius libri_: Be cautious of the man of one book!
Pliny and Seneca give very safe advice on reading: that we should read
much, but not many books--but they had no "monthly list of new
publications!" Since their days others have favoured us with "Methods of
Study," and "Catalogues of Books to be Read." Vain attempts to
circumscribe that invisible circle of human knowledge which is
perpetually enlarging itself! The multiplicity of books is an evil for
the many; for we now find an _helluo librorum_ not only among the
learned, but, with their pardon, among the unlearned; for those who,
even to the prejudice of their health, persist only in reading the
incessant book-novelties of our own time, will after many years acquire
a sort of learned ignorance. We are now in want of an art to teach how
books are to be read, rather than not to read them: such an art is
practicable. But amidst this vast multitude still let us be "the man of
one book," and preserve an uninterrupted intercourse with that great
author with whose mode of thinking we sympathise, and whose charms of
composition we can habitually retain.
It is remarkable that every great writer appears to have a predilection
for some favourite author; and, with Alexander, had they possessed a
golden casket, would have enshrined the works they so constantly turned
over. Demosthenes felt such delight in the history of Thucydides, that,
to obtain a familiar and perfect mastery of his style, he re-copied his
history eight times; while Brutus not only was constantly perusing
Polybius, even amidst the most busy periods of his life, but was
abridging a copy of that author on the last awful night of his
existence, when on the following day he was to try his fate against
Antony and Octavius. Selim the Second had the Commentaries of Caesar
translated for his use; and it is recorded that his military ardour was
heightened by the perusal. We are told that Scipio Africanus was made a
hero by the writings of Xenophon. When Clarendon was employed in writing
his history, he was in a constant study of Livy and Tacitus, to acquire
the full and flowing style of the one, and the portrait-painting of the
other: he records this circumstance in a letter. Voltaire had usually on
his table the _Athalie_ of Racine, and the _Petit Careme_ of Massillon;
the tragedies of the one were the finest model of French verse, the
sermons of the other of French prose. "Were I obliged to sell my
library," exclaimed Diderot, "I would keep back Moses, Homer, and
Richardson;" and, by the _eloge_ which this enthusiastic writer composed
on our English novelist, it is doubtful, had the Frenchman been obliged
to have lost two of them, whether Richardson had not been the elected
favourite. Monsieur Thomas, a French writer, who at times displays high
eloquence and profound thinking, Herault de Sechelles tells us, studied
chiefly one author, but that author was Cicero; and never went into the
country unaccompanied by some of his works. Fenelon was constantly
employed on his Homer; he left a translation of the greater part of the
Odyssey, without any design of publication, but merely as an exercise
for style. Montesquieu was a constant student of Tacitus, of whom he
must be considered a forcible imitator. He has, in the manner of
Tacitus, characterised Tacitus: "That historian," he says, "who abridged
everything, because he saw everything." The famous Bourdaloue re-perused
every year Saint Paul, Saint Chrysostom, and Cicero. "These," says a
French critic, "were the sources of his masculine and solid eloquence."
Grotius had such a taste for Lucan, that he always carried a pocket
edition about him, and has been seen to kiss his hand-book with the
rapture of a true votary. If this anecdote be true, the elevated
sentiments of the stern Roman were probably the attraction with the
Batavian republican. The diversified reading of Leibnitz is well known;
but he still attached himself to one or two favourites: Virgil was
always in his hand when at leisure, and Leibnitz had read Virgil so
often, that even in his old age he could repeat whole books by heart;
Barclay's Argenis was his model for prose; when he was found dead in his
chair, the Argenis had fallen from his hands. Rabelais and Marot were
the perpetual favourites of La Fontaine; from one he borrowed his
humour, and from the other his style. Quevedo was so passionately fond
of the Don Quixote of Cervantes, that often in reading that unrivalled
work he felt an impulse to burn his own inferior compositions: to be a
sincere admirer and a hopeless rival is a case of authorship the hardest
imaginable. Few writers can venture to anticipate the award of
posterity; yet perhaps Quevedo had not even been what he was without the
perpetual excitement he received from his great master. Horace was the
friend of his heart to Malherbe; he laid the Roman poet on his pillow,
took him in the fields, and called his Horace his breviary. Plutarch,
Montaigne, and Locke, were the three authors constantly in the hands of
Rousseau, and he has drawn from them the groundwork of his ideas in his
Emile. The favourite author of the great Earl of Chatham was Barrow; and
on his style he had formed his eloquence, and had read his great master
so constantly, as to be able to repeat his elaborate sermons from
memory. The great Lord Burleigh always carried Tully's Offices in his
pocket; Charles V. and Buonaparte had Machiavel frequently in their
hands; and Davila was the perpetual study of Hampden: he seemed to have
discovered in that historian of civil wars those which he anticipated in
the land of his fathers.
These facts sufficiently illustrate the recorded circumstance of Sir
William Jones's invariable habit of reading his Cicero through every
year, and exemplify the happy result for him, who, amidst the
multiplicity of his authors, still continues in this way to be "the man
of one book."