you with me thus far what I am about to say will have no meaning, and I
had best fold my papers, make my bow, and conclude an unprofitable
business. For my subject is re-reading, the repetition of a message; and
the message that we would willingly hear repeated is not that of utility
but of emotion. It is the word that thrills the heart, nerves the arm, and
puts new life into the veins, not that which simply conveys information.
The former will produce its effect again and again, custom can not stale
it. The latter, once delivered, has done its work. I see two messengers
approaching; one, whom I have sent to a library to ascertain the
birth-date of Oliver Cromwell, tells me what it is and receives my thanks.
The other tells me that one dear to my heart, long lying at death's door,
is recovering. My blood courses through my veins; my nerves tingle; joy
suffuses me where gloom reigned before. I cry out; I beg the bearer of
good tidings to tell them again and again; I keep him by me, so that I may
ask him a thousand questions, bringing out his message in a thousand
variant forms. But do I turn to the other and say, "O, that blessed date!
was Cromwell truly born thereon? Let me, I pray, hear you recite it again
and again!" I trow, not.
The message that we desire to hear again is the one that produces its
effect again and again; and that is the message of feeling, the message of
art--not that of mere utility. This is so true that I conceive we may use
it as a test of art-value. The great works of literature do not lose their
effect on a single reading. One makes response to them the hundredth time
as he did the first. Their appeal is so compelling that there is no
denying it--no resisting it. There are snatches of poetry--and of prose,
too--that we have by heart; that we murmur to ourselves again and again,
sure that the response which never failed will come again, thrilling the
whole organism with its pathos, uplifting us with the nobility of its
appeal, warming us with its humor. There is a little sequence of homely
verse that never fails to bring the tears to my eyes. I have tested myself
with it under the most unfavorable circumstances. In the midst of
business, amid social jollity, in the mental dullness of fatigue, I have
stopped and repeated to myself those three verses. So quickly acts the
magic of the author's skill that the earlier verses grip the fibers of my
mind and twist them in such fashion that I feel the pathos of the last
lines just as I felt them for the first time, years ago. You might all
tell similar stories. I believe that this is a characteristic of good
literature, and that all of it will bear reading, and re-reading, and
reading again.
But I hear someone say, "Do you mean to tell me that those three little
verses that bring the tears to your eyes, will bring them also to mine and
my neighbor's? I might listen to them appreciatively but dry-eyed; my
neighbor might not care for them enough to re-read them once. All about us
we see this personal equation in the appreciation of literature. Unless
you are prepared, then, to maintain that literature may be good for one
and bad for another, your contention will scarcely hold water."
Even so, brother. The messenger who told me of the safety of my dear one
did not thrill your heart as he did mine. She was dear to me, not to you,
and the infinitely delicate yet powerful chain of conditions and relations
that operated between the messenger's voice and my emotional nature did
not connect him with yours. Assuredly, the message that reaches one man
may not reach another. It may even reach a man in his youth and fall short
in manhood, or vice versa. It may be good for him and inoperative on all
the rest of the world. We estimate literature, it is true, by the
universality of its appeal or by the character of the persons whom alone
that appeal reaches. The message of literature as art may thus be to the
crowd or to a select few. I could even imagine intellect and feeling of
such exquisite fineness, such acknowledged superiority, that appeal to it
alone might be enough to fix the status of a work of art, though it might
leave all others cold. Still, in general I believe, that the greatest
literature appeals to the greatest number and to the largest number of
types. I believe that there are very few persons to whom Shakespeare,
properly presented, will not appeal. In him, nevertheless, the learned and
those of taste also delight. There are authors like Walter Pater who are a
joy to the few but do not please the many. There are others galore, whom
perhaps it would be invidious to name, who inspire joy in the multitude
but only distaste in the more discriminating. We place Pater above these,
just as we should always put quality above quantity; but I place
Shakespeare vastly higher, because his appeal is to the few and the many
at once.
