- ' : THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES < ' : * i THE BOOK-LOVER'S ENCHIRIDION. fifth Cation. an& furtbcr Enlarged A. IRELAND AND CO., PRINTERS MANCHESTER. [Enttrtd at Station*** ftatl.\ A TREASURY OF THOUGHTS Companionship OF Books, GATHF.RRD FROM THK WRITINGS Or THE GREATEST THINKERS, FROM CICERO, PETRARCH, AND MONTAIGNE, TO CARLYLE, EMERSON, AND RUSK1N. MMM; S1MPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO " Infi Hilt Riches in a little room." "Indocti distant et ament meministe periti." " He that reader, as it were, for a wager, though he miss never a wont, shall miss almost all the matter: whereas the studious, and insisting Reader, reads more than fieradventtire a hundred others." EDWARD BLOUNT: " Hone Subsecivse," 1620. College Library PREFACE. MY object in this volume has been to present, in chronological order, a selection of the best thoughts of the greatest and wisest minds on the subject of Books their solace and companionship, their efficacy as silent teachers and guides, and the comfort, as of a living presence, which they afford amidst the changes of fortune and the accidents of life. I was led to undertake this labour of love by the con- sideration that no one had hitherto attempted to give to readers any adequate collection of thoughts on this special subject. The field was, in fact, unoccupied. During the miscellaneous reading of more than fifty years, I had met with many striking passages about books. Of these I took note at the time, tran- scribing them carefully, and garnering them for possible future use. In the course of years the collec- tion assumed a considerable bulk, representing many pleasant excursions into the fields of literature many happy hours of studious leisure. It often struck me that, if revised and published, the selection would be acceptable to a large class of readers. I therefore decided to set about my long-contemplated task, and a few years ago published the first edition of "The Book-Lover's Enchiridion." In a note following this preface is given a detailed account of the various editions of the work. 11161 PREFACE The writers of the present century have, it will be observed, contributed most largely to the general store of thought and reflection, to which this volume is specially devoted. I have not confined myself to any particular class of authors, but have welcomed every good and worthy thought about books, from what- ever source derived. Whenever a suitable passage was met with in the course of my reading, I have not hesitated to adopt it, whoever may have been its author. In the pages of this volume the reader will find himself in a very mixed company. Archbishops, bishops, and learned orthodox doctors of both churches, mingle with historians and men of science, noncon- formist divines, idealists and social reformers, novelists and critics, essayists grave and gay, and philosophical writers of every shade of heterodoxy. The sons and daughters of song form part of the gathering, and add to its variety. Heterogeneous although it may be, there is, nevertheless, a remarkable harmony of opinion among its members on one subject. For a time, differences have disappeared. The acrimony of controversy has subsided, and the strife of creeds, no longer heard, ceases to disturb us. From the motley assembly there comes a united chorus in praise and honour of books. The reader, after listening to Montaigne, or Erasmus, or Bishop Hall, or Richard Baxter, or Isaac Barrow, or John Milton, or Abraham Cowley, can pass on to Samuel Johnson, or William Cowper, or Wordsworth, or Scott, or Lamb, or William Hazlitt, or Macaulay. If he prefers the writers of our own time, he can spend many delightful half-hours over the pages of Cailyle and PREFACE. xii Kmcrson, Lowell and Holmes, Ruskin, Frederic Harrison, or John Morley. Let him be careful to observe how these writers have maintained the purity, strength, flexibility, and comprehensiveness of our language in some instances reaching a splendour and vividness not previously attained in English literature. Nor should he fail to note the various peculiarities and diversities of style each attained and perfected by subtle processes of choice and selec- tion the finest outcome of a cultivated intellect. The study of style alone, afforded by these extracts, will be found not unprofitable. I have been disappointed in not finding in the works of certain notable authors whom it was my wish to quote, any thoughts exactly suitable to my purpose. Where I had expected to give a few pages from some well-known writer, I have only been able to meet with a sentence or two worth adding to my store. This will explain the apparent disproportion in the space allotted to different authors. It may here be said that, with one or two exceptions, my material has been gathered from the original sources the works them- selves of the authors quoted so that the accuracy of the text may be trusted. One of the purposes of this volume is to meet certain needs and moods of thoughtful minds, which seek in books, not amusement or mere passive enjoyment, but the inspiration and quickening influence of high aims and noble purposes. I earnestly hope that it will be the means of awakening and strengthening good resolutions in the young, in the direction of inanfulness and self-help; of teaching the salutary FRF. PACK. lesson how to enjoy a little and endure much ; of raising them to a higher level of thought to a frame of mind which has no sympathy with irreverence, frivolous pursuits, or intellectual indifference. May it aid in implanting a love of literature and science, which shall beautify daily existence, however humble its surroundings, however difficult the means and opportunities for its cultivation! It is not always a disadvantage to have to contend with hindrances in the pursuit of knowledge. On the contrary, the difficulties encountered often prove a beneficent discipline, since they tend to stimulate endeavour, and call forth the power to breast obstacles and to conquer them. In conclusion, if this volume should be found helpful to some of my readers who have passed life's meridian, or arrived at old age some to whom anxiety, or sorrow, or ill-health has brought weary hours it will always be a pleasant thought to me if, by the aid of its pages, the monotony of these hours has been lightened or their tediousness beguiled. Intimate communion with the minds of the wisest and most gifted of our race the kings of thought rarely fails to bring with it, not merely patience and hope wherewith to meet the unavoidable cares and disappointments of life, but also fortitude to bear even its worst calamities. ALEXANDER IRELAND. BBAUCLtrrm TKRKACK, SOL'THPURT, JtttU, NOTE ON PREVIOUS EDITIONS. The first edition of this work was published in 1882. Within a few months a second was called for. The two editions were exhausted in less than a year. They were small in size only 4$ by 3 inches in measurement and easily carried in the pocket, for ready use at spare minutes of time. Being bound in white, with gilt edges, and a pretty device on the side, the little volume had a very neat appearance, and came to be in request as a dainty gift-book. The motto was considered appropriate " Infinite riches in a little room " a line taken from Marlowe's play, The Jew of Malta. The rapid sale of two editions was evidence that the subject-matter was appreciated. I was therefore encouraged to prepare a third, in which the size of the volume was increased, and the quantity of matter nearly doubled by the addition of passages from writers of the last three centuries, which the exigences of space compelled me to ex- clude from the previous editions. The type used for these, although beautifully clear and distinct, was found to be too small for many readers. I therefore adopted a larger size of type for the new edition, which appeared in 1883, and consisted of nearly 4,000 copies. It was widely and most favourably noticed by the press, and I had the additional pleasure of receiving from many distinguished men of letters kind words of approval of the aim and contents of the volume. A limited number of copies were thrown off on large paper, and three appropriate illustrations were intro- duced one of these being a very finely executed fac-simile of a notable letter, addressed by Thomas Cariyle to his friend Leigh Hunt on the appearance of the "Autobiography" of the latter. These special x NOTE ON PREVIOUS EDITIONS. copies were soon taken up, and they are now unattain- able, except when by chance one of them finds its way into a second-hand bookseller's catalogue at a fancy price. Many copies have been sold for the purpose of illustration, some of these extending to several volumes adorned by portraits of the authors quoted, and pictures of their birth-places, homes, and haunts. Before the end of the year the third edition was sold out, and preparations made for a fourth. This gave me the opportunity of still further revision and improve- ment of the contents. Sixteen pages of new matter were added, and I ventured to print the large number of 5,000 copies. At the end of 1887 three years from the date of its publication only 100 copies remained in the hands of the publishers, who accordingly intimated the necessity for a fifth edition. During the last few years I have met with many interesting passages in the writings of authors not previously known to me. From these I have made a rigid selection, and inserted them in the text of the new edition in their proper chronological order. The net result is that the volume is now further enriched with extracts from more than forty authors hitherto unquoted. As it is my intention to make no further additions to the work, the present text may be con- sidered as final. My gratitude and thanks are due to several friends and correspondents who have sent me passages of interest, met with in the course of their reading, and which they considered worth adding to my volume. I have gladly made use of such of those extracts as seemed suitable. CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF AUTHORS QUOTED. B.C. SOTRATBS . . . . . . ALEXANDRIAN LIBRARY .. 300 ClCKRO . . . . . . . HORACE .. .. .. .. . 65 8 SSNECA ST. PAUL .. B.C. A.D. 58 32 A.D. ! QUINTILIAN PLUTARCH PLINY, THE YOUNGER AULUS GBLLIUS 4 115 .. 46-120 61 105 117 180 FROM THE PERSIAN ........ - HINDU SAYING ........ - BISHOP RICHARD DB BURY ...... 12871345 FRANCESCO PBTRARCA ........ 13041374 DOMINICO MANCINI ........ - GEOFFREY CHAUCER ........ 1328 1400 THOMAS A KBMPIS ........ 1380 1471 J. FORTIUS RlNGELBERGIUS ...... 1536 DESIDBRIUS ERASMUS ........ 1467 1536 NICCOLO MACHIAVBLLI ...... 14691527 ANTONIO DB GUEVARA ...... 1544 MARTIN LUTHER ........ 1483 1546 ROGER ASCHAM ........ 15151568 MICHBL DB MONTAIGNE ...... >537 >S9> JOSEPH SCALIGER ........ 15401609 JOHN FLORIO ...... . .. 15451645 xii CHRONOLOGICAL LIST BOOK op COMMON PRAYER 1549 JOHN LYLVB 15531601 SIR PHILIP SIUNBV 15541586 LORD CHAN DOS 1621 LORD BACON 15611629 SAMUEL DANIEL 1562 1619 JOSHUA SYLVESTER 15631618 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 15641616 ALPHONSO, KING or ARRAGON .. .. 13841458 OLD ENGLISH SONG A SIXTEENTH CENTURY WRITER .. .. BEN JONSON 1574 '637 BISHOP JOSEPH HALL 15741656 ARCHBISHOP DB PORRB JOHN FLETCHBR 15761625 ROBERT BURTON 15761640 SIR THOMAS OVBRBURY 15811613 JOHN HALES 15841656 BALTHASAR BONIFACIUS RHODIGINUS .. 15841659 FRANCIS OSBORNB 1659 LEO ALLATIUS 15861669 GEORGE WITHER 15881667 BISHOP HACKET 15921670 JAMES SHIRLEY 15941666 JUAN EUSBBIO NIEREMBERGIUS .. .. 15951658 SIR WILLIAM WALLER 15971668 ANTONY TUCKNEY .. 1599 1670 FRANCISCO DB RIOJA 16001659 PETER DU MOULIN 16001684 DR. JOHN EARLE 16011665 SIR WILLIAM DAYEMANT .. . . .. 16051668 SIR THOMAS BROWNE 16051682 THOMAS FULLER 16081661 JOHN MILTON 1608 1674 EARL or CLARENDON 1608 1674 SIR MATTHEW HALE 1609 1676 SAMUEL SORBIERE 16101670 OWEN FELTHAM . 16101678 OF AUTHORS. xin BKNJAMIN WHICMCOTK . 16101683 EARLY ENGLISH WRITER M. TOINAKL) 1639 1706 JKREMV TAYLOR 16131667 Due DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD . 16131680 GILLES MBNAGR 1613 1692 EARL or BEDFORD 16131700 UBBAIN CHHVREAU 1613 1701 RICHARD BAXTER 16151691 DR. JOHN OWEN 16161683 ABRAHAM Cowurv 16181667 THOMAS V. BARTHOLIN 16191680 FRANCOIS CHARPBNTIER 16901703 HENRY VAUGHAN 1631169; JOHN HALL 16371656 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 16381698 ISAAC BARROW 1630 1677 CHARLES COTTON 16301687 BISHOP MUST 1630 1731 JOHN LOCKE 1633 1704 ROBERT SOUTH 16331716 SIR GEORGE MACKENZIE 16361691 JEAN DE LA BRUYKRB 16441696 A SEVENTEENTH CENTURY DIVINE .. JEREMY COLLIER 16501726 ARCHBISHOP FBNBLON 1651 1715 CHARLES BLOUNT 1654 1697 THOMAS FULLER, M.D. 1654 1734 VISCOUNT LONSDALB 1655 1700 EDMUND HALLEY 16561743 JOHN NORRIS OP BEMBRTON .. .. 16571711 JONATHAN SWIFT 1667 1745 WILLIAM CONGRBVB 1670 1739 SIR RICHARD STBBLE 16711739 JOSEPH ADDISON 1673 1719 ROGER GALE 16731744 ISAAC WATTS .. 16741748 CONYBRS MlDDLKTON 16831750 xir CHRONOLOGICAL LIST THOS. SHERIDAN ALEXANDER POPE BARON MONTESQUIEU LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU LORD CHESTERFIELD FRANCOIS M. A. OE VOLTAIRE MATTHEW GREEN JAMES THOMSON JOHN WESLEY SAMUEL JOHNSON DAVID HUME JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU LAURENCE STERNE DENIS DIDEROT WILLIAM SHENSTONB .. HORACE WALPOLE OLIVER GOLDSMITH WILLIAM DODD GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING EDMUND BURKE JOHN MOORE WILLIAM COWPER EDWARD GIBBON J. G. VON HERDER SIR WILLIAM JONES DANIEL WVTTENBACH .. COUNTESS DE GENUS .. JOHN AIKIN RICHARD CECIL .. .. J. WOLFGANG VON GOETHE .. TOMAS DE YRIARTE ELIZABETH INCHBALD .. WILLIAM ROSCOE GEORGE CRABBE WILLIAM GODWIN FRIEDRICH SCHILLER .. WILLIAM COBBETT SlR S EtiERTON liKYUGKb 1684 1738 16881744 16891755 1690 1762 1694-1773 16941778 16961737 1700 1748 17031791 17091784 17131776 17131778 1713 1768 17131789 17141763 17171797 17281774 17291777 1729 1781 1729 '797 17301802 1731 1800 737 1794 17441803 1746-1794 17461820 1746 1830 1747 '822 1748 1816 17491832 17501791 17531821 17531831 17541832 17561836 17591805 1762 1835 17621837 OF AUTHORS. xv JEAN PAUL F. RICHTER 17631815 JOHN FBKRIAR 17641815 ISAAC DISRAELI 17671848 JOHN FOSTER 17701843 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 17701850 SIR WALTER SCOTT 1771 1832 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 17731834 ROBERT SOUTHEY 17741843 CHARLES LAMB 1775 1834 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 17751864 T. FROGNALL DIBDIN 1776 1847 WILLIAM HAZLITT 17781830 HENRY BROUGHAM 1778 1868 CHARLES C. COLTON 1780 1832 WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING .. .. 1780 1843 JOHN KBNYON 1783 1856 WASHINGTON IRVING 17831859 LEIGH HUNT 1784 1859 THOMAS OB QUINCEY 1785 1859 THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK 1785 1866 RICHARD WHATBLY 17871863 ISAAC TAYLOR 17871865 BRYAN W. PROCTER (BARRY CORNWALL) .. 1787 1874 LORD BYRON 17881824 NEIL ARNOTT 17881884 ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER 1788 1860 CHARLES KNIGHT .. .. .. .. 17911873 LORD MAHON 17911875 PERCY BYSSHB SHBLLBY 17931882 SIR JOHN HBRSCHEL 1792 1871 THOS. ARNOLD 1795 1842 THOMAS NOON TALFOURD 17951854 JULIUS C. HARE 17951855 THOMAS CARL VLB 1795 1881 HARTLEY COLERIDGE .. .. .. 1796 1849 CONNOP THIRLWALL . .. . .. 1797 1875 THOMAS HOOD 1798 1845 A. UXONSON ALCOTT 17991888 xri CHRONOLOGICAL LIST T. R MACAULAV 1800-1859 WILLIAM CHAMBERS 18001883 JAMES CROSSLEY 18001883 EARL or SHAFTESBURY 18011885 Hi-en MILLIE 18091856 ROBERT CHAMBERS .. ~ .. .. 18021871 CHIEF JUSTICE COCKBURM iBo 1880 VICTOR HUGO 18091885 K. L. BULWER(LORD LYTTON) .. .. 1803-1873 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 18031882 RICHARD COBDBN 18041865 FREDERICK DEMISON MAURICE . . .. 1805 1872 SAMUEL PALMER 18051881 BENJAMIN DISRAELI (LORD BEACOHSFIELD) 1804 1881 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW .. 1807 1882 HENRY REED 1808 1854 CAROLINE NORTON .. .. .. .. 18081877 GEORGE & HILLARD 1808 1879 J. G. WHITTIER 1808 ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT .. .. 1806 1861 ROBERT ARIS WILLMOTT 18091862 JOHN HILL BURTON 18091881 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 1809 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE .. .. 1809 MARY COWDBN-CLARKB 1809 R. M. MILNES (LORD HOUGHTON) .. 18091885 THEODORE PARKER 18101860 JOHN BROWN 1810 i88a SAMUEL LAINC 1810 W. M. THACKERAY 18111863 JOHN BRIGHT 1811 ROBERT Lowe (LORD SHERBROOKE) .. 1811 SARA P. PARTON (FANNY FERN) .. .. 18111872 CHARLES SUMNER 18111874 CHARLES BRAY 18111884 FRANCIS BENNOCH 1812 JOHN CAMERON 1812 GEORGE GILFILLAN 18131878 OF AUTHORS. xvii MARK PATTISON 18131884 HBNKY WARD BRRCHBK 1813 1887 ANTHONY TROLLOPS 18151882 FREDERICK WILLIAM ROBERTSON .. 18161853 GKORGB S. PHILLIPS (JANUARY SBARLE) .. 1816 i88a JOHN G. SAXB 1816 PHILIP JAMBS BAILEY 1816 SIR ARTHUR HELPS 18171875 SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTB (LORD IDDES- LEIGH) _ .. 18181887 ELIZA COOK .. .. 1818 CHARLES KINGSLBY .. .. .. .. 18191875 JOHN RUSKIN .. 1819 JAMBS RUSSELL LOWELL 1819 EDWIN P. WHIPPLB 18191886 WALT WHITMAN 1819 MARIAN EVANS (GBOROK ELIOT) .. .. 1820 1881 GEORGE DAWSON iSai 1876 ROBERT LBIGHTON 18391869 CHARLES BUXTON i8aa 1871 J. A. LANGFORD 1893 ROBBRT COLLVER 1893 JAMES HAIN FRISWBLL 1837 1878 C. K.BGAN PAUL 1898 EDWARJD BUTLER 1828 ALEXANDER SMITH 1830 1867 W. H. RANDS (MATTHEW BROWNE) .. 1889 JAMES PAYN 1830 GEORGE J. GOSCHBN 1831 FREDERIC HARRISON 1831 EARL LYTTON (OWBN MEREDITH) .. .. 1831 PHILIP GILBERT HAMBRTON 1834 SIR JOHN LUBBOCK .. .. .. .. 1834 FRANK CARR (LAUNCELOT CROSS) .. 1834 SIR G. O. TRBVBLVAN 1838 JOHN MORLBV 1838 WILLIAM FRERLAND 1898 FRANCES R. HAVKKC AL 18361879 *viu LIST OF AUTHORS. ALEX ANDIR LAMONT 1843 WILLIAM E. A. AXON 1846 ANDREW LANG .. 1844 J. FREEMAN CLARKE AUSTIN DOBSOM 1840 ROBERT Louis STEVENSON 1850 CHARLES F. RICHARDSON 1851 R- H. STODIMRD WILLIS GATLORD CLARK 18101841 CYRUS HAMLIN J. ROGERS RBKS 1856 JAMES WILLIAMS 1850 RICMARO LB GALLIENNB 1866 ANONYMOUS AUTHORS. A WOMAN'S TRIBUTB TO BOOKS. REMARKS ON BOOK-BORROWERS. These studies are the aliment of youth, the comfort of old age ; an adornment of prosperity, a refuge and a solace in adversity ; a delight in our home, and no incumbrance abroad ; companions in oar long nights, in our travels, in our country retirement. Cicero. To divert myself from a troublesome fancy, 'tis but to run to my books. They always receive me with the same kindness. The sick man is not to be lamented, who has his cure in his sleeve. In the experience and practice of this sentence, which is a very true one, all the benefit I reap from books consists. . . . They are the best viaticum I have yet found out for this human journey. Montaigne. Good books are true friends that will neither flatter nor dissemble : be you but true to yourself, applying that which they teach . . . and you shall need no other comfort nor counsel. Bacon. For Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potencie of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are ; nay, they do preserve, as in a viall, the purest emcacie and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. ... A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalm'd and treasur'd up on purpose to a life beyond life. Milton. A taste for books is the pleasure and glory of my life. The miseries of a vacant life are never known to a man whose hours are insufficient for the inex- haustible pleasure of study. Gibbon. . . . Books, we know, Are a substantial world, both pure and good ; Round which, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, Our pastime and our happiness will grow. Wordsworth. Books are the first and last, the most home-felt, the most heart-felt of all our enjoyments. Actions pass away and are forgotten; conquerors, statesmen, and kings live but by their names stamped on the page of history. . . . But the dead authors are living men, still breathing and moving in their writings. . . . Intellect only is immortal, and bequeathed unimpaired to posterity. Words are the only things that last for ever. Hazlitt. In Books lies the soul of the whole Past Time; the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream. . . . All that Mankind has done, thought, gained, or been ; it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of Books. . . . Any good book, any book that is wiser than yourself, will teach you something, a great many things, directly and indirectly, if your mind be open to learn. This old counsel of Johnson's is also good and universally applicable : ' ' Read the book you do honestly feel a wish and curiosity to read." The very wish and curiosity indicates that you, then and there, are the person likely to get good of it. Carlyle. In the highest civilization the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satis- factions is provided with a resource against calamity. Angels they are to us of entertainment, sympathy, and provocation silent guides, tractable prophets, historians, and singers, whose embalmed life is the highest feat of art; who now cast their moonlight illumination over solitude, weariness, and fallen fortunes. Emerson. THE '0 fincbtrifcfon. SOLOMON. B.C. 1033 975. He that walketb with wise men shall be wise. Proverbs xiii. 20. A word spoken in due season, how good is it! Proverbs xv. 23. Apply thine heart unto instruction, and thine ears to the words of knowledge. Proverbs xxiii. 12. SOCRATES. B.C. 468 399. Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings; so you shall come easily by what others have laboured hard for. Prefer knowledge to wealth, for the one is transitory, the other perpetual. INSCRIPTION ON THE LIBRARY AT ALEX- ANDRIA. FOUNDED ABOUT 300 B.C. The nourishment of the soul ; or, according to Dio- dorous, the medicine of the mind. . PLATO. PLATO. B.C. 427 347. Books are the immortal sons deifying their sires. [The following passage, comparing books with the interchange of living speech, deserves to be quoted (although on the opposite side). "Plato's tone," observes Dr. J. Martineau, "as in this passage, is invariably depreciatory of everything committed to writing, with the exception of laws. In the immediate context of this quotation, be complains that Theuth, the inventor of letters, has ruined men's memories and living command of their knowledge, by inducing a lazy trust in records ready to their hand : and he limits the benefit of the litera scripta to the compensation it provides for the failing memory of old age, when reading naturally becomes the great solace of life. The passage is touched with an indescribable tincture of pathetic humour."] Trans. Writing has this terrible disadvantage, which puts it on the same footing with painting. The artist's productions stand before you, as if they were alive : but if you ask them anything, they keep a solemn silence. Just so with written discourse : you would fancy it full of the thoughts it speaks : but if you ask it something that you want to know about what is said, it looks at you always with the same one sign. And, once com- mitted to writing, discourse is tossed about everywhere indiscriminately among those who understand and those to whom it is nought ; and cannot select the fit from the unfit. And when maltreated and unjustly CICERO. 3 abused, it is always in need of its father to help it; for it has no power to help or defend itself. Dialogues: "Phadrus," quoted by Dr. J. Martineau, in "Types of Ethical Theory" vol. i., /. in. The same passage is thus translated by Professor Jowett : I cannot help feeling, Phaedrus, that writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence. And the same may be said of speeches. You would imagine that they had intelligence, but if you want to know anything and put a question to one of them, the speaker always gives one unvarying answer. And when they have been once written down they are tossed about anywhere among those who do and among those who do not understand them. And they have no reticences or proprieties towards different classes of persons, and, if they are unjustly assailed or abused, their parent is needed to protect his off- spring, for they cannot protect or defend themselves. {The Dialogues of Plato, translated by B. Jowett, M.A., vol. i., p. 711, "Pkadrus."] CICERO. B.C. 106 41. Nam cetera neque temporum sunt, neque cetatum omnium, neque locorum ; at hsec studia adolescentiam alunt, senectutem oblectant, secundas res ornant, adversis perfugium ac solatium pncbent ; delectant domi, non impediunt foris ; pemoctant nobiscum, peregrinantur, rusticantnr. Pro Archia Poetd, cap. 7. 4 HORACE-SEJfXCA. Trans. For other occupations are not for all times, or all ages, or all places. But these studies are the ali- ment of youth, the comfort of old age ; an adornment of prosperity, a refuge and a solace in adversity; a delight in our home, and no incumbrance abroad ; companions in our long nights, in our travels, in our country retirement. [Translated by R. R. Dees.] HORACE. B.C. 65 8. Lectio, quae placuit, decies repetita placebit. De Arte Poet., line 365. Trans. The reading which has pleased, will please when repeated ten times. O rus, quando ego te aspiciam ? quandoque licebit, Nunc veterum libris, nunc somno et inertibus horis, Ducere solicits jucunda oblivia vitae? Sat. II. Trans. O country, when shall I behold thee? When shall I be permitted to enjoy a sweet oblivion of the anxieties of life, sometimes occupied with the writings of the men of old, sometimes in slumbrous ease, or tranquil abstraction? [Translated by R. R. Dees.} SENECA. B.C. 58 A.D. 32. It does not matter how many, but how good, books you have. Leisure without study is death, and the grave of a living man. ... If you devote your time to study, you will avoid all the irksomeness of this life ; nor will you long for the approach of night, being tired of the day ; nor will yon be a burden to yourself, nor your society insupportable to others. PLUTARCH-QVINTILIAN. j He that is well employed in his study, though he may seem to do nothing, yet does the greatest things of all others. Epist. 15, 82, 84. The crowd of teachers is burdensome and not in- structive ; and it is much better to trust yourself to a few good authors than to wander through several De Tranq. An. 9. PLUTARCH. A.D. 46 120. We ought to regard books as we do sweetmeats, not wholly to aim at the pleasantest, but chiefly to respect the wholesomest; not forbidding either, but approving the latter most. AULUS GELLIUS. dr. 117 180 A.D. The things which are well said do not improve the disposition of the young so much as those which are wickedly said corrupt them. Noct. Alt. 12, 2. QUINTILIAN. A.D. 42 115. Reading is free, and does not exhaust itself with the act, but may be repeated, in case you are in doubt, or wish to impress it deeply on the memory. Let us repeat it; and just as we swallow our food masti- cated and nearly fluid, in order that it may be more easily digested so our reading should not be delivered to the memory in its crude state, but sweetened and worked up by frequent repetition. Inst. Oreti. 10, i. 6 PLfNyST. PAUL. Every good writer is to be read, and diligently ; and, when the volume is finished, is to be gone through again from the beginning. Id. 10. The reader should not at once persuade himself that all things that the best writers have said are absolutely perfect Id. IO. [Translated by J. N.} PLINY, THE YOUNGER. A.D. 61. d. AFTER 105. The elder Pliny used to say that no Book was so bad but that some part of it might be profitable. Epist. 3. They say we should read much, not many things. 747- ST. PAUL. A.D. 65. For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning. Romans xv. 4. All may learn, and all may be comforted. I Corin- thians xiv. 31. FROM THE PERSIAN. A wise man knows an ignorant one, because he has been ignorant himself; but the ignorant cannot recog- nise the wise, because he has never been wise. HINDU SAYING.. The words of the good are like a staff in a slippery place. PERSIAN SAYING-RICHARD DE BURY FROM THE PERSIAN. They asked their wisest man by what means he had attained to such a degree of knowledge ? He replied : "Whatever I did not know, I was not ashamed to inquire about. Inquire about everything that you do not know ; since, for the small trouble of asking, you will be guided in the road of knowledge." RICHARD DE BURY. 1287 1345. In Books we find the dead as it were living ; in Books we foresee things to come ; in Books warlike affairs are methodized ; the rights of peace proceed from Books. All things are corrupted and decay with time. Saturn never ceases to devour those whom he generates; insomuch that the glory of the world would be lost in oblivion if God had not provided mortals with a remedy in Books. Alexander the ruler of the world ; Julius the invader of the world and of the city, the first who in unity of person assumed the empire in arms and arts ; the faithful Fabricius, the rigid Cato, would at this day have been without a memorial if the aid of Books had failed them. Towers are razed to the earth, cities overthrown, triumphal arches mouldered to dust; nor can the King or Pope be found, upon whom the privilege of a lasting name can be conferred more easily than by Books. A Book made, renders succession to the author : for as long as the Book exists, the author remaining adamm, im- mortal, cannot perish. . . . The holy Boetius attributes a threefold existence to Truth, in the mind, t RICHARD DB BURY. in the voice, and in writing ; it appears to abide most usefully and fructify most productively of advantage in Books. For the Truth of the voice perishes with the sound. Truth latent in the mind, is hidden wisdom and invisible treasure ; but the Truth which illuminates Books desires to manifest itself to every disciplinable sense, to the sight when read, to the hearing when heard : it, moreover, in a manner commends itself to the touch, when submitting to be transcribed, collated, corrected and preserved. Truth confined to the mind, though it may be the possession of a noble soul, while it wants a companion and is not judged of, either by the sight, or the hearing, appears to be inconsistent with pleasure. But the Truth of the voice is open to the hearing only, and latent to the sight (which shows us many differences of things fixed upon by a most subtle motion, beginning and ending as it were simul- taneously). But the Truth written in a Book, being not fluctuating, but permanent, shows itself openly to the sight, passing through the spiritual ways of the eyes, as the porches and halls of common sense and imagi- nation ; it enters the chamber of intellect, reposes itself upon the couch of memory, and there congene- rates the eternal Truth of the mind. Lastly, let us consider how great a commodity of doctrine exists in Books, how easily, how secretly, how safely they expose the nakedness of human igno- rance without putting it to shame. These are the masters who instruct us without rods and ferules, without hard words and anger, without clothes or money. If you approach them, they are not asleep ; if investigating you interrogate them, they conceal RICHARD DE BURY PETRARCH. 9 nothing ; if you mistake them, they never grumble ; if you are ignorant, they cannot laugh at you. You only, O Books, are liberal and independent. You give to all who ask, and enfranchise all who serve you assiduously. . . . Truly you are the ears filled with most palatable grains. . . . You are golden urns in which manna is laid up, rocks flowing with honey, or rather indeed honeycombs ; udders most copiously yielding the milk of life, store- rooms ever full ; the four-streamed river of Paradise, where the human mind is fed, and the arid intellect moistened and watered ; . . . fruitful olives, vines of Engaddi, fig-trees knowing no sterility ; burning lamps to be ever held in the hand. The library, therefore, of wisdom is more precious than all riches, and nothing that can be wished for is worthy to be compared with it. Whosoever, therefore, acknowledges himself to be a zealous follower of truth, of happiness, of wisdom, of science, or even of the faith, must of necessity make himself a Lover of Books. Philobiblon, a Treatise on the Love of Books : written in Latin in 1344, and translated from the first edition, 1473. yj- B> Inglis. (London, 1832.,) FRANCESCO PETRARCA. 1304 1374. Books never pall on me. . . . They discourse with us, they take counsel with us, and are united to us by a certain living chatty familiarity. And not only does each book inspire the sense that it belongs to its readers, but it also suggests the name of others, and one begets the desire of the other. Epistola de Rebus Fatniliarious (Jos. Francasettfs Edition). io FBTRARCH. Epistle viiL, Book xvii., is devoted to shewing "how contemptible is the lust of wealth when compared with the noble thirst for learning." JOY [loijuitur] : I consider Books aids to learning. REASON : But take care lest they are rather hin- drances ; some have been prevented from conquering by the numbers of their soldiers, so many have found the multitude of their books a hindrance to learning, and abundance has bred want, as sometimes happens. But if the many Books are at hand, they are not to be cast aside, but to be gleaned, and the best used ; and care should be taken that those which might have proved seasonable auxiliaries, do not become hindrances out of season. De Kemediis utri usque Fortitna t Edition of 1613, /. 174. [Translated ly /. A^.] The friends of Petrarch apologired to him for the length of time between their visits : " It is impossible for us to follow your example: the life you lead is contrary to human nature. In winter, you sit like an owl, in the chimney corner. In summer, you are running incessantly about the fields." Petrarch smiled at these observations : "These people," said he, "consider the pleasures of the world as the supreme good, and cannot bear the idea of renouncing them. I have FRIENDS, whose society is extremely agreeable to me : they are of all ages, and of every country. They have dis- tinguished themselves both in the cabinet and in the field, and obtained high honours for their knowledge of the sciences. It is easy to gain access to them ; PETRARCH MANCfNI. n for they arc always at my service, and I admit them to my company, and dismiss them from it, whenever I please. They are never troublesome, but immediately answer every question I ask them. Some relate to me the events of past ages, while others reveal to me the secrets of nature. Some teach me how to live, and others how to die. Some, by their vivacity, drive away my cares and exhilarate my spirits, while others give fortitude to my mind, and teach me the important lesson how to restrain ray desires, and to depend wholly on myself. They open to me, in short, the various avenues of all the arts and sciences, and upon their information I safely rely, in all emergencies. In return for all these services, they only ask me to ac- commodate them with a convenient chamber in some corner of my humble habitation, where they may repose in peace : for these friends are more delighted by the tranquillity of retirement, than with the tumults of society." DOMINICO MANCINI (A CONTEMPORARY OF PETRARCH). In vain that husbandman his seed doth sow, If he his crop not in due season mow. A general sets his army in array In vain, unless he fight, and win the day. Tis virtuous action that must praise bring forth, Without which slow advice is little worth. Yet they who give good counsel, praise deserve, Though in the active part they cannot serve : ra MANCINI-CHA UCER. In action, learned counsellors their age, Profession, or disease, forbids t' engage. Nor to philosophers is praise deny'd, Whose wise instructions after -ages guide ; Yet vainly most their age in study spend ; No end of writing books, and to no end : Beating their brains for strange and hidden things, Whose knowledge, nor delight nor profit brings : Themselves with doubt both day and night perplex, Nor gentle reader please, or teach, but vex. Bks should to one of these four ends conduce, For wisdom, piety, delight, or use. Then seek to know those things which make us blest, And having found them, lock them in thy breast. In vain on study time away we throw, When we forbear to act the things we know. God, who to thee reason and knowledge lent, Will ask how these two talents have been spent Libellus de quattuor Virtutibus, Paris, 1484. Translated by Sir John Denham. Chal- mers 1 English Poe/s, vol. vii. /. 255. GEOFFREY CHAUCER. 1328 1400. A Clerke ther was of Oxenford also, That unto logik hadde long i-go For him was lever have at his beddes head Twenty bookes, clothed in blak and reed, Of Aristotil, and of his philosophic. CHAUCER THOMAS A KEMPIS. ij But al though he were a philosophic, Yet hadde he but litul gold in cofre ; But al that he might of his frendes hente, On bookes and his lernyng he it spente. Prologue to (he Canterbury Tales. And as for me, though that I konne but lyte, On bokes for to rede I me delyte, And to hem yeve I feyth and fill credence, And in myn herte have hem in reverence So hertely, that ther is game noon, That fro my bokes maketh me to goon, Rut yt be seldome on the holy day, Save, certeynly, whan that the monethe of May Is comen, and that I here the foules synge, And that the floures gynnen for to sprynge, Farwcl my boke, and my devocion ! Prologue to the Legende of Goode Women. For out of old fieldes, as men saithe, Cometh all this new come fro yere to yere, And out of old bookes, in good faithe, Cometh al this new science that men lere. The Assembly of Foules. THOMAS A KEMPIS. 1380 1471. If thou wilt receive profit, read with humility, sim- plicity, and faith ; and seek not at any time the fame of being learned. Book I. chap. v. Verily, when the day of judgment comes, we shnU not be examined what we have read, but what we have , 4 RINGELBERG1US. done ; nor how learnedly we have spoken, but how religiously we have lived. Book I. chap, vi. JOACHIMUS FORTIUS RlNGELBERGIUS. d. 1536. Let no one be dejected, if he is not conscious of any great advantage in study at first For as we know, that the hour-hand of a timepiece moves progressively onward, notwithstanding we cannot discern its mo- mentary motion ; and as we see trees and herbs increase and grow to maturity, although we are not able to perceive their hourly progress ; so do we know that learning and study, although their transitions be imperceptible at the moment of observation, are sure in their advancement. The merchant thinks himself happy if after a ten years voyage, after a thousand dangers, he at length improves his fortune ; and shall we, like poor- spirited creatures, give up all hopes after the first onset ? No ! let us rather adopt this as our maxim, that whatever the mind has commanded itself to do, it is sure of obtaining its purpose. To those who are accustomed to spend more time in slumber than the nature of their studies, and these our admonitions will admit of; an alarum clock, which might be set to any hour they chose, would be found highly serviceable. I myself, when I have been upon a journey, or sojourning in any place where a machine of this kind could not be obtained, have actually slept upon two flat pieces of wood, laid transversely upon RINGELBERGIUS. 15 my bed, lest I should slumber too long. Nor have I felt any inconvenience from this, for I have uniformly found by experience, that when weary, I have slept soundly, notwithstanding the hardness of my couch, and when sufficiently refreshed, the hardness of my couch has compelled me to quit it But this to most men would be a harsh experiment, and one which per- haps few, however attached they may be to literary pursuits, would care to try. I therefore recommend the alarum in preference ; or what is infinitely better than cither, a firm resolution not to continue to slumber after a certain hour of the morning. Let us detach ourselves from things trifling and insignificant, and give ourselves up to the study of things worthy our nature and capacity. We all value our possessions, much more ought we to estimate our time. Yet such is the irrationality of our conduct, that if we should happen by some mischance to lose a portion of our property, which by industry may be easily recovered, we fill the air with our lamentations ; but we not only bear the loss of time, which can never be recovered, with equanimity, but with manifest indications of joy and satisfaction. He who aspires to the character of a man of learning, has taken upon himself the performance of no common task. The ocean of literature is without limit. How then will he be able to perform a voyage, even to a moderate distance, if he waste his time in dalliance on the shore ? Our only hope is in exertion. 16 ERASMUS. Let our only reward be that of industry. Unless we are vigilant to gather the fruit of time, whilst the autumn of life is yet with us ; we shall, at the close of its winter, descend into the grave as the bexsts which perish, without having left a record behind us to in- form posterity that we ever existed. " De Ration* Studii;" translate J by G. B. Earp,from the Edition of Krpenius [1619], who gave it the title of "Liber vere Aureus," or " The truly Golden Treatist." DESIDERIUS ERASMUS. 14671536. At the first it is no great Matter how much you Learn ; but how well you learn it. And now take a Direction how you may not only learn well, but easily too ; for the right Method of Art qualifies the Artist to perform his Work not only well and expeditiously, but easily too. Divide the Day into Tasks, as we read Pliny the Second, and Pope Pius the Great did, Men worthy to be remember'd by all Men. In the first Part of it, which is the chief Thing of all, hear the Master interpret, not only attentively, but with a Sort of Greediness, not being content to follow him in his Dissertations with a slow Pace, but striving to out-strip him a little. Fix all his Sayings in your Memory, and commit the most material of them to Writing, the faithful Keeper of Words. And be sure to take Care not to rely upon them, as that ridiculous rich Man that Seneca speaks of did, who had form'd a Notion, that whatsoever of Literature any of his Servants had, was his own. By no Means have your Study furnish'd with learned Books, and be unlearned yourself. Don't ERASMUS. , 7 suffer what you hear to slip out of your Memory, but recite it either with yourself, or to other Persons. Nor let this suffice you, but set apart some certain Time for Medita- tion ; which one Thing as St. Aurelius writes does most notably conduce to assist both Wit and Memory. An Engagement and combating of Wits does in an extraor- dinary Manner both shew the Strength of Genius's, rouzes them, and augments them. If you are in Doubt of any Thing, don't be asham'd to ask ; or if you have committed an Error, to be corrected. Avoid late and unseasonable Studies, for they murder Wit, and are very prejudicial to Health. The Muses love the Morning, and that is a fit Time for Study. After you have din'd, either divert yourself at some Exercise, or take a Walk, and discourse merrily, and Study between whiles. As for Diet, eat only as much as shall be sufficient to preserve Health, and not as much or more than the Appetite may crave. Before Supper, take a little Walk, and do the same after Supper. A little before you go to-sleep read some- thing that is exquisite, and worth remembring ; and contemplate upon it till you fall asleep ; and when you awake in the Morning, call yourself to an Account for it. Always keep this Sentence of Pliny's in your Mind, All that time is lost that you don't bestow on Study. Think upon this, that there is nothing more fleeting than Youth, which, when once it is past, can never be recall'd. But now I begin to be an Exhorter, when I promis'd to be a Director. My sweet Christian, follow this Method, or a better, if you can ; and so farewell. "Colloquies: Of the Method of Study ; To Christianus of Lubtch" [Front the Latin text of P. Scrivtr's Edition, printed by the Eltevirs, 1643.] C * MACHIA VELLIL UTHER. NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI. 1469 1527. When evening has arrived, I return home, and go into my study. ... I pass into the antique courts of ancient men, where, welcomed lovingly by them, I feed upon the food which is my own, and for which I was born. Here, I can speak with them without show, and can ask of them the motives of their actions ; and they respond to me by virtue of their humanity. For hours together, the miseries of life no longer annoy me ; I forget every vexation ; I do not fear poverty ; and death itself does not dismay me, for I have altogether transferred myself to those with whom I hold converse. Opere di Machiavelli, Editions Italia, 1813, vol. viii. [Translated by E. ff.] MARTIN LUTHER. 1483 1546. Every great book is an action, and every great action is a book. All who would study with advantage in any art what- soever, 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. Table Talk. ROGER ASCHAM. 15151568. Before I went into Germany, I came to Broadgate in Leicestershire, to take my leave of that noble lady Jane Grey, to whom I was exceeding much beholding. ROGER ASCHAM. 19 Her parents, the duke and duchess, with all the house- hold, gentlemen and gentlewomen, were hunting in the park. I found her in her chamber, reading Phado Platonis in Greek, and that with as much delight as some gentlemen would read a merry tale in Boccace. After salutation, and duty done, with some other talk, I asked her, why she would leese such pastime in the park? Smiling, she answered me; "I wist, all their sport in the park is but a shadow to that pleasure that I find in Plato. Alas ! good folk, they never felt what true pleasure meant." "And howcameyou, madam, "quoth I, "to this deep knowledge of pleasure? and what did chiefly allure you into it, seeing not many women, but very few men, have attained thereunto?" "I will tell you," quoth she, "and tell you a truth, which perchance ye will marvel at. One of the greatest benefits that ever God gave me, is, that he sent me so sharp and severe parents, and so gentle a schoolmaster. For when I am in presence either of father or mother ; whether I speak, keep silence, sit, stand, or go, eat, drink, be merry, or sad, be sewing, playing, dancing, or doing anything else ; I must do it, as it were, in such weight, measure, and number, even so perfectly, as God made the world ; or else I am so sharply taunted, so cruelly threatened, yea presently sometimes with pinches, nips, and bobs, and other ways (which I will not name for the honour I bear them) so without measure misordered, that I think myself in hell, till time come that I must go to Mr. Elmer ; who teacheth me so gently, so pleasantly, with such fair allurements to learning, that I think all the time nothing whiles I am with him. And when I am called K> ROGEK ASCHAM. from him, I fall on weeping, because whatsoever I do else but learning, is full of grief, trouble; fear, and whole misliking unto me. And thus my book hath been so much my pleasure, and bringeth daily to me more pleasure and more, that in respect of it, all other pleasures, in very deed, be but trifles and troubles unto me." I remember this talk gladly, both because it is so worthy of memory, and because also it was the last talk that ever I had, and the last time that ever I saw that noble and worthy lady. And I do not mean by all this my talk, that young gentlemen should always be poring on a book, and by using good studies should leese honest pleasure, and haunt no good pastime : I mean nothing less. For it is well known that I both like and love, and have always, and do yet still use all exercises and pastimes that be fit for my nature and ability: and beside natural disposition, in judgment also I was never either stoic in doctrine or anabaptist in religion, to mislike a merry, pleasant, and playful nature, if no outrage be committed against law, measure, and good order. Therefore I would wish, that beside some good time fitly appointed, and constantly kept, to increase by reading the knowledge of the tongues and learning; young gentlemen should use, and delight in all courtly exercises, and gentlemanlike pastimes. And good cause why: for the self same noble city of Athens, justly commended of me before, did wisely, and upon great consideration, appoint the Muses, Apollo and Pallas, to ROGER ASCHAM. n be patrons of learning to their youth. For the Muses, besides learning, were also ladies of dancing, mirth, and minstrelsy : Apollo was god of shooting, and author of cunning playing upon instruments ; Pallas also was lady mistress in wars. Whereby was nothing else meant, but that learning should be always mingled with honest mirth and comely exercises ; and that war also should be governed by learning and moderated by wisdom. Indeed books of common places be very necessary to induce a man into an orderly general knowledge, how to refer orderly all that he readeth, ad certa reritm capita, and not wander in study. But to dwell in Epitomes, and books of common places, and not to bind himself daily by orderly study, to read with all diligence principally the holiest Scripture, and withal the best doctors, and so to learn to make true difference betwixt the authority of the one and the counsel of the other, maketh so many seeming and sun-bumt ministers as we have ; whose learning is gotten in a summer heat, and washed away with a Christmas snow again. And this exercise is not more needfully done in a great work, than wisely done in your common daily writing either of letter or other thing else ; that is to say, to peruse diligently, and see and spy wisely, what is always more than needeth. For twenty to one offend more in writing too much than too little : even as twenty to one fall into sickness, rather by overmuch fulness, than by any lack or emptiness. And there- fore is he always the best English physician, that best M ROGER ASCHAM. can give a purgation : that is by way of Epitome to cut all over-much away. And surely men's bodies be not more full of ill humours, than commonly men's minds (if they be young, lusty, proud, like and love them- selves well, as most men do) be full of fancies, opinions, errors, and faults, not only in inward invention, but also in all their utterance, either by pen or talk. And of all other men, even those that have the inventivest heads for all purposes, and roundest tongues in all matters and places (except they learn and use this good lesson of Epitome), commit com- monly greater faults than dull, staying, silent men do. For quick inventors, and fair ready speakers, being boldened with their present ability to say more, and perchance better too, at the sudden for that present, than any other can do, use less help of diligence and study, than they ought to do ; and so have in them commonly less learning, and weaker judgment for all deep considerations, than some duller heads and slower tongues have. In every separate kind of learning, and study by itself, ye must follow choicely a few, and chiefly some one, and that namely in our school of eloquence, either for pen or talk. And as in por- traiture and painting, wise men choose not that workman that can only make a fair hand, or a well- fashioned leg; but such a one as can furnish up fully all the features of the whole body of a man, woman, and child ; and withal is able too, by good skill, to give to every one of these three, in their proper kind, the right form, the true figure, the natural colour, that is fit and due to the dignity of a man, to the ROGER ASCHAM. sj beauty of a woman, to the sweetness of a young babe : even likewise do we seek such one in our school to follow ; who is able always in all matters to teach plainly, to delight pleasantly, and to carry away by force of wise talk, all that shall hear or read him. But for ignorance men cannot like, and for idleness men will not labour, to come to any perfcctness at all. For as the worthy poets in Athens and Rome were more careful to satisfy the judgment of one learned, than rash in pleasing the humour of a rude multitude; even so, if men in England now had the like reverend regard to learning, skill, and judgment, and durst not presume to write, except they came with the like learning, and also did use like diligence in searching out, not only just measure in every metre (as every ignorant person may easily do), but also true quantity in every foot and syllable (as only the learned shall be able to do, and as the Greeks and Romans were wont to do), surely then rash ignorant beads, which now can easily reckon up fourteen syllables, and easily stumble on every rhyme, either durst not, for lack of such learning, or else would not, in avoiding such labour, be so busy, as every where they be ; and shops in London should not be so full of lewd and rude rhymes, as commonly they are. But now the ripest of tongue be readiest to write. And many daily in setting out books and ballads, make great show of blossoms and buds ; in whom is neither root of learning nor fruit of wisdom at all. The Schole- master, Book i., Ast/tam's Works, by Dr. Giles. 