How to Read.
And as for me, though I con but lite,
On bookes for to rede I me delite,
And to hem yeve I faith and credence,
And in my herte have hem in reverence
So hertely, that there is game none,
That from my bookes maketh me to gone,
But it be seldome on the holy daie,
Save certainly, whan that the month of May
Is comen, and that I heare the foules sing,
And that the floures ginnan for to spring,
Farwell my booke, and my devotion.
GEOFFREY CHAUCER.
Having chosen the books which are to be our friends and counsellors,
the next question to be considered is, How shall we use them? Shall
we read them through as hastily as possible, believing that the more
we read, the more learned we are? Or shall we not derive more profit
by reading slowly, and by making the subject-matter of each book
_thoroughly our own_? I do not believe that any general rule can be
given with reference to this matter. Some readers will take in a page
at a glance, and will more thoroughly master a book in a week than
others could possibly master it in six months. It required Frederick
W. Robertson half a year to read a small manual of chemistry, and
thoroughly to digest its contents. Miss Martineau and Auguste Comte
were remarkably slow readers; but then, that which they read “lay
fructifying, and came out a living tree with leaves and fruit.” Yet it
does not follow that the same rule should apply to readers of every
grade of genius.
It is generally better to read by subjects, to learn what different
writers have thought and said concerning that matter of which you are
making a special study. Not many books are to be read hastily through.
“A person who was a very great reader and hard thinker,” says Bishop
Thirlwall, “once told me that he never took up a book except with the
view of making himself master of some subject which he was studying,
and that while he was so engaged he made all his reading converge to
that point. In this way he might read parts of many books, but not a
single one from ‘end to end.’ This I take to be an excellent method of
study, but one which implies the command of many books as well as of
much leisure.”
Seneca, the old Roman teacher, says: “Definite reading is profitable;
miscellaneous reading is pleasant.... The reading of many authors and
of all kinds of works has in it something vague and unstable.”
Says Quintilian: “Every good writer is to be read, and diligently; and
when the volume is finished, it is to be gone through again from the
beginning.”
Martin Luther, in his “Table Talk,” says: “All who would study with
advantage in any art whatsoever ought to betake themselves to the
reading of some sure and certain books oftentimes over; for to read
many books produceth confusion rather than learning, like as those who
dwell everywhere are not anywhere at home.”
“Reading,” says Locke the philosopher, “furnishes the mind only with
materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what are read over.
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.”
“Much reading,” says Dr. Robert South, “is like much eating,—wholly
useless without digestion.”
“Desultory reading,” writes Julius C. Hare, “is indeed very
mischievous, by fostering habits of loose, discontinuous thought, by
turning the memory into a common sewer for rubbish of all thoughts
to flow through, and by relaxing the power of attention, which of
all our faculties most needs care, and is most improved by it. But a
well-regulated course of study will no more weaken the mind than hard
exercise will weaken the body; nor will a strong understanding be
weighed down by its knowledge, any more than oak is by its leaves or
than Samson was by his locks. He whose sinews are drained by his hair
must already be a weakling.”[10]
Says Thomas Carlyle: “Learn to be good readers,—which is perhaps a more
difficult thing than you imagine. Learn to be discriminative in your
reading; to read faithfully, and with your best attention, all kinds of
things which you have a real interest in,—a real, not an imaginary,—and
which you find to be really fit for what you are engaged in. The most
unhappy of all men is the man who cannot tell what he is going to do,
who has got no work cut out for him in the world, and does not go into
it. For work is the grand cure of all the maladies and miseries that
ever beset mankind,—honest work, which you intend getting done.”
Says Ralph Waldo Emerson: “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. ... The three practical rules 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 Shakspeare’s phrase,—
‘No profit goes where is no pleasure ta’en:
In brief, sir, study what you most affect.’”[11]
“Let us read good works often over,” says another writer.[12] “Some
skip from volume to volume, touching on all points, resting on none.
