A few days ago Mr. Chesterton expressed a doubt whether he had ever
read Boswell "through." Knowing Mr. Chesterton, and having a
life-long acquaintance with Boswell, I share his doubt. G.K.C. has
an amazing gift for seizing the spirit and purport of a book by
turning over the pages in handfuls and sampling a sentence here and
there. He treats books as the expert wine-taster treats wines, not
drinking them in great coarse gulps, but moistening his lips and
catching the bouquet on his palate. The parallel is no doubt as
misleading as most parallels are apt to be. Good wines have to be
"tasted" in this way, but the better the book the deeper should be
the draught or the more deliberate and patient the mastication.
"Chewed and digested" is Bacon's phrase.
But I am far too much addicted to "skipping" myself to treat the
practice as a crime in others. When I was young and industrious and
enthusiastic I read as solemnly and slavishly as anyone. I was like
a dog with a bone. The tougher the theme the more I exercised my
intellectual molars on it. Stout fellows like Zimmermann _On
Solitude_, and Burke on _The Sublime and Beautiful_, and Mill _On
Liberty_ were the sort of men for my youthful ardour. I cannot
honestly say I enjoyed them, but I can honestly say that I read them,
and I can also honestly say that I shall never read them or their
like again. I finished my drudgery long ago, and have become a mere
idler among books, a person who has served his apprenticeship and can
go about enjoying himself, taking a sip here and a longish "pull"
there, passing over this vintage, and returning to that and generally
behaving like a freeman wandering over the estates of the mind,
without a duty to anything but his own fancy.
I, too, doubt whether I have read Boswell through. Why should I read
it through? I have read the conversations a hundred times and I hope
to read them a hundred times more; but I will make no affidavit about
the letters. I suspect that I have been "skipping" the letters
unconsciously all my life. And _Paradise Regained_? My conscience
is clear about _Paradise Lost_, and I can still mouth the speeches of
the first author of our misfortunes whom the judgment of time had
converted into the hero of that immortal poem. But can I put my hand
on my heart and say I have read the _Regained_ right through? I
cannot. I am not even sure that I have read Shakespeare through. I
have a vague notion that in the lusty youth of which I have spoken I
did read _Titus Andronicus_ and _Pericles_ with the rest, but I am
quite prepared to believe that I only like to believe I did.
There is high precedent for those of us who "skip." Johnson himself
was a famous "skipper," and confessed that he seldom finished a book.
It is true that he performed the amazing feat of rising two hours
before his usual time to read Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_. He
was a truthful man, or I should find difficulty in believing him. Of
course the achievement was not so great as it seems, for though
Johnson believed in early rising on principle and recommended all
young men to practise it, he did not himself rise until noon. But
the idea of getting up, if only at ten in the morning, with a
feverish desire to read Burton tries my faith even in Johnson's
veracity. It is pleasant to dip occasionally into that astonishing
rag-box of learning, but most of us are as likely to read Bradshaw's
Time Table through as Burton's _Anatomy_ through. It is not a book;
it is a curiosity.
It is a common experience to find that the habit of "skipping" grows
on us as we grow older. It is not merely that we are more tired or
more lazy: it is that we are more discreet and more delicate in our
intellectual feeding. It is with reading as with eating. When we
are young we can eat anything. If we are offered a bun before dinner
we express no astonishment, but consume it recklessly. But, grown
older and wiser, as Holmes remarks, we receive the offer of a bun
before dinner with polite surprise. And so with books. When the
magic of Shelley seizes us at seventeen we can devour _The Revolt of
Islam_ as we devoured that large boggy bun, but later we learn to
discriminate even with Shelley, and to take great spaces of him as
read. And even the most fervent Wordsworthian would admit that his
reading of Wordsworth is patchy, and that if the poet had not written
a line after he left Grasmere for Rydal Water, his indebtedness to
him would not have been sensibly diminished. Who, for example, can
honestly say that he has traversed the Sahara of the _Ecclesiastical
Sonnets_?
This is not a plea for skimpy reading. It is good for the young to
worry their bone even if there is little meat on it. I would have
them serve an arduous apprenticeship in the great world of books,
cleaving their own way laboriously through the wilderness. The
anthology business for the young is a little over-done. The youthful
digestion ought not to be weakened by an exclusive diet of "elegant
extracts," and spoon-feeding robs us of the joys of discovery and
adventure. What delight is there like encountering in the wilderness
some great unknown of whom we have never heard? It is like coming
into a fortune, or rather it is better than coming into a fortune,
for these are "riches fineless" that grow with compound interest and
are not subject to the vicissitudes of things. I found a young
maiden of my acquaintance the other day in a mood of unusual
exaltation. She had fallen in love and was hot with the first
rapture of passion. She had encountered _Emma_ and was aflame with
ardour for more adventures in the serene world that Jane Austen had
opened out before her. That is the way, casual and unsought, that
the realms of gold should be invaded. Youth should be encouraged to
fashion its own taste and discriminate for itself between the good,
the better and the best. When that is done we can "skip" as we like,
with an easy mind and a good conscience. We have learned our path
through the wilderness. We know where the hyacinths grow and where
we can catch the smell of the wild thyme, and the copse where the
nightingale sings to the moon. And if with this liberty of knowledge
we "skip" some of the high-brows, and are found more often in the
company of Borrow than of Bacon--well, we have done our task-work and
are out to enjoy the sun and the wind on the heath.