1864. Vol. iii. 4 MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE. MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE. 1537 1592. The Commerce of Books is much more certain, and much more our own. It yields all other Advantages to the other two ; but has the Constancy and Facility of it's Sen-ice for it's own Share : it goes side by side with me in my whole Course, and everywhere is assisting to me. It comforts me in my Age and Soli- tude ; it eases me of a troublesome Weight of Idleness, and delivers me at all Hours from Company that I dislike ; and it blunts the Point of Griefs, if they are not extreme, and have not got an entire Possession of my Soul. To divert myself from a troublesome Fancy, 'tis but to run to my Books ; they presently fix me to them, and drive the other out of my Thoughts ; and do not mutiny to see that I have only recourse to them for want of other more real, natural and lively Conveniences ; they always receive me with the same Kindness. . . . The sick Man is not to be la- mented, who has his Cure in his Sleeve. In the Experience and Practice of this Sentence, which is a very true one, all the Benefit I reap from Books consists ; and yet I make as little use of it almost as those who know it not ; I enjoy it as a Miser does his Money, in knowing that I may enjoy it when I please ; my Mind is satisfied with this Right of Possession. I never travel without Books, either in Peace or War ; and yet sometimes I pass over several Days, and sometimes Months, without looking into them ; I will read by and by, say I to myself, or to Morrow, or when I please, and Time steals away without any Inconvenience. For it is not to be imagin'd to what WCHEL JDE MONTAIGNE. aj Degree I please my self, and rest content in this Consideration, that I have them by me, to divert my self with them when I am so dispos'd, and to call to mind what an Ease and Assistance they are to my Life. 'Tis the best Viaticum I have yet found out for this human Journey, and I very much lament those Men of Understanding who are unprovided of it. And yet I rather accept of any sort of diversion, how light soever, because this can never fail me. When at Home, I a little more frequent my Library, from whence I at once survey all the whole Concerns of my Family : As I enter it, I from thence see under my Garden, Court, and Base- court, and into all the parts of the Building. There I turn over now one Book, and then another, of various Subjects without Method or Design : One while I meditate, another I record, and dictate as I walk to and fro, such Whimsies as these with which I here present you. 'Tis in the third Story of a Tower, of which the Ground- Room is my Chapel, the second Story an Apartment with a withdrawing Room and Closet, where I often lie to be more retired. Above it is a great Wardrobe, which formerly was the most useless part of the House. In that Library I pass away most of the Days of my Life, and most of the Hours of the Day. In the Night I am never there. There is within it a Cabinet handsom and neat enough, with a very convenient Fire-place for the Winter, and Windows that afford a great deal of light, and very pleasant Prospects. And were I not more afraid of the Trouble than the Expence, the Trouble that frights me from all Business, I could very easily adjoin on either Side, and on the same Floor, a Gallery of an hundred Paces long, ,6 MICHEL DE MONTAIGNS. and twelve broad, having found Walls already rais'd for some other design, to the requisite height. Every Place of Retirement requires a Walk. My Thoughts sleep if I sit still ; my Fancy does not go by it self, my legs must move it ; and all those who study without a Book are in the same Condition. The Figure of my Study is round, and has no more flat Wall than what is taken up by my Table and Chairs ; so that the remaining parts of the Circle present me a View of all my Books at once, set upon five Degrees of Shelves round about me. It has three noble and free Prospects, and is sixteen Paces Diameter. I am not so continually there in Winter ; for my House is built upon an Emi- nence, as it's Name imports, and no part of it is so much expos'd to the Wind and Weather as that, which pleases me the better, for being of a painful Access, and a little remote, as well upon the account of Exercise, as being also there more retir'd from the Crowd. 'Tis there that I am in my Kingdom, as we say, and there I endeavour to make my self an absolute Monarch, and to sequester this one Corner from all Society, whether Conjugal, Filial, or Civil. Elsewhere I have but verbal Authority only, and of a confus'd Essence. That Man, in my Opinion, is very miserable, who has not at home, where to be by himself, where to entertain himself alone, or to conceal himself from others. . . . I think it much more supportable to be always alone than never to be so. If any one shall tell me, that it is to under-value the Muses, to make use of them only for Sport, and to pass away the Time ; I shall tell him, that he does not know the value of Sport and Pastime so well as I do : I can hardly forbear to add further, MONTAlGNE-yOHN FLORIO. r, th.it all other end is ridiculous. I live from Hand to Mouth, and, with Reverence be it spoken, I only live for my self; to that all my Designs do tend, and in that terminate. I studied when young for Ostentation; since to make my self a little wiser ; and now for my Diversion, but never for any Profit. A vain and prodigal Humour I had after this sort of Furniture, not only for supplying my own needs and defects, but moreover for Ornament and outward show; I have since quite abandon'd it. Books have many charming Qualities to such as know how to choose them. But every Good has it's 111 ; 'tis a Pleasure that is not pure and clean, no more than others : It has it's Inconve- niences, and great ones too. The Mind indeed is exercised by it, but the Body, the care of which I must withal never neglect, remains in the mean time without Action, grows heavy and melancholy. I know no Excess more prejudicial to me, nor more to be avoided in this my declining Age. Of Three Commerces. (Charles Cotton's Translation, 1685.) JOHN FLORIO. 1545 1625. Contenting the Honour of Books. Since honour from the honourer proceeds, How well do they deserve, that memorize And leave in books for all posterities The names of worthies and their virtuous deeds ; When all their glory else, like water-weeds Without their element, presently dies, And all their greatness quite forgotten lies, And when and how they flourished no man heeds ! tS yOtf.V FLORIO-S1R PHILIP SIDNEY. How poor remembrances are statues, tombs And other monuments that men erect To princes, which remain in closed rooms, Where but a few behold them, in respect Of Books, that to the universal eye Show how they lived ; the other where they lie ! Prefixed to the second edition of John Fiona's Translation of Montaigne 1 s Essays, 1613. [ Vide Notes to D. M. Afain's Treasury of English Sonnets, p. 248, in reference to this Sonnet. ] BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER. 1549. Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest. Collect for Second Sunday in Advent. JOHN LYLYE [or LILLY]. 1553 1601. . . . far more seemely were it for thee to have thy Studie full of Bookes, than thy Purses full of Mony. Eu / hues ; the Anatomy of Wit. SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. 1554 1586. It is manifest that all government of action is to be gotten by knowledge, and knowledge, best, by gather- ing many knowledges, which is reading. LORD BACON. 1561 1629. Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight is in privateness and retiring ; for ornament is in discourse ; and for LORD BACON. *> ability is in the judgment and disposition of business. . . . Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and dis- course, but to weigh and consider. Some books are 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. . . . Reading maketh a full man ; conference a ready man ; and writing an exact man ; and, therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory : if he confer little, he had need have a present wit : and if he read little, he had need have much cunning to seem to know that he doth not The images of men's wits and knowledge remain in books, exempted from the worry of time and capable of perpetual renovation. Neither are they fitly to be called images, because they generate still, and cast their seeds in the minds of others, provoking and causing infinite actions and opinions in succeeding ages. We enter into a desire of knowledge sometimes from a natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite ; sometimes to entertain our minds with variety and delight ; sometimes for ornament and reputation ; sometimes to enable us to victory of wit and contradiction, and most times for lucre and profession ; and seldom sincerely to give a true account of our gift of reason, for the benefit and use of man : as if there were sought in knowledge a couch whereupon to rest a searching and restless spirit ; or a terrace for a wandering and y> LORD BACON* variable mind to walk up and down, with a fair pros- pect ; or a tower of state for a proud mind to raise itself upon ; or a fort or commanding ground for strife and contention ; or a shop for profit or sale ; and not a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate. As the eye rejoices to receive the light, the ear to hear sweet music ; so the mind, which is the man, rejoices to discover the secret works, the varieties and beauties of nature. The inquiry of truth, which is the love-making or wooing it ; the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it ; and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying it, is the sovereign good of our nature. The unlearned man knows not what it is to descend into himself or to call himself to account, ot the pleasure of that "suavissima vita indies sentire se fieri meliorem." The mind of man doth wonderfully endeavour and extremely covet that it may not be pensile ; but that it may light upon something fixed and immoveable, on which, as on a firmament, it may support itself in its swift motions and disquisitions. Aristotle endeavours to prove that in all motions of bodies there is some point quiescent ; and very elegantly expounds the fable of Atlas, who stood fixed and bore up the heavens from falling, to be meant of the poles of the world whereupon the conversion is accomplished. In like manner, men do earnestly seek to have some Atlas or axis of their cogitations within themselves, which may, in some measure, moderate the fluctuations and wheelings of the under- standing, fearing it may be the falling of their heaven. LORD BACON-SAMUEL DANIEL. 31 In studies whatsoever a man commandeth upon himself let him set hours for it ; but whatsoever is agreeable to his nature, let him take no care for any set hours, for his thoughts will fly to it of themselves. Such letters as are written from wise men are of all the words of men, in my judgment, the best ; for they are more natural than orations, public speeches, and more advanced than conference or present speeches. SAMUEL DANIEL. 1562 1619. O blessed Letters ! that combine in one All Ages past, and make one live with all. By you we do confer with who are gone, And the Dead-living unto Council call ; By you th' unborn shall have Communion Of what we feel and what doth us befal. Soul of the World, Knowledge without thee ; What hath the Earth that truly glorious is ? . . . What Good is like to this, To do worthy the writing, and to write Worthy the Reading, and the World's Delight ? Musopkilus ; containing a General Defenct of Learning. And tho' books, madam, cannot make this Mind, Which we must bring apt to be set aright ; Yet do they rectify it in that Kind, And touch it so, as that it turns that Way Where Judgment lies. And tho' we cannot find The certain Place of Truth ; yet do they stay, And entertain us near about the same : p f . SHAKESPEARE. And give the Soul the best Delight that may Enchear it most, and most our Sp'rits cnflame To Thoughts of Glory, and to worthy Ends. To the Leuiy Lucy, Countess of Bedford. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 1564 1616. Me, poor man, my library Was dukedom large enough. Tempest, i. 2. Knowing I loved my books, he furnished me, From my own library, with volumes that I prize above my dukedom. Tempest, i. 2. Sir, he hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in a book. Love's Labour Lost, iv. 2. The books, the arts, the academes, That show, contain, and nourish all the world. Love's Labour Lost, iv. 3. Come, and take a choice of all my library ; And so beguile thy sorrow. Titus Andronicus, iv. I. ALONZO OK ARRAGON. Alonzo of Arragon was wont to say in commen- dation of Age, that Age appeared to be best in four things : old wood best to bum ; old wine to drink ; old friends to trust ; and old authors to read. Bacon's Apophthegms, No, 101. GUEVARA. 33 ANTONIO DE GUEVARA. , sine meditatione, arida est ; meditatio, sine lectione, erronea. In our meditations, wee may unawares slip into an errour; which, because our own, of our own selves, we are hardlie restrained from; from which another's hand may easilie helpe meeup. And if, for that and other ends, I would gladlie conferre with the living ; the same motive may persuade mee to converse with others, that are dead ; in their writings : and the rather, because they use to bee more digested ; than others' extemporarie discourses ; especiallie, if, as you do, we make choice of those, that are most pious and learned. I look-at it, as a kind of Communion of Saints ; in which I may expect a greater blessing : but R1OJA PETER DU MOULIN. jg to, as not resting on their authoritic. And shoulde not their writings bee better than my thoughts, yett with mee I find itt thus ; that by reading I have more hints, and better rise, for more and better notions ; than otherwise of myself I shou'd have reached unto : hereby I shall bee better acquainted with the true historic, stating, and phrasing, of any point of contro- vcrsie ; which otherwise I shall too often stumble- att. Third Letter from Dr. Antony Tuckney to Dr. Benjamin Whichcote. " The Reconciliation of Sinners unfa Coal." 1651. FRANCESCO DI RIOJA. 16001659. A little peaceful home Bounds all my wants and wishes ; add to this My book and friend, and this is happiness. PETER DU MOULIN. 1600 1684. Let our dwelling be lightsome, if possible ; in a free air, and near a garden. Gardening is an innocent delight. With these, if one may have a sufficient revenue, an honest employment, little business, sortable companys, and especially the conversation of good books with whom a man may converse as little and as much as he pleaseth ; he needs little more, as for the exteriour to enjoy all the content that this world can afford. ... He that both learned to know the world and himself, will soon be capable of this counsel " To retire within one's self. " . . . Persons that have some goodness in their soul, have a closet where they may retire at any time, and yet keep in society. 60 PETER DU MOULIN. That closet is their own in-side. . . . That in-side to which the wise man must retire, is his judgment and conscience. Thence to impose silence to business and hush all the noise below, that with a calm and undisturbed mind, he may consider the nature of the persons and things which he converseth with, what interests he hath in them, and how far they are appli- cable to God's service, and to the benefit of himself and others. . . . There is no possession sooner lost, than that of one's self. The smallest things rob us of it. . . . Tecum habitat. Dwell at home. Keep possession of your soul. Suffer not anything to steal you away from yourself. There is neither profit nor pleasure worth so much, that the soul should go from home to get it. ... One is always a loser at that game which robs his soul of serenity. . . . Nothing is so great, that for it we should set our mind outof frame. A wise man should not sufferhis soul to stir out of her place, and run into disorder. . . . Keep company with a few well-chosen persons, lending our- selves freely to them, but giving ourselves to none but God, nor suffering friendship to grow to slavery. With all sorts of men we must deal ingenuously, yet re- servedly, saying what we think, but thinking more than we say, lest we give power to others to take hold of the rudder of our mind. . . . Let them not be admitted by too much familiarity to know the secret avenues of our souls. For in all souls there are some places weaker than the rest. A Treatise of Peace and Contentment of Mind : Book VI. To Retire within one's self: To avoid Idleness : Of the care of the and other little Contentments of Life. 1678. JOHN EARLESIR THOMAS BROWNE. 61 JOHN EARLE, 1601 1665. The hermitage by his study has made him somewhat uncouth in the world . . . but practice him a little in men, and brush him over with good company, and he shall out-balance those glisterers, as far as a solid substance does a feather, or gold, gold-lace. Microcosmography : A Down-right Scholar. SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT. 1605 1668. Books shew the utmost conquests of our minds. Gondibert. SIR THOMAS BROWNE. 1605 1682. Tis an unjust way of compute, to magnify a weak head for some Latin abilities ; and to undervalue a solid judgment, because he knows not the genealogy of I lector. When that notable king of France would have his son to know but one sentence in Latin, had it been a good one, perhaps it had been enough. Natural parts and good judgments rule the world. States are not governed by ergotisms.* Many have ruled well, who could not, perhaps, define a common- wealth ; and they who understand not the globe of the earth, command a great part of it. Where natural logick prevails not, artificial too often faileth. Where nature fills the sails, the vessel goes smoothly on ; and when judgment is the pilot, the ensurancc need not be high. When industry builds upon nature, we may expect pyramids : where that foundation is wanting, Conclusions deduced according to the forms of logick. 6a SfX THOMAS BROWNE. the structure must be low. They do most by books, who could do much without them ; and he that chiefly owes himself unto himself, is the substantial man. Christian Morals. I have heard some with deep sighs lament the lost lines of Cicero ; others with as many groans deplore the combustion of the library of Alexandria : for my own part, I think there be too many in the world ; and could with patience behold the urn and ashes of the Vatican, could I, with a few others, recover the perished leaves of Solomon. . . . 'Tis not a melancholy utinam of my own, but the desires of better heads, that there were a general synod not to unite the in- compatible difference of religion, but, for the benefit of learning, to reduce it, as it lay at first, in a few and solid authors ; and to condemn to the fire those swarms and millions of rhapsodies, begotten only to distract and abuse the weaker judgments of scholars, and to maintain the trade and mystery of typographers. I intend no monopoly, but a community in learning. I study not for my own sake only, but for theirs that study not for themselves. I envy no man that knows more than myself, but pity them that know less. I instruct no man as an exercise of my know- ledge, or with an intent rather to nourish and keep it alive in mine own head than beget and propagate it in his. And, in the midst of all my endeavours, there is but one thought that dejects me, that my acquired parts must perish with myself, nor can be Icgacied among my honoured friends. I cannot fall out or contemn a THOMAS FULLER. 63 man for an error, or conceive why a difference in opinion should divide an affection ; for controversies, disputes, and argumentations, both in philosophy and in divinity, if they meet with discreet and peaceable natures, do not infringe the laws of charity. In all disputes, so much as there is of passion, so much there is of nothing to the purpose ; for then reason, like a bad hound, spends upon a false scent, and forsakes the question first started. And this is one reason why controversies are never determined ; for, though they be amply proposed, they are scae at all handled ; they do so swell with unnecessary digressions ; and the parenthesis on the party is often as large as the main discourse upon the subject. . . . Scholars are men of peace, they bear no arms, but their tongues are sharper than Actius's razor ; their pens carry farther, and give a louder report than thunder. I had rather stand the shock of a basilisko than in the fury of a merciless pen. Religio Medici. THOMAS FULLER. 1608 1661. When there is no recreation or business for thee abroad, thou may'st have a company of honest old fellows in their leathern jackets in thy study which will find thee excellent divertisement at home. . . . To divert at any time a troublesome fancy, run to thy books ; they presently fix thee to them, and drive the other out of thy thoughts. They always receive thee with the same kindness. Some books are only cursorily to be tasted of. Namely first, voluminous books, the task of a man's life to 64 JOHN MIL TON. read them over ; secondly, auxiliary books, only to be repaired to on occasions ; thirdly, such as are mere pieces of formality, so that if you look on them, you look through them ; and he that peeps through the casement of the 'index, sees as much as if he were in the house. But the laziness of those cannot be excused who perfunctorily pass over authors of consequence, and only trade in their tables and contents. These, like city-cheaters, having gotten the names of all country gentlemen, make silly people believe they have long lived in those^>laces where they never were, and flourish with skill in those authors they never seriously studied. The Holy State: Of Books. JOHN MILTON. 1608 1674. For Books are not absolutely dead things, but doe contain a potencie of Life in them to be as active as that Soule was whose progeny they are ; nay, they do preserve, as in a violl, the purest efficacie and ex- traction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous Dragons teeth ; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet on the other hand unlesse warinesse be us'd, as good almost kill a Man as kill a good Book ; who kills a Man kills a reasonable creature, Gods Image; but hee who destroyes a good Booke, kills Reason it selfe, kills the Image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a Man lives a burden to the Earth ; but a good Booke is the prctious life-blood of a master spirit, imbalm'd and treasur'd up on purpose to a Life beyond Life. MILTON-LORD CLARENDON. ^ 65 Tis true, no age can restore a Life, whereof perhaps there is no great losse ; and revolutions of ages doe not oft recover the losse of a rejected Truth, for the want of which whole Nations fare the worse. We should be wary therefore what persecution we raise against the living labours of publick men, how we spill that season'd Life of Man preserv'd and stor'd up in Books ; since we see a kinde of homicide may be thus com- mitted, sometimes a martyrdome ; and if it extend to the whole impression, a kinde of massacre, whereof the execution ends not in the slaving of an elementall Life, but strikes at that ethereall and fift essence, the breath of Reason it sclfc, slaies an Immortality rather than a Life. Areopagitita. [Edition ivith Notes ^ &(., by T. Holt White, 1819.] Who reads Incessantly, and to his reading brings not A spirit and judgment equal or superior, Uncertain and unsettled still remains ; Deep-versed in books, but shallow in himself. Paradise Regained. EARL OF CLARENDON. 1608-1674. The wisdom of a learned man comes by opportunity of leisure. That is true ; when there is wisdom and learning, they will both grow, and be improved by the opportunity of leisure ; but neither wisdom nor learning will be ever got by doing nothing. He that hath little business shall become wise, but he that hath none, shall remain a fool ; he that doth not think at all upon what he is to do, will never do any thing well ; F 66 LORD CLARENDON SIR MATTHEW HALE. and he who doth nothing but think, had as good do nothing at all. The mind that is unexcrcised, that takes not the air, that it may know the minds of other men, contracts the same aches and cramps in the faculties of the understanding that the body labours with by the want of exercising its limbs ; and he that resolves to sit still, can never come to the other end of his journey by other men's running never so fast. There is evidence, by the observation and experience of every man, enough to convince him of the great advantages which attend upon an active life, above what waits upon pure contemplation ; that there is a great difference between the abilities of that man who hath contracted himself to any one study, though he excels in it, and him who hath with much less labour attained to a general experimental knowledge of things and persons ; and so the greatest divine who hath read all the school men, and all the fathers, and is as wise as most of them were, will be sooner deceived in the market, and pay more for his clothes and for his meat, than his groom will do, who understands that and his horse too. An Essay on an Active and Contemplative Life ; and why the one should be preferred before the other. SIR MATTHEW HALE. 1609 1676. Read the Bible reverently and attentively, set your heart upon it, and lay it up in your memory, and make it the direction of your life : it will make you a wise and good man. I have been acquainted somewhat with men and books, and have had long experience in learning, and in the world : there is no book like the FRANCIS OS BORNE DR. WHICHCOTE. 67 Bible for excellent learning, wisdom, and use ; and it is want of understanding in them that think or speak otherwise. ... Be diligent in study and in your calling. ... It will be your wisdom and benefit It will be a good expense of time, and a prevention from a thousand inconveniences and temptations that otherwise will befall on man. Counsels of a Father to eing duly fol- lowed, will most sever us from the vulgar sort of. men, and advance us above the common pitch ; enduing us with light to see further than other men, disposing us to affect better things, and to slight those meaner objects of human desire, on which men commonly dote; freeing us from the erroneous conceits and from the pervctse affections of common people. It is said that men of learning are double-sighted : but it is true, that in many cases they see infinitely further than a vulgar sight doth reach. And if a man by serious study doth acquire a clear and solid judgment of things, so as to assign to each its due weight and price; if he accordingly be inclined in his heart to affect and pursue them ; if from clear and right notions of things, a meek and ingenuous temper of mind, a command and moderation of passions, a firm integrity, and a cordial love of goodness do spring, he thereby becometh another kind of thing, much different from those brutish men (beasts of the people) who blindly follow the motions of their sensual appetite, or the suggestions of their fancy, or their mistaken prejudices. It is a calling which hath these considerable advan- tages, that, by virtue of improvement therein, we can see with our own eyes, and guide ourselves by our own reasons, not being led blindfold about, or depending precariously on the conduct of others, in matters of highest concern to us; that we are exempted from giddy credulity, from wavering levity, from fond ad- miration of persons and things, being able to distinguish of things, and to settle our judgments about them, and to get an intimate acquaintance with them, assuring to ISAAC BARROW. 89 us their true nature and worth ; that we are also thereby rescued from admiring ourselves, and that overweening self-conceited ness, of which the Wise Man saith, The sluggard is wiser in his own conteit than seven men that can render a reason . It is a calling most exempt from the cares, the crosses, the turmoils, the factious jars, the anxious intrigues, the vexatious molestations of the world ; its business lying out of the road of those mischiefs, wholly lying in solitary retirement, or being transacted in the most innocent and ingenuous company. It is a calling least subject to any danger or disappointment ; wherein we may well be assured not to miscarry or lose our labour; for the merchant indeed by manifold accidents may lose his voyage, or find a bad market ; the hus- bandman may plough and sow in vain : but the student hardly can fail of improving his stock, and reaping a good crop of knowledge ; especially if he study with a conscientious mind, and pious reverence to God, im- ploring his gracious help and blessing. It is a calling, the business whereof doth so exercise as not to weary, so entertain as not to cloy us ; being not (as other occupations are) a drawing in a mill, or a nauseous tedious repetition of the same work ; but a continued progress towards fresh objects ; our mind not being staked to one or a few poor matters, but having immense fields of contemplation, wherein it may everlastingly expatiate, with great proficiency and pleasure. It is that which recommendeth a man in all company, and procureth regard, every one yielding attention and acceptance to instructive, neat, apposite discourse 90 ISAAC BARROW. (that which the scripture calleth acceptable, pleasant, gracious words;) men think themselves obliged thereby, by receiving information and satisfaction from it ; and accordingly, Every man (saith the Wise Man) shall kiss his. lips thatgiveth a right answer ; and for the grace of his lips the king shall bt his friend ; and the words of a wise man's mouth are gracious. It is that, an eminency wherein purchaseth lasting fame, and a life after death, in the good memory and opinion of pos- terity : Many shall commend his understanding; and so long as the world endureth, it shall not be blotted out: his memorial shall not depart away, and his name shall live from generation to generation. A fame no less great, and far more innocent, than acts of chivalry and martial prowess ; for is not Aristotle as renowned for teaching the world with his pen, as Alexander for con- quering it with his sword? Is not one far oftener mentioned than the other ? Do not men hold them- selves much more obliged to the learning of the philosopher, than to the valour of the warrior ? Indeed the fame of all others is indebted to the pains of the scholar, and could not subsist but with and by his fame : Dignum laude virum Musa vetat mori ; learning consecrateth itself and its subject together to immortal remembrance. It is a calling that fitteth a man for all conditions and fortunes ; so that he can enjoy prosperity with moderation, and sustain adversity with comfort : he that loveth a book will never want a faithful friend, a wholesome counsellor, a cheerful companion, an effectual comforter. By study, by reading, by thinking, one may innocently divert and pleasantly entertain himself, as in all weathers, so in all fortunes. CHARLES COTTON. 91 The exercise of our mind in rational discursiveness about things in quest of truth ; canvassing questions, examining arguments for and against ; how greatly doth it better us, fortifying our natural parts, enabling us to fix our thoughts on objects without roving, inuring us to weigh and resolve, and judge well about matters proposed ; preserving us from being easily abused by captious fallacies, gulled by specious pretences, tossed about with every doubt or objection started before us ! The reading of books, what is it but conversing with the wisest men of all ages and all countries, who thereby communicate to us their most deliberate thoughts, choicest notions, and best inventions, couched in good expression, and digested in exact method ? How doth it supply the room of experience, and furnish us with prudence at the expense of others, informing us about the ways of action, and the conse- quences thereof by examples, without our own danger or trouble ! Sermons: " Of Industry in our Particular Calling as Scholars." CHARLES COTTON. 1630 1687. [The friend of Isaac Walton, and Translator of Montaigne's Essays.] How calm and quiet a delight Is it, alone, To read, and meditate, and write, By none offended, and offending none. To walk, ride, sit, or sleep at one's own ease, And, pleasing a man's self, none other to displease. Poems, 1689. The Retirement. To A fr. Isaac Walton. BISHOP HURT. Who from the busy World retires, To be more useful to it still, And to no greater good aspires But only the eschewing ill. Who, with his Angle, and his Books, Can think the longest day well spent, And praises God when back he looks, And finds that all was innocent. This man is happier far than he Whom public Business oft betrays Through labyrinths of Policy, To crooked and forbidden ways. Poems , 1689. Contentation, Directed to my Dear Father, and most Worthy Friend, Mr. Isaac Walton. PETER DANIEL HUET. 1630 1721. They who endure the toil of study, with a view to nches and honours, will be very much disappointed. All the world has heard of a French treatise on the Miseries of Scholars, but none has appeared descriptive of their felicities. In fact, the retired life, the inac- tivity with respect to all business in common life, or public employments, which an attention to study re- quires, and that internal recluseness and abstraction of mind, so peculiar to the student, are all circumstances averse from the acquisition of wealth. He on whom the Muses have smiled in his infancy will scorn the praises of the multitude, the fascination of wealth, and the enticements of honours ; and will find that his toil is the only adequate reward which can satisfy the mind BISHOP HUBT. 93 of a scholar. He will not be repelled by the length, nor disgusted by the drudgery of his labours. His passion for learning will increase with his acquire- ments ; and, whilst his diligence procures him fresh information, he will discover his numerous deficiencies, and be induced to redouble his attention. These sentiments are not declamatory. I write from expe- rience of the truths which I advance, the experience of my whole life, which I wish protracted for no other reason than that I may employ it in future investiga- tions. Nor let the hoary student be discouraged, should he find himself sometimes going backward instead of forward ; but impute his* misfortune to the incapacities of age, and to the languor that faculties long harassed by continual application must necessarily endure. . . . . . . To constitute a learned man, the gifts of nature .ire in the first line of desiderata ; a solid understanding, a quick apprehension, a retentive memory, a healthful and vigorous body, a disposition steady, constant, and uniform ; diligence which years cannot impair, an insatiable thirst of knowledge, and an invincible attach- ment to reading, &c. Without the gifts of fortune, nature will have been generous in vain. Cujus conatibus obstat Res angusta dorai, must confine his exertions to defend himself from the exigencies of the moment. We must think of merely living, before we can endeavour to live pleasantly and with distinction ; and the conveniences of life must be a consideration superior to the love of study. . . . 94 JOHN LOCKE. An exclusive application to books, as the sole employ- ment and the pleasure of life, is the choice of the student himself, inspired with a love of letters j which neither the fascination of riches or ambition can sup- plant, nor the fears of poverty, nor the dread of labour and obscurity, can extinguish. Horace, in the Ode which Julius Scaliger so highly prized, that he would rather have been the writer of it than a King of Spain, has clothed the above sentiments with all the charms that brilliant composition, united with truth, are capable of bestowing. "When we consider," says the Abbe* Olivet (L'Eloge Histor. de M. Huet), "that he lived to the age of ninety years and upwards, that he had been a hard student from his infancy, that he had had almost all his time to himself, that he enjoyed an uninterrupted state of health, that he had always some one to read to him, even at his meals ; that, in one word, to borrow his own language, neither the heat of youth, nor a multiplicity of business, nor the love of company, nor the hurry of the world, had ever been able to moderate his love of study, we may fairly conclude him to have been the most learned man that any age ever pro- duced. " Huetiana. JOHN LOCKE. 1632 1704. Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company, and reflection must finish him. Those who have read of everything are thought to understand everything too ; but it is not always so Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of JOHN LOCKE. 9S knowledge; it is thinking that makes what is read ours. We are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collec- tions; unless we chew them over again, they will not give us strength and nourishment The End and Use of a little Insight in those Parts of Knowledge, which are not a Man's proper Business, is to accustom our Minds to all Sorts of Ideas, and the proper Ways of examining their Habitudes, and Rela- tions. This gives the Mind a Freedom ; and the exer- cising the Understanding in the several Ways of Enquiry and Reasoning which the most skilful have made use of, teaches the Mind Sagacity and Wariness, and a Suppleness to apply itself more closely and dex- terously to the Bents and Turns of the matter in all its researches. Besides this universal Taste in all the Sciences, with an Indifferency, before the Mind is possessed of any one in particular, and grown into a Love and Admiration of what is made its Darling, will prevent another Evil very commonly to be observed in those who have been reasoned only by one Part of Knowledge. Let a Man be given to the Contemplation of one Sort of Knowledge and that will become every- thing. The Mind will take such a Tincture from a Familiarity with that Object, that everything else, how remote soever, will be brought under the same View. A Metaphysician will bring Plowing and Gardening immediately to abstract notions. The History of Nature will signify nothing to him. An Alchymist, on the contrary, shall reduce Divinity to the Maxims of the Laboratory, explain Morality by Sal Sulphur and g6 ROBERT SOUTH. Mercury, and allegorise the Scripture itself, and the sacred Mysteries thereof, into the Philosopher's Stone. And I heard once a Man who had a more than ordinary Excellency in Musick seriously accommodate Moses seven Days of the first Week, to the Notes of Musick, as if from thence had been taken the Measure and Method of Creation. 'Tis of no small Consequence to keep the Mind from such a Possession, which I think is best done by giving it a fair and equal View of the whole intellectual World, wherein it may see the Order, Rank, and Beauty of the whole, and give a just allowance to the distinct Provinces of the several Sciences, in the due Order, and usefulness of each of them. Conduct of the Understanding. ROBERT SOUTH. 1633 1716. The pleasure and delight of knowledge and learning far surpasseth all other in nature : for, shall the plea- sures of the affections so exceed the senses, as much as the obtaining of desire or victory exceedeth a song or a dinner; and must not, of consequence, the pleasures of the intellect or understanding exceed the pleasures of the affections ? We see in all other pleasures there is satiety, and after they be used, their verdure de- parteth; which sheweth well they be but deceits of pleasure, and not pleasure ; and that it was the novelty which pleased, and not the quality : and therefore we see that voluptuous men turn friars, and ambitious princes turn melancholy. But of knowledge there is no satiety, but satisfaction and appetite are perpetually interchangeable. S/Jt GEORGE MACKENZIE HALLEY. y, Seldom is there much spoke, but something or other had better not been spoke. He who has published an injurious book, sins, as it were, in his very grave ; corrupts others while he is rotting himself. Much reading is like much eating, wholly useless without digestion. Sermons. SIR GEORGE MACKENZIE. 1636 1691. If variety be that which is admired in Society, certainly our own thoughts, or other men's Books, can in these far exceed Conversation ; possessing above it this Advantage, that one can never be either impor- tun'd or betray'd by these, as is much to be feared from the other. . . . O what a divine State then must Solitude be, wherein a Virtuous and Thoughtful Inactivity begets in us a Tranquility, not conceivable by such as do not possess it ! Solitude requires no avarice to maintain its Table. It is satisfied without Coaches, Lacqueys, Treasurers and Embroideries. The Solitary Man is not disquieted at the Infrequency of Guests. . . . Tranquility of Spirit is peculiar to Philosophy, and is the Guest of Solitude. . . . How can that Soul rust which is in continual Exer- cise? A Moral Essay preferring Solitude to Publick Employment. EDMUND HALLEY. 1656 1742. Dr. Halley used to say, "close study prolonged a man's life, by keeping him out of harm's way." Soutfuy's Common-Place Book. Third Series. Quoted from Ivimey's "history of tht Baft is tt." 5>8 LA BRUYSRE JEREMY COLLIER. JOHN DE LA BRUYERE. 1644 1696. Where a book raises your spirit, and inspires you with noble and courageous feelings, seek for no other rule to judge the event by ; it is good and made by a good workman. A SEVENTEENTH CENTURY DIVINE. (Unverified.) There be those that ungratefully complain of the heaviness of time, as if we could have too much of God's most precious gift of life and its containings. Let such persons consider that there be daily duties to be well performed which do not exclude innocent recreations and the privileged opportunities of silent conversation with the greatest minds and spirits, in their most chosen words, in their books, that lie ready and offer themselves to us if we would. JEREMY COLLIER. 1650 1726. The Diversions of Reading, though they are not always of the strongest Kind, yet they generally Leave a better Effect than the grosser Satisfactions of Sense : For if they are well chosen, they neither dull the Appetite, nor strain the Capacity. On the contrary, they refresh the Inclinations, and strengthen the Power, and improve under Experiment : And which is best of all, they Entertain and Perfect at the same time ; and convey Wisdom and Knowledge through Pleasure. By Reading a Man does as it were Antedate his Life, and makes himself contemporary with the JEREMY COLLIER. 99 Ages past And this way of running up beyond one's Nativity, is much better than Plato's Pre-existence ; because here a Man knows something of the State, and is the wiser for it ; which he is not in the other. In conversing with Books we may chuse our Com- pany, and disengage without Ceremony or Exception. Here we are free from the Formalities of Custom, and Respect : We need not undergo the Penance of a dull Story, from a Fop of Figure ; but may shake off the Haughty, the Impertinent, and the Vain, at Pleasure. Besides, Authors, like Women, commonly Dress when they make a Visit. Respect to themselves makes them polish their Thoughts, and exert the Force of their Understanding more than they would, or can do, in ordinary Conversation : So that the Reader has as it were the Spirit and Essence in a narrow Compass ; which was drawn off from a much larger Proportion of Time, Labour, and Expcnce. Like an Heir, he is born rather than made Rich, and comes into a Stock of Sense, with little or no Trouble of his own. Tis true, a Fortune in Knowledge which Descends in this manner, as well as an inherited Estate, is too often neglected, and squandered away; because we do not consider the Difficulty in Raising it. Books are a Guide in Youth, and an Entertainment for Age. They support us under Solitude, and keep us from being a Burthen to our selves. They help us to forget the Crossness of Men and Things ; compose our Cares, and our Passions ; and lay our Disappointments asleep. When we are weary of the Living, we may repair to the Dead, who have nothing of Peevishness, Pride, or Design, in their Conversation. However, to ioo JEREMY COLLIER. be constantly in the Wheel has neither Pleasure nor Improvement in it. A Man may as well expect to grow stronger by always Eating, as wiser by always Reading. Too much over-charges Nature ? and turns more into Disease than Nourishment. Tis Thought and Digestion which makes Books serviceable, and gives Health and Vigour to the Mind. Neither ought we to be too Implicit or Resigning to Authorities, but to examine before we Assent, and preserve our Reason in its just Liberties. To walk always upon Crutches, is the way to lose the Use of our Limbs. Such an absolute Submission keeps us in a perpetual Minority, breaks the Spirits of the Understanding, and lays us open to Imposture. But Books well managed afford Direction and Dis- covery. They strengthen the Organ, and enlarge the Prospect, and give a more universal Insight into Things, than can be learned from unlettered Observation. He who depends only upon his own Experience, has but a few Materials to work upon. He is confined to narrow Limits both of Place and Time: And is not fit to draw a large Model, and to pronounce upon Business which is complicated and unusual. . . . To take Measures wholly from Books, without looking into Men and Business, is like travelling in a Map, where though Countries and Cities are well enough dis- tinguished, yet Villages and private Seats are either Over-looked, or too generally Marked for a Stranger to find. And therefore he that would be a Master, must Draw by the Life, as well as Copy from Originals, and joyn Theory and Experience together. Essays upon Several Moral Subjects: Of the Entertainment of Books. pZtt&LOtrBLOUNTLOfrSDALE. 101 ARCHBISHOP FENELON. 1651 1715. If the crowns of all the kingdoms of the Empire were laid down at my feet in exchange for my books and my love of reading, I would spurn them all. CHARLES BLOUNT. 1654 1697. Books are the only Records of Time, which excite us to imitate the past Glories of our Ancestors. \\'c owe our Philosophy or Contemplation of God in his Works, to the same Cause. . . , Thus we see that Flistories make Men wise; Poets, witty; Mathematicks, subtle ; Natural Philosophy, deep ; Moral Philosophy, grave; Logick and Rhetorick, able to dispute; all which Excellencies are to be acquired only from Books ; since no Vocal Learning is so effectual for Instruction, as Reading. A Just Vindication of Learning. 