I confess to have been much perplexed in my search for a topic on which
I could say something to which you would have patience to listen, or on
which I might find it profitable to speak. One theme however there is,
not inappropriate to the place in which I stand, nor I hope unwelcome to
the audience which I address. The youngest of you have left behind that
period of youth during which it seems inconceivable that any book should
afford recreation except a story-book. Many of you are just reaching the
period when, at the end of your prescribed curriculum, the whole field
and compass of literature lies outspread before you; when, with
faculties trained and disciplined, and the edge of curiosity not dulled
or worn with use, you may enter at your leisure into the intellectual
heritage of the centuries.
Now the question of how to read and what to read has of late filled much
space in the daily papers, if it cannot strictly speaking be said to
have profoundly occupied the public mind. But you need be under no
alarm. I am not going to supply you with a new list of the hundred books
most worth reading, nor am I about to take the world into my confidence
in respect of my "favorite passages from the best authors." Nor again do
I address myself to the professed student, to the fortunate individual
with whom literature or science is the business as well as the pleasure
of life. I have not the qualifications which would enable me to
undertake such a task with the smallest hope of success. My theme is
humble, though the audience to whom I desire to speak is large: for I
speak to the ordinary reader with ordinary capacities and ordinary
leisure, to whom reading is, or ought to be, not a business but a
pleasure; and my theme is the enjoyment--not, mark you, the improvement,
nor the glory, nor the profit, but the _enjoyment_--which may be derived
by such an one from books.
It is perhaps due to the controversial habits engendered by my
unfortunate profession, that I find no easier method of making my own
view clear than that of contrasting with it what I regard as an
erroneous view held by somebody else; and in the present case the
doctrine which I shall choose as a foil to my own, is one which has been
stated with the utmost force and directness by that brilliant and
distinguished writer, Mr. Frederic Harrison. He has, as many of you
know, recently given us, in a series of excellent essays, his opinion on
the principles which should guide us in the choice of books. Against
that part of his treatise which is occupied with specific
recommendations of certain authors I have not a word to say. He has
resisted all the temptations to eccentricity which so easily beset the
modern critic. Every book which he praises deserves his praise, and has
long been praised by the world at large. I do not, indeed, hold that the
verdict of the world is necessarily binding on the individual
conscience. I admit to the full that there is an enormous quantity of
hollow devotion, of withered orthodoxy divorced from living faith, in
the eternal chorus of praise which goes up from every literary altar to
the memory of the immortal dead. Nevertheless every critic is bound to
recognize, as Mr. Harrison recognizes, that he must put down to
individual peculiarity any difference he may have with the general
verdict of the ages; he must feel that mankind are not likely to be in a
conspiracy of error as to the kind of literary work which conveys to
them the highest literary enjoyment, and that in such cases at least
_securus judicat orbis terrarum_.
But it is quite possible to hold that any work recommended by Mr.
Harrison is worth repeated reading, and yet to reject utterly the theory
of study by which these recommendations are prefaced. For Mr. Harrison
is a ruthless censor. His _index expurgatorius_ includes, so far as I
can discover, the whole catalogue of the British Museum, with the
exception of a small remnant which might easily be contained in about
thirty or forty volumes. The vast remainder he contemplates with
feelings apparently not merely of indifference, but of active aversion.
He surveys the boundless and ever-increasing waste of books with
emotions compounded of disgust and dismay. He is almost tempted to say
in his haste that the invention of printing has been an evil one for
humanity. In the habits of miscellaneous reading, born of a too easy
access to libraries, circulating and other, he sees many soul-destroying
tendencies; and his ideal reader would appear to be a gentleman who
rejects with a lofty scorn all in history that does not pass for being
first-rate in importance, and all in literature that is not admitted to
be first-rate in quality.