But we must, I think, acknowledge that an author whose value may not
appeal to others may be great to one reader; that his influence on that
reader may be as strong for good as if it were universal instead of
unique. We may not place such a writer in the Walhalla, but I beseech you,
do not let us tear him rudely from the one or two to whom he is good and
great. Do not lop off the clinging arms at the elbow, but rather skilfully
present some other object of adoration to the intent that they may
voluntarily untwine and enfold this new object more worthily.
The man who desires to own books but who can afford only a small and
select library can not do better than to make his selection on this
basis--to get together a collection of well-loved books any one of which
would give him pleasure in re-reading. Why should a man harbor in his
house a book that he has read once and never cares to read again? Why
should he own one that he will never care to read at all? We are not
considering the books of the great collectors, coveted for their rarity or
their early dates, for their previous ownership or the beauty of their
binding--for any reason except the one that makes them books rather than
curiosities. These collections are not libraries in the intellectual or
the literary sense. Three well thumbed volumes in the attic of one who
loves them are a better library for him than those on which Pierpont
Morgan spent his millions.
This advice, it will be noted, implies that the man has an opportunity to
read the book before he decides whether to buy it or not. Here is where
the Public Library comes in. Some regard the Public Library as an
institution to obviate all necessity of owning books. It should rather be
regarded from our present standpoint as an institution to enable readers
to own the books that they need--to survey the field and make therefrom a
proper and well-considered selection. That it has acted so in the past,
none may doubt; it is the business of librarians to see that this function
is emphasized in the future. The bookseller and the librarian are not
rivals, but co-workers. Librarians complain of the point of view of those
publishers and dealers who regard every library user as a lost customer.
He is rather, they say, in many cases a customer won--a non-reader added
to the reading class--a possible purchaser of books. But have not
librarians shared somewhat this mistaken and intolerant attitude? How
often do we urge our readers to become book-owners? How often do we give
them information and aid directed toward this end? The success of the
Christmas book exhibitions held in many libraries should be a lesson to
us. The lists issued in connection with these almost always include
prices, publishers' names, and other information intended especially for
the would-be purchaser. But why should we limit our efforts to the holiday
season? True, every librarian does occasionally respond to requests for
advice in book-selection and book-purchase, but the library is not yet
recognized as the great testing field of the would-be book owner; the
librarian is not yet hailed as the community's expert adviser in the
selection and purchase of books, as well as its book guardian and book
distributor. That this may be and should be, I believe. It will be if the
librarian wills it.
Are we straying from our subject? No; for from our present standpoint a
book bought is a book reread. My ideal private library is a room, be it
large or small, lined with books, every one of which is the owner's
familiar friend, some almost known by heart, others re-read many times,
others still waiting to be re-read.
But how about the man whose first selection for this intimate personal
group would be a complete set of the works of George Ade? Well, if that is
his taste, let his library reflect it. Let a man be himself. That there is
virtue in merely surrounding oneself with the great masters of literature
all unread and unloved, I can not see. Better acknowledge your poor taste
than be a hypocrite.
The librarian can not force the classics down the unwilling throats of
those who do not care for them and are perhaps unfitted to appreciate
them. There has been entirely too much of this already and it has resulted
disastrously. Surely, a sane via media is possible, and we may agree that
a man will never like Eschylus, without assuring him that Eschylus is an
out-of-date old fogy, while on the other hand we may acknowledge the
greatness of Homer and Milton without trying to force them upon unwilling
and incompetent readers. After all it is not so much a question of Milton
versus George Ade, as it is of sanity and wholesomeness against vulgarity
and morbidity. And if I were to walk through one city and behold
collections of this latter sort predominating and then through another,
where my eyes were gladdened with evidences of good taste, of love for
humor that is wholesome, sentiment that is sane, verse that is tuneful and
noble, I should at once call on the public librarian and I should say to
him, "Thou art the man!" The literary taste of your community is a
reflection of your own as shown forth in your own institution--its
collection of books, the assistants with which you have surrounded
yourself, your attitude and theirs through you toward literature and
toward the public.