1695. LONSDALE (JOHN, LORD VISCOUNT). l6 5S ' Next to his friends, in the selection of whom he was more than commonly nice and exact, his books were his best and most faithful companions, and one of the greatest comforts of his life. And here a pleasing domestic scene presents itself to our view. His eldest son, standing near him while he is writing in his library, is thus animated to the attainment of that knowledge which is treasured up in the volumes of ancient and modern literature. " What a pleasure is it one day to be a judge of the reasonableness and affection of what I am doing, and ica VISCOUNT LONSDALE. at the same time seeing round me whatever the world has produced most worth knowing. When I have at hand all that philosophers, divines, historians, poets, mathematicians, architects, &c., understood, digested into the best method and order, communicative of whatever I am most desirous to know without any constraint upon me, ready to be laid by without offence when weary of them, and to be resumed without cere- mony ; what would a man give for so easy a friend ? And here you have collected together the most ex- cellent of all mortals in all ages, of all countries, without being troubled with either their impertinance, insolence, affectation, moroseness, or pride, the com- mon failings of knowing great and learned men. But as the use of well-chosen books is the most excellent benefit of anything that it hath pleased God to bestow upon the children of men, so an ill choice of them is, in the opposite extreme, the most pernicious mischief that can be. Good books instruct us in our duty toward God, toward man, and to ourselves ; they form the mind to just and proper thoughts, make us good servants to God, good subjects, and useful to the state both as governors and servants, and whatever else relates to the common advantages of life ; ill ones deprave the mind, and have in all those respects a quite contrary effect" He then proceeds, with great diffidence and modesty, to recommend to his son those books which he thought most worthy of his perusal. Life and Character of John, Lord Viscount Lonsdale, author of "Memoir of the Reign of fames //.," by his uncle, the Rev. Dr. Zouch, Prebendary of Durham. York, 1808. T. FULLKR. M.D.JOHN NORRIS. 1*3 THOMAS FULLER, M.D. 1654 1734. Tell me not what thou hast heard and read, and only so ; but what (after thy hearing and reading) thou hast taken into thy Meditation, found to be Truth, settled with Judgment, fixed in thy Memory, embraced in thy affections ; and then a long time practised, and so made up to be truly thine own. This, and only this, is rightly called Learning. Intro Jutt to ad Sapientiam. 1731. JOHN NORRIS. 1657 1711. Concerning my Essays and Discourses I have only this to say, that I design 'd in them as much Brevity and Clearness as are consistent with each other, and to abound in sense rather than -words. I wish all men would observe this in their writings more than they do. I'm sure the multitude of Books and the shortness of Life require it, and sense will lye in a little compass if men would be perswaded to vent no Notions but what they are Masters of, and were Angels to write, I fancy we should have but few Folio's. This is what I designed and endeavour' d'va. the whole. Whether I have attain' d it or no, I submit to Judgment. Introduction to Mis- cellanies. This over-fond and superstitious deference to Autho- rity, makes men, otherwise senseful and Ingenious, quote such things many times out of an old dull Author, and with a peculiar emphasis of commendation too, as would never pass even in ordinary conversation ; and which they themselves would never have took to4 JOHN NORRIS. notice of, had not such an Author said it. But now, no sooner does a man give himself leave to think, but he perceives how absurd and unreasonable 'tis, that one man should prescribe to all Posterity : that men, like beasts, should follow the foremost of the Herd ; and that venerable non-sense should be prefer'd before new-sense: He considers, that that which we call Antiquity, is properly the nonage of the world ; that the sagest of his Authoritys were once new ; and that there is no other difference between an antient Author and himself, but only that of time ; which, if of any advantage, 'tis rather on his side, as living in a more refined and mature age of the world. And thus having cast off this Intellectual slavery, he addicts himself to no Author, Sect or Party ; but freely picks up Truth where-ever he can find it ; puts to Sea upon his own bottom ; holds the Stern himself ; and now, if ever, we may expect new discoverys. The Solitary and Contemplative man sits as safe in his Retirement as one of Homer's Heroes in a Cloud, and has this only trouble from the follies and extrava- gancies of men, that he pitties them. He does not, it may be, laugh so loud, but he is better pleas' d: He is not perhaps so often merry, but neither is he so often disgusted ; he lives to himself and God, full of Serenity and Content. . . . Neither are our intellectual advantages less indebted to Solitude. . . . All kinds of Speculative knowledg as well as practical, are best improved by Solitude. Indeed there is much talk about the great benefit of keeping Great men company, and thereupon 'tis usually reckon'd among the disad- JOHN NORRIS. 105 vantages of a Country life, that those of that condition want the opportunities of a Learned Conversation. Bat to confess the truth, I think there is not so much in it as people generally imagine. ... A man may be a constant attendant at the Conclaves of Learned men all his life long, and yet be no more the wiser for't than a Book-worm is for dwelling in Libraries. And therefore, to speak ingenuously, I don't see for my part wherein the great advantage of great Conversation lies, as the humours of men are pleas'd to order it. Were I to inform my self in business, and the manage- ment of affairs, I would sooner talk with a plain illiterate Farmer or Tradesman than the greatest Vcrtuoso. . . . So that I find I must take refuge at my Study at last, and there redeem the Time that I have Ust among the Learned. A Collection of Miscellanies: "Of the Advantages of Thinking-" "Of Solitude." Here in this shady lonely Grove I sweetly think my hours away, Neither with Business vex'd, nor Love, Which in the World bear such Tyrannic sway : No Tumults can my close Apartment find, Calm as those Seats above, which know no Sturm nor Wind. Let Plots and News embroil the State, Pray what's that to my Books and Aftt Whatever be the Kingdom's Fate, Here I am sure t' enjoy a Monarchy. Lord of my self, accountable to none, Lake the first Man in Paradise, alone. Potms: "Tht Retirement." xo6 GALE-SWIFT-CONGREVE. ROGER GALE. 1672 1744. I have been very busy in ordering my study and making an exact catalogue of the books, a drye, tedious piece of slavery, God wott, but I have now finished it alphabetically, so that I can call any of my old leather coats down very readily whenever I please, and enjoy his company as my fancy directs. You may perhaps think I have much mispent my time and been at all these pains to little purpose ; but many a tedious hour has it helped me off with, and I flatter myself that many more will slide away with great pleasure, at least with less uneasiness, by their assistance. Roger Gale to the Rev. W. Stukeley, M.D., May 20, 1743, The Family Memoirs of Stukeley, &c. (Surtees Society) ', 1880, vol. i. 359-60. JONATHAN SWIFT, 1667 1745. When I am reading a book, whether wise or silly, it seems to me to be alive and talking to me. Sometimes I read a book with pleasure, and detest the author. When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in con- federacy against him. Thoughts on Various Subjects. WILLIAM CONGREVE. 1670 1729. Read, read, sirrah, and refuse your appetite; learn to live upon instruction; feast your mind, and mortify your flesh: read, and take your nourishment in at your eyes, shut up your mouth, and chew the cud of understanding. Plays : "Love for Love. " STEELE-ADDJSON. 107 SIR RICHARD STEELE. 1671 1729. Reading is to the mind, what exercise is to the body. As by the one, health is preserved, strengthened, and invigorated ; by the other, virtue (which is the health of the mind) is kept alive, cherished and confirmed. But as exercise becomes tedious and painful, when we make use of it only as the means of health, so reading is apt to grow uneasy and burthensome when we apply ourselves to it for our improvement in virtue. For this reason, the virtue which we gather from a fable or an allegory, is like the health we get by hunting ; as we are engaged in an agreeable pursuit that draws us on with pleasure, and makes us insensible of the fatigues that accompany it. The Toiler, No. 147. JOSEPH ADDISON. 1672 1719. Aristotle tells us, that the world is a copy or trans- cript of those ideas which are in the mind of the first Being, and that those ideas which are in the mind of man, are a transcript of the world. To this we may add, that words are the transcript of those ideas which are in the mind of man and that writing or printing are the trans- cript of words. Asthe Supreme Being has expressed, and as it were printed his ideas in the creation, men express their ideas in books, which by this great invention of these latter ages may last as long as the sun and moon, and perish only in the general wreck of nature. . . . There is no other method of fixing those thoughts which arise and disappear in the mind of man, and transmitting them to the last periods of time; no other ,08 ADDlSOtf. method of giving a permanency to our ideas, and pre- serving the knowledge of any particular period, when his body is mixed with the common mass of matter, and his soul retired into the world of spirits. Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to genera- tion, as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn. . . . All other arts of perpetuating our ideas continue but a short time. . . . The cir- cumstance which gives authors an advantage above all these great masters, is this, that they can multiply their originals ; or rather can make copies of their works, to what number they please, which shall be as valuable as the originals themselves. This gives a great author something like a prospect of eternity, but at the same time deprives him of those other advantages which artists meet with. The artist finds greater returns in profit, as the author in fame. What an inestimable price would a Virgil or a Homer, a Cicero or an Aristotle bear, were their works, like a statue, a building, or a picture, to be confined only in one place and made the property of a single person ! If writings are thus durable, and may pass from age to age throughout the whole course of time, how care- ful should an author be of committing anything to print that may corrupt posterity, and poison the minds of men with vice and error ! Writers of great talents, who employ their parts in propagating immorality, and seasoning vicious sentiments with wit and humour, are to be looked upon as the pests of society, and the enemies of mankind. They leave books behind them (as it is said of those who die in distempers which SHERIDAN WATTS. 109 breed an ill will towards their own species) to scatter infection and destroy their posterity. Spectator. THOS. SHERIDAN. 1684 1738. While you converse with lords and dukes, I have their betters here my books : Fixed in an elbow-chair at ease, I choose companions as I please. I'd rather have one single shelf Than all my friends, except yourself; For after all that can be said Our best acquaintance are the dead. Addressed to Swift. ISAAC WATTS. 1674 1748. By reading, we acquaint ourselves with the affairs, actions, and thoughts of the living and the dead, in the most remote actions, and in the most distant ages ; and that with as much ease as though they lived in our own age and nation. By reading of books, we may learn something, from all parts, of mankind; whereas, by observation we leam all from ourselves, and only what comes within our own direct cognisance. By conversa- tion we can only enjoy the unction of a very few persons, those who are moving, and live at the same time that we do that is, our neighbours and contemporaries. By study and meditation we improve the hints that we have acquired by observation, conversation, and reading; we take more time in thinking, and by the labour of the mind we penetrate deeper into the themes of knowledge, and carry our thoughts sometimes much farther on many subjects, than we ever met with, either no MIDDLETONPOPE. in the books of the dead or discourses of the living. It is our own reasoning that draws out one truth from another, and forms a whole scheme of science from a few hints which we borrowed elsewhere. On the Improvement of the Mind. CONYERS MlDDLETON. 1683 I75O. I persuade myself that the life and faculties of man, at the best but short and limited, cannot be employed more rationally or laudably than in the search of knowledge ; and especially of that sort which relates to our duty, and conduces to our happiness. In these enquiries, therefore, wherever I perceive any glimmer- ing of truth before me, I readily pursue and endeavour to trace it to its source, without any reserve or caution of pushing the discovery too far, or opening too great a glare of it to the public. I look upon the discovery of anything which is true as a valuable acquisition of society, which cannot possibly hurt or obstruct the good effect of any other truth whatsoever ; for they all partake of one common essence, and necessarily coin- cide with each other ; and like the drops of rain which fall separately into the river, mix themselves at once with the stream, and strengthen the general current Miscellaneous Works. ALEXANDER POPE. 1688 1744. At this day, as much company as I have kept, and as much as I love it, I love reading better I would rather be employed in reading than in the most agree- able conversation. S fence's Anecdotes. MONTESQUIEU-LADY M. Jf. MONTAGU, HI BARON MONTESQUIEU. 1689 1755. Aimer a lire, c'est faire en ^change des heurcs tl'cnnui que 1'on doit avoir en sa vie centre des hcures delicieuscs. [Love of reading enables a man to exchange the weary hours which come to everyone, for hours of delight] LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. 1690 1762. I yet retain, and carefully cherish my love of reading. If relays of eyes were to be hired like post-horses, I would never admit any but silent companions : they afford a constant variety of entertainment, which is almost the only one pleasing in the enjoyment, and inoffensive in the consequence. . . . Every woman endeavours to breed her daughter a fine lady, qualifying her for a station in which she never will appear : and at the same time incapacitating her for that retirement, to which she is destined. Learning, if she has a real taste for it, will not only make her contented, but happy in it. No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting. She will not want new fashions, nor regret the loss of expensive diversions, or variety of company, if she can be amused with an author in her closet. . . . Daughter! daughter! don't call names ; you are always abusing my pleasures, which is what no mortal will bear. Trash, lumber, and stuff, are the titles you give to my favourite amuse- ment. If I called a white staff a stick of wood, a gold key gilded brass, and the ensigns of illustrious orders coloured strings, this may be philosophically true, but 112 LADY M. WORTLEY MONTAGU. would be very ill received. We have all our play- things; happy are they that can be contented with those they can obtain : those hours are spent in the wisest manner that can easiest shade the ills of life, and are the least productive of ill consequences. I think my time better employed in reading the adventures of imaginary people, than the Duchess of Marlborough, who passed the latter years of her life in paddling with her will, and contriving schemes of plaguing some, and extracting praise from others to no purpose ; eternally disappointing and eternally fretting. The active scenes are over at my age. I indulge, with all the art I can, my taste for reading. If I could confine it to valuable books, they are almost as rare as valuable men. I must be content with what I can find. As I approach a second childhood, I endeavour to enter into the pleasures of it Your youngest son is, perhaps, at this very moment riding on a poker with great delight, not at all regretting that it is not a gold one, and much less wishing it an Arabian horse, which he could not know how to manage ; I am reading an idle tale, not expecting wit or truth in it, and am very glad it is not metaphysics to puzzle my judgment, or history to mislead my opinion : he fortifies his health by exercise ; I calm my cares by oblivion. The methods may appear low to busy people ; but if he improves his strength, and I forget my infirmities, we both attain very desirable ends. Letters, 1752-7. LORD CHESTERFIELD. 1694 1773. Lay aside the best book whenever you can go into the best company ; and, depend upon it, you change LORD CHESTERFIELD VOLTAIRE GREEN. 113 for the better. . . . Throw away none of your time upon those trivial futile books, published by idle or necessitous authors, for the amusement of idle and ignorant readers. Cerium petefinem; have some one object for those leisure moments, and pursue that object invariably till you have attained it ... The ignorant and the weak only are idle. . . . Know- ledge does not cloy by possession, but increases desire ; which is the case with very few pleasures. Nobody ever lent themselves more than I did, when I was young, to the pleasure and dissipation of good com- pany. I even did it too much. But then I can assure you that I always found time for serious studies ; and when I could find it in no other way, I took it out of my sleep ; for I resolved always to rise early in the morning, however late I went to bed at night. . . . Rise early, and at the same hour, every morning, how late soever you may have sat up the night before. This secures you an hour or two, at least, of reading or reflection, before the common interruptions of the morning begin. Letters to His Son. AROUET DE VOLTAIRE. 1694 1778. You despise books; you, whose whole lives are absorbed in the vanities of ambition, the pursuit of pleasure, or in indolence; but remember that all the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by Books. Dictionnaire Phil.: Art." Books" MATTHEW GREEN. 1696 1737. And shorten tedious hours with books. , The Spleen. "4 JAMES THOMSON. JAMES THOMSON. 1700 1748. Now, all amid the rigours of the year, In the wild depth of winter, while without The ceaseless winds blow ice, be my retreat Between the groaning forest and the shore, Beat by the boundless multitude of waves; A rural, sheltered, solitary scene ; Where ruddy fire and beaming tapers join To cheer the gloom. There studious let me sit, And hold high converse with the mighty dead ; Sages of ancient time, as gods revered, As gods beneficent, who bless'd mankind With arts, with arms, and humanized a world. Roused at th' inspiring thought, I throw aside The long-lived volume; and, deep musing, hail The sacred shades, that, slowly rising, pass Before my wond'ring eye. First of your kind ! society divine ! Still visit thus my nights, for you reserved, And mount my soaring soul, to thoughts like yours, Silence, thou lonely power ! the door be thine; See on the hallow'd hour that none intrude, Save a few chosen friends, who sometimes deign To bless my humble roof, with sense refined, Learning digested well, exalted faith, Unclouded wit, and humour ever gay. Thus in some deep retirement would I pass The winter-gloom, with friends of pliant souls, Or blithe, or solemn, as the theme inspired. The Seasons: "Winter." JOHN WESLEY SAMUEL JOHNSON. 115 JOHN WESLEY. 1703 1791. Read the most useful books, and that regularly, and constantly. Steadily spend all the morning in this employ, or, at least, five hours in four-and -twenty. "But I read only the Bible." Then you ought to teach others to read only the Bible, and, by parity of reason, to hear only the Bible. But if so, you need preach no more. "Just so," said George Bell. "And what is the fruit?. Why, now he neither reads the Bible, nor anything else. This is rank enthusiasm." If you need no book but the Bible, you are got above St. Paul. He wanted others too. "Bring the books," says he, "but especially the parchments," those wrote on parchment. " But I have no taste for reading." Contract a taste for it by use, or return to your trade. The Works of the Rev. John Wesley, 1830, vol. viii., p. 315, "Minutes of Some Late Conversations;" &c. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 1709 1784. " Idleness is a disease which must be combated ; but I would not advise a rigid adherence to a particular plan of study. I myself have never persisted in any plan for two days together. A man ought to read just as inclination leads him ; for what he reads as a task will do him little good. A young man should read five hours in the day, and so may acquire a great deal of knowledge." He then took occasion to enlarge on the advantages of reading, and combated the idle, superficial notion, that knowledge enough may be acquired in conversa- tion. "The foundation," said he, "must be laid by it SAMUEL JOHNSON. reading. General principles must be had from books, which, however, must be brought to the test of real life. In conversation you never get a system. . . . The parts of a truth, which a man gets thus, are at such a dis- tance from each other that he never attains a full view." He said, that for general improvement a man should read whatever his immediate inclination prompts him to; though, to be wise, if a man have a science to learn, he must regularly and resolutely advance. He added, "what we read with inclination works a much stronger impression. If we read without inclination, half the mind is employed in fixing the attention ; so there is but one half to be employed on what we read." H'e told us he read Fielding's "Amelia" through without stopping. He said, "If a man begins to read in the middle of a book, and feels an inclina- tion to go on, let him not quit it, to go to the beginning. He may perhaps not feel again the inclination." " Books that can be held in the hand, and carried to the fireside, are the best after all." BosweWs "Johnson." He was never a close student, and used to advise young people never to be without a book in their pocket to read at bye-times, when they had nothing else to do. "It has been by that means that all my knowledge has been gained, except what I have picked up by running about the world with my wits ready to observe and my tongue ready to talk." . . . Mrs. Piozzi: "Recollections" A little plausibility of discourse, and acquaintance with unnecessary speculations, are dearly purchased, DAVID HUME ROUSSEAU. 117 when it excludes those instructions which fortify the heart with resolution, and exalt the spirit to indepen- dence. The Rambler, No. 180. DAVID HUME. 1712 1776. My family, however, was not rich, and being myself a younger brother, my patrimony, according to the mode of my country, was of course very slender. My father, who passed for a man of parts, died when I was an infant, leaving me, with an elder brother and a sister, under the care of our mother, a woman of singular merit, who, though young and handsome, de- voted herself entirely to the rearing and educating of her children. I passed through the ordinary course of education with success, and was seized very early with a passion for literature, which has been the ruling passion of my life, and the great source of my enjoy- ments. My studious disposition, my sobriety, and my industry, gave my family a notion that the law was a proper profession for me ; but I found an unsur- mountable aversion to every thing but the pursuits of philosophy and general learning ; and while they fancied I was poring upon Voet and Vinnius, Cicero and Virgil were the authors which I was secretly devouring. The Life of David Hume, written by Himself. JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU. 1712 1778. When the understanding is once enlarged by the custom of reflecting, it is always much best to find one's self the things which arc to be met with in books, 1 18 ROUSSEA U-DIDERO T-S TERNE. This is the true secret to fix them well in the head, and make them our own. The great error of those who study, is trusting too much to their books, and not extracting enough from their own fund ; not thinking that, of all sophists, our own reason is almost always that which deceives us the least ; as soon as they reflect, every one feels what is good ; every one discovers what is beautiful. We have no occasion to learn to distinguish either one or the other. . . . The soul is elevated, the heart is inflamed, by contem- plating the highest models ; by reflecting on them, we seek to become like them, and no longer suffer any- thing meddling without a mortal disgust. The mind, no more than the body, carries more than it can bear. When the understanding makes things its own, before it lays them up in the memory, what we afterwards draw from it, is our own ; while, by overloading the memory, without its knowledge, we run the risk of extracting nothing from it, which is our own. . . . Reason is not a piece of furniture which we can lay aside, and take again at our pleasure ; whoever has been able to live ten years without thinking, will nevel think during his whole life. DENYS DIDEROT. 1713 1789. Spoken sentences are like sharp nails, which force truth upon us. Diderotiana. LAURENCE STERNE. 1713 1768. The mind should be accustomed to make wise reflections, and draw curious conclusions as it goes SHENSTONE- WALPOLE-GOLDSM1TH. 119 along ; the habitude of which made Pliny the younger affirm that he never read a book so bad but he drew some profit from it. Digressions incontestably are the sunshine, they are the life, the soul of reading. WILLIAM SHENSTONE. 1714 1763. I hate a style, as I do a garden that is wholly flat and regular; that slides along like an eel, and never rises to what one can call an inequality. Essays : "On Writing and Books. " HORACE WALPOLE. 1717 1797. Without grace no book can live, and with it the poorest may have its life prolonged. ... I some- times wish for a catalogue of lounging books books that one takes up in the gout, low spirits, ennui, or when in waiting for company. Some novels, gay poetry, odd whimsical authors, as Rabelais, &c. A catalogue raisonnt of such might be itself a good lounging book. OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 1728 1774. An author may be considered as a merciful substitute to the legislature. He acts not by punishing crimes, but by preventing them. There is improbable pleasure attending the life of a voluntary student. The first time I read an excellent 120 DODD-LESSING BURKE. book, it is to me just as if I had gained a new friend ; when I read over a book I have perused before, it resembles the meeting with an old one. Citizen oft/ie World. WILLIAM DODD. 1729 1777. Books, dear books, Have been, and are my comforts, morn and night, Adversity, prosperity, at home, Abroad, health, sickness, good or ill report, The same firm friends ; the same refreshments rich, And source of consolation. Thoughts in Prison. GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. 1729 1781. "Yes," said Goethe ; "Lessing himself said, that if God would give him truth, he would decline the gift, and prefer the labour of seeking it for himself." Ecker- mann's Conversations with Goethe in the Last Years of His Life. [ Translated by Margaret Fuller. ] EDMUND BURKE. 1729 1797. He who calls in the aid of an equal understanding, doubles his own ; and he who profits by a superior understanding, raises his power to a level with the height of the superior understanding he unites with. Whatever turns the soul inward on itself, tends to concentre its forces, and to fit it for greater and stronger flights MOORE COWPER. tti JOHN MOORE. 1730 1802. It can hardly be conceived how life, short as it is, can be passed without many intervals of tedium, by those who have not their bread to earn, if they could not call in the assistance of our worthy mute friends, the Books. Horses, hounds, the theatres, cards, and the bottle, are all of use occasionally, no doubt ; but the weather may forbid the two first ; a kind of nonsense may drive us from the third ; the association of others is necessary for the fourth, and also for the fifth, unless to those who are already sunk into the lowest state of wretched- ness and degradation : but the entertainment which BOOKS afford, can be enjoyed in the worst weather, can be varied as we please, obtained in solitude, and instead of blunting, it sharpens the understanding ; but the most valuable effect of a taste for reading is, that it often preserves us from bad company. For those are not apt to go or remain with disagreeable people abroad, who are always certain of a pleasant party at home. Zelufo ; Various Views of Human Nature, WILLIAM COWPER. 1731 1800. Now stir the fire, and dose the shutters fast, Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round, And, while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn Throws up a steamy column, and the cups That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each, So let us welcome peaceful evening in. 22 COWPER Tis pleasant through the loop-holes of retreat To peep at such a world. To see the stir Of the great Babel, and not feel the crowd. To hear the roar she sends through all her gates At a safe distance, where the dying sound Falls in soft murmur on the uninjured ear. Thus sitting and surveying them at ease The globe and its concerns, I seem advanced To some secure and more than mortal height, That liberates and exempts me from them all. Oh Winter ! ruler of the inverted year, Thy scatter'd hair with sleet-like ashes fill'd, Thy breath congeal'd upon thy lips, thy cheeks Fringed with a beard made white with other snows Than those of age ; thy forehead wrapt in clouds, A leafless branch thy sceptre, and thy throne A sliding car indebted to no wheels, But urged by storms along its slippery way ; I love thee, all unlovely as thou seem'st And dreaded as thou art. . . . I crown thee King of intimate delight, Fire-side enjoyments, home-born happiness, And all the comforts that the lowly roof Of undisturb'd retirement, and the hours Of long uninterrupted evening know. Come, evening, once again, season of peace, Return, sweet evening, and continue long ! Come then, and thou shall find thy votary calm Or make me so. Composure is thy gift. GIBBON SIR WILLIAM JONES. ia) And whether I devote thy gentle hours To books, to music, or the poet's toil, I slight thee not, but make thee welcome still. Flow calm is my recess ! and how the frost Raging abroad, and the rough wind endear The silence and the warmth cnjoy'd within. The Task, Book iv., The Winter Evening. Books are not seldom talismans and spells. The Task, Book vi., The Winter Walk at Noon. EDWARD GIBBON. 1737 1794. A taste for books is the pleasure and glory of my life. ... I would not exchange it for the wealth of the Indies. . . . The miseries of a vacant life are never known to a man whose hours are insufficient for the inexhaustible pleasures of study. . . . The love of study, a passion which derives great vigour from enjoyment, supplies each day, each hour, with perpetual round of independent and rational pleasure. A utobiography. Let us read with method, and propose to ourselves an end to what our studies may point. The use of reading is to aid us in thinking. SIR WILLIAM JONES. 1746 1794. I have carefully and regularly perused the Holy Scriptures, and am of opinion that they contain more ia 4 WYTTENBACH-DE GENLlS-AIKftf. sublimity, purer morality, more important history, and finer strains of eloquence, than can be collected from all other books, in whatever language they may have been written. DANIEL WYTTENBACH. 1746 1820. There is no business, no avocation whatever, which will not permit a man, who has the inclination, to give a little time, every day, to study. COUNTESS DE GENLIS. 1746 1830. Books are a guide in youth, and an entertainment for age. They support us under solitude, and keep us from becoming a burden to ourselves. They help us to forget the crossness of men and things, compose our cares and our passions, and lay our disappointments asleep. When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride, or design in their conversation. It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds ; and these invaluable communications are within the reach of all. Menioires, &c. JOHN AIKIN. 1747 1822. At the head of all the pleasures which offer them- selves to the man of liberal education, may confidently be placed that derived from books. In variety, durability, and facility of attainment, no other can stand in competition with it ; and even in intensity it is inferior to few. Imagine that we had it in our A/KIN. 113 power to call up the shades of the greatest and wisest men that ever existed, and oblige them to converse with us on the most interesting topics what an inestimable privilege should we think it ! how superior to all common enjoyments ! But in a well- furnished library we, in fact, possess this power. We can question Xenophon and Caesar on their campaigns, make Demosthenes and Cicero plead before us, join in the audiences of Socrates and Plato, and receive demonstrations from Euclid and Newton. In books we have the choicest thoughts of the ablest men in their best dress. We can at pleasure exclude dulness and impertinence, and open our doors to wit and good sense alone. It is needless to repeat the high com- mendations that have been bestowed on the study of letters by persons, who had free access to every other source of gratification. Instead of quoting Cicero to you, I shall in plain terms give you the result of my own experience on this subject. If domestic enjoy- ments have contributed in the first degree to the happiness of my life (and I should be ungrateful not to acknowledge that they have), the pleasures of reading have beyond all question held the second place. Without books I have never been able to pass a single day to my entire satisfaction : with them, no day has been so dark as not to have its pleasure. Even pain and sickness have for a time been charmed away by them. By the easy provision of a book in my pocket, I have frequently worn through long nights and days in the most disagreeable parts of my profession, with all the difference in my feelings between calm content and fretful impatience. Such occurrences have afforded 126 AlKIN-COETHE. me full proof both of the possibility of being cheaply pleased, and of the consequence it is of to the sum of human felicity, not to neglect minute attentions to make the most of life as it passes. Reading may in every sense be called a cheap amuse- ment. A taste for books, indeed, may be made expensive enough ; but that is a taste for editions, bindings, paper, and type. If you are satisfied with getting at the sense as an author, in some commodious way, a crown at a stall will supply your wants as well as a guinea at a shop. Learn, too, to distinguish between books to be perused, and books to be possessed. Of the former you may find an ample store in every subscription library, the proper use of which to a scholar is to furnish his mind without loading his shelves. No apparatus, no appointment of time and place, is necessary for the enjoyment of reading. From the midst of bustle and business you may, in an instant, by the magic of a book, plunge into scenes of remote ages and countries, and disengage yourself from present care and fatigue. "Sweet pliability of man's spirit, (cries Sterne, on relating an occurrence of this kind in his Sentimental Journey) that can at once surrender itself to illusions which cheat expectation and sorrow of their weary moments!" Letters from a Father to his Son. JOHN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE. 17491832. No productiveness of the highest kind, no re- markable discovery, no great thought which bears GOETHE. 117 fruit and has results, is in the power of any one ; but such things are elevated above all earthly control. Man must consider them as an unexpected gift from above, as pure children of God, which he must receive and venerate with joyful thanks. They are akin to the daemon, which does with him what it pleases, and to which he unconsciously resigns himself, whilst he believes he is acting from his own impulse. In such cases, man may often be considered as an instrument in a higher government of the world, as a vessel found worthy for the reception of a divine influence. I say this, whilst I consider how often a single thought has given a different form to whole centuries, and how individual men have, by their expressions, imprinted a stamp upon their age, which has remained unefiaced, and has operated beneficially upon succeeding genera- tions. Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann and Sont. [Translated by John Oxenford.] There are three classes of readers ; some enjoy without judgment ; others judge without enjoyment ; and some there are who judge while they enjoy, and enjoy while they judge. Whoever would do good in the world, ought not to deal in censure. We ought not to destroy, but rather construct. It is a peculiarity of the literary world, that nothing in it is ever destroyed without a new production, and one of the same kind too. There is in it an eternal life, for it is always in its old age, in its manhood, youth, and childhood, and all this at one and the same time. ia8 GOETHE. Certain books are written, not to instruct you, hut to let you know that the author knew something. Our most valuable acquisition from history is the enthusiasm it excites. To understand an author we must first understand his age. Whatever you cannot understand, you cannot possess. Generally speaking, an author's style is a faithful copy of his mind. If you would write a lucid style, let there first be light in your own mind. I have never made a secret of my enmity to parodies and travesties. My only reason for hating them is because they lower the beautiful, noble, and great.* Every week he (Schiller) was different and more perfect ; whenever I saw him he appeared to me to have advanced in reading, learning, and judgment. * One of the papers (that entitled " Debasing the Moral Currency") in "The Impressions of Theophrastus Such" ex- presses a strongly marked characteristic of George Eliot's mind. It is a pithy protest against the tendency of the present generation to turn the grandest deeds and noblest works of art into food for laughter. For she hated nothing so much as mockery and ridicule of what other people reverenced, often remarking that those who considered themselves freest from superstitious fancies were the most intolerant. She carried this feeling to such a pitch that she even disliked a book like " Alice in Wonderland," because it laughed at the things which children had had a kind of belief in. In censuring this vicious habit of burlesquing the things that ought to be regarded with awe and admiration, she remarks, " Let a greedy buffoonery debase all historic beauty, majesty and pathos, and the more you heap up the desecrated symbols, the greater will be the lack of the ennobling emotions which subdue the tyranny of suffering, and make ambition one with virtue." Gforgt Eliot: by Mathilde Blind. (Eminent Women Series > GOETHE. 1*9 Look at Bums ! What makes him great, but the circumstance that the old songs of his ancestors still lived in the mouth of the people, that they were sung at his cradle, that he heard them and grew up with them in his boyhood, until their high perfection became part and parcel of himself, and until they became for him a living basis on which he could stand and take his start. And again, what makes him great, but the echo which his songs found in the hearts of his countrymen ! They came back to him from the field where the labourers sang them, and from the inn, where merry fellows greeted his ear with his own songs. Goethe's Opinions ; from his Correspondence and Conversations ; by Otto Wenckstern. In the whirlpool of the literature of the day, I have been dragged into the bottomless abyss of horrors of the recent French romance-literature. I will say in one word /'/ is a literature of despair. In order to produce a momentary effect, the very contrary of all that should be held up to man for his safety or his comfort is brought before the reader, who at last knows not whether to fly or how to save himself. To push the hideous, the revolting, the cruel, the base, in short the whole brood of the vile and abandoned, to impos- sibility, in their Satanic task. One may, and must, say task; for there is at the bottom a profound study of old times, by-gone events and circumstances, remarkable and intricate plots, and incredible facts ; so that it is impossible to call such a work either empty or bad. And this task even men of remarkable talents have undertaken ; clever, eminent men, men of middle age, J 130 HERDER-CECIL. who feel themselves damned henceforward to occupy themselves with these abominations. . . . Every- thing true everything sesthetical is gradually and necessarily excluded from this literature. Goet/te's Correspondence tvith Ztller. J. G. VON HERDER. 1744 1803. With the greatest possible solicitude avoid author- ship. Too early or immoderately employed, it makes the head waste and the heart empty ; even were there no other worse consequences. A person, who reads only to print, in all probability reads amiss ; and he, who sends away through the pen and the press every thought, the moment it occurs to him, will in a short time have sent all away, and will become a mere journeyman of the printing-office, a compositor, To the above passage, quoted in the " Biographia Literaria," Coleridge appends the following note: To which I may add from myself, that what medical physiologists affirm of certain secretions applies equally to our thoughts ; they too must be taken up again into the circulation, and be again and again re-secreted in order to ensure a healthful vigour, both to the mind and to its intellectual offspring. RICHARD CECIL. 1748 1816. God has given us four books : the book of grace, the book of nature, the book of the world, and the book of providence. Every occurrence is a leaf in one of these books : it does not become us to be negligent in the use of any of them. YRIAR TE-INCHBALD-ROSCOE. 131 TOMAS DE YRIARTE. 1750 1791. For every man of real learning Is anxious to increase his lore, And feels, in fact, a greater yearning, The more he knows, to know the more. ELIZABETH INCHBALD. 1753 1821. Here, in the country, my books are my sole occupa- tion ; books my sure solace, and refuge from frivolous cares. Books are the calmers as well as the instructors of the mind. Letttrs. WILLIAM ROSCOE. 1753 1831. 7*0 my Books on Farting with Them, As one who, destined from his friends to part, Regrets his loss, yet hopes again erewhile To share their converse and enjoy their smile, And tempers as he may affliction's dart, Thus, loved associates I chiefs of elder Art I Teachers of wisdom ! who could once beguile My tedious hours, and lighten every toil, I now resign you : nor with fainting heart ; For pass a few short years, or days, or hours, And happier seasons may their dawn unfold, And all your sacred fellowship restore ; When, freed from earth, unlimited its powers, Mind shall with mind direct communion hold, And kindred spirits meet to part no more. 13* CRABBE. GEORGE CRABBE. 1754 1832. But what strange art, what magic can dispose The troubled mind to change its native woes ? Or lead us willing from ourselves, to see Others more wretched, more undone than we ? This, BOOKS can do ; nor this alone ; they give New views to life, and teach us how to live ; They soothe the grieved, the stubborn they chastise, Fools they admonish, and confirm the wise : Their aid they yield to all : they never shun The man of sorrow, nor the wretch undone : Unlike the hard, the selfish, and the proud, They fly not sullen from the suppliant crowd ; Nor tell to various people various things, But show to subjects, what they show to kings. Come, Child of Care ! to make thy soul serene, Approach the treasures of this tranquil scene ; Survey the dome, and, as the doors unfold, The soul's best cure, in all her cares, behold ! Where mental wealth the poor in thought may find And mental physic the diseased in mind ; See here the balms that passion's wounds assuage ; See coolers here, that damp the fire of rage ; Here alt'ratives, by slow degrees control The chronic habits of the sickly soul ; And round the heart and o'er the aching head, Mild opiates here their sober influence shed. Now bid thy soul man's busy scenes exclude, And view composed this silent multitude : Silent they are but, though deprived of sound, Here all the living languages abound ; CRABBE-GODWIN. 133 Here all that live no more ; preserved they lie, In tombs that open to the curious eye. Blest be the gracious Power, who taught mankind To stamp a lasting image of the mind ! Beasts may convey, and tuneful birds may sing, Their mutual feelings, in the opening spring ; But Man alone has skill and power to send The heart's warm dictates to the distant friend ; Tis his alone to please, instruct, advise Ages remote, and nations yet to rise. Here come the grieved, a change of thought to find ; The curious here to feed a craving mind ; , Here the devout their peaceful temple choose ; And here the poet meets his favouring muse. With awe, around these silent walks I tread ; These are the lasting mansions of the dead : "The dead !" methinks a thousand tongues reply; "These are the tombs of such as cannot die ! "Crown'd with eternal fame, they sit sublime, "And laugh at all the little strife of time." The Library. 1781. WILLIAM GODWIN. 1756 1836. Books are the depositary of everything that is most honourable to man. Literature, taken in all its bearings, forms the grand line of demarcation between the human and the animal kingdoms. He that loves reading, has everything within his reach. He has but to desire ; and he may possess himself of every species of wisdom to judge, and power to perform. . . . Books 134 GODWIN SCHILLER. gratify and excite our curiosity in innumerable ways. They force us to reflect. They hurry us from point to point They present direct ideas of various kinds, and they suggest indirect ones. In a well-written book we are presented with the maturest reflections, or the happiest flights, of a mind of uncommon excellence. It is impossible that we can be much accustomed to such companions, without attaining some resemblance of them. When I read Thomson, I become Thomson ; when I read Milton, I become Milton. I find myself a sort of intellectual cameleon, assuming the colour of the substances on which I rest. He that revels in a .well-chosen library, has innumerable dishes, and all of admirable flavour. His taste is rendered so acute, as easily to distinguish the nicest shades of difference. His mind becomes ductile, susceptible to every im- pression, and gaining new refinement from them all. His varieties of thinking baffle calculation, and his powers, whether of reason or fancy, become eminently vigorous. The Enquirer : Of an Early Taste for heading. FRIEDRICH SCHILLER. 1759 1805. There is no more implacable enemy, no more envious colleague, no more zealous inquisitor, than the man who has set his talents and knowledge to sale. . . . Not in the deep and hidden treasures of his own thoughts does such an one seek his reward ; he seeks it in external applause, in titles and posts of honour or authority. ... In vain has he searched for truth, if he cannot barter her in exchange for gold, for newspaper applause, for court favour. SCHILLER. 135 How far different is the philosophical spirit ! Just as sedulously as the trader in knowledge severs his own peculiar science from all others, does the lover of wisdom strive to extend its dominion and restore its connexion with them. I say, to restore; for the boundaries which divide the sciences are but the work of abstraction. What the empiric separates, the philosopher unites. He has early come to the conviction that in the territory of intellect, as in the world of matter, every thing is enlinked and com- mingled, and his eager longing for universal harmony and agreement cannot be satisfied by fragments. All his efforts are directed to the perfecting of his know- ledge ; his noble impatience cannot be tranquillized till all his conceptions have arranged themselves into one harmonious whole ; till he stands at the central point of arts and sciences, and thence overlooks the whole extent of their dominion with satisfied glance. New discoveries in the field of his activity, which depress the trader in science, enrapture the philo- sopher. . . . The philosophical mind passes on through new forms of thought, constantly heightening in beauty, to perfect, consummate excellence ; while the empiric hoards the barren sameness of his school attainments in a mind eternally stationary. . . . Whatever one conquers in the empire of 'truth, the philosopher snares with all ; while the man whose only estimate of wisdom is profit, hates his contemporaries and grudges them the light and sun which illumine them ; he guards with jealous care the tottering barriers which feebly defend him from the incursions of victorious truth ; for whatever he undertakes, he is 136 WILLIAM COBBETT. compelled to borrow stimulus and encouragement from without, while the philosophical spirit finds in its objects, nay, even in its toils, excitement and reward. Lecture on Universal History, at fena, 1789. WILLIAM COBBETT. 