Novels are excluded from "serious reading," so that the man who, bent
on self-improvement, has been deciding to devote ninety minutes three
times a week to a complete study of the works of Charles Dickens will
be well advised to alter his plans. The reason is not that novels are
not serious--some of the great literature of the world is in the form
of prose fiction--the reason is that bad novels ought not to be read,
and that good novels never demand any appreciable mental application on
the part of the reader. It is only the bad parts of Meredith's novels
that are difficult. A good novel rushes you forward like a skiff down
a stream, and you arrive at the end, perhaps breathless, but
unexhausted. The best novels involve the least strain. Now in the
cultivation of the mind one of the most important factors is precisely
the feeling of strain, of difficulty, of a task which one part of you
is anxious to achieve and another part of you is anxious to shirk; and
that feeling cannot be got in facing a novel. You do not set your
teeth in order to read "Anna Karenina." Therefore, though you should
read novels, you should not read them in those ninety minutes.
Imaginative poetry produces a far greater mental strain than novels. It
produces probably the severest strain of any form of literature. It is
the highest form of literature. It yields the highest form of
pleasure, and teaches the highest form of wisdom. In a word, there is
nothing to compare with it. I say this with sad consciousness of the
fact that the majority of people do not read poetry.
I am persuaded that many excellent persons, if they were confronted
with the alternatives of reading "Paradise Lost" and going round
Trafalgar Square at noonday on their knees in sack-cloth, would choose
the ordeal of public ridicule. Still, I will never cease advising my
friends and enemies to read poetry before anything.
If poetry is what is called "a sealed book" to you, begin by reading
Hazlitt's famous essay on the nature of "poetry in general." It is the
best thing of its kind in English, and no one who has read it can
possibly be under the misapprehension that poetry is a mediaeval
torture, or a mad elephant, or a gun that will go off by itself and
kill at forty paces. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine the mental
state of the man who, after reading Hazlitt's essay, is not urgently
desirous of reading some poetry before his next meal. If the essay so
inspires you I would suggest that you make a commencement with purely
narrative poetry.
There is an infinitely finer English novel, written by a woman, than
anything by George Eliot or the Brontes, or even Jane Austen, which
perhaps you have not read. Its title is "Aurora Leigh," and its author
E.B. Browning. It happens to be written in verse, and to contain a
considerable amount of genuinely fine poetry. Decide to read that book
through, even if you die for it. Forget that it is fine poetry. Read
it simply for the story and the social ideas. And when you have done,
ask yourself honestly whether you still dislike poetry. I have known
more than one person to whom "Aurora Leigh" has been the means of
proving that in assuming they hated poetry they were entirely mistaken.
Of course, if, after Hazlitt, and such an experiment made in the light
of Hazlitt, you are finally assured that there is something in you
which is antagonistic to poetry, you must be content with history or
philosophy. I shall regret it, yet not inconsolably. "The Decline and
Fall" is not to be named in the same day with "Paradise Lost," but it
is a vastly pretty thing; and Herbert Spencer's "First Principles"
simply laughs at the claims of poetry and refuses to be accepted as
aught but the most majestic product of any human mind. I do not
suggest that either of these works is suitable for a tyro in mental
strains. But I see no reason why any man of average intelligence
should not, after a year of continuous reading, be fit to assault the
supreme masterpieces of history or philosophy. The great convenience
of masterpieces is that they are so astonishingly lucid.
I suggest no particular work as a start. The attempt would be futile
in the space of my command. But I have two general suggestions of a
certain importance. The first is to define the direction and scope of
your efforts. Choose a limited period, or a limited subject, or a
single author. Say to yourself: "I will know something about the
French Revolution, or the rise of railways, or the works of John
Keats." And during a given period, to be settled beforehand, confine
yourself to your choice. There is much pleasure to be derived from
being a specialist.
The second suggestion is to think as well as to read. I know people
who read and read, and for all the good it does them they might just as
well cut bread-and-butter. They take to reading as better men take to
drink. They fly through the shires of literature on a motor-car, their
sole object being motion. They will tell you how many books they have
read in a year.
Unless you give at least forty-five minutes to careful, fatiguing
reflection (it is an awful bore at first) upon what you are reading,
your ninety minutes of a night are chiefly wasted. This means that
your pace will be slow.
Never mind.
Forget the goal; think only of the surrounding country; and after a
period, perhaps when you least expect it, you will suddenly find
yourself in a lovely town on a hill.