Now, I am far from denying that this theory is plausible. Of all that
has been written, it is certain that the professed student can master
but an infinitesimal fraction. Of that fraction the ordinary reader can
master but a very small part. What advice, then, can be better than to
select for study the few masterpieces that have come down to us, and to
treat as non-existent the huge but undistinguished remainder? We are
like travelers passing hastily through some ancient city; filled with
memorials of many generations and more than one great civilization. Our
time is short. Of what may be seen we can only see at best but a
trifling fragment. Let us then take care that we waste none of our
precious moments upon that which is less than the most excellent. So
preaches Mr. Frederic Harrison; and when a doctrine which put thus may
seem not only wise but obvious, is further supported by such assertions
that habits of miscellaneous reading "close the mind to what is
spiritually sustaining" by "stuffing it with what is simply curious," or
that such methods of study are worse than no habits of study at all
because they "gorge and enfeeble" the mind by "excess in that which
cannot nourish," I almost feel that in venturing to dissent from it, I
may be attacking not merely the teaching of common sense but the
inspirations of a high morality.
Yet I am convinced that for most persons the views thus laid down by Mr.
Harrison are wrong; and that what he describes, with characteristic
vigor, as "an impotent voracity for desultory information," is in
reality a most desirable and a not too common form of mental appetite. I
have no sympathy whatever with the horror he expresses at the "incessant
accumulation of fresh books." I am never tempted to regret that
Gutenberg was born into the world. I care not at all though the
"cataract of printed stuff," as Mr. Harrison calls it, should flow and
still flow on until the catalogues of our libraries should make
libraries themselves. I am prepared, indeed, to express sympathy almost
amounting to approbation for any one who would check all writing which
was _not_ intended for the printer. I pay no tribute of grateful
admiration to those who have oppressed mankind with the dubious blessing
of the penny post. But the ground of the distinction is plain. We are
always obliged to read our letters, and are sometimes obliged to answer
them. But who obliges us to wade through the piled-up lumber of an
ancient library, or to skim more than we like off the frothy foolishness
poured forth in ceaseless streams by our circulating libraries? Dead
dunces do not importune us; Grub Street does not ask for a reply by
return of post. Even their living successors need hurt no one who
possesses the very moderate degree of social courage required to make
the admission that he has not read the last new novel or the current
number of a fashionable magazine.
But this is not the view of Mr. Harrison. To him the position of any one
having free access to a large library is fraught with issues so
tremendous that, in order adequately to describe it, he has to seek for
parallels in two of the most highly-wrought episodes in fiction: the
Ancient Mariner, becalmed and thirsting on the tropic ocean; Bunyan's
Christian in the crisis of spiritual conflict. But there is here,
surely, some error and some exaggeration. Has miscellaneous reading all
the dreadful consequences which Mr. Harrison depicts? Has it any of
them? His declaration about the intellect being "gorged and enfeebled"
by the absorption of too much information, expresses no doubt with great
vigor an analogy, for which there is high authority, between the human
mind and the human stomach; but surely it is an analogy which may be
pressed too far. I have often heard of the individual whose excellent
natural gifts have been so overloaded with huge masses of undigested and
indigestible learning that they have had no chance of healthy
development. But though I have often heard of this personage, I have
never met him, and I believe him to be mythical. It is true, no doubt,
that many learned people are dull; but there is no indication whatever
that they are dull because they are learned. True dullness is seldom
acquired; it is a natural grace, the manifestations of which, however
modified by education, remain in substance the same. Fill a dull man to
the brim with knowledge, and he will not become less dull, as the
enthusiasts for education vainly imagine; but neither will he become
duller, as Mr. Harrison appears to suppose. He will remain in essence
what he always has been and always must have been. But whereas his
dullness would, if left to itself, have been merely vacuous, it may have
become, under cureful cultivation, pretentious and pedantic.
I would further point out to you that while there is no ground in
experience for supposing that a keen interest in those facts which Mr.