1762 1835. When only eleven years old, with three pence in my pocket my whole fortune I perceived, at Richmond, in a bookseller's window, a little book, marked "Price Three pence" Swift's "Tale of a Tub." Its odd title excited my curiosity ; I bought it in place of my supper. So impatient was I to examine it, that I got over into a field at the upper corner of Kew Gardens, and sat down to read, on the shady side of a hay-stack. The book was so different from anything I had read before it was something so new to my mind, that, though I could not at all understand some parts of it, still it delighted me beyond measure, and produced, what I have always considered, a sort of birth of intellect. I read on till it was dark, without any thought of supper or bed. When I could see no longer, I put it into my pocket, and fell asleep beside the stack, till the birds awaked me in the morning; and then I started off, still reading my little book. I could relish nothing beside ; I carried it about with me wherever I went, till, when about twenty years old, I lost it in a box that fell overboard in the Bay of Fundy. I hope that your tastes will keep you aloof from the writings of those detestable villains, who employ the powers of their mind in debauching the minds of others, or in endeavours to do it. They present their poison in such captivating forms, that it requires great COBBETTSIR EGER TON BR YDGES. 137 virtue and resolution to withstand their temptations ; and they have, perhaps, done a thousand times as much mischief in the world as all the infidels and atheists put together. These men ought to be held in universal abhorrence, and never spoken of but with execration. If you wish to remember a thing well, put it into writing, even if you burn the paper immediately after you have done ; for the eye greatly assists the mind. Memory consists of a concatenation of ideas, the place, the time, and other circumstances, lead to the recollec- tion of facts ; and no circumstance more effectually than stating the facts upon paper. A JOURNAL should be kept by every young man. Put down something against every day in the year, if it be merely a descrip- tion of the weather. You will not have done this for one year without rinding the benefit of it. It demands not more than a minute in the twenty-four hours ; and that minute is most agreeably and advantageously employed. It tends greatly to produce regularity in the conducting of affairs ; it is a thing demanding a small portion of attention once only in every day. Advice to Young Men, and (incidentally) to Young Women, in the Middle and Higher Ranks of Life, in a Series of Letters addressed to a Youth, a Bachelor, a Lover, a Husband, a Father, a Citizen or a Subject. SIR S. EGERTON BRYDGES. 1762 1837. Are books, in truth, a dead letter ? To those who have no bright mirror in their own bosoms to reflect their images, they arc ! but the lively and active scenes, which they call forth in well-framed minds, exceed the t 3 8 SIR EGERTON BRYDGES. liveliness of reality. Heads and hearts of a coarsei grain require the substance of material objects to put them in motion. Books instruct us calmly, and with- out intermingling with their instruction any of those painful impressions of superiority, which we must necessarily feel from a living instructor. They wait the pace of each man's capacity ; stay for his want of perception, without reproach ; go backward and for- ward with him at his wish ; and furnish inexhaustible repetitions. How is it possible to express what we owe, as intellectual beings, to the art of printing ? When a man sits in a well -furnished library, sur- rounded by the collected wisdom of thousands of the best endowed minds, of various ages and countries, what an amazing extent of mental range does he com- mand. Every age, and every language, has some advantages, some excellencies peculiar to itself ! I am not sure, that skill in a variety of tongues is always wisdom ; but an acquaintance with various forms of expression, and the operations and results of minds at various times, and under various circumstances of climate, manners and government, must necessarily enrich and strengthen our opinions. A person, who is only conversant with the literature of his own country, and that during only the last ten or twenty years, con- tracts so narrow a taste, that every other form of phrase, or mode of composition, every other fashion of sentiment, or intellectual process, appears to him repulsive, dull and worthless. He reads Spenser, and Milton, if he reads them at all, only as a task ; and he turns with disgust from the eloquence of Sydney, Hooker, and Jeremy Taylor. . . . SIR EGERTON BRYDGES. 139 Above mil, there is this value in books, that they enable us to converse with the dead. There is something in this beyond the mere intrinsic worth of what they have left us. When a person's body is mouldering, cold and insensible, in the grave, we feel a sacred sentiment of veneration for the living memorials of his mind. The Kuminatoi, No. 22, Books. The contempt of many of the innocent trifles of life, which the generality of the world betray, arises from the weakness and narrowness, and not from the superiority, of their understandings. Most of the empty baubles, which mankind pursue as objects of high consideration, are suffered to eclipse those simple amusements which are in no respect less important, and which are so far more valuable as they are more compatible with purity of heart and conduct ! It is from an undue estimate of the points of ordinary ambi- tion, that health, liberty, carelessness of mind, and ease of conscience are sacrificed to the attainment of distinctions, which in the opinion of the truly wise are mere vanity. A just appreciation on the contrary will deem every pursuit, that affords amusement without derogating from virtue, praiseworthy. Of all the human relaxations which are free from guilt, perhaps there is none so dignified as reading. It is no little good to while away the tediousness of existence in a gentle and harmless exercise of the intellectual facul- ties. If we build castles in the air that vanish as quickly as the passing clouds, still some beneficial result has been obtained ; some hours of weariness Ho RICHTER. have been stolen from us ; and probably some cares have been robbed of their sting. I do not here mean to discuss the scale of excellence among the various studies that books afford. It is my purpose to shew that even the most trifling books, which give harmless pleasure, produce a good far exceeding what the world ascribes to more high-sounding occupations. When we recollect of how many it is the lot, even against choice, to pass their days in solitude, how admirable is the substitute for conversation, which the powers of genius and art of printing bestow ! The Ruminator, No. 24, On the Pleasures of Reading. JEAN PAUL F. RICHTER. 1763 1825. A scholar has no ennui. ... In this bridal- chamber of the mind (such are our study-chambers), in this concert-hall of the finest voices gathered from all times and places the aesthetic and philosophic enjoyments almost overpower the faculty of choice. Hesperus. And now the most beautiful dawn that mortal can behold, arose upon his spirit the dawn of a new composition. For the book that a person is beginning to create or design, contains within itself half a life, and God only knows what an expanse of futurity also. Hopes of improvement ideas which are to ensure the development and enlightenment of the human race swarm with a joyful vitality in his brain, as he softly paces up and down in the twilight when it has become too dark to write. FERRIAR ISAAC DISRAELI. 141 DR. JOHN FERRIAR. 1764 1815. Like Poets, born, in vain Collectors strive To cross their Fate, and learn the art to thrive. Like CACUS, bent to tame their struggling will, The tyrant-passion drags them backward still : Ev'n I, debarr'd of ease, and studious hours, Confess, mid' anxious toil, its lurking pow'rs. How pure the joy, when first my hands unfold The small, rare volume, black with tarnish'd gold. The Bibliomania, ISAAC DISRAELI. 1767 1848. Golden volumes ! richest treasures ! Objects of delicious pleasures ! You my eyes rejoicing please, You my hands in rapture seize ! Brilliant wits, and musing sages, Lights who beamed through many ages, Left to your conscious leaves their story, And dared to trust you with their glory; And now their hope of fame achieved ! Dear volumes ! you have not deceived ! Imitated from Kantzau, ike founder of the Library at Copenhagen. Men of letters find in books an occupation congenial to their sentiments ; labour without fatigue ; repose with activity ; an employment, interrupted without inconvenience, and exhaustless without satiety. They remain ever attached to their studies. Their library and their chamber are contiguous; and often in this i4a ISAAC DISRAELI. contracted space, does the opulent owner consume his delicious hours. His pursuits are ever changing, and he enlivens the austere by the lighter studies. It was said of a great hunter, that he did not live, but hunted ; and it may be said of the man of letters, that he does not live, but meditates. He is that happy man who creates hourly wants, and enjoys the voluptuousness of imme- diate gratification. . . . Those who feel with enthusiasm the eloquence of a fine writer, insensibly receive some particles from it ; a virtuous writer communicates virtue ; a refined writer, a subtile delicacy ; a sublime writer, an elevation of sentiment. All these characters of the mind, in a few years, are diffused throughout the nation. Among us, what acute reasoners has the refined penetration of Hume formed ; what amenity of manners has not Addison introduced ; to how many virtuous youths have not the moral essays of Johnson imparted forti- tude, and illumined with reflection ? . . . It is curious to observe the solitary man of letters in the concealment of his obscure study, separated from the crowd, unknown to his contemporaries, col- lecting the materials of instruction from every age and every country ; combining with the present the example of the past, and the prediction of the future ; pouring forth the valuable secrets of his meditations to posterity ; striking with the concussion of new light the public mind ; and forming the manners, the opinions, the refinement, and the morals of his fellow-citizens. . . . The interruptions of visitors have been feelingly lamented by men of letters. The mind, occupied in maturing its speculations, feels the approach of the ISAAC DISRAELI. 143 visitor by profession, as the sudden gales of an eastern blast, passing over the blossoms of spring. " We are afraid," said some of the visitors to Baxter, "that we break in upon your time." "To be sure you do," replied the disturbed and blunt scholar. . . . The amiable Melancthon, incapable of a harsh expression, when he received these idle visits, only noted down the time he had expended, that he might reanimate his industry, and not lose a day. Yet let us not confound true PHILOSOPHERS with dreaming THEORISTS. They are not more engaged in cultivating the mind, than the earth ; the annals of agriculture are as valuable as the annals of history ; and while they instruct some to think, they teach others to labour. PHILOSOPHY extends it's thoughts on what- ever the eye has seen, or the hand has touched ; it herbalises in fields ; it founds mines ; it is on the waters, and in the forests ; it is in the library, and the labora- tory ; it arranges the calculations of finance ; it invents the police of a city ; it erects it's fortifications ; it gives velocity to our fleets ; in a word, it is alike in the solitude of deserts, as in the populousness of manufac- tories. The GENIUS of PHILOSOPHY pierces every where, and on whatever it rests, like the sun, it dis- covers what lay concealed, or matures what it found imperfect. An Essay on the Manners and Genius of the Literary Character. 1795. Those authors who appear sometimes to forget they are writers, and remember they are men, will be our favourites. He who writes from the heart, will write to the heart ; every one is enabled to decide on his merits, i44 ISAAC DISRAELI. and they will not be referred to learned heads, or a distant day. We are I think little interested if an author displays sublimity ; but we should be much concerned to know whether he has sincerity. . . . " Why," says Boileau, "are my verses read by all? it is only because they speak truths, and that I am con- vinced of the truths I write." Why is Addison still the first of our essayists? he has sometimes been excelled in criticisms more philo- sophical, in topics more interesting, and in diction more coloured. But there is a personal charm in the character he has assumed, in his periodical Miscellanies, which is felt with such a gentle force, that we scarce advert to it. He has painted forth his little humours, his individual feelings, and eternised himself to his readers. . . . Sterne perhaps derives a portion of his celebrity from the same influence ; he interests us in his minutest motions, for he tells us all he feels. Richardson was sensible of the power with which his minute strokes of description enter the heart, and which are so many fastenings to which the imagination clings. He says " If I give speeches and conversations I ought to give them justly ; for the humours and characters of persons cannot be known, unless I repeat what they say, and their manner of saying." I confess I am infinitely pleased when Sir William Temple acquaints us with the size of his orange trees, and with the flavour of his peaches and grapes, confessed by Frenchmen to equal those of France ; with his having had the honour to naturalize in this country four kinds of grapes, with his liberal distribution of them because " he ever thought all things of this kind the commoner ISAAC DISRAELI. MS they are the better." In a word with his passionate attachment to his garden, of his desire to escape from great employments, and having passed five years with- out going to town, where, by the way, "he had a large house always ready to receive him." Dryden has interspersed many of these little particulars in his prosaic compositions, and I think, that his character and dispositions, may be more correctly acquired by uniting these scattered notices, than by any biographical account which can now be given of this man of genius. . . . Dryden confesses that he never read any- thing but for his pleasure. . . . Montaigne's works have been called by a Cardinal "the Breviary of Idlers." It is therefore the book of man ; for all men are idlers; we have hours which we pass with lamentation, and which we know are always returning. At those moments miscellanists are comformable to all our humours. We dart along their airy and concise page, and their lively anecdote, or their profound observation are so many interstitial pleasures in our listless hours. We find, in these literary miniatures, qualities incom- patible with more voluminous performances. Some- times a bolder, and sometimes a firmer touch ; for they are allowed but a few strokes. They are permitted every kind of ornament, for how can the diminutive please, unless it charms by it's finished decorations, it's elaborate niceties, and it's exquisite polish? A concise work preserves a common subject from insi- pidity, and an uncommon one from error. An essayist expresses himself with a more real enthusiasm, than the writer of a volume ; for I have observed that the most fervid genius is apt to cool in a quarto. . . K M 6 ISAAC DISRAELI. The ancients were great admirers of Miscellanies ; and this with some profound students, who affect to contemn these light and beautiful compositions, might be a solid argument to evince their bad taste. Aulus Gellius has preserved a copious list of titles of such works. These titles are so numerous, and include such gay and pleasing descriptions, that we may infer by their number that they were greatly admired by the public, and by their titles that they prove the great delight their authors experienced in their composition. Among the titles are " a basket of flowers ; " "an em- broidered mantle ; " and " a variegated meadow. " Such a m iscellanist as was the admirable Erasmus, deserves the happy description which Plutarch with an elegant enthusiasm bestows on Menander: he calls him the delight of philosophers fatigued with study ; that they have recourse to his works as to a meadow enamelled with flowers, where the sense is delighted by a purer air. Nature herself is most delightful in her miscellaneous scenes. When I hold a volume of Miscellanies, and run over with avidity the titles of its contents, my mind is enchanted, as if it were placed among the landscapes of Valais, which Rousseau has described with such picturesque beauty. I fancy myself seated in a cottage amid those mountains, those valleys, those rocks, en- circled by the enchantments of optical illusion. I look, and behold at once the united seasons. "All climates in one place, all seasons in one instant." I gaze at once on a hundred rainbows, and trace the romantic figures of the shifting clouds. I seem to be in a temple dedicated to the service of the Goddess VARIETY. ISAAC DISRAELI. 14? On the other side, readers must nut imagine that all the pleasures of composition depend on the author ; for there is something which a reader himself must bring to the book, that the book may please. There is a literary appetite which the author can no more im- part, than the most skilful cook can give an appetency to the guests. When Cardinal Richelieu said to Godeau, that he did not understand his verses, the honest poet replied, that it was not his fault. It would indeed be very unreasonable, when a painter exhibits his pictures in public, to expect that he should provide spectacles for the use of the short-sighted. Every man must come prepared as well as he can. Simonides confessed himself incapable of deceiving stupid persons ; and Balzac remarked of the girls of his village, that they were too silly to be duped by a man of wit. Dullness is impenetrable ; and there are hours when the liveliest taste loses its sensibility. The temporary tone of the mind may be unfavourable to taste a work properly, and we have had many erroneous criticisms from great men, which may often be attributed to this circumstance. The mind communicates it's infirm dispositions to the book, and an author has not only his own defects to account for, but also those of his reader. There is something in composition, like the game of shuttlecock, where, if the reader does not quickly rebound the feathered cork to the author, the game is destroyed, and the whole spirit of the work falls extinct. Literary Miscellanies: including a Dissertation on Anecdotes. A New Edition, enlarged. 1801. 1 4 8 JOHN FOSTER. JOHN FOSTER. 1770 1843. The man who is supposed to be thoughtfully passing his eye over a large array of books . . . may be arrested by the works of some authors of highest dis- tinction, splendid in literary achievement and lasting fame. While pronouncing their names and looking at these volumes, in which they have left a representative existence on earth, left the form and action of their minds embodied in a more durable vehicle than their once animated clay, how striking to think, that some- where, and in some certain condition, they themselves are existing still existing as really and personally as when they were revolving the thoughts and writing the sentences which fill these books ! . . . The musing of our contemplatist may at times be led to solemn con- jectures at the award which these great intellectual performers have found in another state ; and he follows some of them with a very dark surmise. . . . And he may be reminded of that sovereignty of the Governor of the world in his selection and appointment, by which minds greatly below the highest order of natural ability may be rendered pre-eminent in usefulness. It may also occur to him, diverting for an instant from all the ranks and varieties of those who have aspired to be teachers of mankind, to reflect how many humble spirits, that never attempted any of the thousand speculations, nor revelled in the literary luxuries con- tained in these books, have nevertheless passed worthily and happily through the world into a region where it may be the appointed result and reward of fervent piety, in inferior faculties, to overtake, by one mighty JOHN POSTER. 149 bound, the intellectual magnitude of those who had previously been much more powerful minds. . . . The mind of a thoughtful looker over a range of volumes, of many dates, and a considerable portion of them old, will sometimes be led into a train of con- jectural questions : Who were they, that, in various times and places, have had these in their possession ? Perhaps many hands have turned over the leaves, many eyes have passed along the lines. With what measure of intelligence, and of approval or dissent, did those persons respectively follow the train of thoughts ? How many of them were honestly intent on becoming wise by what they read I How many sincere prayers were addressed by them to the Eternal Wisdom during the perusal ? How many have been determined, in their judgment or their actions, by these books? . . . May not some one of these books be the last that some one person lived to read ? Many that have perused them are dead ; each made an exit in a manner and with circumstances of its own ; what were the manner and circumstances in each instance ? It was a most solemn event to that person ; but how ignorant concerning it am I, who now perhaps have my eye on the book which he read the last! What a power of association, what an element of intense significance, would invest some of these volumes, if I could have a momentary vision of the last scene of a number of the most remarkable of their former readers 1 Of that the books can tell me nothing ; but let me endeavour to bring the fact, that persons have read them and died, to bear with a salutary influence on my own mind while I am reading t 5 o JOHN FOSTER. any of them. Let me cherish that temper of spirit which is sensible of intimations ot what is departed, remaining and mingling with what is present, and can thus perceive some monitory glimpses of even the unknown dead. What multiplied traces of them on some of these books are perceptible to the imagina- tion, which beholds successive countenances long since " changed and sent away," bent in attention over the pages 1 And the minds which looked from within through those countenances, conversing with the thoughts of other minds perhaps long withdrawn, even at that time, from among men what and where are they now ? Sometimes the conjectural reference to the former possessors and readers of books seems to be rendered a little less vague, by our finding at the beginning of an old volume one or more names written, in such characters, and perhaps accompanied with such dates, that we are assured those persons must long since have done with all books. The name is generally all we can know of him who inserted it ; but we can thus fix on an individual as actually having possessed this volume ; and perhaps there are here and there certain marks which should indicate an attentive perusal. What manner of person was he ? What did he think of the sentiments, the passages which I see that he particularly noticed ? If there be opinions here which I cannot admit, did he believe them? If there be counsels here which I deem most just and important, did they effectually persuade him ? . . . The book is perhaps such a one as he could not read without being cogently admonished that he was going to his JOHN FOSTER. 151 great account. He went to that account how did he meet and pass through it? This is no vain revery. Fie, the man who bore and wrote this name, did go, at a particular time, though unrecorded, to surrender himself to his Judge. But I, who handle the book that was his, and observe his name, and am thus directing my thoughts into the dark after the man, I also am in progress toward the same tribunal, when it will be proved to my joy or sorrow, whether I have learned true wisdom from my books, and from my reflections on those who have possessed and read them before. But it may be that the observer's eye fixes on a volume which instantly recalls to his mind a person whom he well knew a revered parent perhaps, or a valued friend, who is recollected to have approved and inculcated the principles of the book, or perhaps to have given it to the person who is now looking at it as a token of regard, or an inoffensive expedient for drawing attention to an important subject. He may have the image of that relative or friend, as in the employment of reading that volume, or in the act of presenting it to him. This may awaken a train of remembrances leading away from any relation to the book, and possibly of salutary tendency ; but also, such an association with the book may have an effect, whenever he shall consult it, as if it were the departed friend, still more than the author, that uttered the senti- ments. The author spoke to any one indifferently to no one in particular; but the sentiments seem to be especially applied to me, when they come in this connection with the memory of one who was my friend. >5 a JOHN FOSTER. Thus he would have spoken to me ; thus in effect he does speak to me, while I think of him as having read the book, and regarded it as particularly adapted to me ; or seem to behold him, as when reading it in my hearing, and sometimes looking off from the page to make a gentle enforcement of the instruction. He would have been happy to anticipate, that, when- ever I might look into it, my remembrance of him would infuse a more touching significance, a more applying principle, into its important sentiments ; thus retaining him, though invisibly, and without his actual presence, in the exercise of a beneficent in- fluence. But indeed I can, at some moments, indulge my mind to imagine something more than this mere ideal intervention to reinforce the impression of truth upon me, insomuch that, supposing it were permitted to receive intimations from those who have left the world, it will seem to me possible that I might, when looking into some parts of that book, in a solitary hour of night, perceive myself to be once more the object of his attention, signified by a mysterious whisper from no visible form ; or by a momentary preternatural luminousness pervading the lines, to intimate that a friendly intelligence that does not forget me, would still and again enforce on my conscience the dictates of piety and wisdom which I am reading. ... Is all influential relation dissolved by the withdrawment from mortal intercourse ; so that let my friends die, and I am as loose from their hold upon me as if they had ceased to exist, or even never had existed ? Intro- ductory Essay to Doddridge's Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul. WOR DS IVOR Tff. 1 53 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 1770 1850. Wings have we, and as far as we can go We may find pleasure : wilderness and wood, Blank ocean and mere sky, support that mood Which with the lofty sanctifies the low, Dreams, books, are each a world ; and books, we know, Are a substantial world, both pure and good : Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood Our pastime and our happiness will grow. There find I personal themes, a plenteous store ; Matter wherein right voluble I am : To which I listen with a ready eat ; Two shall be named, pre-eminently dear The gentle lady married to the Moor ; And heavenly Una with her milk-white lamb. Nor can I not believe but that hereby Great gains are mine ; for thus I live remote From evil speaking ; rancour, never sought, Comes to me not : malignant truth, or lie. Hence have I genial seasons, hence have I Smooth passions, smooth discourse, and joyous thought : And thus from day to day my little boat Rocks in its harbour, lodging peaceably. Blessings be with them and eternal praise, Who gave us nobler loves and nobler cares The poets, who on earth have made us heirs Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays ! Oh ! might my name be numbered among theirs, Then gladly would I end my mortal days. 154 WALTER SCOTT WALTER SCOTT. 1771 1832. The hours of youth, my dear Walter, are too precious to be spent all in gaiety. We must lay up in that period when our spirit is active, and our memory strong, the stores of information which are not only to facilitate our progress through life, but to amuse and interest us in our later stages of existence. I very often think vhat an unhappy person I should have been, if I had not done something more or less towards improving my understanding when I was at your age ; and I never reflect, without severe self-condemnation, on the opportunities of acquiring knowledge which I either trifled with, or altogether neglected. I hope you will be wiser than I have been, and experience less of that self-reproach. Lockharfs Life: " Letter to His Son." If my learning be flimsy and inaccurate, the reader must have some compassion even for an idle workman, who had so narrow a foundation to build upon. If, however, it should ever fall to the lot of youth to peruse these pages, let such a reader remember that it is with the deepest regret that I recollect in my manhood the opportunities of learning which I neglected in my youth ; that through every part of my literary career I have felt pinched and hampered by my own ignorance ; and that I would at this moment give half the reputa- tion I have had the good fortune to acquire, if by doing so I could rest the remaining part upon a sound foundation of learning and reason. Lockharfs Life: ' ' Autobiography. " Nothing increases by indulgence more than a desul- tory habit of reading. Waver ley. COLERIDGE. 155 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 1772 1834. I would address an affectionate exhortation to the youthful literati, grounded on my own experience. It will be but short ; for the beginning, middle, and end converge to one charge : never pursue literature as a trade. With the exception of one extraordinary man, I have never known an individual, least of all an individual of genius, healthy or happy without a pro- fession, that is, some regular employment, which does not depend on the will of the moment, and which can be carried on so far mechanically that an average quantum only of health, spirits, and intellectual exer- tion are requisite to its faithful discharge. Three hours of leisure, unannoyed by any alien anxiety, and looked forward to with delight as a change and recreation, will suffice to realise in literature a larger product of what is truly genial, than weeks of compulsion. . . . "My dear young friend, suppose yourself established in any honourable occupation. From the manufactory or counting house, from the law-court, or from having visited your last patient, you return at evening, Dear tranquil time, when the sweet sense of Home Is sweetest . . . to your family, prepared for its social enjoyments, with the very countenances of your wife and children brightened, and their voice of welcome made doubly welcome, by the knowledge that, as far as they are concerned, you have satisfied the demands of the day by the labour of the day. Then, when you retire into your study, in the books on your shelves you revisit so many venerable friends with whom you can con- 1S 6 COLERIDGE. verse. Your own spirit scarcely less free from personal anxieties than the great minds, that in those books are still living for you ! Even your writing desk with its blank paper and all its other implements will appear as a chain of flowers, capable of linking your feelings as well as thoughts to events and characters past or to come; not a chain of iron, which binds you down to think of the future and the remote by recalling the claims and feelings of the peremptory present. But why should I say retire f The habits of active life and daily intercourse with the stir of the world will tend to give you such self-command, that the presence of your family will be no interruption. Nay, the social silence, or undisturbing voices of a wife or sister will be like a restorative atmosphere, or soft music which moulds a dream without becoming its object. If facts are required to prove the possibility of combining weighty performances in literature with full and in- dependent employment, the works of Cicero and Xenophon among the ancients ; of Sir Thomas More, Bacon, Baxter, or to refer at once to later and con- temporary instances, Darwin and Roscoe, are at once decisive of the question. Biographia Literaria, chap. xi. In classifying the various kinds of readers, he (Cole- ridge) said some were like jelly-bags they let pass away all that is pure and good, and retained only what is im- pure and refuse. Another class he typified by a sponge ; these were they whose minds sucked all up, and gave it back again, only a little dirtier. Others, again, he likened to an hour-glass, and their reading to the sand SOUTHEY. 157 which runs in and runs out, and leaves no trace behind. I forget the fourth class, but the fifth and last he com- pared to the slave in the Golconda mines, who retained the gold and the gem, and cast aside the dust and the dross. "Notes and Reminiscences" by the late W. H. Harrison, University Afagazine, vol. i. /. 537. ROBERT SOUTHEY. 1774 1843. My days among the Dead are pass'd ; Around me I behold, Where'er these casual eyes are cast, The mighty minds of old ; My never-failing friends are they, With whom I converse day by day. With them I take delight in weal, And seek relief in woe ; And while I understand and feel How much to them I owe, My cheeks have often been bedew'd With tears of thoughtful gratitude. My thoughts are with the Dead : with them I live in long-past years ; Their virtues love, their faults condemn, Partake their hopes and fears, And from their lessons seek and find Instruction with an humble mind. My hopes are with the Dead, anon My place with them will be, And I with them shall travel on Through all Futurity ; Yet leaving here a name, I trust, That will not perish in the dust. J5 8 SOUTH EY. Young readers you, whose hearts arc open, whose understandings are not yet hardened, and whose feelings are not yet exhausted nor encrusted with the world, take from me a better rule than any professors of criticism will teach you ! Would you know whether the tendency of a book is good or evil, examine in what state of mind you lay it down. Has it induced you to suspect that what you have been accustomed to think unlawful, may after all be innocent, and that may be harmless which you have hitherto been taught to think dangerous ? Has it tended to make you dis- satisfied and impatient under the control of others, and disposed you to relax in that self-government without which both the laws of God and man tell us there can be no virtue, and consequently no happiness ? Has it attempted to abate your admiration and reverence for what is great and good, and to diminish in you the love of your country, and your fellow-creatures? Has it addressed itself to your pride, your vanity, your selfish- ness, or any other of your evil propensities? Has it defiled the imagination with what is loathsome, and shocked the heart with what is monstrous? Has it disturbed the sense of right and wrong which the Creator has implanted in the human soul ? If so, if you are conscious of all or any of these effects, or if having escaped from all, you have felt that such were the effects it was intended to produce, throw the book in the fire, whatever name it may bear in the title- page ! Throw it in the fire, young man, though it should have been the gift of a friend ; young lady, away with the whole set, though it should be the prominent furniture of a rosewood bookcase. The Doctor, ii. 86 (Interchapter v.). SOUTHEY. ijg " Libraries," says my good old friend George Dyer, i man as learned as he is benevolent, . . . "libraries arc the wardrobes of literature, whence men, properly informed, might bring forth something for ornament, much for curiosity, and more for use." These books of mine, as you well know, are not drawn up here for display, however much the pride of the eye may be gratified in beholding them ; they are on actual service. ' Whenever they may be dispersed, there is not one among them that will ever be more com- fortably lodged, or more highly prized by its possessor ; and generations may pass away before some of them will again find a reader. . . . It is well that we do not moralize too much upon such subjects, . . . For foresight is a melancholy gift, Which bares the bald, and speeds the all-too-swift. But the dispersion of a library, whether in retrospect or in anticipation, is always to me a melancholy thing. How many such dispersions must have taken place to have made it possible that these books should thus be brought together here among the Cumberland moun- tains 1 Many, indeed ; and in many instances most disastrous ones. Not a few of these volumes have been cast up from the wreck of the family or convent libraries during the late Revolution. . . . Yonder Acta Sanctorum belonged to the Capuchines, at Ghent. This book of St. Bridget's Revelations, in which not only all the initial letters are illuminated, but every capital throughout the volume was coloured, came from the Carmelite Nunnery at Bruges. That copy UCLA LIBRARY 160 SOUTH 'EY. of Alain Chartier, from the Jesuits' College at Ixmvain ; that Imago Primi Sitculi Societatis, from their college at Ruremond. Here are books from Colbert's library; here others from the Lamoignon one. ... A book is the more valuable to me when I know to whom it has belonged, and through what "scenes and changes " it has past. I would have its history recorded in the fly leaf, as carefully as the pedigree of a race-horse is preserved. ... I confess that I have much of that feeling in which the superstition concerning relics has originated ; and I am sorry when I see the name of a former owner obliterated in a book, or the plate of his arms defaced. Poor memorials though they be, yet they are something saved for a while from oblivion ; and I should be almost as unwilling to destroy them, as to efface the Hie jacet of a tombstone. There may be sometimes a pleasure in recognizing them, some- times a salutary sadness. How peaceably they stand together, . . . Papists and Protestants side by side 1 Their very dust reposes not more quietly in the cemetery. Ancient and Modern, Jew and Gentile, Mahommedan and Crusader, French and English, Spaniards and Portuguese, Dutch and Brazilians, fighting their old battles, silently now, upon the same shelf: Femam Lopez and Pedro de Ayala ; John de Laet and Barlaeus, with the historians of Joam Fernandes Vieira ; Fox's Martyrs and the Three Conversions of Father Persons ; Cranmer and Stephen Gardiner ; Dominican and Franciscan ; Jesuit and Philosophe (equally misnamed) ; Churchmen and Sectarians ; Roundheads and Cavaliers I SOUTHEY. 161 Here are God's conduits, grave divines ; and here Is nature's secretary, the philosopher : And wily statesmen, which teach how to tie The sinews of a city's mystic body ; Here gathering chroniclers : and by them stand Giddy fantastic poets of each land. ^ Here I possess these gathered treasures of time, the harvest of so many generations, laid up in my garners : and when I go to the window, there is the lake, and the circle of the mountains, and the illimitable sky. The simile of the bees, Sie vos non vein's mellificatis apef, has often been applied to men who have made litera- ture their profession ; and they among them to whom worldly wealth and worldly honours are objects of ambition, may have reason enough to acknowledge its applicability. But it will bear a happier applica- tion, and with equal fitness ; for, for whom is the purest honey hoarded that the bees of this world elaborate, if it be not for the man of letters ? The exploits of the kings and heroes of old, serve now to fill story books for his amusement and instruction. It was to delight his leisure and call forth his admiration that Homer sung, and Alexander conquered. It is to gratify his curiosity that adventurers have traversed deserts and savage countries, and navigators have explored the seas from pole to pole. The revolutions of the planet which he inhabits are but matters for his speculation ; and the deluges and conflagrations which it has undergone, problems to exercise his philosophy, ... or fancy. He ia the inheritor of whatever has been discovered L i6a SOUTH EY. by persevering labour, or created by inventive genius. The wise of all ages have heaped up a treasure for him, which rust doth not corrupt, and which thieves cannot break through and steal. ... I must leave out the moth, ... for even in this climate care is required against its ravages. Never can any man's life have been passed more in accord with his own inclinations, nor more answerably to his own desires. Excepting that peace which, through God's infinite mercy, is derived from a higher source, it is to literature, humanly speaking, that I am beholden, not only for the means of subsistence, but for every blessing which I enjoy; . . . health of mind and activity of mind, contentment, cheerfulness, continual employments, and therewith continual plea- sure. Suavissima vita indies sentire se fieri meliorem ; and this, as Bacon has said, and Clarendon repeated, is the benefit that a studious man enjoys in retirement. To the studies which I have faithfully pursued, I am indebted for friends with whom, hereafter, it will be deemed an honour to have lived in friendship ; and as for the enemies which they have procured to me in sufficient numbers, . . . happily I am not of the thin- skinned race, . . . they might as well fire small shot at a rhinoceros, as direct their attacks upon me. In omnibus requiem quasivi, said Thomas a Kempis, sed non invent nisi in angulis et libellis. I too have found repose where he did, in books and retirement, but it was there alone I sought it : to these my nature, under the direction of a merciful Providence, led me betimes, and the world can offer nothing which should tempt me from them. Sir Thomas More : or, Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society. Colloquy xiv. : ' ' The Library. " CHARLES LAMB. 163 CHARLES LAMB. 1775 1834. Above all thy rarities, old Oxenford, what do most arride and solace me, are thy repositories of mouldering learning, thy shelves What a place to be in is an old library ! It seems u though all the souls of all the writers, that have bequeathed their labours to these Bodleians, were reposing here, as in some dormitory, or middle state. J do not want to handle, to profane the leaves, their winding-sheets. I could as soon dislodge a shade. I seem to inhale learning, walking amid their foliage ; and the odour of their old moth -scented coverings is fragrant as the first bloom of those sciential apples which grew amid the happy orchard. Etta's Essays: " Oxford in the Vacation" To one like Elia, whose treasures are rather cased in leather covers than closed in iron coffers, there is a class of alienators more formidable than that which I have touched upon ; I mean your borrowers of books those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes. There is Com- berbatch [Coleridge], matchless- in his depredations ! That foul gap in the bottom shelf facing you, like a great eye-tooth knocked out (you are now with me in my little back study in Bloomsbury, reader !) with the huge Switzcr-like tomes on each side (like the Guildhall giants, in their reformed posture, guardant of nothing) once held the tallest of my folios, Opera Bonavcntura, choice and massy divinity, to which its two supporters (school divinity also, but of a lesser calibre, Bellarmine, and Holy Thomas), 164 CHARLES LAMB. showed but as dwarfs, itself an Ascapart ! that Comberbatch abstracted upon the faith of a theory he holds, which is more easy, I confess, for me to suffer by than to refute, namely, that "the title to property in a book (my Bonaventure, for instance), is in exact ratio to the claimant's powers of understanding and appreciating the same." Should he go on acting upon this theory, which of our shelves is safe ? The slight vacuum in the left-hand case two shelves from the ceiling scarcely distinguishable but by th% quick eye of a loser was whilom the commodious resting-place of Brown on Urn Burial. C. will hardly allege that he knows more about that treatise than I do, who introduced it to him, and was indeed the first (of the moderns) to discover its beauties but so have I known a foolish lover to praise his mistress in the presence of a rival more qualified to carry her off than himself. Just below, Dodsley's dramas want their fourth volume, where Vittoria Corombona is ! The remainder nine are as distasteful as Priam's refuse sons, when the Fates borrowed Hector. Here stood the Anatomy of Melancholy, in sober state. There loitered the Complete.Angler ; quiet as in life, by some stream side. In yonder nook, John Buncle, a widower- volume, with "eyes closed," mourns his ravished mate. ElicCs Essays : " The Two Races of Men." I own that I am disposed to say grace upon twenty other occasions in the course of the day besides my dinner. I want a form for setting out upon a pleasant walk, for a moonlight ramble, for a friendly meeting, or a solved problem. Why have we none for books, CHARLES LAMB. 163 those spiritual repasts a grace before Milton a grace before Shakspcare a devotional exercise proper to be said before reading the Fairy Queen ? Ella's Essays: " Craft Before Meal." In the depth of college shades, or in his lonely chamber, the poor student shrunk from observation. Pie found shelter among books, which insult not ; and studies, that ask no questions of a youth's finances. EM s Essays: "Poor Relations." I must confess that I dedicate no inconsiderable portion of my time to other people's thoughts. I dream away ray life in others' speculations. I love to lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not walking, I am reading ; I cannot sit and think. Books think for me. I have no repugnances. Shaftesbury is not too genteel for me, nor Jonathan Wild too low. I can read anything which I call a book. There are things in that shape which I cannot allow for such. In this catalogue of books which are no books biblia a-biblia I reckon Court Calendars, Directories, Pocket Books, Draught Boards, bound and lettered at the back, Scientific Treatises, Almanacks, Statutes at large ; the works of Hume, Gibbon, Robertson, Beattie, Soame Jenyns, and, generally, all those volumes which "no gentleman's library should be without : " the Histories of Flavius Josephus (that learned Jew), and Paley's Moral Philosophy. With these exceptions, I can read almost any thing. I bless my stars for a taste so catholic, so unexcluding. 