But, someone asks, suppose that I am so fortunate and so happy as to sit
in the midst of such a group of friendly authors; how and how often shall
I re-read? Shall I traverse the group every year? He who speaks thus is
playing a part; he is not the real thing. Does the young lover ask how and
how often he shall go to see his sweetheart? Try to see whether you can
keep him away! The book-lover reopens his favorite volume whenever he
feels like it. Among the works on his shelves are books for every mood,
every shade of varying temper and humor. He chooses for the moment the
friend that best corresponds to it, or it may be, the one that may best
woo him away from it. It may be that he will select none of them, but
occupy himself with a pile of newcomers, some of whom may be candidates
for admission to the inner group. The whole thing--the composition of his
library, his attitude toward it, the books that he re-reads oftenest, the
favorite passages that he loves, that he scans fondly with his eye while
yet he can repeat them by heart, his standards of admission to his inner
circle--all is peculiarly and personally his own. There is no other
precisely like it, just as there is no other human being precisely like
its owner. There is as much difference between this kind of a library and
some that we have seen as there is between a live, breathing creature with
a mind and emotions and aspirations, and a wax figure in the Eden Musee.
Thus every book lover re-reads his favorites in a way of his own, just as
every individual human being loves or hates or mourns or rejoices in a way
of his own.
One can no more describe these idiosyncrasies than he can write a history
of all the individuals in the world, but perhaps, in the manner of the
ethnological or zoological classifier, it may interest us to glance at the
types of a few genera or species.
And first, please note that re-reading is the exact repetition of a dual
mental experience, so far at least as one of the minds is concerned. It is
a replica of mind-contact, under conditions obtainable nowhere else in
this world and of such nature that some of them seem almost to partake of
other-worldliness. My yesterday's interview with Smith or Jones, trivial
as it is, I can not repeat. Smith can not remember what he said, and even
if he could, he could not say it to me in the same way and to the same
purpose. But my interview with Plato--with Shakespeare, with Emerson; my
talk with Julius Caesar, with Goethe, with Lincoln! I can duplicate it
once, twice, a hundred times. My own mind--one party to the contact--may
change, but Plato's or Lincoln's is ever the same; they speak no "various
language" like Byrant's nature, but are like that great Author of Nature
who has taken them to Himself, in that in them "is no variableness,
neither shadow of turning." To realize that these men may speak to me
today, across the abyss of time, and that I can count on the same message
tomorrow, next year and on my death bed, in the same authentic words,
producing the same effect, assures me that somewhere, somehow, a miracle
has been wrought.
I have said that one of the minds that come thus into contact changes not,
while the other, the reader's, is alterable. This gives him a sort of
standard by which he can measure or at least estimate, the changes that go
on within him, the temporary ones due to fluctuations in health, strength
or temper, the progressive ones due to natural growth or to outside
influences.
In his "Introduction to Don Quixote," Heine tells us how that book, the
first that he ever read, was his mental companion through life. In that
first perusal knowing not "how much irony God had interwoven into the
world," he looked upon the luckless knight as a real hero of romance and
wept bitterly when his chivalry and generosity met with ingratitude and
violence. A little later, when the satire dawned upon his comprehension,
he could not bear the book. Still later he read it with contemptuous
laughter at the poor knight. But when in later life, he lay racked on a
bed of pain his attitude of sympathy returned. "Dulcinea del Toboso," he
says "is still the most beautiful woman in the world; although I lie
stretched upon the earth, helpless and miserable, I will never take back
that assertion. I can not do otherwise. On with your lances, ye Knights of
the Silver Moon; ye disguised barbers!"
So every reader's viewpoint shifts with the years.
Our friend who welcomes George Ade to his inner sanctuary may find as the
years go on that his reaction to that contact has altered. I should not
recommend that the author be then be cast into outer darkness. Once a
favorite, always a favorite, for old sake's sake even if not for present
power and influence. Our private libraries will hold shelf after shelf of
these old-time favorites--milestones on the intellectual track over which
we have wearily or joyously traveled.