Harrison describes as "merely curious" has any stupefying effect upon
the mind, or has any tendency to render it insensible to the higher
things of literature and art, there is positive evidence that many of
those who have most deeply felt the charm of these higher things have
been consumed by that omnivorous appetite for knowledge which excites
Mr. Harrison's especial indignation. Dr. Johnson, for instance, though
deaf to some of the most delicate harmonies of verse, was without
question a very great critic. Yet in Dr. Johnson's opinion, literary
history, which is for the most part composed of facts which Mr. Harrison
would regard as insignificant, about authors whom he would regard as
pernicious, was the most delightful of studies. Again, consider the case
of Lord Macaulay. Lord Macaulay did everything Mr. Harrison says he
ought not to have done. From youth to age he was continuously occupied
in "gorging and enfeebling" his intellect, by the unlimited consumption
of every species of literature, from the masterpieces of the age of
Pericles to the latest rubbish from the circulating library. It is not
told of him that his intellect suffered by the process; and though it
will hardly be claimed for him that he was a great critic, none will
deny that he possessed the keenest susceptibilities for literary
excellence in many languages and in every form. If Englishmen and
Scotchmen do not satisfy you, I will take a Frenchman. The most
accomplished critic whom France has produced is, by general admission,
Ste.-Beuve. His capacity for appreciating supreme perfection in
literature will be disputed by none; yet the great bulk of his vast
literary industry was expended upon the lives and writings of authors
whose lives Mr. Harrison would desire us to forget, and whose writings
almost wring from him the wish that the art of printing had never been
discovered.
I am even bold enough to hazard the conjecture (I trust he will forgive
me) that Mr. Harrison's life may be quoted against Mr. Harrison's
theory. I entirely decline to believe, without further evidence, that
the writings whose vigor of style and of thought have been the delight
of us all are the product of his own system. I hope I do him no wrong,
but I cannot help thinking that if we knew the truth, we should find
that he followed the practice of those worthy physicians who, after
prescribing the most abstemious diet to their patients, may be seen
partaking freely, and to all appearances safely, of the most succulent
and the most unwholesome of the forbidden dishes.
It has to be noted that Mr. Harrison's list of the books which deserve
perusal would seem to indicate that in his opinion, the pleasures to be
derived from literature are chiefly pleasures of the imagination. Poets,
dramatists, and novelists form the chief portion of the somewhat meagre
fare which is specifically permitted to his disciples. Now, though I
have already stated that the list is not one of which any person is
likely to assert that it contains books which ought to be excluded, yet,
even from the point of view of what may be termed aesthetic enjoyment,
the field in which we are allowed to take our pleasures seems to me
unduly restricted.
Contemporary poetry, for instance, on which Mr. Harrison bestows a good
deal of hard language, has and must have, for the generation which
produces it, certain qualities not likely to be possessed by any other.
Charles Lamb has somewhere declared that a pun loses all its virtues as
soon as the momentary quality of the intellectual and social atmosphere
in which it was born has changed its character. What is true of this,
the humblest effort of verbal art, is true in a different measure and
degree of all, even of the highest, forms of literature. To some extent
every work requires interpretation to generations who are separated by
differences of thought or education from the age in which it was
originally produced. That this is so with every book which depends for
its interest upon feelings and fashions which have utterly vanished, no
one will be disposed, I imagine, to deny. Butler's 'Hudibras,' for
instance, which was the delight of a gay and witty society, is to me at
least not unfrequently dull. Of some works, no doubt, which made a noise
in their day it seems impossible to detect the slightest race of charm.
But this is not the case with 'Hudibras.' Its merits are obvious. That
they should have appealed to a generation sick of the reign of the
"Saints" is precisely what we should have expected. But to us, who are
not sick of the reign of the Saints, they appeal but imperfectly. The
attempt to reproduce artificially the frame of mind of those who first
read the poem is not only an effort, but is to most people, at all
events, an unsuccessful effort. What is true of 'Hudibras' is true also,
though in an inconceivably smaller degree, of those great works of
imagination which deal with the elemental facts of human character and
human passion. Yet even on these, time does, though lightly, lay his
hand. Wherever what may be called "historic sympathy" is required, there
will be some diminution of the enjoyment which those must have felt who
were the poet's contemporaries. We look, so to speak, at the same
splendid landscape as they, but distance has made it necessary for us to
aid our natural vision with glasses, and some loss of light will thus
inevitably be produced, and some inconvenience from the difficulty of
truly adjusting the focus. Of all authors, Homer would, I suppose, be
thought to suffer least from such drawbacks. But yet in order to listen
to Homer's accents with the ears of an ancient Greek, we must be able,
among other things, to enter into a view about the gods which is as far
removed from what we should describe as religious sentiment, as it is
from the frigid ingenuity of those later poets who regarded the deities
of Greek mythology as so many wheels in the supernatural machinery with
which it pleased them to carry on the action of their pieces. If we are
to accept Mr. Herbert Spencer's views as to the progress of our species,
changes of sentiment are likely to occur which will even more seriously
interfere with the world's delight in the Homeric poems. When human
beings become so nicely "adjusted to their environment" that courage and
dexterity in battle will have become as useless among civic virtues as
an old helmet is among the weapons of war; when fighting gets to be
looked upon with the sort of disgust excited in us by cannibalism; and
when public opinion shall regard a warrior much in the same light that
we regard a hangman,--I do not see how any fragment of that vast and
splendid literature which depends for its interest upon deeds of heroism
and the joy of battle is to retain its ancient charm.