166 CHARLES LAMB. I confess that it moves my spleen to see these things in books 1 clothing perched upon shelves, like false saints, usurpers of true shrines, intruders into the sanctuary, thrusting out the legitimate occupants. To reach down a well-bound semblance of a volume, and hope it some kind-hearted play-book, then, opening what "seem its leaves," to come bolt upon a withering Population Essay. To expect a Steele, or a Farquhar, and find Adam Smith. To view a well-arranged assortment of blockheaded Encyclopaedias (Anglicanas or Metropoli- tanas) set out in an array of Russia or Morocco, when a tithe of that good leather would comfortably re-clothe my shivering folios ; would renovate Paracelsus himself, and enable old Raymund Lully to look like himself again in the world. I never see these impostors, but I long to strip them, to warm my ragged veterans in their spoils. To be strong-backed and neat-bound is the deside- ratum of a volume. Magnificence comes after. This, when it can be afforded, is not to be lavished upon all kinds of books indiscriminately. I would not dress a set of Magazines, for instance, in full suit. The dishabille, or half-binding (with Russia backs ever) is our costume. A Shakspeare, or a Milton (unless the first editions), it were mere foppery to trick out in gay apparel. The possession of them confers no distinction. The exterior of them (the things themselves being so common), strange to say, raises no sweet emotions, no tickling sense of property in the owner. Thomson's Seasons, again, looks best (I maintain it) a little torn, and dog's-eared. How beautiful to a genuine lover of reading are the sullied leaves, and worn out appearance, CHARLES LAMB. 167 nay, the very odour (beyond Russia,) if we would not forget kind feelings in fastidiousness, of an old " Circu- lating Library" Tom Jones, or Vicar of Wakefield! How they speak of the thousand thumbs, that have turned over their pages with delight ! of the lone sempstress, whom they may have cheered (milliner, or harder-working mantua-maker) after her long day's needle-toil, running far into midnight, when she has snatched an hour, ill spared from sleep, to steep her cares, as in some Lethean cup, in spelling out their enchanting content ! Who would have them a whit less soiled ? What better condition could we desire to see them in ? In some respects the better a book is, the less it demands from binding. Fielding, Smollet, Sterne, and all that class of perpetually self-reproductive volumes- Great Nature's Stereotypes we see them individually perish with less regret, because we know the copies of them to be " eterne." But where a book is at once both good and rare where the individual is almost the species, and when that perishes, We know not where is that Promethean torch That can its light relumine such a book, for instance, as the Life of the Duke of Newcastle, by his Duchess no casket is rich enough, no casing sufficiently durable, to honour and keep safe such a jewel. . . . I do not know a more heartless sight than the reprint of the Anatomy of Melancholy. What need was there of unearthing the bones of that fantastic old great man, to expose them in a winding-sheet of the newest fashion 168 CHARLES LAMB. to modern censure ? what hapless stationer could dream of Burton ever becoming popular? The wretched Malone could not do worse, when he bribed the sexton of Stratford church to let him white-wash the painted effigy of old Shakspeare, which stood there, in rude but lively fashion depicted, to the very colour of the cheek, the eye, the eyebrow, hair, the very dress he used to wear the only authentic testimony we had, however imperfect, of these curious parts and parcels of him. They covered him over with a coat of white paint. By , if I had been a justice of peace for Warwickshire, I would have clapped both commen- tator and sexton fast in the stocks, for a pair of meddling sacrilegious varlets. I think I see them at their work these sapient trouble-tombs. . . . Much depends upon when and where you read a book. In the five or six impatient minutes, before the dinner is quite ready, who would think of taking up the Fairy Queen for a stop-gap, or a volume of Bishop Andrewes' sermons ? Milton almost requires a solemn service of music to be played before you enter upon him. But he brings his music, to which, who listens, had need bring docile, thoughts, and purged ears. Winter evenings the world shut out with less of ceremony the gentle Shakspeare enters. At such a season, the Tempest, or his own Winter's Tale . . . Coming in to an inn at night having ordered your supper what can be more delightful than to find lying in the window-seat, left there time out of mind by the carelessness of some former guest two or three num- CHARLES LAMB. 169 bers of the old Town and Country Magazine, with its amusing tfle-b-tete pictures "The Royal Lover and Lady G ;" "The Melting Platonic and the old Beau," and such like antiquated scandal? Would you exchange it at that time, and in that place for a better book ? . . t I am not much a friend to out-of-doors reading. I cannot settle my spirits to it I knew a Unitarian minister, who was generally to be seen upon Snow-hill (as yet Skinner's-street was not), between the hours of ten and eleven in the morning, studying a volume of Lardner. I own this to have been a strain of abstrac- tion beyond my reach. I used to admire how he sidled along, keeping clear of secular contacts. An illiterate encounter with a porter's knot, or a bread basket, would have quickly put to flight all the theology I am master of, and have left me worse than indifferent to the five points. There is a class of street-readers, whom I can never contemplate without affection the poor gentry, who, not having wherewithal to buy or hire a book, filch a little learning at the open stalls the owner, with his hard eye, casting envious looks at them all the while, and thinking when they will have done. Venturing tenderly, page after page, expecting every moment when he shall interpose his interdict, and yet unable to deny themselves the gratification, they "snatch a fear- ful joy." Martin B , in this way, by daily frag- ments, got through two volumes of Clarissa, when the stall-keeper damped his laudable ambition, by asking him (it was in his younger days) whether he meant to purchase the work. M. declares, that under no cir- i 7 o CHARLES LAMB. cumstances of his life did he ever peruse a book with half the satisfaction which he took in those uneasy snatches. Ella's Essays: "Detached Thoughts on Books and Heading." [Bridget Elia loquitur] "I wish the good old times would come again, when we were not quite so rich. I do not mean, that I want to be poor ; but there was a middle state;" so she was pleased to ramble on, "in which I am sure we were a great deal happier. A pur- chase is but a purchase, now that you have money enough and to spare. Formerly it used to be a triumph. When we coveted a cheap luxury (and, O ! how much ado I had to get you to consent in those times !) we were used to have a debate two or three days before, and to weigh the for and against, and think what we might spare it out of, and what saving we could hit upon, that should be an equivalent. A thing was worth buying then, when we felt the money that we paid for it. " Do you remember the brown suit, which you made to hang upon you, till all your friends cried shame upon you, it grew so thread-bare and all because of that folio Beaumont and Fletcher, which you dragged home late at night from Barker's in Covent -garden ? Do you remember how we eyed it for weeks before we could make up our minds to the purchase, and had not come to a determination till it was near ten o'clock of the Saturday night, when you set off from Islington, fearing you should be too late and when the old bookseller with some grumbling opened his shop, and by the twinkling taper (for he was setting WALTER SAVAGE LAN DOR. 171 bedwards) lighted out the relic from his dusty treasures and when you lugged it home, wishing it were twice as cumbersome and when you presented it to me and when we were exploring the perfectness of it (collating you called it) and while I was repairing some of the loose leaves with paste, which your im- patience would not suffer to be left till day-break was there no pleasure in being a poor man ? or can those neat black clothes which you wear now, and are so careful to keep brushed, since we have become rich and finical, give you half the honest vanity, with which you flaunted it about in that over-worn suit your old corbeau for four or five weeks longer than you should have done, to pacify your conscience for the mighty sum of fifteen or sixteen shillings was it? a great affair we thought it then which you had lavished on the old folio. Now you can afford to buy any book that pleases you, but I do not see that you ever bring me home any nice old purchases now." Elia's Essays: "Old China." WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 1775 1864. O Andrew ! Although our learning raiseth up against us many enemies, among the low, and more among the powerful, yet doth it invest us with grand and glorious privileges, and grant to us a largess of beatitude. We enter our studies, and enjoy a society which we alone can bring together. We raise no jealousy by conversing with one in preference to another ; we give no offence to the most illustrious by questioning him as long as we will, and leaving him as abruptly. Diver- i;a WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. sity of opinion raises no tumult in our presence ; each interlocutor stands before us, speaks, or is silent, and we adjourn or decide the business at our leisure. Nothing is past which we desire to be present ; and we enjoy by anticipation somewhat like the power which I imagine we shall possess hereafter of sailing on a wish from world to world. Imaginary Conversa- tions: "Milton in conversation with Andrew Afarvell." Logic, however unperverted, is not for boys ; argu- ment is among the most dangerous of early practices, and sends away both fancy and modesty. The young mind should be nourished with simple and grateful food, and not too copious. It should be little exercised until its nerves and muscles show themselves, and even then rather for air than anything else. Study is the bane of boyhood, th? aliment of youth, the indulgence of manhood, and the restorative of age. Pericles and Aspasia, Ivii. : " Cleone to Aspasia." The writings of the wise are the only riches our posterity cannot squander. WILLIAM HAZLITT. 1778 1830. They [Books] are the nearest to our thoughts : they wind into the heart ; the poet's verse slides into the current of our blood. We read them when young, we remember them when old. We read there of what has happened to others ; we feel that it has happened to ourselves. They are to be had everywhere cheap and good. We breathe but the air of books : we owe WILLIAM HAZLITT. 173 every thing to their authors, on this side barbarism ; and we pay them easily with contempt, while living, and with an epitaph, when dead 1 ... there are neither picture-galleries nor theatres-royal on Salisbury- plain, where I write this ; but here, even here, with a few old authors, I can manage to get through the summer or the winter months, without ever knowing what it is to feel ennui. They sit with me at break- fast ; they walk out with me before dinner. After a long walk through unfrequented tracks, after starting the hare from the fem, or hearing the wing of the raven rustling above my head, or being greeted by the wood- man's "stern good-night," as he strikes into his narrow homeward path, I can "take mine ease at mine inn," beside the blazing hearth, and shake hands with Signor Orlando Friscobaldo [a character in one of Dekkar's Plays], as the oldest acquaintance I have, Ben Jonson, learned Chapman, Master Webster, and Master Hey- wood, are there ; and seated round, discourse the silent hours away. Shakespear is there himself, not in Gibber's manager's coat. Spenser is hardly yet returned from a ramble through the woods, or is con- cealed behind a group of nymphs, fawns, and satyrs. Milton lies on the table, as on an altar, never taken up or laid down without reverence. Lyly's Endymion sleeps with the moon, that shines in at the window ; and a breath of wind stirring at a distance seems a sigh from the tree under which he grew old. Faustus disputes in one comer of the room with fiendish faces, and reasons of divine astrology. Bcllafront soothes Matheo, Vittoria triumphs over her judges, and old Chapman repeats on* of the hymns of Homer, in his 174 WILLIAM HAZLITT. own fine translation ! I should have no objection to pass my life in this manner out of the world, not thinking of it, nor it of me ; neither abused by my enemies, nor defended by my friends ; careless of the future, but sometimes dreaming of the past which might as well be forgotten ! Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth. Actions pass away and are forgotten: conquerors, statesmen, and kings live but by their names stamped on the page of history. Hume says rightly that more people think of Virgil and Homer than ever trouble their heads about Caesar or Alexander. In fact, poets are a longer-lived race than heroes ; they breathe more of the air of immortality. We have all that Virgil or Homer did, as much as if we had lived at the same time with them. Scarcely a trace of what the others did is left upon the earth, so as to be visible to common eyes. The one, the dead authors, are living men, still breathing and moving in their writings. The others, the conquerors of the world, are but the ashes in an urn. . . . Words, ideas, feelings, with the pro- gress of time, harden into substances ; things, bodies, actions, moulder away, or melt into a sound, into thin air ! . , . For not only a man's actions are effaced and vanish with him ; his virtues and generous qualities die with him also; his intellect only is immortal and bequeathed unimpaired to posterity. Words are the only things that last for ever. Table Talk: "On Thought and Action. " When I take up a work that I have read before (the oftener the better) I know what I have to expect. WILLIAM HAZLITT. 175 The satisfaction is not lessened by being anticipated. When the entertainment is altogether new, I sit down to it as I should to a strange dish, turn and pick out a bit here and there, and am in doubt what to think of the composition. There is a want of confidence and security to second appetite. New-fangled books are also like made-dishes in this respect, that they are generally little else than hashes and rifaccimenti of what has been served up entire and in a more natural state at other times. Besides, in thus turning to a well-known author, there is not only an assurance that my time will not be thrown away, or my palate nauseated with the most insipid or vilest trash, but I shake hands with, and look an old, tried, and valued friend in the face, compare notes, and chat the hours away. It is true, we form dear friendships with such ideal guests dearer, alas ! and more lasting, than those with our most intimate acquaintance. In reading a book which is an old favourite with me (say the first novel I ever read) I not only have the pleasure of imagination and of a critical relish of the work, but the pleasures of memory added to it. It recalls the same feelings and associations which I had in first reading it, and which I can never have again in any other way. Standard productions of this kind are links in the chain of our conscious being. They bind together the different scattered divisions of our personal identity. They are landmarks and guides in our journey through life. They are pegs and loops on which we can hang up, or from which we can take down, at pleasure, the wardrobe of a moral imagination, the relics of our best affections, the tokens and records of our happiest hours. '* WILLIAM HAZL1TT. They are "for thoughts and for remembrance!" They are like Fortunatus's Wishing-Cap they give us the best riches those of Fancy ; and transport us, not over half the globe, but (which is better) over half our lives, at a word's notice 1 My father Shandy solaced himself with Bruscambille. Give me for this purpose a volume of "Peregrine Pickle" or "Tom Jones." Open either of them any- where at the "Memoirs of Lady Vane," or the adventures at the masquerade with Lady Bellaston, or the disputes between Thwackum and Square, or the escape of Molly Seagrim, or the incident of Sophia and her muff, or the edifying prolixity of her aunt's lecture and there I find the same delightful, busy, bustling scene as ever, and feel myself the same as when I was first introduced into the midst of it. Nay, sometimes the sight of an old volume of these good old English authors on a stall, or the name lettered on the back among others on the shelves of a library, answers the purpose, revives the whole train of ideas, and sets "the puppets dallying." Twenty years are struck off the list, and I am a child again. A sage philosopher, who was not a very wise man, said, that he should like very well to be young again, if he could take his experience along with him. This ingenious person did not seem to be aware, by the gravity of his remark, that the great advantage of being young is to be without this weight of experience, which he would fain place upon the shoulders of youth, and which never comes too late with years. Oh! what a privilege to be able to let this hump, like Christian's burthen, drop from off one's back, and transport oneself, by the help of a little WILLIAM HAZLITT. 177 musty duodecimo, to the time when " ignorance was bliss," and when we first got a peep at the raree-show of the world, through the glass of fiction gazing at mankind, as we do at wild beasts in a menagerie, through the bars of their cages, or at curiosities in a museum, that we must not touch ! for myself, not only are the old ideas of the contents of the work brought back to my mind in all their vividness, but the old associations of the faces and persons of those I then knew, as they were in their lifetime the place where I sat to read the volume, the day when I got it, the feeling of the air, the fields, the sky return, and all my early impressions with them. This is better to me those places, those times, those persons, and those feelings that come across me as I retrace the story and devour the page, are to me better far than the wet sheets of the last new novel from the Ballantyne press, to say nothing of the Minerva press in Leadenhall Street. It is like visiting the scenes of early youth. I think of the time " when I was in my father's house, and my path ran down with butter and honey," when I was a little, thoughtless child, and had no other wish or care but to con my daily task, and be happy ! "Tom Jones," I remember, was the first work that broke the spell. It came down in numbers once a fortnight, in Cooke's pocket -edition, embellished with cuts. I had hitherto read only in school-books, and a tiresome ecclesiastical history (with the exception of Mrs. Raddiffe's "Romance of the Forest"): but this had a different relish with it, "sweet in the mouth," though not "bitter in the belly." It smacked of the world I lived in, and in which I was to live and M i 7 8 WILLIAM HAZLtTT. showed me groups, "gay creatures" not "of the ele- ment," but of the earth; not "living in the clouds," but travelling the same road that I did ; some that had passed on before me, and others that might soon overtake me. My heart had palpitated at the thoughts of a boarding-school ball, or gala-day, at Midsummer or Christmas ; but the world I had found out in Cooke's edition of the "British Novelists" was to me a dance through life, a perpetual gala-day. The six- penny numbers of this work regularly contrived to leave off just in the middle of a sentence, and in the nick of a story. . . . With what eagerness I used to look forward to the next number, and open the prints ! Ah ! never again shall I feel the enthusiastic delight with which I gazed at the figures, and anticipated the story and adventures of Major Bath and Commodore Trunnion, of Trim and my Uncle Toby, of Don Quixote and Sancho and Dapple, of Gil Bias and Dame Lorenza Sephora, of Laura and the fair Lucretia, whose lips open and shut like buds of roses. To what nameless ideas did they give rise, with what airy de- lights I filled up the outlines, as I hung in silence over the page ! Let me still recall them, that they may breathe fresh life into me, and that I may live that birthday of thought and romantic pleasure over again ! Talk of the ideal! This is the only true ideal the heavenly tints of Fancy reflected in the bubbles that float upon the spring-tide of human life. O Memory ! shield me from the world's poor strife, And give those scenes thine everlasting life ! The Plain Speaker: "On Reading Old Books." WILLIAM HAZLITT. 179 I cannot understand the rage manifested by the greater part of the world for reading New Books. If the public had read all those that have gone before, I can conceive how they should not wish to read the same work twice over ; but when I consider the countless volumes that lie unopened, unregarded, unread, and unthought-of, I cannot enter into the pathetic com- plaints that I hear made that Sir Walter writes nc more that the press is idle that Lord Byron is dead. If I have not read a book before, it is, to all intents and purposes, new to me, whether it was printed yes- terday or three hundred years ago. If it be urged that it has no modern, passing incidents, nnd is out of date and old-fashioned, then it is so much the newer ; it is farther removed from other works that I have lately read, from the familiar routine of ordinary life, and makes so much more addition to my knowledge. But many people would as soon think of putting on old armour as of taking up a book not published within the last month, or year at the utmost. There is a fashion in reading as well as in dress, which lasts only for the season. One would imagine that books were, like women, the worse for being old ; that they have a pleasure in being read for the first time ; that they open their leaves more cordially ; that the spirit of enjoy- ment wears out with the spirit of novelty ; and that, after a certain age, it is high time to put them on the shelf. This conceit seems to be followed up in practice. What is it to me that another that hundreds or thou- sands have in all ages read a work ? Is it on this account the less likely to give me pleasure, because it has delighted so many others? Or can I taste this i8o WILLIAM HAZLITT. pleasure by proxy ? Or am I in any degree the wiser for their knowledge ? Yet this might appear to be the inference. Sketches and Essays: "On Reading New Books." The greatest pleasure in life is that of reading, and I have had as much of this pleasure as perhaps anyone. I have had more pleasure in reading the adventures of a novel (and perhaps changing situations with the hero) than I ever had in my own. I do not think any one can feel much happier a greater degree of heart's ease than I used to feel in reading Tristram Shandy, and Peregrine Pickle, and Tom Jones, and The Tatler, and Gil Bias of Santillane, and Werter, and Boccacio. It was some years after that I read the last, but his Tales Dallied with the innocence of love, Like the old time. The story of Federigo Alberigi affected me as if it had been my own case. . . . Mrs. Inchbald was always a great favourite with me. There is the true soul of woman breathing from what she writes, as much as if you heard her voice. It is as if Venus had written books. ... I once sat on a sunny bank in a field, in which the green blades of corn waved in the fitful northern breeze, and read the letter in the ' ' New Heloise " in which St. Preux describes the Pays de Vaud. I never felt what Shakespeare calls II my glassy existence " so much as then. ... I have certainly spent some enviable hours at inns, luxuriantly in books. I remember getting completely wet through one day and stopping at an inn (I think WILLIAM HAZL1TT. 181 it was at Tewkesbury), where I sat up all night to read Paul and Virginia. Sweet were the showers in early youth that drenched my body, and sweet the drops of pity that fell upon the books I read 1 . . . I stopped two days at Bridgewater, and when I was tired of sauntering on the banks of its muddy river, returned to the inn and read Camilla. So have I loitered my life away, reading books, looking at pic- tures, going to plays, hearing, thinking, writing on what pleased me best. I have wanted only one thing to make me happy ; but wanting that have wanted everything. ... It was on the loth of April, 1798, that I sat down to a volume of The New Heloise, at the inn at Llangollen, over a bottle of sherry and a cold chicken. I had brought the book with me as a bonne bouche to crown the evening with. It was my birth-day, and I had for the first time come from a place in the neighbourhood to visit this delightful spot. . . . For myself, I should like to browse on folios, and have to deal chiefly with authors that I have scarcely strength to lift, that are as solid as they are heavy, and if dull, are full of matter. It is delightful . . . to travel out of one's self into the Chaldee, Hebrew, and Egyptian characters ; to have the palm- trees waving mystically in the margin of the page, and the camels moving slowly on in the distance of three thousand years. . . . Not far from the spot where I write [Winterslow Hut, February 20, 1828], I first read Chaucer's The Flower ami The Leaf, and was charmed with that young beauty, shrouded in her bower, and listening with ever-fresh delight to the repeated song of the nightingale close by her -the 1 6a WILLIAM HAZLITT. impression of the scene, the vernal landscape, the cool of the morning, the gushing notes of the songstress, " And ayen methought she sang close by mine ear," is as vivid as if it had been of yesterday. From various Essays : ' ' My First Acquaintance with Poets, " "A Farewell to Essay-writing" &c, Books are but one inlet of knowledge ; and the powers of the mind, like those of the body, should be left open to all impressions. I applied too close to my studies, soon after I was of your age, and hurt myself irreparably by it. Whatever may be the value of learning, health and good spirits are of more. . . . By conversing with the mighty dead, we imbibe senti- ment with knowledge. We become strongly attached to those who can no longer either hurt or serve us, except through the influence which they exert over the mind. We feel the presence of that power which gives immor- tality to human thoughts and actions, and catch the flame of enthusiasm from all ages and nations. . . . As to the books you will have to read by choice or for amusement, the best are the commonest. The names of many of them are already familiar to you. Read them as you grow up with all the satisfaction in your power, and make much of them. It is perhaps the greatest pleasure you will have in life, the one you will think of longest, and repent of least. If my life had been more full of calamity than it has been (much more than I hope yours will be), I would live it over again, my poor little boy, to have read the books I did in my youth. On the Conduct of Life; or Advue to a Schoolboy. WILLIAM HAZLITT. >j [The following passages are from the last article which Hazlitt wrote. It is entitled The Sick Chamber, and appeared in the New Monthly Magazine for August, 1830. Hazlitt died on the i8th of September of the same year, at the age of fifty-two. For some time he had been ailing, and all through the month of August was struggling with death. He seemed to live on "by a pure act of volition." His old and ever-dear friend, Charles Lamb who said of him that " in his natural and healthy state, he was one of the wisest and finest spirits breathing," and "that he should go down to the grave without finding, or expecting to find, such another companion " was beside him at the dose, which was so peaceful that his son, who was sitting by his bed-side, did not know that he had gone, till the breathing had ceased for a moment or two. During his illness a friend saw him as he lay ghastly, shrunk, and helpless, on the bed from which he never afterwards rose. That friend said that his mind seemed to have weathered all the dangers of extreme sickness, and to be safe and as strong as ever ; but the body had endured much decay. The article here quoted from, and another that preceded it, called The Free Admis- sion, brilliant, and full of fine things, have never been reprinted in any of the editions of his works which have appeared since his death. The article possesses excep- tional interest, being the last composition of a man of true genius, written within a few weeks of his death. It exhibits many of the characteristics of its author 184 WILLIAM HAZLITT. his intellectual vigour and robustness, his keen sense of the Beautiful, his imagination, and passionate intensity. It presents, with uncliminished power and vividness, the conditions and surroundings, the consolations and heart- sinkings, the fluctuations of thought and feeling, incident to the innate of a sick-room. This Essay may truly be said to be unknown buried as it has been for more than half-a-century in the dust-covered volume of a forgotten Periodical. As it concludes with a touching tribute to Books, and as these are often associated with the hush and quietude of a sick-chamber, the compiler may be forgiven for reverently and lovingly snatching from oblivion and preserving for future readers these latest recorded thoughts of a favourite author. Assuredly the works of Hazlitt will, in course of time, become better known than they now are, and take their fitting place in our Literature.]* Bui wer [Lord Lytton], in his Essay entitled " Some Thoughts on the Genius of William Hazlitt," says : "The present century has produced many men of poetical genius, and some of analytical acumen ; but I doubt whether it has produced anyone who has given to the world such signal proofs of the union of the two as William Hazlitt . . . He possessed the critical faculty in its noblest degree his taste was not the creature .of schools and canons ; it was begotten of Enthu- siasm by Thought. . . . Scattered throughout his Essays is a wealth of thought and poetry, beside which half the contem- poraries of their author seem as paupers. He had a keen sense of the Beautiful and the Subtile ; and what is more, he was deeply imbued with sympathy for the humane. He ranks high amongst the social writers his intuitive feeling was in favour of the multitude ; yet he had nothing of the demagogue or WILUAM HAZLITT. 183 What a difference Iwtwecn this subject and my last a " Free Admission 1" Yet from the crowded theatre litterateur ; he did not pander to a single vulgar passion. When he died, he left no successor. Others may equal him, but none resemble. I must confess that few deaths of the great writers of my time erer affected me more powerfully than his. . . . He went down to dust without having won the crown for which he had so bravely struggled. . . . His faults have been harshly judged, because they have not been fairly analysed they arose mostly from an arrogant and lordly sense of superiority. . . . He was the last man to play the thrifty with his thoughts he sent them forth with an insolent ostenta- tion, and cared not much what they shocked or whom they offended. . . . Posterity will do him justice. To the next age, he will stand among the foremost of the thinkers of the present ; and late and tardy retribution will assuredly be his, which compensates to others the neglect to which men of genius sometimes are doomed ; that retribution which, long after the envy they provoked is dumb, and the errors they committed are forgotten invests with interest everything associated with their names making it an honour even to have been their con- temporaries, and an hereditary rank to be their descendants." The same critic, thirty years later, in an article on " Charles Lamb, and Some of His Companions," in the Quarterly Review, Jan., 18671 again writes of Hazlitt, and delivers this mature judgment of him : " But amidst all these intolerant prejudices and this wild extravagance of apparent hate, there are in Hazlitt from time to time those times not unfrequcnt outbursts of sentiment scarcely surpassed among the writers of our century for tender sweetness, rapid perceptions of truth and beauty in regions of criticism then but sparingly cultured nay, scarcely discovered and massive fragments of such composition as no hand of ordinary strength could hew out of the unransacked mines of our native language. ... It is not as a guide that Hazlitt can be useful to any man. His merit is that of a companion in districts little trodden a companion strong and hardy, who keeps our sinews i86 WILLIAM HAZLITT. to the sick chamber ; from the noise, the glare, the keen delight, to the loneliness, the darkness, the dulncss, and the pain, there is but one step. A breath of air, an overhanging cloud effects it ; and though the transi- tion is made in an instant, it seems as if it would last for ever. A sudden illness not only puts a stop to the career of our triumphs and agreeable sensations, but blots out and cancels all recollection of and desire for them. We lose the relish of enjoyment : we are effectually cured of our romance. Our bodies are con- fined to our beds : nor can our thoughts wantonly in healthful strain ; rough and irascible) whose temper will con- stantly offend us if we do not steadily preserve our own ; but always animated, vivacious, brilliant in his talk ; suggestive of truths, even where insisting on paradoxes ; and of whom when we part company we retain impressions stamped with the crown- mark of indisputable genius. Gladly would we welcome among the choicer prose works of our age some volumes devoted to the more felicitous specimens of Hazlitt's genius. ' He needs but an abstract of his title deeds to secure a fair allotment in the ground, already overcrowded, which has been quaintly described by a Scandinavian poet as the garden-land lying south between Walhalla and the sea." " In his Essays and other writings," says a critic of fine sym- pathies, the late Alexander Smith, "it is almost pathetic to notice how he clings to the peaceful images which the poet loves ; how he reposes in their restful lines. . . . He is continually quoting Sidney's Arcadian image of the shepherd-coy under the shade, piping at though he would never grow old, as if the recurrence of the image to his memory brought with it silence, sunshine, and waving trees. . . . When at his best, his style is excel- lent, concise, sinewy laying open the stubborn thought as the sharp ploughshare the glebe. . . . His best Essays were, in a sense, autobiographical, because in them he recalls his enthu- siasm, and the passionate hopes on which he fed his spirit." WILLIAM WAZLITT. 187 detach themselves and take the road to pleasure, but turn back with doubt and loathing at the faint, evanes- cent phantom which has usurped its place. If the folding-doors of the imagination were thrown open or left ajar, so that from the disordered couch where we lay, we could still hail the vista of the past or future, and see the gay and gorgeous visions floating at a dis- tance, however denied to our embrace, the contrast, though mortifying, might have something soothing in it, the mock splendour might be the greater for the actual gloom : but the misery is that we cannot con- ceive anything beyond or better than the present evil ; we are shut up and spell-bound in that, the curtains of the mind are drawn close, we cannot escape from "the body of this death," our souls are conquered, dismayed, " cooped and cabined in," and thrown with the lumber of our corporeal frames in one corner of a neglected and solitary room. We hate ourselves and everything else; nor does one ray of comfort "peep through the blanket of the dark " to give us hope. How should we entertain the image of grace and beauty, when our bodies writhe with pain ? To what purpose invoke the echo of some rich strain of music, when we ourselves can scarcely breathe? The very attempt is an im- possibility. It is amazing how little- effect physical suffering or local circumstances have upon the mind, except while we are subject to their immediate influence. While the impression lasts, they are everything : when it is gone, they are nothing. We toss and tumble about in a sick bed : we lie on our right side, we then change- to our left ; we stretch ourselves on our backs, we turn i88 WILLIAM HAZLITT. on our faces ; we wrap ourselves up under the clothes to exclude the cold, we throw them off to escape the heat and suffocation ; we grasp the pillow in agony, we fling ourselves out of bed, we walk up and down the room with hasty or feeble steps ; we return into bed ; we are worn out with fatigue and pain, yet can get no repose for the one, or intermission for the other ; we summon all our patience, or give vent to passion and petty rage : nothing avails ; we seem wedded to our disease, "like life and death in disproportion met;" we make new efforts, try new expedients, but nothing appears to shake it off, or promise relief from our grim foe : it infixes its sharp sting into us, or overpowers us by its sickly and stunning weight : every moment is as much as we can bear, and yet there seems no end of our lengthening tortures ; we are ready to faint with exhaustion, or work ourselves up to frenzy : we "trouble deaf Heaven with our bootless prayers :" we think our last hour has come, or peevishly wish it were, to put an end to the scene ; . . . when lo ! a change comes, the spell falls off, and the next moment we forget all that has happened to us. No sooner does our disorder turn its back upon us than we laugh at it The state we have been in sounds like 4 dream, a fable ; health is the order of the day, strength is ours de jure and de facto ; and we discard all un- called-for evidence to the contrary with a smile of contemptuous incredulity, just as we throw our physic- bottles out of the window ! I see (as I awake from a short, uneasy doze) a golden light shine through my white window-curtains on the opposite wall : is it the dawn of a new -day, or the departing light of evening ? WILLIAM HAZL1TT. 184 I do not well know, for the opium "they have drugged my posset with " has made strange havoc with my brain, and I am uncertain whether time has stood still, or advanced, or gone backward. By " puzzling o'er the doubt," my attention is drawn a little out of my- self to external objects ; and I consider whether it would not administer some relief to my monotonous langour, if I could call up a vivid picture of an evening sky I witnessed a short while before, the white fleecy clouds, the azure vault, the verdant fields and balmy air. In vain ! the wings of fancy refuse to mount from my bedside. The air without has nothing in common with the closeness within : the clouds disappear, the sky is instantly overcast and black. It is curious that, on coming out of a sick-room, where one has been pent some time, and grown weak and nervous, and looking at Nature for the first time, the objects that present themselves have a very questionable and spectral appearance, the people in the street resemble flies crawling about, and seem scarce half-alive. It is we who are just risen from a torpid and unwholesome state, and who impart our imperfect feelings of existence, health, and motion to others. Or it may be that the violence and exertion of the pain we have gone through make common every-day objects seem unreal and unsubstantial. It is not till we have established ourselves in form in the sitting-room, wheeled round the arm-chair to the fire (for this makes part of our re-introduction to the ordinary modes of being in all seasons,) felt our appetite return, and taken up a book, that we can be considered as at all restored to ourselves. And even 190 WILLIAM HAZLITT. then our first sensations are rather empirical than positive ; as after sleep we stretch out our hands to know whether we are awake. This is the time for reading. Books are then indeed "a world, both pure and good," into which we enter with all our hearts, after our revival from illness and respite from the tomb, as with the freshness and novelty of youth. They are not merely acceptable as without too much exertion they pass the time and relieve ennui ; but from a certain suspension and deadening of the passions, and abstrac- tion from worldly pursuits, they may be said to bring back and be friendly to the guileless and enthusiastic tone of feeling with which we formerly read them. Sickness has weaned us pro tempore from contest and cabal ; and we are fain to be docile and children again. All strong changes in our present pursuits throw us back upon the past. This is the shortest and most complete emancipation from our lafe discomfiture. We wonder that any one who has read The History of a Foundling should labour under an indigestion ; nor do we comprehend how a perusal of the Faery Queen should not insure the true believer an unin- terrupted succession of halcyon days. Present objects bear a retrospective meaning, and point to "a foregone conclusion. " Returning back to life with half-strung nerves and shattered strength, we seem as when we first entered it with uncertain purposes and faltering aims. The machine has received a shock, and it moves on more tremulously than before, and not all at once in the beaten track. Startled at the approach of death, we are willing to get as far from it as we can by making a proxy of our former selves ; and rinding the WILLIAM HAZLITT. 191 precarious tenure by which we hold existence, and its last sands running out, we gather up and make the most of the fragments that memory has stored up for us. Everything is seen through a medium of reflec- tion and contrast. We hear the sound of merry voices in the street ; and this carries us back to the recollections of some country-town or village- group " We see the children sporting on the shore And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore." ' }~ : ' A cricket chirps on the hearth, and we are reminded of Christmas gambols long ago. The very cries in the street seem to be of a former date ; and the dry toast eats very much as it did twenty years ago. A rose smells doubly sweet, after being stifled with tinctures and essences ; and we enjoy the idea of a journey and an inn the more for having been bed-rid. But a book is the secret and sure charm to bring all these implied associations to a focus. I should prefer an old one, Mr. Lamb's favourite, the Journey to Lisbon, by Henry Fielding ; or the Decameron, if I could get it. . . . Well, then, I have got the new paraphrase on the Beggar's Opera, Paul Clifford, by Bulwer, am fairly embarked in it ; and at the end of the first volume, where I am galloping across the heath with the three highwaymen, while the moon is shining full upon them, feel my nerves so braced, and my spirits so exhilarated, that, to say truth, I am scarce sorry for the occasion that has thrown me upon the work and the author have quite forgot my Sick Room, and am 199 CHARLES C. COLTON. more than half ready to recant the doctrine that a Free- Admission to the theatre is "The true pathos and sublime Of human life:" for I feel as I read that if the stage shows us the masks of men and the pageant of the world, books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own. They are the first and last, the most home-felt, the most heart-felt of all our enjoyments ! CHARLES C. COLTON. 1780 1832. So idle are dull readers, and so industrious are dull authors, that puffed nonsense bids fair to blow unpuffed sense wholly out of the field. Some read to think, these are rare ; some to write, -^ these are common ; and some read to talk, and these form the great majority. The first page of an author not unfrequently suffices for all the purposes of this latter class: of whom it has been said, that they treat books as some do lords ; they inform themselves of their titles, and then boast of an intimate acquaintance. Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason ; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them. Those works therefore are the most valuable, that set our thinking faculties in the fullest operation. For as the solar light calls forth all the latent powers and dormant principles of vegetation contained in the kernel, but which, without such a stimulus, would neither have struck root downwards, nor borne fruit upwards, so it C. F. DIBDIN-DR. W. E. CHANNINC. 193 is with the light that is intellectual ; it calls forth and awakens into energy those latent principles of thought in the minds of others, which, without this stimulus, reflection would not have matured, nor examination improved, nor action embodied. Lacon: or, Many Thingt in few words: Addressed to Those who Think, C. FROGNALL DIBDIN. 1776 1847. Unless I have greatly deceived myself, this book will afford comfort to those who at the close of a long and actively spent life, will find a communion with their books one of the safest and surest methods of holding a communion with their God. The library of a good man is one of his most constant, cheerful, and instruc- tive companions ; and as it has delighted him in youth, so will it solace him in old age. The Library Com- panion, DR. WJLLIAM ELLERY CHANNING. 1780 1842. It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds; and these invaluable means of communication are in the reach of all. In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours. God be thanked for books ! They are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. Books are the true levellers. They give to all who will faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence of the best and greatest of our race. No matter how poor I am ; no matter though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my N 194 DR. W. E. CHANN/NG. obscure dwelling ; if the sacred writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof if Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of Paradise ; and Shakspeare to open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of the human heart ; and Franklin to enrich me with his practical wisdom I shall not pine for want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man, though excluded from what is called the best society in the place where I live. To make this means of culture effectual, a man must select good books, such as have been written by right- minded and strong-minded men, real thinkers ; who, instead of diluting by repetition what others say, have something to say for themselves,- and write to give relief to full earnest souls : and these works must not be skimmed over for amusement, but read with fixed attention, and a reverential love of truth. In selecting books, we may be aided much by those who have studied more than ourselves. But after all, it is best to be determined in this particular a good deal by our own tastes. The best books for a man are not always those which the wise recommend, but oftener those which meet the peculiar wants, the natural thirst of his mind, and therefore awaken interest and rivet thought. And here it may be well to observe, not only in regard to books, but in other respects, that self-culture must vary with the individual. All means do not equally suit us all. A man must unfold himself freely, and should respect the peculiar gifts or biasses by which nature has distinguished him from others. Self-culture does not demand the sacrifice of individuality ; it docs DR. W. E. CHANN1NG. 195 not regularly apply an established machinery ; for the sake of torturing every man into one rigid shape, called perfection. As the human countenance, with the same features in us all, is diversified without end in the race, and is never the same in any two individuals ; so the human soul, with the same grand powers and law, expands into an infinite variety of forms, and would be wofully stinted by modes of culture requiring all men to learn the same lesson, or to bend to the same rules. I know how hard it is to some men, especially to those who spend much time in manual labour, to fix attention on books. Let them strive to overcome the difficulty, by choosing subjects of deep interest, or by reading in company with those whom they love. Nothing can supply the place of books. They are cheering or soothing companions in solitude, illness, affliction. The wealth of both continents would not compensate for the good they impart. Let every man, if possible, gather some good books under his roof, and obtain access for himself and family to some social library. Almost any luxury should be sacrificed to this. One of the very interesting features of our times, is the multiplication of books, and their distribution through all conditions of society. At a small expense, a man can now possess himself of the most precious treasures of English literature. Books, once confined to a few by their costliness, are now accessible to the multitude ; and in this way a change of habits is going on in society, highly favourable to the culture of the people. Instead of depending on casual rumour and .96 WASHINGTON IRVING. loose conversation for most of their knowledge and objects of thought ; instead of forming their judgments in crowds, and receiving their chief excitement from the voice of neighbours, men are now learning to study and reflect alone, to follow out subjects continuously, to determine for themselves what shall engage their minds, and to call to their aid the knowledge, original views, and reasonings of men of all countries and ages ; and the results must be, a deliberateness and indepen- dence of judgment, and a thoroughness and extent of information, unknown in former times. The diffusion of these silent teachers, books, through the whole community, is to work greater effects than artillery, machinery, and legislation. Its peaceful agency is to supersede stormy revolutions. The culture, which it is to spread, whilst an unspeakable good to the indi- vidual, is also to become the stability of nations. Self- Culture : An Address introductory to the Franklin Lectures, at Boston, 1838. WASHINGTON IRVING. 1783 1859. The scholar only knows how dear these silent, yet eloquent, companions of pure thoughts and innocent hours become in the season of adversity. When all that is worldly turns to dross around us, these only re- tain their steady value. When friends grow cold, and the converse of intimates languishes into vapid civility and common-place, these only continue the unaltered countenance of happier days, and cheer us with that true friendship which never deceived hope nor deserted sorrow. The Sketch Book. LEIGH HUNT. 97 LEIGH HUNT. 1784 1859. Were I to name, out of the times gone by, The poets dearest to me, I should say, Pulci for spirits, and a fine, free way ; Chaucer for manners, and close, silent eye ; Milton for classic taste, and harp strung high ; Spenser for luxury, and sweet, sylvan play ; Horace for chatting with, from day to day ; Shakspeare for all, but most, society. But which take with me, could I take but one ? Shakspeare, as long as I was unoppress'd With the world's weight, making sad thoughts intenser; But did I wish, out of the common sun, To lay a wounded heart in leafy rest, And dream of things far off and healing, Spenser. London Examiner, Dec. 24, 1815. We like a small study, where we are almost in con- tact with our books. We like to feel them about us, to be in the arms of our mistress Philosophy, rather than see her at a distance. . . . We do not know how our ideas of a' study might expand with our walls. Montaigne, who was Montaigne " of that ilk," and lord of a great chateau, had a study " sixteen paces in diameter, with three noble and free prospect*." . . . "The figure of my study is round, and has no more flat (bare) wall, than what is taken up by my table and my chairs : so that the remaining parts of the circle present me with a view of all my books at once, set upon five degrees i 9 8 LEIGH HUNT. of shelves round about me." A great prospect we hold to be a very disputable advantage, upon the same reasoning as before ; but we like to have some green boughs about our windows, and to fancy ourselves as much as possible in the country when we are not there. Milton expressed a wish with regard to his study, extremely suitable to our present purpose. He would have the lamp in it seen ; thus letting others into a share of his enjoyments, by the imagination of them. " And let my lamp at midnight hour Be seen in some high lonely tower, Where I may oft outwatch the Bear With thrice great Hermes ; or unsphere The Spirit of Plato, to unfold What world or what vast regions hold The immortal mind, that hath forsook Her mansion in this fleshy nook." The Indicator. 