We hold, on the contrary, that if a book be worth reading once, it is
worth reading twice, and that if it stands a second reading, it may
stand a third. This, indeed, is one great test of the excellence of
books. Many books require to be read more than once, in order to be
seen in their proper colors and latent glories, and dim-discovered
truths will by-and-by disclose themselves.... Again, let us read
thoughtfully; this is a great secret in the right use of books.
Not lazily, to mumble, like the dogs in the siege of Corinth, as
dead bones, the words of the author,—not slavishly to assent to his
every word, and cry Amen to his every conclusion,—not to read him
as an officer his general’s orders, but to read him with suspicion,
with inquiry, with a free exercise of your own faculties, with the
admiration of intelligence, and not with the wonder of ignorance,—that
is the proper and profitable way of reading the great authors of your
native tongue.”
Says Sir Arthur Helps: “There is another view of reading which, though
it is obvious enough, is seldom taken, I imagine, or at least acted
upon; and that is, that in the course of our reading we should lay up
in our minds a store of goodly thoughts in well-wrought words, which
should be a living treasure of knowledge always with us, and from
which, at various times and amidst all the shifting of circumstances,
we might be sure of drawing some comfort, guidance, and sympathy....
In any work that is worth carefully reading, there is generally
something that is worth remembering accurately. A man whose mind is
enriched with the best sayings of his own country is a more independent
man, walks the streets in a town or the lanes in the country with
far more delight than he otherwise would have, and is taught by wise
observers of man and nature to examine for himself. Sancho Panza,
with his proverbs, is a great deal better than he would have been
without them; and I contend that a man has something in himself to
meet troubles and difficulties, small or great, who has stored in his
mind some of the best things which have been said about troubles and
difficulties.”[13]
And John Ruskin: “No book is worth anything which is not worth _much_;
nor is it serviceable until it has been read, and reread, and loved,
and loved again; and marked, so that you can refer to the passages you
want in it, as a soldier can seize the weapons he needs in an armory,
or a housewife bring the spice she needs from her store.”
“I am not at all afraid,” says Matthew Browne, “of urging overmuch the
propriety of frequent, very frequent, reading of the same book. The
book remains the same, but the reader changes; and the value of reading
lies in the collision of minds. It may be taken for granted that _no_
conceivable amount of reading could ever put me into the position with
respect to his book—I mean as to intelligence only—in which the author
strove to place me. I may read him a hundred times, and not catch the
precise right point of view; and may read him a hundred and one times,
and approach it the hundred and first. The driest and hardest book that
ever was, contains an interest over and above what can be picked out of
it, and laid, so to speak, on the table. It is interesting as my friend
is interesting; it is a problem which invites me to closer knowledge,
and _that_ usually means better liking. He must be a poor friend that
we only care to see once or twice, and then forget.”[14]
“The great secret of reading consists in this,” says Charles F.
Richardson, “that it does not matter so much what we read, or how we
read it, as what we think and how we think it. Reading is only the
fuel; and, the mind once on fire, any and all material will feed the
flame, provided only it have any combustible matter in it. And we
cannot tell from what quarter the next material will come. The thought
we need, the facts we are in search of, may make their appearance in
the corner of the newspaper, or in some forgotten volume long ago
consigned to dust and oblivion.... The mind that is not awake and alive
will find a library a barren wilderness. Now, gather up the scraps
and fragments of thought on whatever subject you may be studying,—for
of course by a note-book I do not mean a mere receptacle for odds
and ends, a literary dust-bin,—but acquire the habit of gathering
everything whenever and wherever you find it, that belongs in your line
or lines of study, and you will be surprised to see how such fragments
will arrange themselves into an orderly whole by the very organizing
power of your own thinking, acting in a definite direction. This is
a true process of self-education; but you see it is no mechanical
process of mere aggregation. It requires activity of thought; but
without that, what is any reading but mere passive amusement? And it
requires method. I have myself a sort of literary book-keeping. I post
my literary accounts, bringing together in proper groups the fruits of
much casual reading.”[15]
Edward Gibbon the historian tells us that a taste for books was the
pleasure and glory of his life. “Let us read with method,” he says,
“and propose to ourselves an end to what our studies may point. The use
of reading is to aid us in thinking.”