About these remote contingencies, however, I am glad to think that
neither you nor I need trouble our heads; and if I parenthetically
allude to them now, it is merely as an illustration of a truth not
always sufficiently remembered, and as an excuse for those who find in
the genuine, though possibly second-rate, productions of their own age,
a charm for which they search in vain among the mighty monuments of
the past.
But I leave this train of thought, which has perhaps already taken me
too far, in order to point out a more fundamental error, as I think it,
which arises from regarding literature solely from this high aesthetic
standpoint. The pleasures of imagination, derived from the best literary
models, form without doubt the most exquisite portion of the enjoyment
which we may extract from books; but they do not, in my opinion, form
the largest portion if we take into account mass as well as quality in
our calculation. There is the literature which appeals to the
imagination or the fancy, some stray specimens of which Mr. Harrison
will permit us to peruse; but is there not also the literature which
satisfies the curiosity? Is this vast storehouse of pleasure to be
thrown hastily aside because many of the facts which it contains are
alleged to be insignificant, because the appetite to which they minister
is said to be morbid? Consider a little. We are here dealing with one of
the strongest intellectual impulses of rational beings. Animals, as a
rule, trouble themselves but little about anything unless they want
either to eat it or to run away from it. Interest in and wonder at the
works of nature and the doings of man are products of civilization, and
excite emotions which do not diminish but increase with increasing
knowledge and cultivation. Feed them and they grow; minister to them and
they will greatly multiply. We hear much indeed of what is called "idle
curiosity"; but I am loth to brand any form of curiosity as necessarily
idle. Take, for example, one of the most singular, but in this age one
of the most universal, forms in which it is accustomed to manifest
itself: I mean that of an exhaustive study of the contents of the
morning and evening papers. It is certainly remarkable that any person
who has nothing to get by it should destroy his eyesight and confuse his
brain by a conscientious attempt to master the dull and doubtful details
of the European diary daily transmitted to us by "Our Special
Correspondent." But it must be remembered that this is only a somewhat
unprofitable exercise of that disinterested love of knowledge which
moves men to penetrate the Polar snows, to build up systems of
philosophy, or to explore the secrets of the remotest heavens. It has in
it the rudiments of infinite and varied delights. It _can_ be turned,
and it _should_ be turned into a curiosity for which nothing that has
been done, or thought, or suffered, or believed, no law which governs
the world of matter or the world of mind, can be wholly alien or
uninteresting.
Truly it is a subject for astonishment that, instead of expanding to the
utmost the employment of this pleasure-giving faculty, so many persons
should set themselves to work to limit its exercise by all kinds of
arbitrary regulations. Some there are, for example, who tell us that the
acquisition of knowledge is all very well, but that it must be _useful_
knowledge; meaning usually thereby that it must enable a man to get on
in a profession, pass an examination, shine in conversation, or obtain a
reputation for learning. But even if they mean something higher than
this, even if they mean that knowledge to be worth anything must
subserve ultimately if not immediately the material or spiritual
interests of mankind, the doctrine is one which should be energetically
repudiated. I admit, of course, at once, that discoveries the most
apparently remote from human concerns have often proved themselves of
the utmost commercial or manufacturing value. But they require no such
justification for their existence, nor were they striven for with any
such object. Navigation is not the final cause of astronomy, nor
telegraphy of electro-dynamics, nor dye-works of chemistry. And if it be
true that the desire of knowledge for the sake of knowledge was the
animating motive of the great men who first wrested her secrets from
nature, why should it not also be enough for us, to whom it is not given
to discover, but only to learn as best we may what has been discovered
by others?