1819. Sitting last winter among my books, and walled round with all the comfort and protection which they and my fire-side could afford me, to wit, a table of high-piled books at my back, my writing desk on one side of me, some shelves on the other, and the feeling of the warm fire at my feet, I began to con- sider how I loved the authors of those books ; how I loved them too, not only for the imaginative pleasures they afforded me, but for their making me love the very books themselves, and delight to be in contact with them. I looked sideways at my Spenser, my Theo- critus, and my Arabian Nights ; then above them at LEIGH HUNT. 199 my Italian Poets ; then behind me at my Dryden and Pope, my Romances, and my Boccaccio ; then on my left side at my Chaucer, who lay on my writing desk ; and thought how natural it was in Charles Lamb to give a kiss to an old folio, as I once saw him do to Chapman's Homer. . . . I entrench myself in my books, equally against sorrow and the weather. If the wind comes through a passage, I look about to see how I can fence it off by a better disposition of my moveables ; if a melan- choly thought is importunate, I give another glance at my Spenser. When I speak of being in contact with my books, I mean it literally. I like to be able to lean my head against them. . . . I like a great library next my study ; but for the ttudy itself, give me a small snug place almost entirely walled with books. There should be only one window in it, looking upon trees. Some prefer a place with few or no books at all ; nothing but a chair or a table, like Epictetus : but I should say that these were philosophers, not lovers of books, if I did not recollect that Montaigne was both. He had a study in a round tower, walled as aforesaid. It is true, one forgets one's books while writing : at least they say so. For my part, I think I have them in a sort of sidelong mind's eye ; like a second thought, which is none ; like a waterfall, or a whispering wind. . . . The very perusal of the backs is a "discipline of humanity." There Mr. Southey takes his place again with an old Radical friend : there Jeremy Collier is at peace with Dryden : there the lion, Martin Luther, lies down with the Quaker lamb, Sewell : there Guzman zoo LEIGH HUNT. d'AIfarachc thinks himself fit company for Sir Charles Grandison, and has his claims admitted. Even the "high fantastical" Duchess of Newcastle, with her laurel on her head, is received with grave honours, and not the less for declining to trouble herself with the constitutions of her maids. . . . How pleasant it is to reflect that the greatest lovers of books have themselves become books 1 What better metamorphosis could Pythagoras have desired ! How Ovid and Horace exulted in anticipating theirs ! And how the world have justified their exultation ! They had a right to triumph over brass and marble. It is the only visible change which changes no further ; which generates, and yet is not destroyed. Consider : mines themselves are exhausted ; cities perish ; king- doms are swept away, and man weeps with indignation to think that his own body is not immortal. . . . Yet this little body of thought that lies before me in the shape of a book has existed thousands of years ; nor since the invention of the press, can any thing short of an universal convulsion of nature, abolish it. To a shape like this, so small, yet so comprehensive, so slight, yet so lasting, so insignificant, yet so venerable, turns the mighty activity of Homer, and so turning, is enabled to live and warm us for ever. To a shape like this turns the placid sage of Academus: to a shape like this the grandeur of Milton, the exuberance of Spenser, the pungent elegance of Pope, and the volatility of Prior. In one small room, like the com- pressed spirits of Milton, can be gathered together 1 ' The assembled souls of all that men held wise. " LEIGH HUNT. M i May I hope to become the meanest of these existences ? This is a question which every author, who is a lover of books, asks himself some time in his life ; and which must be pardoned, because it cannot be helped. I know not. I cannot exclaim with the poet, " Oh that my name were numbered among theirs, Then gladly would I end my mortal days." For iny mortal days, few and feeble as the rest of them may be, are of consequence to others. But I should like to remain visible in this shape. The little of myself that pleases myself, I could wish to be accounted worth pleasing others. I should like to survive so, were it only for the sake of those who love me in private, knowing as I do what a treasure is the possession of a friend's mind, when he is no more. At all events, nothing, while I live and think, can deprive me of my value for such treasures. I can help the appreciation of them while I last, and love them till I die ; and perhaps, if fortune turns her face once more in kind- ness upon me before I go, I may chance, some quiet day, to lay my over-beating temples on a book, and so have the death I most envy.* Tkt Literary Examiner: "My Books." 1823. The want we wish to supply by the London Journal \& that of something more connected with the ornamental *"We think few can read this very lovely passage and not sympathise cordially in the wish so nobly conceived and so tenderly expressed. Something not to be replaced would be struck out or the gentler literature or our century, could the mind of (>eigh Hunt cease to speak to us in a book." Lord Lftttm (E. L. Bultutr). " Charles Lamb ami torn* tf Hit Companions? &c. Quarterly Review. 1867. 202 LEIGH HUNT. part of utility, with the art of extracting pleasurable ideas from the commonest objects, and the participations of a scholarly experience. In the metropolis there are thousands of improving and inquiring minds, capable of all the elegance of intellectual enjoyment, who, for want of education worthy of them, are deprived of a world of pleasures, in which they might have in- structed others. We hope to be read by these. In every country town there is always a knot of spirits of this kind, generally young men, who are known, above others, for their love of books, for the liberality of their sentiments, and their desire to be acquainted with all that is going forward in connection with the graces of poetry and the fine arts. We hope to have these for our readers. . . . Pleasure is the busi- ness of this journal ; we own it ; we love to begin it with the word ; it is like commencing the day with sunshine in the room. Pleasure for all who can receive pleasure ; consolation and encouragement for the rest : this is our purpose. But then it is pleasure like that implied by our simile, innocent, kindly, we dare to add, instructive and elevating. Nor shall the gravest aspects of it be wanting. As the sunshine floods the sky and the ocean, and yet nurses the baby- buds of the roses on the wall, so we would fain open the largest and the very least sources of pleasure, the noblest that expands above us into the heavens, and the most familiar that catches our glance in the home- stead. We would break up the surface of habit and indifference, and shew the treasures concealed beneath. Man has not yet learnt to enjoy the world he lives in. We would fain help him to render it productive of LEIGH HUNT. .03 still greater joy. We would make adversity hopeful, prosperity sympathetic, all kinder, richer, and happier ; and we have some right to assist in the endeavour, for there is scarcely a single joy or sorrow within the ex- perience of our fellow creatures which we have not tasted ; and the belief in the good and beautiful has never forsaken us. It has been medicine to us in sickness, riches in poverty, and the best part of all that has ever delighted us in health and wealth. . . . We have been at this work now, off and on, man and boy (for we began essay-writing while in our teens) for upwards of thirty years, and excepting that we would fain have done yet more, we feel the same as we have done throughout ; and we have the same hope, the same love, the same faith in the beauty and goodness of nature and all her prospects, in space and in time ; we could almost add, if a sprinkle of white hairs in our black would allow us, the same youth. . . . We have had so much sorrow, and yet are capable of so much joy, and receive pleasure from so many familiar objects, that we sometimes think we should have had an unfair portion of happiness, if our life had not been one of more than ordinary trial. London Journal f April I, 1834. Conceive what our pleasure must be when those who have a right to judge pronounce our Journal to have done well, both in spirit and letter, and unite heartily in approving the cultivation of one sequestered spot in the regions of literature. ... It is our ambition to be one of the sowers of a good seed in places where it is not common, but would be most profitable ; to be 204 LEIGH HUNT. one of those who should try to render a sort of public loving-kindness a grace of common life, a conventional, and for that very reason, in the highest sense of the word, a social and universal elegance. We dare to whisper in the ears of the wisest, and therefore of the all-hearing and the kindliest judging, that we would fain do something, however small and light, towards Christianizing public minds. . . . If we end in doing nothing but extending a faith in capabilities of any sort, and showing some thousands of our fellow- creatures that sources of amusement and instruction await but a touch in the objects around them, to start up like magic, and enrich the meanest hut, perhaps the most satiated ennui, we shall have done something not unworthy. London journal, August 27, 1834. Our object was to put more sunshine into the feel- ings of our countrymen, more good will and good humour, a greater habit of being pleased with one another, and with everything, and therefore a greater power of dispensing with uneasy sources of satisfaction. We wished to create one corner and field of periodical literature in which men might be more of hope and cheerfulness, and of the cultivation of peaceful and flowery thoughts, without the accom- paniment of anything inconsistent with them ; we knew that there was a desire at the bottom of every human heart to retain a faith in such thoughts, and to see others believe in them and recommend them ; and heartily have anxious as well as happy readers in this green and beautiful England responded to our belief. . . . Still blow then, ye fair winds, and keep open LEIGH HUNT. x> 5 upon us, ye blue heavens still hail us as ye go, all gallant brother voyagers, and encourage us to pursue the kindly task which love and adversity have taught us, touching at all curious shores of reality and romance, endeavouring to make them know and love one another, to learn what is good against the roughest elements, or how the suffering that cannot be remedied may be best endured, to bring news of hope and joy and exaltation from the wings of the morning, and the uttermost parts of the sea, making familiar companions, but not the less revered on that account, of the least things on earth and the greatest things apart from it of the dust and the globe, and the divided moon, of sun and stars, and the loneliest meetings of man's thought with immensity, which is not too large for his heart, though it be for his knowledge ; because know- ledge is but man's knowledge, but the heart has a portion of God's wisdom, which is Love.* London fffurnal, Sept. 4, 1834. " The London "Journal was a miscellany of essays, criticisms, and passages from books. The note which it struck was of too xsthetical a nature for cheap readers in those days ; and in 1836, after attaining the size of a goodly folio double volume, it termi- nated. I have since had the pleasure of seeing the major part of the essays renew their life, and become accepted by the public, in a companion volume to the 1 initiator, called the Sitr. The Seer docs not mean a prophet, or one gifted with second sight, but ad observer of ordinary things about him, gifted by his admiration of nature with the power of discerning what every body else may discern by a cultivation of the like secret of satis- faction. ... I have been pleased to see that (he London Journal maintains a good steady price with ray old friends, the bookstalls. . . . Assuredly its large, triple-columned, eight hundred pages, full of cheerful ethics, of reviews, anecdotes, io6 LEIGH MUNT. We still find ourselves halting as instinctively at the humblest, or even the most familiar book -stall, as we legends, table-talk, and romances of real life, make a reasonable sort of library, &c." Autobiography. The Louden Journal, in two folio volumes, is often to be met with in second-hand book catalogues, and will be found a perfect storehouse of literary amenities and delights. An ardent admirer of Hunt Mr. Frank Carr, of Newcastle who chooses to veil his identity under the nom dt plume of " Lancelot Cross," has devoted a dainty little volume to a description of the merits and varied contents of the London Journal, as a Typical Literary Miscellany. He says of it : - "The charm of his articles does not lie alone in their ever sparkling freshness, in the morning sweetness that pervades them, but in the largeness of their scope in their consideration, according to the call of the moment, of all human needs. Hunt's was of the inquisitive and exploring order of minds ; industry and method he shared with hundreds of other literary workers but he cuperadded (and therein lay his power) a genial humanity which looked on ill things with an equal eye, moved towards all with a warm sympathising heart, and sought good in all things with a clear, trustful mind. His style was conversational picturesqueness, richness of ready learning, flux unfailing cordiality and communicativeness. If we had to state his power in a brief sentence it would be the alchemy of intelligent loving-kindness." " There is to be found in those two volumes," he says, " matter that will stir every pure power of the soul smiles, tears, deep thought, and devotion. It is a book that can be laid before the child, the lady, the poet, and the philosopher. It is a noble boast when an author can declare that he leaves not ' one line which, dying, he could wish to blot ; ' but it is tenfold higher praise when it may be said of him that he has not only left his multi- farious writings pure, all misconceptions atoned for, all rash judgments corrected (as when he says ' How pleasant it is thus to find oneself reconciled to men whom we have ignorantly LEIGH HUNT, 90, used to do when first fresh from school. In vain have got cold feet at it, shivering, wind-beaten sides, and black-fingered gloves. The dusty old siren still delays us, charming with immortal beauty inside her homely attire, and singing songs of old poets. We still find ourselves diving even into the sixpenny or threepenny "box," in spite of eternal disappointment, and running over whole windows of books, which we saw but three days before for the twentieth time, and of which we could repeat by heart a good third of the titles. Nothing disconcerts us but absolute dirt, or an ill- tempered looking woman. What delights us is to see a plentiful sprinkle of old poetry, little Elzevir classics, Ariostos full of loving comment, and a woman getting under-valued, and how fortunate to have lived long enough to say so ') but that in the immense mass of charming selections that he has made and commented upon over a long period of time, there is not one sullied by temper, pruriency, or factious- ness. Their range includes the fruits of all intellects, of all forms of human endeavour, from the sayings of childhood to those of the wisest of the sons of man ; from instances of domestic magnanimity to the heroic achievements in art, science, and public strife, and each and all convey the most ennobling lessons. We love the glorious two folios for their own sake, and because, in addition to other great merits, they are a Prime Exemplar of Periodical Literature for fulness, variety, ease, elegance, enthusiasm, and urbanity." Christopher North (Professor Wilson), who at one time viru- lently attacked Leigh Hunt, made the amend* honorable in thus speaking of the London Journal: " It is not only beyond all comparison, but out of all sight the most entertaining and instructive of all the cheap periodicals ; and when laid, as it duly is once a week, on my breakfast-table, it lies there, but is not permitted to lie long like a spot of sunshine dazzling the snow." to8 LEIGH HUNT. gradually better and better dressed, her afternoon ribbons matching with her pleasant face, and a chubby urchin in her arms. Nothing delights us more than to overhaul some dingy tome, and read a chapter gratuitously. Occa- sionally when we have opened some very attractive old book, we have stood reading for hours at the stall, lost in a brown study and worldly forgetfulness, and should probably have read on to the end of the last chapter, had not the vendor of published wisdom offered, in a satirically polite way, to bring us out a chair "Take a chair, sir; you must be tired." They who can afford to give a second-hand book- seller what he asks in his catalogue, may in general do it with good reason, as well as a safe conscience. He is of an anxious and industrious class of men, com- pelled to begin the world with laying out ready money and living very closely ; and if he prospers, the com- modities and people he is conversant with, encourage the good and intellectual impressions with which he set out, and generally end in procuring him a reputation for liberality as well as acuteness. A Second-Hand Bookseller's Catalogue is not a mere catalogue or list of saleables as the uninitiated may fancy. Even a common auctioneer's catalogue of goods and chattels, suggests a thousand reflections to a peruser of any knowledge ; judge then what the case must be with a catalogue of Books ; the very titles of which run the rounds of the whole world, visible and in- LEIGH HUNT. x* visible ; geographies biographies histories loves hates joys sorrows cookeries sciences fashion, and eternity ! We speak on this subject from the most literal experience ; for often and often have we cut open a new catalogue of old books, with all the fervour and ivory folder of a first love ; often read one at tea ; nay, at dinner ; and have put crosses against dozens of volumes in the list, out of the pure imagination of buying them, the possibility being out of the question I Serin of Papers in The Monthly Repository, 1837, entitled " Retrospective Review, or Companion to The Lover of Old Books;" Old Books and Bookshops Benefuence of Bookstalls Catalogues of Cheap Books. This book (A Book for a Corner ), for the most part, is a collection of passages from such authors as retain, if not the highest, yet the most friendly and as it were domestic hold upon us during life, and sympathize with us through all portions of it. Hence the first extract is a Letter addressed to an Infant, the last the Elegy in the Churchyard, and the intermediate ones have something of an analogous reference to the successive stages of existence. It is therefore intended to be read by in- telligent persons of all times of life, the youthful associations in it being such as the oldest readers love to call to mind, and the oldest such as all would gladly meet with in their decline. It has no politics in it, no polemics, nothing to offend the delicatest mind. The innocentcst boy and the most cautious of his seniors might alike be glad to look over the other's shoulder, and find him in his comer perusing it. This may be speaking in a boastful manner ; but an Editor has a o tto LEIGH HUNT. right to boast of his originals, especially when they are such as have comforted and delighted him throughout his own life, and are for that reason recommended by him to others. This compilation is intended for all lovers of books, at every time of life, from childhood to old age, particularly such as are fond of the authors it quotes, and who enjoy their perusal most in the quietest places. It is intended for the boy or girl who loves to get with a book into a corner for the youth who on entering life finds his advantage in having become acquainted with books for the man in the thick of life, to whose spare moments books are refreshments and for persons in the decline of life, who reflect on what they have experienced, and to whom books and gardens afford their tranquillest pleasures. It is a book (not to say it immodestly) intended to lie in old parlour win- dows, in studies, in cottages, in cabins aboard ship, in country-inns, in country-houses, in summer-houses, in any houses that have wit enough to like it, and are not the mere victims of a table covered with books for show. . . . Some of the most stirring men in the world, persons in the thick of business of all kinds, and indeed with the business of the world itself on their hands, Lorenzo de Medici, for instance, who was at once the great merchant and the political arbiter of his time, have combined with their other energies the greatest love of books, and found no recreation at once so wholesome and so useful. We hope many a man of business will refresh himself with the short pieces in these volumes, UCLA LEIGH HUNT an and return to his work the fitter to baffle craft, and yet retain a reverence for simplicity. Every man who has a right sense of business, whether his business be that of the world or of himself, has a respect for all right things apart from it ; because business with him is not a mind- less and merely instinctive industry, like that of a beetle rolling its ball of clay, but an exercise of faculties congenial with the other powers of the human being, and all working to some social end. Hence he approves of judicious and refreshing leisure of domestic and social evenings of suburban retreats of gardens of ultimate retirement " for good " of a reading and reflective old age. Such retirements have been longed for, and in many instances realized, by wise and great men of all classes, from the Diocletians of old to the Foxes and Burkes of our own days. Warren Hastings, who had ruled India, yearned for the scenes of his boyhood ; and lived to be happy in them. The wish to possess a country-house, a retreat, a nest, a harbour of some kind from the storms and even from the agitating pleasures of life, is as old as the sorrows and joys of civilization. The child feels it when he " plays at house ;" the schoolboy, when he is reading in his comer ; the lover, when he thinks of his mistress. Epicurus felt it in his garden ; Horace and Virgil expressed their desire of it in passages which the sympathy of mankind has rendered immortal. It was the end of all the wisdom and experience of Shakspeare. He retired to his native town, and built himself a house in which he died. And who else does not occasionally 11 flit " somewhere meantime if he can ? The country for many miles round London, and indeed in most aia LEIGH HUNT. other places, is adorned with houses and grounds of men of business, who are whirled to and fro f>n weekly or daily evenings, and who would all find something to approve in the closing chapters of our work. . . . It is Books that teach us to refine on our pleasures when young, and which, having so taught us, enable us to recall them with satisfaction when old. For let the half-witted say what they will of delusions, no thorough reader ever ceased to believe in his books, whatever doubts they might have taught him by the way. They are pleasures too palpable and habitual for him to deny. The habit itself is a pleasure. They contain his young dreams and his old discoveries ; all that he has lost, as well as all that he has gained ; and, as he is no surer of the gain than of the loss, except in proportion to the strength of his perceptions, the dreams, in being renewed, become truths again. He is again in communion with the past ; again interested in its adventures, grieving with its griefs, laughing with its merriment, forgetting the very chair and room he is sitting in. Who, in the mysterious operation of things, shall dare to assert in what unreal comer of time and space that man's mind is ; or what better proof he has of the existence of the poor goods and chattels about him, which at that moment (to him) arc non-existent? "Oh I" people say, "but he wakes up, and sees them there." Well ; he woke down then, and saw the rest. What we distinguish into dreams and realities, are, in both cases, but representatives of impressions. Who shall know what difference there is in them at all, save that of degree, till some higher state of existence help us to a criterion ? LEIGH HUNT. ,., For our part, such real things to us are books, that, if habit and perception make the difference between real and unreal, we may say that we more frequently wake out of common life to them, than out of them to common life. Yet we do not find the life the less real. We only feel books to be a constituent part of it ; a world, as the poet says, " Round which, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, Our pastime and our happiness will grow." . . . And yet, when readers wake up to that other dream of life, called real life (and we do not mean to deny its palpability), they do not find their enjoyment of it diminished. It is increased increased by the contrast by the variety by the call upon them to show the faith which books have originally given them in all true and good things, and which books, in spite of contradiction and disappointment, have constantly maintained. Mankind are the creatures of books, as well as of other circumstances ; and such they eternally remain ; proofs, that the race is a noble and believing race, and capable of whatever books can stimulate. The volumes now offered to our fellow readers originated in this kind of passion for books. They were suggested by a wish we had long felt to get up a book for our private enjoyment, and of a very particular and unambitious nature. It was to have consisted of favourite passages, not out of the authors we most admired, but those whom we most love ; and it was to have commenced, as the volumes do, with Shenstone's "Schoolmistress," and ended with Gray's "Elegy." 2i 4 LEIGH HUNT. It was to have contained indeed little which the volumes do not comprise, though not intended to be half so big, and it was to have proceeded on the same plan of beginning with childhood and ending with the church-yard. We did not intend to omit the greatest authors on account of their being the greatest, but because they moved the feelings too strongly. What we desired was not an excitement, but a balm. Readers, who have led stirring lives, have such men as Shak- speare with them always, in their very struggles and sufferings, and in the tragic spectacles of the world. Great crowds and great passions are Shakspeares; and we, for one (and such we take to be the case with many readers), are sometimes as willing to retire from their "infinite agitation of wit," as from strifes less exalted; and retreat into the placider corners of genius more humble. It is out of no disrespect to their greatness ; neither, we may be allowed to say, is it from any fear of being unable to sustain it ; for we have seen perhaps as many appalling faces of things in our time as they have, and we are always ready to confront more if duty demand it. But we do not choose to be always suffering over again in books what we have suffered in the world. We prefer, when in a state of repose, to renew what we have enjoyed to possess wholly what we enjoy still to discern in the least and gentlest things the greatest and sweetest intentions of Nature and to cultivate those soothing, serene, and affectionate feelings, which leave us in peace with all the world, and in good hope of the world to come. The very greatest genius, after all, is not the greatest thing in the world, any more than the greatest city in the world LEIGH HUNT. 113 is the country or the sky. It is a concentration of some of its greatest powers, but it is not the greatest diffusion of its might. It is not the habit of its success, the stability of its sercncness. And this is what readers like ourselves desire to feel and know. The greatest use of genius is but to subserve to that end ; to further the means of enjoying it, and to freshen and keep it pure ; as the winds and thunders, which come rarely, are purifiers of the sweet fields, which are abiding. . . . We have imagined a book-loving man, or man able to refresh himself with books, at every successive period of his life ; the child at his primer, the sanguine boy, the youth entering the world, the man in the thick of it, the man of alternate business and repose, the retired man calmly considering his birth and his death ; and in this one human being we include, of course, the whole race and both sexes, mothers, wives, and daughters, and all which they do to animate and sweeten existence. Thus our invisible, or rather many- bodied hero (who is the reader himself), is in the first instance a baby; then a child under the "School- mistress " of Shenstone ; then the schoolboy with Gray and Walpole, reading poetry and romance ; then "Gil Bias " entering the world ; then the sympathiser with the "John Buncles " who enjoy it, and the "Travellers" who fill it with enterprise ; then the matured man beginning to talk of disappointments, and standing in need of admonition "Against Inconsistency in his Expectations " [the title of an admirable Essay by Mrs. Barbauld] ; then the reassured man comforted by his honesty and his just hopes, and refreshing himself with his Club or his country-lodging, his pictures, or his ai6 LEIGH HUNT. theatre ; then the retiring, or retired, or finally old man, looking back with tenderness on his enjoyments, with regret for his errors, with comfort in his virtues, and with a charity for all men, which gives him a right to the comfort ; loving all the good things he ever loved, particularly the books which have been his companions and the childhood which he meets again in the fields ; and neither wishing nor fearing to be gathered into that kindly bosom of Nature, which covers the fields with flowers, and is encircled with the heavens. . . . A universalist, in one high bibliographical respect, may be said to be the only true reader ; for he is the only reader on whom no writing is lost. Too many people approve no books but such as are representatives of some opinion or passion of their own. They read, not to have human nature reflected on them, and so be taught to know and to love everything, but to be reflected themselves as in a pocket mirror, and so inter- change admiring looks with their own narrow cast of countenance. The universalist alone puts up with difference of opinion, by reason of his own very difference ; because his difference is a right claimed by him in the spirit of universal allowance, and not a privilege arrogated by conceit. He loves poetry and prose, fiction and matter of fact, seriousness and mirth, because he is a thorough human being, and contains portions of all the faculties to which they appeal. A man who can be nothing but serious, or nothing but merry, is but half a man. The lachrymal or the risible organs are wanting in him. He has no business to have eyes or muscles like other men. The universalist LEIGH HUNT. 117 alone can put up with Aim, by reason of the very sympathy of his antipathy. He understands the defect enough to pity, while he dislikes it. The universalist is the only reader who can make something out of books for which he has no predilection. He sees differences in them to sharpen his reasoning ; sciences which impress on him a sense of his ignorance ; nay, languages which, if they can do nothing else, amuse his eye and set him thinking of other countries. . . . Our compilation, therefore, though desirous to please all who are willing to be pleased, is ambitious to satisfy this sort of person most of all. It is of his childhood we were mostly thinking when we extracted the "Schoolmistress." He will thoroughly understand the wisdom lurking beneath the playfulness of its author. He will know how wholesome as well as amusing it is to become acquainted with books like "Gil Bias" and "Joseph Andrews." He will derive agreeable terror from "Sir Bertram" and the "Haunted Chamber;" will assent with delighted reason to every sentence in "Mrs. Barbauld's Essay ;" will feel himself wandering into solitudes with "Gray;" shake honest hands with "Sir Roger de Coverley;" be ready to embrace "Parson Adams," and to chuck "Pounce" out of window, instead of the hat ; will travel with "Marco Polo" and "Mungo Park;" stay at home with "Thomson;" retire with "Cowley;" be in- dustrious with "Hutton;" sympathizing with "Gay and Mrs. Inchbald ;" laughing with (and at) "Buncle;" melancholy, and forlorn, and self-restored, with the shipwrecked mariner of "De Foe." There are "Robin- son Crusoes" in the moral as well as physical world, *i8 LEIGH HUNT. and even a universalist may be one of them ; men, cast on desert islands of thought and speculation} without companionship ; without worldly resources ; forced to arm and clothe themselves out of the remains of shipwrecked hopes, and to make a home for their solitary hearts in the nooks and corners of imagination and reading. It is not the worse lot in the world. Turned to account for others, and embraced with patient cheerfulness, it may, with few exceptions, even be one of the best. We hope our volume may light into the hands of such men. Every extract which is made in it, has something of a like second-purpose, beyond what appears on its face. There is amuse- ment for those who require nothing more, and instruc- tion in the shape of amusement for those who choose to find it. ... Our book may have little novelty in the least sense of the word ; but it has the best in the greatest sense ; that is to say, never-dying novelty ; antiquity hung with ivy-blossoms and rose-buds ; old friends with the ever-new faces of wit, thought, and affection. Time has proved the genius with which it is filled. "Age cannot wither it," nor "custom stale its variety." We ourselves have read, and shall continue to read it to our dying day; and we should not say thus much, especially on such an occasion, if we did not know, that hundreds and thousands would do the same, whether they read it in this collection or not. Introduction to A Book for a Corner. Selections in Prose and Verse from Authors the best suited to that mode of enjoyment, with Comments on each, and General Introduction, 1849. LEIGH HUNT. s >4 I must therefore end life as I began it, in what is perhaps my only true vocation, that of a love of nature and books ; complaining of nothing, grate- ful, if others will not complain of me, a little proud perhaps (nature allows such balm to human weakness) of having been found not unworthy of doing that for the Good Cause by my sufferings, which I can no longer pretend to do by my pen, and possessed of one golden secret, tried in the fire, which I still hope to recom- mend in future writings ; namely, the art of finding as many things to love as possible in our path through life, let us otherwise try to reform it as we may, Fare- well Address in the Monthly Repository. 1838. I am not aware that I have a single enemy, and I accept the fortunes, good and bad, which have occurred to me, with the same disposition to believe them the best that could have happened, whether for the correc- tion of what was wrong in me, or for the improvement of what was right. I have never lost cheerfulness of mind or opinion. What evils there are, I find to be, for the most part, relieved with many consolations : some I find to be necessary to the requisite amount of good ; and every one of them I find come to a termi- nation, for either they are cured and live, or arekilled and die ; and in the latter case I see no evidence to prove that a little finger of them aches any more. Autobiography. [After giving some account of his religious views and convictions, he thus concludes his " Auto- biography"]:* 'When Hunt's "Autobiography" appeared in 1850, Carlyle read it with the deepest interest, and wrote to the author ex- s*> LEIGH HUNT. Such are the doctrines, and such only, accompanied by expositions cf the beauties and wonders of God's great pressing his admiration of the work. A letter more overflowing with loving-kindness, and hearty recognition and sympathy, is not to be found in the whole range of literary correspondence. A verbatim reprint of this letter has never before appeared. The following is a faithful reproduction of the original, of which the compiler of this volume is the fortunate possessor : " Dear Hunt, " I have just finished your ' Autobiography,' which has been most pleasantly occupying all my leisure these three days ; and you must permit me to write you a word upon it, out of the fulness of the heart, while the impulse is still fresh, to thank you. This good Book, in every sense one of the best I have read this long while, has awakened many old thoughts, which never were extinct, or even properly asleep, but which (like so much else) have had to fall silent amid the tempests of an evil time, Heaven mend it ! A word from me, once more, I know, will not be unwelcome, while the world is talking of you. " Well, I call this an excellently good Book ; by far the best of the autobiographic kind I remember to hare read in the English language ; and indeed, except it be Boswcll's of Johnson, I do not know where we have such a Picture drawn of a human Life, as in these three volumes. A pious, ingenious, altogether human and worthy Book ; imaging with graceful honesty and free felicity, many interesting objects and persons on your life- path, and imaging throughout, what is best of all, a gifted, gentle, patient, and valiant human soul, as it buffets its way thro* the billows of the time, and will not drown, tho' often in danger ; cannot be drowned, but conquers, and leaves a track of radiance behind it : that, I think, comes out more clearly to me than in any other of your Books ; and that I can venture to assure you is the best of all results to realise in a Book or written record. In fact this Book has been like an exercise of devotion to me : I have not assisted at any sermon, liturgy or litany, this long while, that has had so religious an effect on me. Thanks in the name of all men t And believe along with me that this Book LEIGH HUNT. m book of the universe, which will be preached in the temples of the earth, including those of our beloved country, England, its beautiful old ivied turrets and their green neighbourhood, then, for the first time, thoroughly uncontradicted and heavenly ; with not a sound in them more terrible than the stormy yet sweet organ, analogous to the beneficent winds and tempests; and no thought of here or hereafter, that can disturb the quiet aspect of the graves, or the welcome of the new-born darling, and that such a consummation may come slowly but surely, without intermission in itsadvance, and without an injury to a living soul, will be the last prayer, as it must needs be among the latest words of the author of this book . [To some readers of these pages it may appear that the passages from Leigh Hunt's writings occupy a dis- proportionate space, when compared with the selections given from other authors. In explanation, the compiler would remark that, of all the authors quoted, this one affords the greatest abundance, variety, and appropriate- ness of thought on the subject-matter of the present volume, viz., the consolations, companionship, and pleasures of Books. On this special topic, and others will be welcome to other generations as well as to ours and long may you live to write more Books for us ; and may the evening sun be softer on you (and on me) than the noon sometimes was ! "Adieu, dear Hunt, (you must let me use this familiarity, for I am an old fellow too now as well as you). I have often thought of coming up to see you once more ; and perhaps I shall one of these days (tho' horribly sick and lonely, and beset with spectral lions, go whitherward I may); but whether I do or not, believe for ever in my regard. And so God bless you. " Yours heartily, "T. CAKLYLB." m LEIGH HUNT. having close affinity to it, no other author has left behind him so many beautiful thoughts ; nor can a more interest- ing example be adduced of a long and anxious life finding its best solace in the comfort of Books. Leigh Hunt is one of the most striking exemplars of a genuine Book-Lover one to whom Books were a world of real, exhaustless delights. With catholic tastes, and a very wide range of sympathies, he was tolerant of every variety and form of thought and opinion, and hospitably entertained, without stint or limit, every intellectual guest who came in the shape of a book. His refined critical power, wide culture, and subtle perception of beauty made him a matchless interpreter of our great poets and dramatists Chaucer, Spenser, Marlow, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Middleton, Webster, Milton, Marvel, Dryden, Pope, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, and others as exemplified in his "Imagination and Fancy, " and ' ' Wit and Humour ;" * in which the essayist and critic shows himself in- trinsically competent to his theme, and "makes the reader feel," as has been happily remarked, " that he is taking a most delicious tour through every species of poetical beauty with one deeply imbued with every * The full titles of these two works are : " Imagination and Fancy ; or Selections from the English Poets, illustrative of those first requisites of their Art; with markings of the best passages, critical notices of the writers, and an essay in answer to the question, ' What is Poetry? ' " 1845. " Wit and Humour : selected from the English Poets ; with an illustrative essay and critical comments." 1846. LEIGH HUNT. s* 3 point of view of the glorious scenery he has himself so long dwelt amongst." He had also a keen relish for the fine things that lie hidden in the pages of com- paratively unknown and half-forgotten authors bringing to light quaint beauties and lurking flavours unsuspected by the reader, as they were probably undesigned by the writer. The excellent sense and sanity of his mind, giving balance to his critical faculties, his warm and generous sympathies, and that goodness of heart which is an essential requisite of a good critic, constitute him, without dispute, one of the most genial and discriminating of literary guides. " It is not every consummate man of letters of whom it can be unhesitatingly affirmed that he was true, brave, just, and pious." We cannot take farewell of Hunt and his writings in words more - appropriate than those used by his eldest son at the conclusion of the introduction to his father's "Auto- biography " : "To promote the happiness of his kind, to minister to the more educated appreciation of order and beauty, to open more widely the door of the library, and more widely the window of the library looking out upon nature these were the purposes that guided his studies, and animated his labours to the very last."]* * The best writers and finest critics of hit time Lamb, Keats, Shelley, Hazlitt, Forster, Talfourd, Carlylc, liulwcr, Macaulay, Dickens, Thackeray, Jerrold, Charles Cowden Clarke, Lord Houghton, and many others - have borne cordial testimony to the fine genius of this essayist, who remained to the last " true as steel " to the best hopes of human nature. 224 LOVE PEACOCK DE QUINCE V. LOVE PEACOCK. 1785 1866. [Dr. Folliott loquitur] There- is nothing more fit to be looked at than the outside of a book. It is, as I may say from repeated experience, a pure and unmixed pleasure to have a goodly volume lying before you, and to know that you may open it if you please, and need not open it unless you please. It is a resource against ennui, if ennui should come upon you. To have the resource and not to feel the ennui, to enjoy your bottle in the present, and your book in the indefinite future, is a delightful condition of human existence. There is no place, in which a man can move or sit, in which the outside of a book can be otherwise than an innocent and becoming spectacle. Crotchet Castle, Chap, vii., ' The Sleeping Venus." THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 1786 1859. A great scholar, in the highest sense of the term, is not one who depends simply on an infinite memory, but also on an infinite and electrical power of combi- nation ; bringing together from the four winds, like the Angel of the Resurrection, what else were dust from dead men's bones, into the unity of breathing life. And of this let every one be assured that he owes to the impassioned books which he has read, many a thousand more of emotions than he can consciously trace back to them. Dim by their origination, these emotions yet arise in him, and mould him through life like the forgotten incidents of childhood. DE QUINCEY-LORD BROUGHAM. 995 At this hour, five hundred years since their creation, the tales of Chaucer, never equalled on this earth for their tenderness, and for life of picturesqueness, are read familiarly by many in the charming language of their natal day, and by others in the modernisations of Dryden, of Pope, and Wordsworth. At this hour, one thousand eight hundred years since their creation, the Pagan tales of Ovid, never equalled on this earth for the gaiety of their movement and the capricious graces of their narrative, are read by all Christendom. This man's people and their monuments are dust ; but he is alive : he has survived them, as he told us that he had it in his commission to do, by a thousand years ; "and shall a thousand more." Essay on Pope. LORD BROUGHAM. 1778 1868. There is something positively agreeable to all men, to all, at least, whose nature is not most grovelling and base, in gaining knowledge for its own sake. . . . This kind of gratification is of a pure and disinterested nature, and has no reference to any of the common purposes of life ; yet it is a pleasure an enjoyment. . . . The mere gratification of curiosity ; the knowing more to-day than we knew yesterday; the understanding clearly what before seemed obscure and puzzling; the contemplation of general truths, and the comparing together of different things, is an agreeable occupation of the mind ; and, besides the present enjoyment, elevates the faculties above low pursuits, purifies and refines the passions, and helps P aa6 TA YLOR WHA TEL Y. our reason to assuage their violence. Practical Obser- vations on the Education of the People. JSAAC TAYLOR. 1787 1865. As to daily social readings continued from year to year, while a family is running through its course of changes they constitute a bright continuity of its intellectual and moral existence. This communion of intelligence, and these recollections of books, that have left an impression upon the memories of the listeners they readily coalesce with the remembrance of family events, I have said the same as to the connection of the seasons with family history. The book, and the events that marked the time of its perusal, weld into one; and especially it will be so if, in any instance, the heavy hammer of suffering and sorrow has come, stroke upon stroke, so as to make all one in the memory. Taking a glance round at my own shelves, I see books, never to be forgotten for they were in course of reading at such and such a time. Personal Recollections in "Good Words," 1865. RICHARD WHATELY. 1787 1863. If, in reading books, a man does not choose wisely, at any rate he has the chance offered to him of doing so. After all, it is the will of Providence that man should be exposed to the temptations of hearing truth and falsehood ; of seeing a good and a bad example. Wherever we go in life, even in the darkest alleys of literature, a good and an evil example will always be RICHARD WHATELY. wj put before us ; and because this world is not heaven, we must be left to make our choice between good and evil ; but the more a person's views are enlarged, and the wider the choice that is offered to him, the better hope there is that he may take the good and leave the evil. All that we can do is to give him light light in every possible direction ; and if a man chooses to make a bad use of his eyes and ears, and of his other faculties, all that we can say is, we have done our best ; we cannot make the world heaven ; but if we put it into the power of men to cultivate their minds, and get a knowledge of good sense, that is precisely the system which the Almighty Himself has directed us to pursue, and which is pursued by Himself in the government of His creation. We must guide ourselves with His help, according to our own responsibilities, and the faculties He has endowed us with. We may say, as the inspired prophet did in the name of his Heavenly Master to his people, "Behold, I set before you this day good and evil; now, therefore, choose good." Speech of Archbishop Whately at the Manchester Athenaum, October, 1846. He who not only understands fully what he is reading, but is earnestly occupying his mind with the matter of it, will be likely to read as if he understood it, and thus to make others understand it ; and in like manner, with a view to the impressiveness of the delivery, he who not only feels it, but is exclusively absorbed with that feeling, will be likely to read as if he felt it, and to communicate the impression to his hearers. But this cannot be the case if he is occupied 228 BARRY CORNWALL. with the thought of what their opinion will be of this reading, and how his voice ought to be regulated ; if, in short, he is thinking of himself, and, of course, in the same degree abstracting his attention from that which ought to occupy it exclusively. It is not, indeed, desirable that in reading the Bible, for example, or anything that is not intended to appear as his own composition, he should deliver what are avowedly another's sentiments in the same style as if they were such as arose in his own mind ; but it is desirable that he should deliver them as if he were reporting another's sentiments which were both fully understood and felt in all their force by the reporter ; and the only way to do this effectually with such modulation of voice and gesture as are suitable to each word and passage is to fix his mind earnestly on the meaning, and leave nature and habit to suggest the utterance. BRYAN WALLER PROCTER (BARRY CORNWALL). 