There will always be a warm spot in my heart and a nook on my private
shelf for Oliver Optic and Horatio Alger. Though I bar them from my
library (I mean my Library with a big L) I have no right to exclude them
from my private collection of favorites, for once I loved them. I scarcely
know why or how. If there had been in those far-off days of my boyhood,
children's libraries and children's librarians, I might not have known
them; as it is, they are incidents in my literary past that can not be
blinked, shameful though they may be. The re-reading of such books as
these is interesting because it shows us how far we have traveled since we
counted them among our favorites.
Then there is the book that, despite its acknowledged excellence, the
reader would not perhaps admit to his inner circle if he read it now for
the first time. It holds its place largely on account of the glamour with
which his youth invested it. It thrills him now as it thrilled him then,
but he half suspects that the thrill is largely reminiscent. I sometimes
fancy that as I re-read Ivanhoe and my heart leaps to my mouth when the
knights clash at Ashby, the propulsive power of that leap had its origin
in the emotions of 1870 rather than those of 1914. And when some of
Dickens' pathos--that death-bed of Paul Dombey for instance--brings the
tears again unbidden to my eyes, I suspect, though I scarcely dare to put
my suspicion into words, that the salt in those tears is of the vintage of
1875. I am reading Arnold Bennett now and loving him very dearly when he
is at his best; but how I shall feel about him in 1930 or how I might feel
if I could live until 2014, is another question.
Then there is the book that, scarce comprehended or appreciated when it
was first read, but loved for some magic of expression or turn of thought,
shows new beauties at each re-reading, unfolding like an opening rose and
bringing to view petals of beauty, wit, wisdom and power that were before
unsuspected. This is the kind of book that one loves most to re-read, for
the growth that one sees in it is after all in oneself--not in the book.
The gems that you did not see when you read it first were there then as
they are now. You saw them not then and you see them now, for your mental
sight is stronger--you are more of a man now than you were then.
Not that all the changes of the years are necessarily for the better. They
may be neither for better nor for worse. As the moving train hurries us
onward we may enjoy successively the beauties of canyon, prairie and lake,
admiring each as we come to it without prejudice to what has gone before.
In youth we love only bright colors and their contrasts--brilliant sunsets
and autumn foliage; in later life we come to appreciate also the more
delicate tints and their gradations--a prospect of swamp-land and distant
lake or sea on a gray day; a smoky town in the fog; the tender dove colors
of early dawns. So in youth we eagerly read of blood and glory and wild
adventure; Trollope is insufferably dull. Jane Austen is for old maids;
even such a gem as Cranford we do not rate at its true value. But in after
life how their quiet shades and tints come out! There is no glory in them,
no carnage, no combat; but there is charm and fascination in the very
slowness of their movement, the shortness of their range, their lack of
intensity, the absence of the shrill, high notes and the tremendous bases.
Then there is the re-reading that accuses the reader of another kind of
change--a twist to the right or the left, a cast in the mental eye, or
perhaps the correction of such a cast. The doctrines in some book seemed
strange to you once--almost abhorrent; you are ready to accept them now.
Is it because you then saw through a glass darkly and now more clearly? Or
is your vision darker now than it was? Your rereading apprizes you that
there has been a change of some sort. Perhaps you must await corroborative
testimony before you decide what its nature has been. Possibly you read
today without a blush what your mind of twenty years ago would have been
shocked to meet. Are you broader-minded or just hardened? These questions
are disquieting, but the disturbance that they cause is wholesome, and I
know of no way in which they can be raised in more uncompromising form
than by re-reading an old favorite, by bringing the alterable fabric of
your living, growing and changing mind into contact with the stiff,
unyielding yardstick of an unchangeable mental record--the cast of one
phase of a master mind that once was but has passed on.