Another maxim, more plausible but equally pernicious, is that
superficial knowledge is worse than no knowledge at all. That "a little
knowledge is a dangerous thing" is a saying which has now got currency
as a proverb stamped in the mint of Pope's versification; of Pope, who
with the most imperfect knowledge of Greek translated Homer, with the
most imperfect knowledge of the Elizabethan drama edited Shakespeare,
and with the most imperfect knowledge of philosophy wrote the 'Essay on
Man.' But what is this "little knowledge" which is supposed to be so
dangerous? What is it "little" in relation to? If in relation to what
there is to know, then all human knowledge is little. If in relation to
what actually is known by somebody, then we must condemn as "dangerous"
the knowledge which Archimedes possessed of mechanics, or Copernicus of
astronomy; for a shilling primer and a few weeks' study will enable any
student to outstrip in mere information some of the greatest teachers
of the past. No doubt, that little knowledge which thinks itself to be
great may possibly be a dangerous, as it certainly is a most ridiculous
thing. We have all suffered under that eminently absurd individual who
on the strength of one or two volumes, imperfectly apprehended by
himself, and long discredited in the estimation of everyone else, is
prepared to supply you on the shortest notice with a dogmatic solution
of every problem suggested by this "unintelligible world" or the
political variety of the same pernicious genus, whose statecraft
consists in the ready application to the most complex question of
national interest of some high-sounding commonplace which has done weary
duty on a thousand platforms, and which even in its palmiest days was
never fit for anything better than a peroration. But in our dislike of
the individual, do not let us mistake the diagnosis of his disease. He
suffers not from ignorance but from stupidity. Give him learning and you
make him not wise, but only more pretentious in his folly.
I say then that so far from a little knowledge being undesirable, a
little knowledge is all that on most subjects any of us can hope to
attain; and that, as a source not of worldly profit but of personal
pleasure, it may be of incalculable value to its possessor. But it will
naturally be asked, "How are we to select from among the infinite number
of things which may be known, those which it is best worth while for us
to know?" We are constantly being told to concern ourselves with
learning what is important, and not to waste our energies upon what is
insignificant. But what are the marks by which we shall recognize the
important, and how is it to be distinguished from the insignificant. A
precise and complete answer to this question which shall be true for all
men cannot be given. I am considering knowledge, recollect, as it
ministers to enjoyment; and from this point of view each unit of
information is obviously of importance in proportion as it increases the
general sum of enjoyment which we obtain, or expect to obtain, from
knowledge. This, of course, makes it impossible to lay down precise
rules which shall be an equally sure guide to all sorts and conditions
of men; for in this, as in other matters, tastes must differ, and
against real difference of taste there is no appeal.
There is, however, one caution which it may be worth your while to keep
in view:--Do not be persuaded into applying any general proposition on
this subject with a foolish impartiality to every kind of knowledge.
There are those who tell you that it is the broad generalities and the
far-reaching principles which govern the world, which are alone worthy
of your attention. A fact which is not an illustration of a law, in the
opinion of these persons appears to lose all its value. Incidents which
do not fit into some great generalization, events which are merely
picturesque, details which are merely curious, they dismiss as unworthy
the interest of a reasoning being. Now, even in science this doctrine in
its extreme form does not hold good. The most scientific of men have
taken profound interest in the investigation of facts from the
determination of which they do not anticipate any material addition to
our knowledge of the laws which regulate the Universe. In these matters,
I need hardly say that I speak wholly without authority. But I have
always been under the impression that an investigation which has cost
hundreds of thousands of pounds; which has stirred on three occasions
the whole scientific community throughout the civilized world; on which
has been expended the utmost skill in the construction of instruments
and their application to purposes of research (I refer to the attempts
made to determine the distance of the sun by observation of the transit
of Venus),--would, even if they had been brought to a successful issue,
have furnished mankind with the knowledge of no new astronomical
principle. The laws which govern the motions of the solar system, the
proportions which the various elements in that system bear to one
another, have long been known. The distance of the sun itself is known
within limits of error relatively speaking not very considerable. Were
the measuring rod we apply to the heavens based on an estimate of the
sun's distance from the earth which was wrong by (say) three per cent.,
it would not to the lay mind seem to affect very materially our view
either of the distribution of the heavenly bodies or of their motions.