1787 1874. All round the room my silent servants wait, My friends in every season, bright and dim Angels and seraphim Come down and murmur to me, sweet and low, And spirits of the skies all come and go Early and late ; From the old world's divine and distant date, From the sublimer few, Down to the poet who but yester-eve Sang sweet and made us grieve, BARRY CORNWALL-LORD BYRON All come, assembling here in order due. And here I dwell with Poesy, my mate, With Erato and all her vernal sighs, Great Clio with her victories elate, Or pale Urania's deep and starry eyes. Oh friends, whom chance and change can never harm Whom Death the tyrant cannot doom to die Within whose folding soft eternal charm I love to lie, And meditate upon your verse that flows, And fertilizes wheresoe'er it goes, Whether .... Bryan Waller Procter (Barry Cornwall): An Autobiographical Fragment and Bio- graphical Notes, with Personal Sketches of Contemporaries, Unpublished Lyrics, and Letters of Literary Friends. 1877. LORD BYRON. 1788 1824. But words are things, and a small drop of ink, Falling like dew, upon a thought, produces That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think ; Tis strange, the shortest letter which man uses Instead of speech, may form a lasting link Of ages ; to what straits old Time reduces Frail man, when paper even a rag like this Survives himself, his tomb, and all that's his. Don Juan, Canto iii., s. 88. Z3 o DR. ARNOTT. DR. ARNOTT. 1788 1824. In remote times the inhabitants of the earth were divided into small states or societies, often at enmity among themselves, and whose thoughts and interests were confined much within their own narrow territories and rude habits. In succeeding ages men found them- selves belonging to larger communities, as when the English heptarchy became united, or more lately when England, Scotland, and Ireland have become one ; but still distant kingdoms and quarters of the world were of no interest to them, and often were totally unknown. Now, however, a man feels that he is a member of one vast more civilized society which covers the face of the earth, and no part of the earth is in- different to him. In England, for instance, a man of small fortune, nay, even a journeyman mechanic who is honest, sober, and intelligent, may cast his regards around him, and say, with truth and exultation, "I am lodged in a house that affords me conveniences and comforts which some centuries ago even a king could not command. Ships are crossing the seas in every direction to bring what is useful to me from all parts of the earth ; in China men are gathering the tea leaf for me, in the West India Islands and elsewhere they are preparing my sugar and my coffee; in America they are cultivating cotton for me ; elsewhere they are shearing the sheep to give me abundance of warm clothing ; at home powerful steam-engines are spinning and weaving for me and making cutlery, and pumping the mines that minerals useful to me may be procured. My patrimony was small, yet I have railway-trains DR. ARNOTT. 231 running day and night on all the roads to carry my correspondence and to bring the coal for my winter fire ; nay, I have protecting fleets and armies around my happy country, to render secure my enjoyments and repose. Then I have editors and printers, who daily send me an account of what is going on throughout the world, among these people who serve me. And in a corner of my house I have BOOKS the miracle of all my possessions, more wonderful than the wishing- cap of the Arabian tales, for they transport me instantly, not only to all places, but to all times. By my books I can conjure up before me to a momentary existence many of the great and good men of past ages, and for my individual satisfaction they seem to act again the most renowned of their achievements ; the orators declaim for me, the historians recite, the poets sing." This picture is not overcharged, and might be much extended ; such being the goodness and providence which devised this world, that each individual of the civilized millions that cover it, if his conduct be prudent, may have nearly the same happiness as if he were the single lord of all. The Elements of Physics. ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER. 1788 1860. It is the case with literature as with life ; wherever we turn we come upon the incorrigible mob of human- kind, whose name is Legion, swarming everywhere, damaging everything, as flics in summer. Hence the multiplicity of bad books, those exuberant weeds of literature which choke the true corn. Such books rob 939 ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER. the public of time, money, and attention, which ought properly to belong to good literature and noble aims, and they are written with a view merely to make money or occupation. They are therefore not merely useless, but injurious. Nine-tenths of our current literature has no other end but to inveigle a thaler or two out of the public pocket, for which purpose author, publisher, and printer are leagued together. A more pernicious, subtler, and bolder piece of trickery is that by which penny-a-liners and scribblers succeed in destroying good taste and real culture. . . . Hence, the paramount importance of acquiring the art not to read; in other words, of not reading such books as occupy the public mind, or even those which make a noise in the world, and reach several editions in their first and last year of existence. We should recollect that he who writes for fools finds an enormous audi- ence, and we should devote the ever scant leisure of our circumscribed existence to the master-spirits of all ages and nations, those who tower over humanity, and whom the voice of Fame proclaims : only such writers cultivate and instruct us. Of bad books we can never read too little: of the good never too much. The bad are intellectual poison and undermine the under- standing. Because people insist on reading not the best books written for all time, but the newest contem- porary literature, writers of the day remain in the narrow circle of the same perpetually revolving ideas, and the age continues to wallow in its own mire. . . Mere acquired knowledge belongs to us only like a wooden leg or a wax nose. Knowledge attained by means of thinking resembles our natural limbs, and is AKTHUR SCHOPENHAUER. 933 the only kind that really belongs to us. Hence the difference between the thinker and the pedant. The intellectual possession of the independent thinker is like a beautiful picture which stands before us, a living thing with fitting light and shadow, sustained tones, perfect harmony of colour. That of the merely learned man may be compared to a palette covered with bright colours, perhaps even arranged with some system, but wanting in harmony, coherence and meaning. . . . We find in the greater number of works, leaving out the very bad, that their authors have thought, not seen written from reflection, not intuition. And this is why books are so uniformly mediocre and wearisome. For what an author has thought, the reader can think for himself; but when his thought is based on intuition, it is as if he takes us into a land we have not ourselves visited. All is fresh and new. . . . We discover the quality of a writer's thinking powers after reading a few pages. Before learning what he thinks, we see how he thinks namely, the texture of his thoughts ; and this remains the same, no matter the subject in hand. The style is the stamp of individual intellect, as language is the stamp of race. We throw away a book when we find ourselves in a darker mental region than the one we have just quitted. Only those writers profit us whose under- standing is quicker, more lucid than our own, by whose brain we indeed think for a time, who quicken our thoughts, and lead us whither alone we could not find our way. Parcrga und Paralipomtna. 34 JOHN KENYON. [Schopenhauer's great work, "The World as Will and Idea" (Welt als Wille und Vorstellung), "the real value of which," he says, "may be discovered in distant limes only," has been translated by R, B. Haldane, M.A., and John Kemp, M.A. JOHN KENYON. 1783 1856. How oft, at evening, when the mind, o'erwrought, Finds, in dim reverie, repose from thought, Just at that hour when soft subsiding day Slants on the glimmering shelves its latest ray ; Along those darkling files I ponder slow, And muse, how vast the debt to books we owe. Yes ! friends they are ! and friends thro' life to last ! Hopes for the future ! memories for the past ! With them, no fear of leisure unemployed ; I^t come the leisure, they shall fill the void : With them, no dread of joys that fade from view ; They stand beside us, and our youth renew ; Telling fond tales of that exalted time, When lore was bliss, and power was in its prime. Come then, delicious converse still to hold, And still to teach, ye long-loved volumes old ! And sweet 'twill be, or hope would so believe, When close round life its fading tints of eve, To turn again our earlier volumes o'er, And love them then, because we've loved before ; And inly bless the waning hour that brings A will to lean once more on simple things. Poems: For the Most Part Occasional. CHARLES KNIGHT. a 3 s CHARLES KNIGHT. 1791 1873. Books are, no doubt, the readiest roads to knowledge, but there may be a great deal of knowledge, and a great deal of taSte, without any very extensive acquaintance with books. If I enter the premises of a working-man, and find his garden deformed with weeds his once latticed porch broken and unseemly his walls dis- coloured his hearth dirty I know that there is little self-respect in the master of that hovel, and that he flies from his comfortless home to the nightly gratifi- cation which the ale-house supplies. But show me the trim crocus in the spring, or the gorgeous dahlia in the autumn, flourishing in his neat enclosure let me see the vine or the monthly rose covering his cottage-walls in regulated luxuriance let me find within, the neatly- sanded floor, the well-polished furniture, a few books, and a print or two over his chimney, and I am satisfied that the occupiers of that cottage have a principle at work within them which will do much to keep them from misery and degradation. They have found out unexpensive employments for their leisure ; they have the key to the same class of enjoyments which constitute a large portion of the happiness of the best-informed ; they have secured a share of the common inheritance of intellectual gratification. Speech delivered to the Members of the Windsor ami Eton Fublic Library, Oct., 1833. There are some, no doubt, amongst those whom I have the honour of addressing, who have been familiar long ago with the poetry and the philosophy 236 CHARLES KNIGHT. that has sprung up, and flourished in their own soil, and who, in advancing years, derive new pleasures from their recollection. Those things which were the delight of our jocund days, steal in upon the sober consolations of our waning time bright images, tender echoes. Memory dwells upon the scenes in which childhood was nourished, and youth walked fearlessly ; but it especially dwells upon the enduring productions of mind which were treasured up when our fancies were vivid, and our hopes ardent. Is not this a reason, if any were needed, for asking the young man to familiarize himself with the highest and the purest things that belong to the imagination, to store up the soundest things that are to be imparted by history and philosophy ; to seek the companionship, in a word, of the best books. ... It has been said that mediocrity will be the result of the vast extension of the reading public. I venture to think that the mediocrity of a century ago was the result of the confined space in which the then reading public moved. Speech at the Opening of the Sheffield Athenaeum, May 5, 1847. LORD MAHON (PHILIP HENRY STANHOPE). 17911875. Believe me, ladies and gentlemen, the pleasures of reading deserve most careful cultivation. Other objects which we have in this world, other pleasures which we seek to pursue, depend materially on other LORD MAHON. , 37 circumstances, on the opinion or caprice of others, on the flourishing or depressed state of an interest or a profession, on connections, on friends, on oppor- tunities, on the prevalence of one party or the other in the State. Thus, then, it happens, that without any fault of ours, with regard to objects dear to us, we may be constantly doomed to disappointment. In the pleasure of reading, on the other hand, see how much is at all times within your own power ; how little you depend upon any one but yourselves . see how little the man who can rely on the pleasures of reading is dependent on the caprice or the will of his fellow-men. See how much there is within his own power and control ; how by reading, if his circumstances have been thwarted by any of the fortuitous events to which I have just referred, how often it is in his power, by these very studies, to better his condition ; or, failing in that, how many hours he has in which to obtain oblivion from it, when com- muning with the great and good of other days. Surely, then, all those who feel and who does not? the variety and the vicissitudes of human life, ought, on that very account, if they be wise, to cultivate in themselves, and also to promote in others, an enlightened taste for reading. Of the pleasures of reading I will say, that there is no man so high as to be enabled to dispense with them ; and no man so humble who should be compelled to forego them. Rely upon it, that in the highest fortune and the highest station, hours of lassitude and weariness will intrude, unless they be cheered by intellectual occu- pation. Rely on it, also, that there is no life so 238 S/K JOHN HERSCHEL. toilsome, so devoted to the cares of this world, and to the necessity of providing the daily bread, but what it will afford intervals (if they be only sought out) in which intellectual pleasures may be cultivated and oblivion of other cares enjoyed. Depend upon it that these are pleasures, which he who condemns, will find himself a miserable loser in the end. Address to the members of the Manchester Athenaum, November n, 1848. SIR JOHN HERSCHEL. 1792 1871. There is a want too much lost sight of in our estimate of the privations of the humbler classes, though it is one of the most incessantly craving of all our wants, and is actually the impelling power which, in the vast majority of cases, urges men into vice and crime. It is the want of amusement. . . . Now I would ask, what provision do we find for the cheap and innocent and daily amusements of the mass of the labouring population of this country? What sort of resources have they to call up the cheerfulness of their spirits, and chase away the cloud from their brow after the fatigue of a day's hard work, or the stupefying monotony of some sedentary occupation ? Why, really very little I hardly like to assume the appearance of a wish to rip up grievances by saying how little. The pleasant field walk and the village green are becoming rarer and rarer every year. . . . The beer-shop and the public -house, it is true, are always open, and always full, but it is not by those institutions that the cause of moral and intellectual culture is advanced. The truth S//1 JOHN HEKSCHEL. .39 is, that under the pressure of a continually condensing population, the habits of the city have crept into the village the demands of agriculture have become sterner and more imperious, and while hardly a foot of ground is left uncultivated, and unappropriated, there is positively not space left for many of the cheerful amusements of rural life. . . I hold it, therefore, to be a matter of very great consequence, independent of the kindness of the thing that those who are at their ease in this world should look about and be at some pains to furnish available means of harmless gratification to the in- dustrious and well-disposed classes, who are worse provided for than themselves in every respect, but who, on that very account, are prepared to prize more highly every accession of true enjoyment, and who really want it more. To do so is to hold out a bonus for the withdrawal of a man from mischief in his idle hours it is to break that strong tie which binds many a one to evil associates and brutal habits the want of something better to amuse him, by actually making his abstinence become its own reward. Now, of all the amusements which can possibly be imagined for a hard-working man, after his daily toil, or in its intervals, there is nothing like reading an entertaining book, supposing him to have a taste for it, and supposing him to have the book to read. It calls for no bodily exertion, of which he has had enough or too much. It relieves his home of its dull- ness and sameness, which, in nine cases out of ten, is what drives him out to the ale-house, to his own ruin and his family's. It transports him into a livelier, and s 4 o S/K JOHN HERSCHEL. gayer, and more diversified and interesting scene, and while he enjoys himself there he may forget the evils of the present moment, fully as much as if he were ever so drunk, with the great advantage of finding himself the next day with his money in his pocket, or at least laid out in real necessaries and comforts for himself and his family, and without a headache. Nay, it accompanies him to his next day's work, and if the book he has been reading be anything above the very idlest and lightest, gives him something to think of besides the mere mechanical drudgery of his every day occupation, something he can enjoy while absent, and look forward with pleasure to return to. But supposing him to have been fortunate in the choice of his book, and to have alighted upon one really good and of a good class. What a source of domestic enjoyment is laid open ! What a bond of family union 1 He may read it aloud, or make his wife read it, or his eldest boy or girl, or pass it round from hand to hand. All have the benefit of it all contribute to the gratification of the rest, and a feeling of common interest and pleasure is excited. Nothing unites people like companionship in intellectual enjoyment. It does more, it gives them mutual respect, and to each among them self-respect that corner-stone of all virtue. . . . I recollect an anecdote told me by a late highly- respected inhabitant of Windsor as a fact which he could personally testify, having occurred in a village where he resided several years, and where Tie actually was at the time it took place. The blacksmith of the village had got hold of Richardson's novel of "Pamela, S/K JOHN HERSCHEL. 141 or Virtue Rewarded," and used to read it aloud in the long summer evenings, seated on his anvil, and never failed to have a large and attentive audience. It is a pretty long-winded book but their patience was fully a match for the author's prolixity, and they fairly listened to it all. At length, when the happy turn of fortune arrived, which brings the hero and heroine together, and sets them living long and happily according to the most approved rales the congregation were so delighted as to raise a great shout, and procuring the church keys, actually set the parish bells ringing. Now let any one say whether it is easy to estimate the amount of good done in this simple case. Not to speak of the number of hours agreeably and innocently spent not to speak of the good-fellowship and harmony promoted here was a whole rustic population fairly won over to the side of good charmed and night after night spell-bound within that magic circle which genius can trace so effectually, and compelled to bow before that image of virtue and purity which (though at a great expense of words) no one knew better how to body forth with a thousand life-like touches than the author of that work. If I were to pray for a taste which should stand me in stead under every variety of circumstances, and be a source of happiness and cheerfulness to me through life, and a shield against its ills, however things might go amiss, and the world frown upon me, it would be a taste for reading. I speak of it of course only as a worldly advantage, and not in the slightest degree as superseding or derogating from the higher office and surer and stronger panoply of religious principles but Q zccoming. And the most that even he can do, is but a chance stroke or two at this fine essence housed in the handsome dust, but too fugitive and coy to be caught and held fast for longer than the passing glance ; the master touching ever and retouching the picture he leaves unfinished. "My life has been the poem I would have writ, But I could not both live and utter it." . . . Any library is an attraction. And there is an indescribable delight who has not felt it that deserves the name of scholar in mousing at choice among the alcoves of antique book-shops especially, and finding the oldest of these sometimes newest of the new, fresher, more suggestive than the book just published and praised in the reviews. And the pleasure scarcely less of cutting the leaves of the new volume, opening by preference at the end rather than title-page, and seizing the author's conclusions at a glance. Very few books repay the reading in course. Nor can we excuse an author if his page does not tempt us to copy passages into our common places, for quota- tion, proverbs, meditation, or other uses. A good book is fruitful of other books ; it perpetuates its fame from age to age, and makes eras in the lives of its readers. Tablets : ' Books. " Next to a friend's discourse, no morsel is more delicious than a ripe book, a book whose flavor is as *68 A. B. ALCOTT refreshing at the thousandth tasting as at the first. Books when friends weary, conversation flags, or nature fails to inspire. The best books appeal to the deepest in us and answer the demand. A book loses if wanting the personal element, gains when this is insinuated, or comes to the front occasionally, blending history with mythology. My favorite books have a personality and com- plexion as distinctly drawn as if the author's portrait were framed into the paragraphs and smiled upon me as I read his illustrated pages. Nor could I spare them from my table or shelves, though I should not open the leaves for a twelve-month ; the sight of them, the knowledge that they are within reach, accessible at any moment, rewards me when I invite their company. Borrowed books are not mine while in hand. I covet ownership in the contents, and fancy that he who is conversant with these is the rightful owner, and moreover, that the true scholar owes to scholars a catalogue of his chosen volumes, that they may leam from whence his entertainment during leisure moments. Next to a personal introduction, a list of one's favourite authors were the best admittance to his character and manners. . . . Without Plutarch, no library were complete. Can we marvel at his fame, or overestimate the surpassing merits of his writings ? It seems as I read as if none before, none since, had written lives, as if he alone were entitled to the name of biographer, such intimacy of insight is his, laying open the springs of character, and through his parallels portraying his times as no historian had done before. ... It is good excr- A. B. ALCOTT. >*9 else, good medicine, the reading of his books, good for to-day, as in times it was preceding ours, salutary reading for all times. Montaigne also comes in for a large share of the scholar's regard. Opened anywhere, his page is sensible, marrowy, quotable. He may be taken up, too, and laid aside carelessly without loss, so inconse- quent is his method, and he so careless of his wealth. Professing nature and honesty of speech, his page has the suggestions of the landscape, is good for striking out in any direction, suited to any mood, sure of yielding variety of information, wit, entertainment, not to be commended, to be sure, without grave abatements, to be read with good things growing side by side with things not such and tasting of the apple. Still, with every abatement, his book is one of the ripest and mellowist, and, bulky as it is, we wish there were more of it. He seems almost the only author whose success warrants in every stroke of his pen his right to guide it ; he of the men of letters, the prince of letters ; since writing of life, he omits nothing of its substance, but tells all with a courage unprecedented. His frank- ness is charming. So his book has indescribable attractions, being as it were a Private Book, his diary self-edited, and offered with an honesty that wins his readers, he never having done bestowing his opulent hospitalities on him, gossiping sagely, and casting his wisdom in sport to any who care for it. Everywhere his page is alive and rewarding, and we are disappointed at finding his book comes to an end like other books. Cotuord Days : "Books" a 70 MACAU LAY. THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 1800 1859. There is scarcely any delusion which has a better claim to be indulgently treated than that under the influence of which a man ascribes every moral excellence to those who have left imperishable monuments of their genius. The causes of this error lie deep in the inmost recesses of human nature. We are all inclined to judge of others as we find them. Our estimate of a character always depends much on the manner in which that character affects our own interests and passions. We find it difficult to think well of those by whom we are thwarted or depressed ; and we are ready to admit every excuse for the vices of those who are useful or agreeable to us. This is, we believe, one of those illusions to which the whole human race is subject, and which experience and reflection can only partially remove. It is, in the phraseology of Bacon, one of the idola tribus. Hence it is that the moral character of a man eminent in letters or in the fine arts is treated often by contemporaries, almost always by posterity, with extraordinary tenderness. The world derives pleasure and advantage from the performances of such a man. The number of those who suffer by his per- sonal vices is small, even in his own time, when compared with the number of those to whom his talents are a source of gratification. In a few years all those whom he has injured disappear. But his works remain, and are a source of delight to millions. The genius of Sallust is still with us. But the Nnmidians whom he plundered, and the unfortunate husbands who caught MACAULAY. 171 him in their houses at unseasonable hours, are forgotten. We suffer ourselves to be delighted by the keenness of Clarendon's observation, and by the sober majesty of his style, till we forget the oppressor and the bigot in the historian. Falstaff and Tom Jones have survived the gamekeepers whom Shakspeare cudgelled, and the landladies whom Fielding bilked. A great writer is the friend and benefactor of his readers ; and they cannot but judge of him under the deluding influence of friendship and gratitude. We all know how unwilling we are to admit the truth of any disgraceful story about a person whose society we like, and from whom we have received favours ; how long we struggle against evidence, how fondly, when the facts cannot be disputed, we cling to the hope that there may be some explanation or some extenuating circumstance with which we are unacquainted. Just such is the feeling which a man of liberal education naturally entertains towards the great minds of former ages. The debt which he owes to them is incalculable. They have guided him to truth. They have filled his mind with noble and graceful images. They have stood by him in all vicissitudes, comforters in sorrow, nurses in sickness, companions in solitude. These friendships are exposed to no danger from the occur- rences by which other attachments are weakened or dissolved. Time glides on; fortune is inconstant; tempers are soured ; bonds which seemed indissoluble are daily sundered by interest, by emulation, or by caprice. But no such cause can affect the silent converse which we hold with the highest of human intellects. That placid intercourse is disturbed by no 27 a MACAULAY. jealousies or resentments. These are the old friends who are never seen with new faces, who are the same in wealth and in poverty, in glory and in obscurity. With the dead there is no rivalry. In the dead there is no change. Plato is never sullen. Cervantes is never petulant. Demosthenes never comes un- seasonably. Dante never stays too long. No differ- ence of political opinion can alienate Cicero. No heresy can excite the horror of Bossuet. Critical and Historical Essays : ' ' Lord Bacon. " Compare the literary acquirements of the great men of the thirteenth century with those which will be within the reach of many who will frequent our reading room. As to Greek learning, the profound man of the thirteenth century was absolutely on a par with the superficial man of the nineteenth. In the modern languages, there was not, six hundred years ago, a single volume which is now read. The library of our profound scholar must have consisted entirely of Latin books. We will suppose him to have had both a large and a choice collection. We will allow him thirty, nay forty manuscripts, and among them a Virgil, a Terence, a Lucan, an Ovid, a Statius, a great deal of Livy, a great deal of Cicero. In allowing him all this, we are dealing most liberally with him ; for it is much more likely that his shelves were filled with treatises on school divinity and canon law, composed by writers whose names the world has very wisely forgotten. But, even if we suppose him to have possessed all that is most valuable in the literature of Rome, I say with perfect confidence that, both in respect of intellectual MACAULAY. 173 improvement, and in respect of intellectual pleasures, he was far less favourably situated than a man who now, knowing only the English language, has a book- case filled with the best English works. Our great man of the Middle Ages could not form any conception of any tragedy approaching Macbeth or Lear, or of any comedy equal to Henry the Fourth or Twelfth Night. The best epic poem that he had read was far inferior to the Paradise Lost ; and all the tomes of his philosophers were not worth a page of the Novum Organum. A large part of what is best worth knowing in ancient literature, and in Che literature of France, Italy, Germany, and Spain, has been translated into our own tongue. It is scarcely possible that the translation of any book of the highest class can be equal to the original. But, though the finer touches may be lost in the copy, the great outlines will remain. An Englishman who never saw the frescoes in the Vatican may yet, from engravings, form some notion of the exquisite grace of Raphael, and of the sublimity and energy of Michael Angelo. And so the genius of Homer is seen in the poorest version of the Iliad ; the genius of Cervantes is seen in the poorest version of Don Quixote. Let it not be supjx)sed that I wish to dissuade any person from studying either the ancient languages or the languages of modern Europe. Far from it. I prize most highly those keys of knowledge ; and I think that no man who has leisure for study ought to be content until he possesses several of them. I always much admired a saying of the Emperor Charles the Fifth. "When I learn a new language," s 2/4 MACAULAY. he said, "I feel as if I had got a new soul." Speech delivered at the Opening of the Edinburgh Philo- sophical Institute, November 4, 1846. I still retain (not only undiminished, but strengthened by the very events which have deprived me of every- thing else,) my thirst for knowledge; my passion for holding converse with the greatest minds of all ages and nations ; my power of forgetting what surrounds me, of living with the past, the future, and the unreal. Books are becoming everything to me. If I had at this moment my choice of life, I would bury myself in one of those immense libraries that we saw together at the universities, and would never pass a waking hour without a book before me. Letter to his Sister. Trevelyan's "Life and Letters of Macau! ay, "vol. i., A 395- Thank you for your very pretty letter. I am always glad to make my little girl happy, and nothing pleases me so much as to see that she likes books. For when she is as old as I am, she will find that they are better than all the tarts, and cakes, and toys, and plays, and sights in the world. If anybody would make me the greatest king that ever lived, with palaces and gardens, and fine dinners, and wine and coaches, and beautiful clothes, and hundreds of servants, on condition that I would not read books, I would not be a king I would rather be a poor man in a garret with plenty of books, than a king who did not love reading. Letter to his Niece. Trevelyaris "Life and Letters of Macaulay" vol. ii., /. 207. WILLIAM CHAMBERS. , WILLIAM CHAMBERS. 1800 1883. I was now to have an opportunity of learning prac- tically how far my weekly earnings as a bookseller's apprentice would go in defraying the cost of board and lodging. In short, at little above fourteen years of age, I was thrown on my own resources. From necessity, not less than from choice, I resolved at all hazards to make the weekly four shillings serve for everything. I cannot remember entertaining the slightest despondency on the subject. ... As favourable for carrying out my aims at an indepen- dent style of living, I had the good-fortune to be installed in the dwelling of a remarkably precise and honest widow, a Peebles woman, who, with two grown-up sons, occupied the top story of a building in the West Port. My landlady had the reputation of being excessively parsimonious, but as her honesty was of importance to one in my position, and as she con- sented to let me have a bed, cook for me, and allow me to sit by her fireside the fire, by the way, not being much to speak of for the reasonable charge of eighteenpence a week, I was thought to be lucky in finding her disposed to receive me within her establish- ment. To her dwelling, therefore, I repaired with my all, consisting of a few articles of clothing and two or three books, including a pocket Bible the whole con- tained in a small blue-painted box, which I carried on my shoulder along the Grassmarket. I made such attempts as were at all practicable, while an apprentice, to remedy the defects of my 27 WILLIAM CHAMBERS. education at school. Nothing in that way could be done in the shop, for there reading was proscribed. But allowed to take home a book for study, I gladly availed myself of the privilege. The mornings in summer, when light cost nothing, were my chief reliance. Fatigued with trudging about, I was not naturally inclined to rise, but on this and some other points I overruled the will, and forced myself to get up at five o'clock, and have a spell at reading until it was time to think of moving off my brother, when he was with me, doing the same. In this way I made some progress in French, with the pronunciation of which I was already familiar from the speech of the French prisoners of war at Peebles. I likewise dipped into several books of solid worth such as Smith's Wealth of Nations, Locke's Human Understanding, Paley's Moral Philosophy, and Blair's Bellts-Lettres fixing the leading facts and theories in my memory by a note-book for the purpose. In another book, I kept for years an accurate account of my expenses, not allowing a single halfpenny to escape record. In the winter of 1815-16, when the cold and cost of candle-light would have detained me in bed, I was so fortunate as to discover an agreeable means of spending my mornings. . . . From this hopeful personage, whom it was my duty to look after, I one day had a pro- position, which he had been charged to communicate. If I pleased, he would introduce me to his occasional employer, the baker in Canal Street, who, he said, was passionately fond of reading, but without leisure for its gratification. If I would go early very early say five WILLIAM CHAMBERS. rri o'clock in the morning, and read aloud to him and his two sons, while they were preparing their batch, I should be regularly rewarded for my trouble with a penny roll newly drawn from the oven. . . Behold me, then, quitting my lodgings in the West Port, before five o'clock in the winter mornings, and pursuing my way across the town to the cluster of sunk streets below the North Bridge, of which Canal Street was the principal. The scene of operations was a cellar of confined dimensions, reached by a flight of steps descending from the street, and possessing a small back window immediately beyond the baker's kneading board. Seated on a folded-up sack in the sole of the window, with a book in one hand and a penny candle stuck in a bottle near the other, I went to work for the amusement of the company. The baker was not particular as to subject. All he stipulated for was something droll and laughable. Aware of his tastes, I tried him first with the jocularities of Roderick Random, which was a great success, and produced shouts of laughter. I followed this up with other works of Smollett, also with the novels of Fielding, and with Gil Bleu; the tricks and grotesque rogueries in this last-mentioned work of fiction giving the baker and his two sons unqualified satisfaction. My services as a reader for two and a half hours every morning were unfailingly recompensed by a donation of the antici- pated roll, with which, after getting myself brushed of the flour, I went on my way to shop-opening, lamp- cleaning, and all the rest of it, at Calton Street. Memoir of Robert Chambers ; with Autobiographic Reminiscences of William Chambers. 978 JAMES CROSSLEV. JAMES CROSSLEY (LATE PRESIDENT OF THE CHEETHAM SOCIETY). 1800 1883. Who is not delighted to meet in a place utterly barren and unpromising, with something akin to his habits, and congenial to his pursuits? ... To know what pleasure is, we ought to meet with the thing, which, of all others, we most want, in the place, where, of all others, we least expect to find it. ... We were led into these speculations by a late visit to the library, founded by Humphrey Cheetham, in Manchester ; a venerable institution, rendered more striking, by presenting somewhat of the appearance of a college, amidst the hurry and business of a large manufacturing town. It is pleasing to pass from the noise and dissonance of a crowded street, into the com- paratively still and silent court of a spacious antique mansion, with low-browed roofs, and narrow windows, apparently of the architecture of the time of James the First, where the only habitants seem to be a little population of boys, in their grotesque liveries, according well with their ancient domicile. To feel that there is such a place amidst warehouses, factories, and shops, is some satisfaction, as it shows you are not completely immersed in trade and calculation, but that there is still amidst wool shops, and cotton rooms, a little zoar set apart for better things. As you enter the door leading towards the library, from the court on the left, you are struck with a spacious and lofty hall whose appearance reminds you of ancient feasts, and old English hospitality which is now appropriated as the dining room of the children, who are educated by the JAMES CROSSLEY. 179 bounty of the founder. You proceed up a flight of stone stairs to the library, where the books are dis- posed in compartments, secured by wires from the encroachments of the profane. . . . There is something very substantial in the appearance of a library of this description. . . . All within it contributes to withdraw us to the past. The mind is left here to resign itself to its own fancies without being recalled by some startling incongruity to the recollections of the present ; and for aught which strikes us in the rapidity of a first impression, we might imagine it the spot where Bacon was accus- tomed to study, and Raleigh delighted to muse. It is impossible to enter a large library, especially when in appearance so antique as the one of which we are now writing, without feeling an inward sensation of reverence, and without catching some sparks of noble emulation, from the mass of mind which is scattered around you. The very dullest, and least intellectual of the sons of earth, must be conscious of the high and lofty society into which he is intruding ; a society which no combination of living talent can ever hope to parallel. . . . We feel, as we reverence the mighty spirits around us, that we are in some sort their brothers ; and the very homage which we pay to their majesty is itself the bond of our alliance. . . . The works around us naturally bring their authors before our eye. We can see Hooker in his quiet country parsonage, beholding "God's blessings spring out of his mother earth, and eating his own bread in peace and privacy." We can see Sydney amongst the shades of Pen&hurst writing on poetry, with a&> JAMES CROSSLEYHUGH MILLER. all the enthusiasm of a poet, and proving, that "poesie is full of virtue, breeding delightfulness, and void of no gift that ought to be in the noble name of learning." We can see Bacon in his closet, con- ceiving in his mighty mind the greatest birth of time, and unbent by misfortune, and undejected by disgrace, illuminating philosophy "with all the weight of matter, worth of subject, soundness of argument, life of invention, and depth of judgment" We can see Selden amidst bulls, breviats, antiphoners, and monkish manuscripts, laying up the stores of his vast learning, and awaiting from posterity the rewards which were denied him by a prejudiced clergy. We can be present with Burton, whilst enjoying the delights of voluntary solitariness, and walking alone in some grove, betwixt wood and water, by a brook side, to meditate upon some delightsome and pleasant subject, and hear him declaring in ecstasy, "what an incomparable delight it is so to melancholize and build castles in the air." And last, though second to none of his contemporaries, we can be witness to the lonely musings of him, "who untamed in war, and indefatigable in literature, as inexhaustible in ideas as exploits, after having brought a new world to light, wrote the history of the old in a prison. " Article on the Cheetham Library, Blackwoo99 Laws die, Books never. Richelieu, Act i., Scene 2. Beneath the rule of men entirely great The pen is mightier than the sword. Behold The arch-enchanter's wand I . . . . . . Take away the sword States can be saved without it. Richelieu. Act ii., Scene 2. Ye ever-living and imperial Souls, Who rule us from the page in which ye breathe, What were our wanderings if without your goals ? As air and light, the glory ye dispense, Becomes our being who of us can tell What he had been, had Cadmus never taught The art that fixes into form the thought Had Plato never spoken from his cell, Or his high harp blind Homer never strung ? Kinder all earth hath grown since genial Shakspeare sung ! The Wise (Minstrel or Sage) out of their books are clay ; But in their books, as from their graves, they rise, Angels that, side by side, upon our way, Walk with and warn us ! Hark ! the world so loud And they, the movers of the world, so still ! We call some books immoral ! Do they live t If so, believe 1110, TIME hath made them pure. 300 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. In Books, the veriest wicked rest in peace God wills that nothing evil should endure ; The grosser parts fly off and leave the whole, As the dust leaves the disembodied soul ! All books grow homilies by time ; they are Temples, at once, and Landmarks. In them, we Who but for them, upon that inch of ground We call "THE PRESENT," from the cell could see No daylight trembling on the dungeon bar ; . Turn, as we list, the globe's great axle round, Traverse all space, and number every star, And feel the Near less household than the Far ! There is no Past, so long as Books shall live ! A disinterr'd Pompeii wakes again For him who seeks yon well. 7 he Souls of Books. RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 1803 1882. 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 arc: I. 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 Shakespeare's phrase, " No profit goes where is no pleasure ta'en : In brief, sir, study what you most affect." RALPH WALDO EMERSON. JOi Consider what you have in the smallest chosen library. A company of the wisest and wittiest men that could be picked out of all civil countries, in a thousand years, have set in best order the results of their learning and wisdom. The men themselves were hid and inaccessible, solitary, impatient of interruption, fenced by etiquette ; but the thought which they did not uncover to their bosom friend is here written out in transparent words to us, the strangers of another age. We owe to books those general benefits which come from high intellectual action. Thus, I think, we often owe to them the perception of immortality. They impart sympathetic activity to the moral power. Go with mean people, and you think life is mean. Then read Plutarch, and the world is a proud place, peopled with men of positive quality, with heroes and demigods standing around us, who will not let us sleep. Then they address the imagination : only poetry inspires poetry. They become the organic culture of the time. College education is the reading of certain books which the common sense of all scholars agrees will represent the science already accumulated. If you know that, for instance, in geometry, if you have read Euclid and Laplace, your opinion has some value ; if you do not know these, you arc not entitled to give any opinion on the subject Whenever any sceptic or bigot claims to be heard on the questions of intellect and morals, we ask if he is familiar with the books of Plato, where all his pert objections have once for all been disposed of. If not, he has no right to our time. Let him go and find himself answered there. y* RALPH WALDO EMERSON. Meantime the colleges, whilst they provide us with libraries, furnish no professor of books ; and, I think, no chair is so much wanted. In a library we are sur- rounded by many hundreds of dear friends, but they are imprisoned by an enchanter in these paper and leathern boxes; and though they know us, and have been waiting two, ten, or twenty centuries for us, some of them, and are eager to give us a sign, and unbosom themselves, it is the law of their limbo that they must not speak until spoken to ; and as the enchanter has dressed them, like battalions of infantry, in coat and jacket of one cut, by the thousand and ten thousand, your chance of hitting on the right one is to be computed by the arithmetical rule of Permutation and Combination, not a choice out of three caskets, but out of half a million caskets all alike. But it happens, in our experience, that in this lottery there are at least fifty or a hundred blanks to a prize. It seems, then, as if some charitable soul, after losing a great deal of time among the false books, and alighting upon a few true ones which made him happy and wise, would do a right act in naming those which have been bridges or ships to carry him safely over dark morasses and barren oceans, into the heart of sacred cities, into palaces and temples. This would be best done by those great masters of books who from time to time appear, the Fabricii, the Seldens, Mag- liabecchis, Scaligers, Mirandolas, Bayles, Johnsons, whose eyes sweep the whole horizon of learning. But private readers, reading purely for love of the book, would serve us by leaving each the shortest note of what he found. Society and Solitude. RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 303 In the highest civilization the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity. Like Plato's disciple who has perceived a truth, "he is preserved from harm until another period." . . . We find in Southey's "Common-place Book" this said of the Earl of Strafford : "I learned one rule of him," says Sir G. Radcliffe, "which I think worthy to be remembered. When he met with a well-penned oration or tract upon any subject, he framed a speech upon the same argument, inventing and disposing what seemed fit to be said upon that subject, before he read the book ; then, reading, compared his own with the author's, and noted his own defects and the author's art and fulness ; whereby he drew all that ran in the author more strictly, and might better judge of his own wants to supply them." . . . Original power is usually accompanied with assimi- lating power, and we value in Coleridge his excellent knowledge and quotations perhaps as much, possibly more, than his original suggestions. If an author give us just distinctions, inspiring lessons, or imagina- tive poetry, it is not so important to us whose they are. If we are fired and guided by these, we know him as a benefactor, and shall return to him as long as he serves us so well. We may like well to know what is Plato's, and what is Montesquieu's or Goethe's part, and what thought was always dear to the writer himself; but the worth of the sentences consists in their radiancy and equal aptitude to all intelligence. They fit all our facts like a charm. We respect our- selves the more that we know them. 304 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it Many will read the book before one thinks of quoting a passage. As soon as he has done this, that line will be quoted east and west. Then there are great ways of borrowing. Genius borrows nobly. When Shakspeare is charged with debts to his authors, Landor replies : " Yet he was more original than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life." And we must thank Karl Ottfried Miiller for the just remark, "Poesy, drawing within its circle all that is glorious and inspiring, gave itself but little concern as to where its flowers originally grew." So Voltaire usually imitated, but with such superiority that Dubuc said: " He is like the false Amphitryon ; although the stranger, it is always he who has the air of being master of the house." Wordsworth, as soon as he heard a good thing, caught it up, meditated upon it, and very soon reproduced it in his conversation and writing. If De Quincey said, " That is what I told you," he replied, "No; that is mine mine, and not yours." On the whole, we like the valor of it. 