Among practical suggestions to those who would read for profit, I have
found nothing more pertinent than the following from the posthumous
papers of Bryan Waller Procter: “Always read the preface to a book. It
places you on vantage ground, and enables you to survey more completely
the book itself. You frequently also discover the character of the
author from the preface. You see his aims, perhaps his prejudices. You
see the point of view from which he takes his pictures, the rocks and
impediments which he himself beholds, and you steer accordingly....
Understand every word you read; if possible, every allusion of the
author,—if practicable, while you are reading; if not, make search
and inquiry as soon as may be afterward. Have a dictionary near you
when you read; and when you read a book of travels, always read
with a map of the country at hand. Without a map the information is
vague and transitory.... After having read as much as your mind will
easily retain, sum up what you have read,—endeavor to place in view
the portion or subject that has formed your morning’s study; and
then reckon up (as you would reckon up a sum) the facts or items of
knowledge that you have gained. It generally happens that the amount
of three or four hours’ reading may be reduced to and concentrated in
half a dozen propositions. These are your gains,—these are the facts
or opinions that you have acquired. You may investigate the truth of
them hereafter. Although I think that one’s general reading should
extend over many subjects, yet for serious _study_ we should confine
ourselves to some branch of literature or science. Otherwise the mind
becomes confused and enfeebled, and the thoughts, dissipated on many
things, will settle profitably on none. A man whose duration of life
is limited, and whose powers are limited also, should not aim at all
things, but should content himself with a few. By such means he may
master one, and become tolerably familiar perhaps with two or three
arts or sciences. He may indeed even make valuable contributions to
them. Without this economy of labor, he cannot produce any complete
work, nor can he exhaust any subject.”[16]
Every scholar is familiar with Lord Bacon’s classification of
books,—some “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.” Coleridge’s classification of the
various kinds of readers is perhaps not quite so well known. He said
that some readers are like jelly-bags,—they let pass away all that is
pure and good, and retain only what is impure and refuse. Another class
he typified by a sponge; these are they whose minds suck all up, and
give it back again, only a little dirtier. Others, again, he likened to
an hour-glass, and their reading to the sand which runs in and out, and
leaves no trace behind. And still others he compared to the slave in
the Golconda mines, who retains the gold and the gem, and casts aside
the dust and the dross. Charles C. Colton, the author of “Lacon,” says
there are three kinds of readers: first, those who read to think,—and
they are rare; second, those who read to write,—and they are common;
third, those who read to talk,—and they form the great majority. And
Goethe, the greatest name in German literature, makes still a different
classification: some readers, he tells us, enjoy without judgment;
others judge without enjoyment; and some there are who judge while they
enjoy, and enjoy while they judge.
In these days, when, so far as reading-matter is concerned, we are
overburdened with an embarrassment of riches, we cannot afford to read,
even in the books which we have chosen as ours, those things which have
no relationship to our studies, which do not concern us, and which
are sure to be forgotten as soon as read. The art of reading, says
Philip Gilbert Hamerton in his admirable essay on “The Intellectual
Life,” “is to skip judiciously. The art is to skip all that does not
concern us, whilst missing nothing that we really need. No external
guidance can teach this; for nobody but ourselves can guess what
the needs of our intellect may be. But let us select with decisive
firmness, independently of other people’s advice, independently of
the authority of custom.” And Charles F. Richardson, referring to the
same subject, remarks: “The art of skipping is, in a word, the art of
noting and shunning that which is bad, or frivolous, or misleading,
or unsuitable for one’s individual needs. If you are convinced that
the book or the chapter is bad, you cannot drop it too quickly. If it
is simply idle and foolish, put it away on that account,—unless you
are properly seeking amusement from idleness and frivolity. If it is
something deceitful and disingenuous, your task is not so easy; but
your conscience will give you warning, and the sharp examination which
should follow will tell you that you are in poor literary company.”
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