And yet this information, this piece of celestial gossip, would seem to
have been the chief astronomical result expected from the successful
prosecution of an investigation in which whole nations have interested
themselves.
But though no one can, I think, pretend that science does not concern
itself, and properly concern itself, with facts which are not to all
appearance illustrations of law, it is undoubtedly true that for those
who desire to extract the greatest pleasure from science, a knowledge,
however elementary, of the leading principles of investigation and the
larger laws of nature, is the acquisition most to be desired. To him who
is not a specialist, a comprehension of the broad outlines of the
universe as it presents itself to his scientific imagination is the
thing most worth striving to attain. But when we turn from science to
what is rather vaguely called history, the same principles of study do
not, I think, altogether apply, and mainly for this reason: that while
the recognition of the reign of law is the chief amongst the pleasures
imparted by science, our inevitable ignorance makes it the least among
the pleasures imparted by history.
It is no doubt true that we are surrounded by advisers who tell us that
all study of the past is barren, except in so far as it enables us to
determine the principles by which the evolution of human societies is
governed. How far such an investigation has been up to the present time
fruitful in results, it would be unkind to inquire. That it will ever
enable us to trace with accuracy the course which States and nations are
destined to pursue in the future, or to account in detail for their
history in the past, I do not in the least believe. We are borne along
like travelers on some unexplored stream. We may know enough of the
general configuration of the globe to be sure that we are making our way
towards the ocean. We may know enough, by experience or theory, of the
laws regulating the flow of liquids, to conjecture how the river will
behave under the varying influences to which it may be subject. More
than this we cannot know. It will depend largely upon causes which, in
relation to any laws which we are even likely to discover may properly
be called accidental, whether we are destined sluggishly to drift among
fever-stricken swamps, to hurry down perilous rapids, or to glide gently
through fair scenes of peaceful cultivation.
But leaving on one side ambitious sociological speculations, and even
those more modest but hitherto more successful investigations into the
causes which have in particular cases been principally operative in
producing great political changes, there are still two modes in which we
can derive what I may call "spectacular" enjoyment from the study of
history. There is first the pleasure which arises from the contemplation
of some great historic drama, or some broad and well-marked phase of
social development. The story of the rise, greatness, and decay of a
nation is like some vast epic which contains as subsidiary episodes the
varied stories of the rise, greatness, and decay of creeds, of parties,
and of statesmen. The imagination is moved by the slow unrolling of this
great picture of human mutability, as it is moved by the contrasted
permanence of the abiding stars. The ceaseless conflict, the strange
echoes of long-forgotten controversies, the confusion of purpose, the
successes in which lay deep the seeds of future evils, the failures that
ultimately divert the otherwise inevitable danger, the heroism which
struggles to the last for a cause foredoomed to defeat, the wickedness
which sides with right, and the wisdom which huzzas at the triumph of
folly,--fate, meanwhile, amidst this turmoil and perplexity, working
silently towards the predestined end,--all these form together a subject
the contemplation of which need surely never weary.
But yet there is another and very different species of enjoyment to be
derived from the records of the past, which requires a somewhat
different method of study in order that it may be fully tasted. Instead
of contemplating as it were from a distance the larger aspects of the
human drama, we may elect to move in familiar fellowship amid the scenes
and actors of special periods. We may add to the interest we derive from
the contemplation of contemporary politics, a similar interest derived
from a not less minute, and probably more accurate, knowledge of some
comparatively brief passage in the political history of the past. We may
extend the social circle in which we move, a circle perhaps narrowed and
restricted through circumstances beyond our control, by making intimate
acquaintances, perhaps even close friends, among a society long
departed, but which, when we have once learnt the trick of it, we may,
if it so pleases us, revive.