Here I can not help saying a word of a kind of re-reading that is not the
perusal of literature at all with most of us--the re-reading of our own
words, written down in previous years--old letters, old lectures,
articles--books, perhaps, if we chance to be authors. Of little value,
perhaps, to others, these are of the greatest interest to ourselves
because instead of measuring our minds by an outside standard they enable
us to set side by side two phases of our own life--the ego of 1892,
perhaps, and that of 1914. How boyish that other ego was; how it jumped to
conclusions; how ignorant it was and how self-confident! And yet, how
fresh it was; how quickly responsive to new impressions; how unspoiled;
how aspiring! If you want to know the changes that have transformed the
mind that was into the very different one that now is, read your own old
letters.
I have tried to show you that pure literature is an art and like other
arts depends primarily upon manner and only secondarily upon matter. That
the artist, who in this case is the author, uses his power to influence
the reader usually through his emotions or feelings and that its effects
to a notable extent, are not marred by repetition. That on this account
all good literature may be re-read over and over, and that the pleasure
derived from such re-reading is a sign that a book is peculiarly adapted
in some way to the reader. Finally, that one's private library, especially
if its size be limited, may well consist of personal favorites, often
re-read.
When the astronomer Kepler had reduced to simple laws the complicated
motions of the planets he cried out in ecstacy: "O God! now think I Thy
thoughts after Thee!" Thus when a great writer of old time has been
vouchsafed a spark of the divine fire we may think his divine thoughts
after him by re-reading. And Shakespeare tells us in that deathless speech
of Portia's, that since mercy is God's attribute we may by exercising it
become like God. Thus, by the mere act of tuning our brains to think the
thoughts that the Almighty has put into the minds of the good and the
great, may it not be that our own thoughts may at the last come to be
shaped in the same mould?
"Old wine, old friends, old books," says the old adage; and of the three
the last are surely the most satisfying. The old wine may turn to vinegar;
old friends may forget or forsake us; but the old book is ever the same.
What would the old man do without it? And to you who are young I would
say--you may re-read, you first must read. Choose worthy books to love. As
for those who know no book long enough either to love or despise it--who
skim through good and bad alike and forget page ninety-nine while reading
page 100, we may simply say to them, in the words of the witty Frenchman,
"What a sad old age you are preparing for yourself!"
HISTORY AND HEREDITY[8]
[8] Read before the New England Society of St. Louis.
In one of his earlier books, Prof. Hugo Munsterberg cites the growing love
for tracing pedigrees as evidence of a dangerous American tendency toward
aristocracy. There are only two little things the matter with this--the
fact and the inference from it. In the first place, we Americans have
always been proud of our ancestry and fond of tracing it; and in the
second place, this fondness is akin, not to aristocracy but to democracy.
It is not the purpose of this paper to prove this thesis in detail, so I
will merely bid you note that aristocratic pedigree-tracers confine
themselves to one line, or to a few lines. Burke will tell you that one of
the great-great-grandfathers of the present Lord Foozlem was the First
Baron; he is silent about his great-grandfather, the tinker, and his
great-grandfather, the pettifogging country lawyer. Americans are far more
apt to push their genealogical investigations in all directions, because
they are prompted by a legitimate curiosity rather than by desire to prove
a point, American genealogical research is biological, while that of
Europe is commercial.
An obvious advantage of interest in our ancestors is that it ought to make
history a more vital thing to us; for to them, history was merely current
events in which they took part, or which, at least, they watched. This
linking up of our personal ancestral lines with past events is done too
seldom. Societies like the New England Society are doing it, and it is for
this reason that I have chosen to bring the subject briefly before you.
It has been noted that our historical notions of the Civil War are now,
and are going to be in the future, more just and less partisan than those
of the Revolution. This is not because we are nearer the Civil War; for
nearness often tends to confuse historical ideas rather than to clear them
up. It is because the descendants of those who fought on both sides are
here with us, citizens of our common country, intermarrying and coming
into contact in a thousand ways. We are not likely to ignore the Southern
standpoint regarding the rights of secession and the events of the
struggle so long as the sons and daughters of Confederate soldiers live
among us. Nor shall we ever forget the Northern point of view while the
descendants of those who fought with Grant and Sherman are our friends and
neighbors.