It is this kind of historical reading which is usually branded as
frivolous and useless; and persons who indulge in it often delude
themselves into thinking that the real motive of their investigation
into bygone scenes and ancient scandals is philosophic interest in an
important historical episode, whereas in truth it is not the philosophy
which glorifies the details, but the details which make tolerable the
philosophy. Consider, for example, the case of the French Revolution.
The period from the taking of the Bastile to the fall of Robespierre is
about the same as that which very commonly intervenes between two of our
general elections. On these comparatively few months, libraries have
been written. The incidents of every week are matters of familiar
knowledge. The character and the biography of every actor in the drama
has been made the subject of minute study; and by common admission there
is no more fascinating page in the history of the world. But the
interest is not what is commonly called philosophic, it is personal.
Because the Revolution is the dominant fact in modern history, therefore
people suppose that the doings of this or that provincial lawyer, tossed
into temporary eminence and eternal infamy by some freak of the
revolutionary wave, or the atrocities committed by this or that mob,
half drunk with blood, rhetoric, and alcohol, are of transcendent
importance. In truth their interest is great, but their importance is
small. What we are concerned to know as students of the philosophy of
history is, not the character of each turn and eddy in the great social
cataract, but the manner in which the currents of the upper stream drew
surely in towards the final plunge, and slowly collected themselves
after the catastrophe again, to pursue at a different level their
renewed and comparatively tranquil course.
Now, if so much of the interest of the French Revolution depends upon
our minute knowledge of each passing incident, how much more necessary
is such knowledge when we are dealing with the quiet nooks and corners
of history; when we are seeking an introduction, let us say, into the
literary society of Johnson, or the fashionable society of Walpole.
Society, dead or alive, can have no charm without intimacy, and no
intimacy without interest in trifles which I fear Mr. Harrison would
describe as "merely curious." If we would feel at our ease in any
company, if we wish to find humor in its jokes, and point in its
repartees, we must know something of the beliefs and the prejudices of
its various members, their loves and their hates, their hopes and their
fears, their maladies, their marriages, and their flirtations. If these
things are beneath our notice, we shall not be the less qualified to
serve our Queen and country, but need make no attempt to extract
pleasure from one of the most delightful departments of literature.
That there is such a thing as trifling information I do not of course
question; but the frame of mind in which the reader is constantly
weighing the exact importance to the universe at large of each
circumstance which the author presents to his notice, is not one
conducive to the true enjoyment of a picture whose effect depends upon a
multitude of slight and seemingly insignificant touches, which impress
the mind often without remaining in the memory. The best method of
guarding against the danger of reading what is useless is to read only
what is interesting; a truth which will seem a paradox to a whole class
of readers, fitting objects of our commiseration, who may be often
recognized by their habit of asking some adviser for a list of books,
and then marking out a scheme of study in the course of which all are to
be conscientiously perused. These unfortunate persons apparently read a
book principally with the object of getting to the end of it. They reach
the word _Finis_ with the same sensation of triumph as an Indian feels
who strings a fresh scalp to his girdle. They are not happy unless they
mark by some definite performance each step in the weary path of
self-improvement. To begin a volume and not to finish it would be to
deprive themselves of this satisfaction; it would be to lose all the
reward of their earlier self-denial by a lapse from virtue at the end.
To skip, according to their literary code, is a species of cheating; it
is a mode of obtaining credit for erudition on false pretenses; a plan
by which the advantages of learning are surreptitiously obtained by
those who have not won them by honest toil. But all this is quite wrong.
In matters literary, works have no saving efficacy. He has only half
learnt the art of reading who has not added to it the even more refined
accomplishments of skipping and of skimming; and the first step has
hardly been taken in the direction of making literature a pleasure until
interest in the subject, and not a desire to spare (so to speak) the
author's feelings, or to accomplish an appointed task, is the prevailing
motive of the reader.
I have now reached, not indeed the end of my subject, which I have
scarcely begun, but the limits inexorably set by the circumstances under
which it is treated. Yet I am unwilling to conclude without meeting an
objection to my method of dealing with it, which has I am sure been
present to the minds of not a few who have been good enough to listen to
me with patience. It will be said that I have ignored the higher
functions of literature; that I have degraded it from its rightful
place, by discussing only certain ways in which it may minister to the
entertainment of an idle hour, leaving wholly out of sight its
contributions to what Mr. Harrison calls our "spiritual sustenance."
Now, this is partly because the first of these topics and not the second
was the avowed subject of my address; but it is partly because I am
deliberately of opinion that it is the pleasures and not the profits,
spiritual or temporal, of literature which most require to be preached
in the ear of the ordinary reader. I hold indeed the faith that all such
pleasures minister to the development of much that is best in
man--mental and moral; but the charm is broken and the object lost if
the remote consequence is consciously pursued to the exclusion of the
immediate end. It will not, I suppose, be denied that the beauties of
nature are at least as well qualified to minister to our higher needs as
are the beauties of literature. Yet we do not say we are going to walk
to the top of such and such a hill in order to drink in "spiritual
sustenance." We say we are going to look at the view. And I am convinced
that this, which is the natural and simple way of considering literature
as well as nature, is also the true way. The habit of always requiring
some reward for knowledge beyond the knowledge itself, be that reward
some material prize or be it what is vaguely called self-improvement, is
one with which I confess I have little sympathy, fostered though it is
by the whole scheme of our modern education. Do not suppose that I
desire the impossible. I would not if I could destroy the examination
system. But there are times, I confess, when I feel tempted somewhat to
vary the prayer of the poet, and to ask whether Heaven has not reserved,
in pity to this much-educating generation, some peaceful desert of
literature as yet unclaimed by the crammer or the coach; where it might
be possible for the student to wander, even perhaps to stray, at his own
pleasure without finding every beauty labeled, every difficulty
engineered, every nook surveyed, and a professional cicerone standing at
every corner to guide each succeeding traveler along the same well-worn
round. If such a wish were granted, I would further ask that the domain
of knowledge thus "neutralized" should be the literature of our own
country. I grant to the full that the systematic study of _some_
literature must be a principal element in the education of youth. But
why should that literature be our own? Why should we brush off the bloom
and freshness from the works to which Englishmen and Scotchmen most
naturally turn for refreshment,--namely, those written in their own
language? Why should we associate them with the memory of hours spent in
weary study; in the effort to remember for purposes of examination what
no human being would wish to remember for any other; in the struggle to
learn something, not because the learner desires to know it, because he
desires some one else to know that he knows it? This is the dark side of
the examination system; a system necessary and therefore excellent, but
one which does, through the very efficiency and thoroughness of the
drill by which it imparts knowledge, to some extent impair the most
delicate pleasures by which the acquisition of knowledge should
be attended.
How great those pleasures may be, I trust there are many here who can
testify. When I compare the position of the reader of to-day with that
of his predecessor of the sixteenth century. I am amazed at the
ingratitude of those who are tempted even for a moment to regret the
invention of printing and the multiplication of books. There is now no
mood of mind to which a man may not administer the appropriate nutriment
or medicine at the cost of reaching down a volume from his bookshelf. In
every department of knowledge infinitely more is known, and what is
known is incomparably more accessible, than it was to our ancestors. The
lighter forms of literature, good, bad, and indifferent, which have
added so vastly to the happiness of mankind, have increased beyond
powers of computation; nor do I believe that there is any reason to
think that they have elbowed out their more serious and important
brethren. It is perfectly possible for a man, not a professed student,
and who only gives to reading the leisure hours of a business life, to
acquire such a general knowledge of the laws of nature and the facts of
history that every great advance made in either department shall be to
him both intelligible and interesting; and he may besides have among his
familiar friends many a departed worthy whose memory is embalmed in the
pages of memoir or biography. All this is ours for the asking. All this
we shall ask for, if only it be our happy fortune to love for its own
sake the beauty and the knowledge to be gathered from books. And if this
be our fortune, the world may be kind or unkind, it may seem to us to be
hastening on the wings of enlightenment and progress to an imminent
millennium, or it may weigh us down with the sense of insoluble
difficulty and irremediable wrong; but whatever else it be, so long as
we have good health and a good library, it can hardly be dull.