'T is on Marmontel's principle, "I pounce on what is mine, wherever I find it ;" and on Bacon's broader rule, " I take all knowledge to be my province." It betrays the consciousness that truth is the property of no individual, but is the treasure of all men. And inasmuch as any writer has ascended to a just view of man's condition, he has adopted this tone. In so far as the receiver's aim is on life, and not on literature, will be his indifference to the source. The nobler the truth or sentiment, the less imports the question of RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 305 authorship. It never troubles the simple seeker from whom he derived such or such a sentiment. Whoever expresses to us a just thought makes ridiculous the pains of the critic who should tell him where such a word had been said before. "It is no more according to Plato than according to me." Truth is always present : it only needs to lift the iron lids of the mind's eye to read its oracles. But the moment there is the purpose of display, the fraud is exposed. In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others, as it is to invent. Always some steep transition, some sudden alteration of temperature, of point of view, betrays the foreign interpolation. . . . We are as much informed of a writer's genius by what he selects as by what he originates. We read the quotation with his eyes, and find a new and fervent sense ; as a passage from one of the poets, well recited, borrows new interest from the rendering. As the journals say, "the italics are ours." The profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader. The pro- foundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it. ... In hours of high mental activity we sometimes do the book too much honor, reading out of it better things than the author wrote, reading, as we say, between the lines. You have had the like experience in conversation : the wit was in what you heard, not in what the speakers said. Our best thought came from others. We heard in their words a deeper sense than the speakers put into them, and could express ourselves in other people's phrases to finer purpose than they knew. . . . o jo6 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. We cannot overstate our debt to the Past, but the moment has the supreme claim. The Past is for us : but the sole terms on which it can become ours are its subordination to the Present. Only an inventor knows how to borrow, and every man is or should be an inventor. We must not tamper with the organic motion of the soul. 'T is certain that thought has its own proper motion, and the hints which flash from it, the words overheard at unawares by the free mind, are trustworthy and fertile, when obeyed, and not per- verted to low and selfish account. This vast memory is only raw material. The divine gift is ever the instant life, which receives and uses and creates, and can well bury the old in the omnipotency with which Nature decomposes all her harvest for recomposition. Letters and Social Aims : " Quotation and Originality" " Literature is the record of the best thoughts. . Every attainment and discipline which increases a man's acquaintance with the invisible world, lifts his being. Every thing that gives him a new perception of beauty, multiplies his pure enjoyments. A river of thought is always running out of the invisible world into the mind of man. Shall not they who received the largest streams spread abroad the healing waters? "Homer and Plato and Pindar and Shaksperc serve many more than hive heard their names. Thought is the most volatile of all things. It can not be con- tained in any cup, though you shut the lid never so tight. Once brought into the world, it runs over the vessel which received it into all minds that love it. The very language we speak thinks for us by the subtle RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 307 distinctions which already are marked for us by its words, and every one of them is the contribution of the wit of one and another sagacious man in all the centuries of time. Consider that it is our own state of mind at any time that makes our estimate of life and the world. . . . Now, if you can kindle the imagination by a new thought, by heroic histories, by uplifting poetry, instantly you expand, are cheered, inspired, and become wise, and even prophetic. Music works this miracle for those who have a good ear; what omniscience has music 1 so absolutely impersonal, and yet every sufferer feels his secret sorrow reached. Yet to a scholar the book is as good or better. There is no hour of vexation which, on a little reflection, will not find diversion and relief in the library. His companions are few ; at the moment he has none ; but, year by year, these silent friends supply their place. Many times the reading of a book has made the fortune of the man, has decided his way of life. It makes friends. Tis the tie between men to have been delighted with the same book. Every one of us is always in search of his friend ; and when, unexpectedly, he finds a stranger enjoying the rare poet or thinker who is dear to his own solitude, it is like finding a brother. " In books I have the history or the energy of the past. Angels they are to us of entertainment, sym- pathy, and provocation. With them many of us spend the most of our life, these silent guides, these tractable prophets, historians, and singers, whose embalmed life is the highest feat of art ; who now cast their moon- light illumination over solitude, weariness, and fallen fortunes. You say 'tis a languid pleasure. Yes ; but 3o8 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. its tractableness, coming and going like a dog at yout bidding, compensates the quietness, and contrast with the slowness of fortune, and the inaccessibleness of persons. You meet with a man of science, a good thinker or good wit ; but you do not know how to draw out of him that which he knows. But the book is a sure friend, always ready at your first leisure, opens to the very page you desire, and shuts at your first fatigue, as possibly your professor might not. "It is a tie between men to have read the same book; and it is a disadvantage not to have read the book your mates have read, or not to have read it at the same time, so that it may take the place in your culture it does in theirs, and you shall understand their allusions to it, and not give it more or less emphasis than they do. . . . " In saying these things for books, I do not for a moment forget that they are secondary, mere means, and only used in the off-hours, only in the pause, and, as it were, the sleep, or passive state, of the mind. The intellect reserves all its rights. Instantly, when the mind itself wakes, all books, all past acts are forgotten, huddled aside as impertinent in the august presence of the creator. Their costliest benefit is that they set us free from ourselves ; for they wake the imagination and the sentiment, and in their inspira- tions we dispense with books. Let me add, then, read proudly, put the duty of being read invariably on the author. If he is not read, whose fault is it? I am quite ready to be charmed, but I shall not make believe I am charmed." Address on the Dedication of the Free Library in Concord, May, 1873. RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 309 "Let us not forget the genial miraculous force we have known to proceed from a book. We go musing into the vault of day and night ; no constellation shines, no muse descends, the stars are white points, the roses brick-colored dust, the frogs pipe, mice peep, and wagons creak along the road. We return to the house and take up Plutarch or Augustine, and read a few sentences or pages, and lo! the air swims with life; the front of heaven is full of fiery shapes ; secrets of magnanimity and grandeur invite us on every hand ; life is made up of them. Such is our debt to a book." The Dial, 1840 : " Thoughts on Modern Literature" "Whenever I have to do with young men and women, he said, I always wish to know what their books are ; I wish to defend them from bad ; I wish to introduce them to good ; I wish to speak of the immense benefit which a good mind derives from reading, probably much more to a good mind from reading than from conversation. It is of first im- portance, of course, to select a friend ; for a young man should find a friend a little older than himself, or whose mind is a little older than his own, in order to wake up his genius. That service is performed oftener for us by books. I think, if a very active mind, if a young man of ability, should give you his honest experience, you would find that he owed more impulse to books than to living minds. The great masters of thought, the Platos, not only those that we call sacred writers, but those that we call profanes, have acted on the mind with more energy than any com- panions. I think that every remarkable person whom Sic RICHARD COBDEN. you meet will testify to something like that, that the fast- opening mind has found more inspiration in his book than in his friend. We take the book under great advan- tages. We read it when we are alone. We read it with an attention not distracted. And, perhaps, we find there our own thought, a little better, a little maturer, than it is in ourselves." Address to the Students ( coloured ) of Howard University, Washington, January, 1872. RICHARD COBDEN. 1804 1865. Gentlemen, I exhort you to maintain this and kindred institutions on every ground, public and private. I have had many changes, I have seen many phases of society, probably as many as most. I do not say this egotistically, because I am merely now going to eluci- date a thought. I have seen many phases of society, I have had many excited means of occupation, and of gratification ; but I tell you honestlyand conscientiously, that if I want to look back to that which has given me the purest satisfaction of mind, it is in those pursuits which are accessible to every member of the Athenaeum. I have not found the greatest enjoyment in the exciting plaudits of a public meeting; I have not found the greatest pleasure or interest in intercourse, sometimes with men of elevated sphere abroad, where others would think probably that you were privileged to meet such men ; I come back to you conscientiously to declare that the purest pleasures I have ever known are those accessible to you all ; it is in the calm intercourse with intelligent minds, and in the communion with the departed great, through books, by our own firesides. Address to the members of the Manchester Athenuum, November 18, 1847. P. D. MAURtCR. 311 FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE. 1805 1872. Sir Walter Scott has also kindled a healthy desire among us for real histories, not merely historical novels. The demand has been met by many authors, whose patient industry as well as their power of exhibiting acts, and the sources of acts, surely promise that they shall live. Charles Lamb said, in one of his exquisite essays, that there were some histories written in the last age which cannot be called books at all. They were merely the pasteboard covers " History of Eng- land," or " History of the World," which careful librarians put into their shelves when their books are absent. Some of the historians that our age has pro- duced are books in the truest sense of the word. They illustrate great periods in our own annals, and in the annals of other countries. They show what a divine discipline has been at work to form men : they teach us that there is such a discipline at work to form us into men. That is the test to which I have urged that all books must at last be brought : if they do not bear it their doom is fixed. They may be light or heavy, the penny sheet, or the vast folio; they may speak of things seen or unseen ; of Science or Art ; of what has been, or what is to be ; they may amuse us, weary us, flatter us, or scorn us ; if they do not assist to make us better or more substantial men, they are only providing fuel for a fire larger and more utterly destructive than that which consumed the library of the Ptolemies. The Friendship of Books, Mid other Lectures, by the A'ev. F. D. Maurice. On Books : An Address delivered to the Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society, NOT ember, 1865. 3Ia SAMUEL PALMER. SAMUEL PALMER (ARTIST). 1805 1881. " There is nothing like poetry," said Charles James Fox, who might often be found engrossed by Virgil's Eclogues in the intervals of a very different career. I think we may extend his remark, and say, ' ' There is nothing like books." Of all things sold incomparably the cheapest ; of all pleasures the least palling : they take up little room, keep quiet when they are not wanted, and, when taken up, bring us face to face with the choicest men who have ever lived, at their choicest moments. As my walking companion in the country I was so un-English as, on the whole, to prefer my pocket Milton, which I carried for twenty years, to the not unbeloved bull-terrier "Trimmer," who accom- panied me for five : for Milton never fidgeted, frightened horses, ran after sheep, or got run over by a goods- van. Memoir of Samuel Palmer, the artist, by A. H. Palmer, 1882. LORD BEACONSFIELD (BENJAMIN DISRAELI). 18051881. The idea that human happiness is dependent on the cultivation of the mind, and on the discovery of truth, is, next to the conviction of our immortality, the idea the most full of consolation to man ; for the cultivation of the mind has no limits, and truth is the only thing that is eternal. Indeed, when you consider what a man is who knows only what is passing under his own eyes, and what the condition of the same man must be LORD BBACONSFIELD. 313 who belongs to an institution like the one which has assembled us together to-night, is it ought it to be a matter of surprise that, from that moment to the present, you have had a general feeling throughout the civilised world in favour of the diffusion of knowledge? A man who knows nothing but the history of the passing hour, who knows nothing of the history of the past, but that a certain person whose brain was as vacant as his own occupied the same house as himself, who in a moment of despondency or of gloom has no hope in the morrow because he has read nothing that has taught him that the morrow has any changes that man, compared with him who has read the most ordinary abridgment of history, or the most common philosophical speculation, is as distinct and different an animal as if he had fallen from some other planet, was influenced by a different organization, working for a different end, and hoping for a different result. It is knowledge that equalizes the social condition of man that gives to all, however different their political position, passions which are in common, and enjoy- ments which are universal. Knowledge is like the mystic ladder in the patriarch's dream. Its base rests on the primeval earth its crest is lost in the shadowy splendour of the empyrean ; while the great authors who for traditionary ages have held the chain of science and philosophy, of poesy and erudition, are the angels ascending and descending the sacred scale, and maintaining, as it were, the communication between man and heaven. Speech to the Humbert of the Alan Chester Athtnaum, October 23, 1844. 3 i 4 BEACONSFIELD LONGFELLOW. An Author may influence the fortunes of the world to as great an extent as a statesman or a warrior ; and the deeds and performances by which this influence is created and exercised, may rank in their interest and importance with the decisions of great Congresses, or the skilful valour of a memorable field. M. de Voltaire was certainly a greater Frenchman than Cardinal Flury, the Prime Minister of France in his time. His actions were more important ; and it is certainly not too much to maintain that the exploits of Homer, Aristotle, Dante, or my Lord Bacon were as considerable events as anything that occurred at Actium, Lepanto, or Blenheim. A Book may be as great a thing as a Battle, and there are systems of Philosophy that have produced as great revolutions as any that have disturbed the social and political existence of our centuries. Memoir of Isaac Disraeli, by Ins Son, Benjamin Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield). Prefixed to posthumous Edition of ' ' Curiosities of Literature. " H. W. LONGFELLOW. 1807 1882. O precious evenings ! all too swiftly sped, Leaving us heirs to amplest heritages Of all the best thoughts of the greatest sages, And giving tongues unto the silent dead ! Sonnet to Mrs. Fanny Kemble. [The following touching sonnet is the last emanation from the pen of a poet whose writings will always be loved and admired for their purity, tenderness, and simplicity] : LONGFELLOW HILLARD. 3 , 5 My Books. Sadly as some old mediaeval knight Gazed at the arms he could no longer wield, The sword two-handed and the shining shield Suspended in the hall, and full in sight, While secret longings for the lost delight Of tourney or adventure in the field Came over him, and tears but half concealed Trembled and fell upon his beard of white, So I behold these books upon their shelf, My ornaments and arms of other days ; Not wholly useless, though no longer used, For they remind me of my other self, Younger and stronger, and the pleasant ways, In which I walked, now clouded and confused. December, 1881. G. S. HILLARD (AMERICAN LAWYER). 18081879. Other things being equal, the man who has the greatest amount of intellectual resources is in the least danger from inferior temptations, if for no other reason, because he has fewer idle moments. The ruin of most men dates from some vacant hour. Occupation is the armour of the soul ; and the train of Idleness is borne up by all the vices. I remember a satirical poem, in which the Devil is represented as fishing for men, and adapting his baits to the taste and tempera- ment of his prey ; but the idler, he said, pleased him most, because he bit the naked hook. To a young man away from home, friendless and forlorn in a great 3 t6 G. S. HILLARD-y. G. WHITTIER. city, the hours of peril are those between sunset and bed time ; for the moon and the stars see more of evil in a single hour than the sun in his whole day's circuit. The poet's visions of evening are all compact of tender and soothing images. It brings the wanderer to his home, the child to his mother's arms, the ox to his stall, and the weary labourer to his rest. But to the gentle-hearted youth who is thrown upon the rocks of a pitiless city, and stands "homeless among a thousand homes," the approach of evening brings with it an aching sense of loneliness and desolation, which comes down upon the spirk like darkness upon the earth. In this mood his best impulses become a snare to him ; and he is led astray because he is social, affectionate, sympathetic, and warm-hearted. If there be a young man thus circumstanced within the sound of my voice, let me say to him that books are the friends of the friendless, and that a library is the home of the home- less. A taste for reading will always carry you into the best possible society, and enable you to converse with men who will instruct you by their wisdom, and charm you by their wit; who will soothe you when fretted, refresh you when weary, counsel you when perplexed, and sympathise with you at all times. Address to Mercantile Libry. Associatn., Boston. 1850. J. G. WHITTIER. b. 1808. The Library. "Let there be Light !" God spake of old, And over chaos dark and cold, And through the dead and formless frame Of nature, life and order came. 7. C. VTH1TT1ER. 317 Faint was the light at first that shone On giant fern and mastodon, On half-formed plant and beast of prey, And man as rude and wild as they. Age after age, like waves o'erran The earth, uplifting brute and man ; And mind, at length, in symbols dark Its meanings traced on stone and bark. On leaf of palm, on sedge- wrought roll, On plastic clay and leathern scroll, Man wrote his thoughts ; the ages passed, And lo ! the Press was found at last ! Then dead souls woke ; the thoughts of men Whose bones were dust revived again ; The cloister's silence found a tongue, Old prophets spake, old poets sung. And here, to-day, the dead look down, The kings of mind again we crown ; We hear the voices lost so long, The sage's word, the sybil's song. Here Greek and Roman find themselves Alive along these crowded shelves ; And Shakspere treads again his stage, And Chaucer paints anew his age. As if some Pantheon's marbles broke Their stony trance, and lived and spoke, Life thrills along the alcoved hall, The lords of thought awake our call. Sung at the opening of the Library at flaoerhill. Mass. 3i8 CAROLINE NORTON R. A. WILLMOTT. MRS. C. NORTON. 1808 1877. To My Books. Silent companions of the lonely hour, Friends, who can never alter or forsake, Who for inconstant roving have no power, And all neglect, perforce, must calmly take, Let me return to You ; this turmoil ending Which worldly cares have in my spirit wrought, And, o'er your old familiar pages bending, Refresh my mind with many a tranquil thought : Till, happily meeting there, from time to time, Fancies, the audible echo of my own, 'Twill be like hearing in a foreign clime My native language spoke in friendly tone, And with a sort of welcome I shall dwell On these, my unripe musings, told so well. ROBERT ARIS WILLMOTT. 1809 1862. An affecting instance of the tenderness and the compensations of Learning is furnished by the old age of Usher, when no spectacles could help his failing sight, and a book was dark except beneath the strongest light of the window. Hopeful and resigned he con- tinued his task, following the sun from room to room through the house he lived in, until the shadows of the trees disappeared from the grass, and the day was gone. How strange and delightful must have been his feelings, when the sunbeam fell brilliantly upon some half-remembered passage, and thought after thought shone out from the misty words, like the features of a familiar landscape in a clearing fog. Pleasures, Objects, and Advantages of Literature. HENRY REED. 319 HENRY REED (AMERICAN PROFESSOR). 18081854. It is not unfrequently thought that the true guidance for habits of reading is to be looked for in prescribed courses of reading, pointing out the books to be read, and the order of proceeding with them. Now, while this external guidance may to a certain extent be useful, I do believe that an elaborately prescribed course of reading would be found neither desirable nor practicable. It does not leave freedom enough to the movements of the reader's own mind ; it does not give free enough scope to choice. Our communion with books, to be intelligent, must be more or less spontaneous. It is not possible to anticipate how or when an interest may be awakened in some particular subject or author, and it would be far better to break away from the prescribed list of books, in order to follow out that interest while it is a thoughtful impulse. It would be a sorry lameness of intellect that would not, sooner or later, work its way out of the track of the best of any such prescribed courses. . . . I apprehend that often a taste for reading is quenched by rigid and injudicious prescription of books in which the mind takes no interest, can assimilate nothing to itself, and recognises no progress but what the eye takes count of in the reckoning of pages it has travelled over. But reverse the process: observe or engender the interest as best you may, in the young mind, and then work with that expanding, cultivating, chastening it. Ltiturts on English Literature. 3 E. BARRETT BROWNING. E. BARRETT BROWNING. 1809 1861. Mr. Kenyon calls me his "omnivorous cousin." I read without principle. I have a sort of unity, but it amalgamates instead of selecting. When I had read the Hebrew Bible right through, and the Greek poets and Plato from end to end, I passed as thoroughly through the flood of all possible and impossible British and foreign novels and romances, with slices of metaphysics laid thick between the sorrows of the multitudinous Celestinas. It is only useful knowledge and the multiplication table I never tried hard at. Is this matter of exultation ? Alas, no ! Do I boast of my omnivorousness of reading, even apart from the romances ? Certainly no ! never, except in joke. It's against my theories and ratiocinations, which take upon themselves to assert that we all generally err by reading too much, and out of propor- tion to what we think. I should be wiser, I am per- suaded, if I had not read half as much should have had stronger and better exercised faculties. The fact is, that the ne plus ultra of intellectual indolence is this reading of books. It comes next to what the Ameri- cans call " whittling. "Letter to R. H. Home, 1843. Or else I sate on in my chamber green, And lived my life, and thought my thoughts, and prayed My prayers without the vicar ; read my books, Without considering whether they were fit To do me good. Mark, there. We get no good By being ungenerous, even to a book, And calculating profits, so much help ELIZABETH B. BROWNING. \ By so much reading. It is rather when We gloriously forget ourselves and plunge Soul-forward, headlong, into a book's profound, Impassioned for its beauty and salt of truth Tis then we get the right good from a book. Books, books, books ! I had found the secret of a garret -room Piled high with cases in my father's name, Piled high, packed large, where, creeping in and out Among the giant fossils of my past, Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs Of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there At this or that box, pulling through the gap, In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy, The first book first. And how I felt it beat Under my pillow, in the morning's dark, An hour before the sun would let me read ! My books ! At last because the time was ripe, I chanced upon the poets. Aurora Leigh. JOHN HILL BURTON. 1809 1881. As to collectors, it is quite true that they do not in general read their books successively straight through, and the practice of desultory reading, as it is some- times termed, must be treated as part of their case, and if a failing, one cognate with their habit of col- lecting. They arc notoriously addicted to the practice TTCLA LIBRARY 3 JOHN HILL BURTON. of standing arrested on some round of a ladder, where, having mounted up for some certain book, they have by wayward chance fallen upon another, in which, at the first opening, has come up a passage which fascinates the finder as the eye of the Ancient Mariner fascinated the wedding-guest, and compels him to stand there, poised on his uneasy perch, and read. Perad- venture the matter so perused suggests another passage in some other volume which it will be satisfactory and interesting to find, and so another and another search is made, while the hours pass by unnoticed, and the day seems all too short for the pursuit which is a luxury and an enjoyment, at the same time that it fills the mind with varied knowledge and wisdom. The Book-Hunter : " The Desultory Reader, or Bohemian of Literature" To every man of our Saxon race endowed with full health and strength, there is committed, as if it were the price he pays for these blessings, the custody of a restless demon, for which he is doomed to find ceaseless excitement, either in honest work, or some less profit- able or more mischievous occupation. Countless have been the projects devised by the wit of man to open up for this fiend fields of exertion great enough for the absorption of its tireless energies, and none of them is more hopeful than the great world of books, if the demon is docile enough to be coaxed into it Then will its erratic restlessness be sobered by the immensity of the sphere of exertion, and the consciousness that, however vehemently and however long it may struggle, the resources set before it will not be exhausted when OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 383 the life to which it is attached shall have faded away; and hence, instead of dreading the languor of inaction, it will have to summon all its resources of promptness and activity to get over any considerable portion of the ground within the short space allotted to the life of man. The Book- Hunter : "7*e Collector and the Scholar." OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. b. 1809. Society is a strong solution of books. It draws the virtue out of what is best worth reading, as hot water draws the strength of tea-leaves. If I were a prince, I would hire or buy a private literary tea-pot, in which I would steep all the leaves of new books that promised well. The infusion would do for me without the vege- table fibre. You understand me ; I would have a person whose sole business should be to read day and night, and talk to me whenever I wanted him to. I know the man I would have: a quick-witted, out- spoken, incisive fellow ; knows history, or at any rate has a shelf full of books about it, which he can use handily, and the same of all useful arts and sciences; knows all the common plots of plays and novels, and the stock company of characters that are continually coming on in new costume ; can give you a criticism of an octavo in an epithet and a wink, and you can depend on it ; cares for nobody except for the virtue there is in what he says; delights in taking off big-wigs and professional gowns, and in the tliscmbalming and un- bandaging of all litciary mummies. Yet he is as 324 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. tender and reverential to all that bears the mark of genius that is, of a new influx of truth or beauty as a nun over her missal. In short, he is one of those men that know everything except how to make a living. Him would I keep on the square next my own royal compartment on life's chessboard. To him I would push up another pawn, in the shape of a comely and wise young woman, whom he would, of course, take to wife. For all contingencies I would liberally provide. In a word, I would, in the plebeian, but expressive phrase, "put him through " all the material part of life ; see him sheltered, warmed, fed, button- mended, and all that, just to be able to lay on his talk when I liked - with the privilege of shutting it off at will. I believe in reading, in a large proportion, by subjects rather than by authors. Some books must be read tasting, as it were, every word. Tennyson will bear that as Milton would, as Gray would for they tasted every word themselves as Ude or Care'me would taste a potage meant for a king or a queen. But once become familiar with a subject, so as to know what you wish to learn about it, and you can read a page as a flash of lightning reads it. I like books, I was born and bred among them, and have the easy feeling, when I get into their presence, that a stable-boy has among horses. I don't think I undervalue them either as companions or as instructors. But I can't help remembering that the world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 3S great scholars great men. The Hebrew patriarchs had small libraries, I think, if any ; yet they represent to our imaginations a very complete idea of manhood, and I think, if we could ask in Abraham to dine with us men of letters next Saturday, we should feel honoured by his company. What I wanted to say about books is this: that there are times in which every active mind feels itself above any and all human books. You talk about reading Shakspeare, using him as an expression for the highest intellect, and you wonder that any common person should be so presumptuous as to suppose his thought can rise above the text which lies before him. But think a moment A child's reading of Shakspeare is one thing, and Coleridge's or Schlegel's reading of him is another. The satura- tion-point of each mind differs from that of every other. But I think it is as true for the small mind which can only take up a little as for the great one which takes up much, that the suggested trains of thought and feeling ought always to rise above not the author, but the reader's mental version of the author, whoever he may be. I think most readers of Shakspeare sometimes find themselves thrown into exalted mental conditions like those produced by music. Then they may drop the book, to pass at once into the region of thought with- out words. We may happen to be very dull folks, you and I, and probably are, unless there is some particular reason to suppose the contrary. But we get glimpses now and then of a sphere of spiritual possibilities, 336 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. where we, dull as we are now, may sail in vast circles round the largest compass of earthly intelligences. I always believed in life rather than in books. I suppose every day of earth, with its hundred thousand deaths and something more of births, with its loves and hates, its triumphs and defeats, its pangs and blisses, has more of humanity in it than all the books that were ever written, put together. I believe the flowers growing at this moment send up more fragrance to heaven than was ever exhaled from all the essences ever distilled. Books are the negative pictures of thought, and the more sensitive the mind that receives their images, the more nicely the finest lines are reproduced. The Autocrat of the Breakfast- Table, by Oliver Wendell Holmes, M.D. Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch ; nay, you may kick it about all day, like a football, and it will be round and full at evening. Does not Mr. Bryant say, that Truth gets well if she is run over by a locomotive, while Error dies of lockjaw if she scratches her finger ? I never heard that a mathema- tician was alarmed for the safety of a demonstrated proposition. I think, generally, that fear of open discussion implies feebleness of inward conviction, and great sensitiveness to the expression of individual opinion is a mark of weakness. The Professor at the Breakfast-Table. The first thing, naturally, when one enters a scholar's study or library, is to look at his books. One gets a OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. y - notion very speedily of his tastes and the range of his pursuits by a glance round his book -shelves. Of course, you know there are many fine houses where the library is a part of the upholstery, so to speak. Books in handsome binding kept locked under plate-glass in showy dwarf book-cases are as important to stylish establishments as servants in livery, who sit with folded arms, are to stylish equipages. I suppose those wonderful statues with the folded arms do some- times change their attitude, and I suppose those books with the gilded backs do sometimes get opened, but it is nobody's business whether they do or not, and it is not best to ask too many questions. This sort of thing is common enough, but there u another case that may prove deceptive if you undertake to judge from appearances. Once in a while you will come on a house where you will find a family of readers and almost no library. Some of the most indefatigable devourers of literature have very few books. They belong to book clubs, they haunt the public libraries, they borrow of friends, and somehow or other get hold of everything they want, scoop out all it holds for them, and have done with it. When / want a book, it is as a tiger wants a sheep. I must have it with one spring, and, if I miss it, go away defeated and hungry. And my experience with public libraries is that the first volume of the book I inquire for is out, unless I happen to want the second, when that is out. Yes, he said, I have a kind of notion of the way in which a library ought to be put together no, I don't mean that, I mean ought to grow. I don't pre- 38 MARY COWDEN-CLARKE. tend to say that mine is a model, but it serves my turn well enough, and it represents me pretty accurately. A scholar must shape his own shell, secrete it, for secre- tion is only separation, you know, of certain elements derived from the materials of the world about us. And a scholar's study is his shell. ... Of course I must have my literary harem, my fare aux cerfs, where my favorites await my moments of leisure and pleasure, my scarce and precious editions, my luxurious typo- graphical masterpieces; my Delilahs, that take my head in their lap; secret treasures that nobody else knows anything about ; books, in short, that I like for insufficient reasons it may be, but peremptorily, and mean to like and to love and to cherish till death us do part. The Poet at the Breakfast- Table. MARY COWDEN-CLARKE. b. 1809. Sometimes when I sit quietly and muse On bygone times and long departed joys, I hear with startling clearness thy loved voice In sudden ringing laugh, that still renews An echo of my then delight to use Whatever wile might win that pleasant noise Of heartfelt mirth from thee : the veriest toys Of fancy served to please us and amuse. Our own old favourite books read o'er and o'er Ne'er failed to charm again and yet again : We freshly savoured all the pith and core Of jests from Sheridan's or Moliere's brain; Jack FalstafTs racy wit ne'er lost its zest, And Shakespeare's fun we always found the best. Honey from the Weed: "To her Husband" WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 3*9 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. b. 1809. Be slow to stir enquiries which you do not mean par- ticularly to pursue to their proper end. Be not afraid to suspend your judgment, or feel and admit to yourself how narrow are the bounds of knowledge. Do not too readily assume that to us have been opened royal roads to truth, which were heretofore hidden from the whole family of man ; for the opening of such roads would not be so much favour as caprice. If it is bad to yield a blind submission to authority, it is not less an error to deny to it its reasonable weight Eschewing a servile adherence to the past, regard with reverence and gratitude, and accept its accumulations in inward as well as outward things, as the patrimony which it is your part in life both to preserve and to improve. Speech at Distribution of Prizes to the Pupils of Liver- pool College, 1872. One who is now beginning at any rate to descend the hill of life naturally looks backwards as well as forwards, and we must be becoming conscious that the early part of this century has witnessed in this and other countries, what will be remembered in future times as a splendid literary age. The elder among us have lived in the lifetime of many great men who have passed to their rest ; the younger have heard them familiarly spoken of, and still have their works in their hands, as I trust they will continue to be in the hands of all generations. I am afraid we cannot hope that literature it would be contrary to all the ex- perience of former times were we to hope should be 330 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. equably sustained at that extraordinary high level which belongs, roughly speaking, to the first fifty years after the Peace of 1815. That was a great period in England, in Germany, in France, and in Italy. I think we can hardly hope that it should continue on a perfect level at so high an elevation. Undoubtedly the cultivation of literature will ever be dear to the people of this country ; but we must remember what is literature, and what is not. In the first place, we should be all agreed that book-making is not literature. The business of book-making, I have no doubt, may thrive, and will be continued upon a constantly extending scale from year to year. But that we may put aside. For my own part, if I am to look a little forward, what I anticipate for the re- mainder of the century is an age, not so much of literature proper not so much of great, permanent, and splendid additions to those works in which beauty is embodied as an essential condition of production, but I rather look forward to an age of research ! This is an age of great research, in science, in history, in all the branches of enquiry that throw light upon the former condition, whether of our race, or of the world which it inhabits ; and it may be hoped that, even if the remaining years of the century be not so brilliant as some of its former periods, in the production of works, great in themselves, and immortal, still they may add largely to the knowledge of mankind. And if they make such additions to the knowledge of man- kind, they will be preparing materials of a new tone and of new splendour in the realm of literature. There is a sunrise and a sunset. There is a transition from WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. M the light of the sun to the gentler light of the moon. There is a rest in Nature which seems necessary in all her great operations. And so with all the great operations of the human mind. But do not let us despond if we seem to see a diminished efficacy in the production of what is essentially and immortally great. Our sun is hidden only for a moment. He is like the day-star of Milton, which " Anon repairs his drooping head And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore Flames in the forehead of the morning sky." Sptech at the Royal Academy Dinner, 1877. It was said of Socrates that he called down philo- sophy from heaven. But the enterprise of certain enlightened publishers has taught them to work for the million, and that is a very important fact. When I was a boy I used to be fond of looking into a book- seller's shop, but there was nothing to be seen there that was accessible to the working man of that day. Take a Shakspeare, for example. I remember very well that I gave 2. l6s. od. for my first copy; but you can get an admirable copy for 35. Those books are accessible now which formerly were quite inaccessible. We may be told that you want amusement, but that does not include improvement. There are a set of worthless books written now and at times which you should avoid ; which profess to give amusement ; but in reading the works of such authors as Shakspeare and Scott there is the greatest possible amusement in its best form. Do you suppose when you sec men engaged in study that they dislike it ? No. There is 33 LORD HOUGHTON. Labour no doubt of a certain kind mental labour, but it is so associated with interest all along that it is forgotten in the light it carries in its performance, and no people know that better than the working classes. I want you to understand that multitudes of books are constantly being prepared and placed within reach of the population at large, for the most part executed by writers of a high stamp having subjects of the greatest interest, and which enable you, at a moderate price, not to get cheap literature which is secondary in its quality, but to go straight into the very heart if I may so say, into the sanctuary of the temple of literature and become acquainted with the greatest and best works that men of our country have produced. It is not to be supposed that working-men, on coming home from labour, are to study Euclid and works of that character ; and it is not to be desired unless in the case of very special gifts; but what is to be desired is that some effort should be made by men of all classes, and perhaps by none more than the labouring class, to lift ourselves above the level of what is purely frivolous, and to endeavour to find our amusement in making ourselves acquainted with things of real interest and beauty. Speech in aid of the Backley Institute and Reading Room, 1878. LORD HOUGHTON (RICHARD MONCK.TON MILNES). 1809 1885. I think it impossible to overrate the political utility of such an institution as this. Think what a book is what each one of these volumes is. It is a portion of LORD HOUGH TON. 333 the eternal mind, caught in its process through the world, stamped in an instant, and preserved for eternity. Think what it is ; that enormous amount of human sympathy and intelligence that is contained in these volumes ; and think what it is that this sympathy should be communicated to the masses of the people. Compare the state 01 the man who is really well acquainted with the whole past of literature upon the subject on which he is speaking, and with which his mind is embued, with that of the solitary artisan, upon whom, perhaps, the light of genius has dawned in some great truth in some noble aspiration in some high idea resting there, unable to accomplish itself, unable to realise its meaning, and probably ending in nothing but discontent or despair. Compare the state of that man, such as he would be without books, with what that man may be with books. So that it is only books that can save him from the most exaggerated conclusions, from the falsest doctrines, and all those evils which may damage and even destroy the masses of mankind. It is only, remember, what lies in these books that makes all the difference between the wildest socialism* that ever passed into the mind of a man in this hall, and the deductions and careful processes of the mind of the student who will sit at these tables who will learn humility by seeing what others have taught before him ; and who will gain from the sympathy of ages, intelligence and sense for himself. Speech at the Inauguration of the Manchester fret Library, September 2, 1852. *The building in which the Free Library was firtt located was previously a Socialist Hall. S34 THEODORE PARKER. THEODORE PARKER. 1810 1860. The pleasures of the intellect not creative, but only recipient, have never been fully appreciated. What a joy is there in a good book, writ by some great master of thought, who breaks into beauty, as in summer the meadow into grass and dandelions and violets, with geraniums, and manifold sweetness. As an amuse- ment, that of reading is 'worth all the rest. What pleasure in science, in literature, in poetry, for any man who will but open his eye and his heart to take it in. What delight an audience of men who never speak, take in some great orator, who looks into their faces, and speaks into their hearts, and then rains a meteoric shower of stars, falling from his heaven of genius before their eyes; or, far better still, with a whole day of sun- light warms his audience, so that every manly and womanly excellence in them buds and blossoms with fragrance, one day to bear most luscious fruit before God, fruit for mortality, fruit for eternity not less. I once knew a hard-working man, a farmer and mechanic, who in the winter-nights rose a great while before day, and out of the darkness coaxed him at least two hours of hard study, and then when the morning peeped over the eastern hills, he yoked his oxen and went forth to his daily work, or in his shop he laboured all day long ; and when the night came, he read aloud some simple book to his family; but when they were snugly laid away in their sleep, the great-minded mechanic took to his hard study anew ; and so, year out and year in, he went on, neither rich nor much honoured, hardly entreated by daily work, and yet he probably had a DR. JOHN BROWN. 335 happiness in his heart and mind which the whole county might have been proud to share. I fear we do not know what a power of immediate pleasure and permanent profit is to be had in a good book. The books which help you most are those which make you think the most. The hardest way of learning is by easy reading ; every man that tries it finds it so. But a great book that comes from a great thinker, it is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth, with beauty too. It sails the ocean, driven by the winds of heaven, breaking the level sea of life into beauty where it goes, leaving behind it a train of sparkling loveliness, widening as the ship goes on. And what treasures it brings to every land, scattering the seeds of truth, justice, love, and piety, to bless the world in ages yet to come. Lessons from The World of Matter and The World of Man. JOHN BROWN. 18101882. If our young medical student would take our advice, and for an hour or two twice a week take up a volume of Shakspeare, Cervantes, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Cowper, Montaigne, Addison, Defoe, Goldsmith, Fielding, Scott, Charles Lamb, Macaulay, Jeffrey, Sydney Smith, Helps, Thackeray, &c., not to mention authors on deeper and more sacred subjects they would have happier and healthier minds, and make none the worse doctors. If they, by good fortune for the tide has set in strong against the liter* humaniores have come off with some Greek or Latin, we would supplicate for an ode of Horace, a couple of pages of Cicero or of Pliny once a month, 336 DR. JOHN BROWN, and a page of Xenophon. French and German should be mastered either before or during the first years of study. They will never afterwards be acquired so easily or so thoroughly, and the want of them may be bitterly felt when too late. But one main help, we are persuaded, is to be found in studying, and by this we do not mean the mere reading, but the digging into and through, the energizing upon, and mastering such books as we have mentioned at the close of this paper. * These are not, of course, the only works we would re- commend to those who wish to understand thoroughly, and to make up their minds, on these great subjects as wholes; but we all know too well that our Art is long, broad, and deep, and Time, opportunity, and our little hour, brief and uncertain, therefore, we would recommend those books as a sort of game of the mind, a mental exercise like cricket, a gymnastic, a clearing of the eyes of their mind as with euphrasy, a strengthening their power over particulars, a getting fresh, strong * i. Amauld's Port-Royal Logic ; translated by T. S. Baynes. a. Thomson's Outlines of the Necessary Laws of Thought. 3. Descartes on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason, and Seeking Truth in the Sciences. 4. Coleridge's Essay on Method. 5. Whately's Logic and Rhetoric j new and cheap edition. 6. Mill's Logic ; new and cheap edition. 7. Dugald Stewart's Outlines. 8. Sir John Herschel's Preliminary Dissertation. 9. Quarterly Review, vol. Ixviii. ; Article upon Whewell's Philosophy of Inductive Sciences. 10. Isaac Taylor's Elements of Thought u. Sir William Hamilton's edition of Reid ; Dissertations ; and Lectures. 12. Professor Eraser's Rational Philosophy. 13. Locke on the Conduct of the Under- standing. DB. JOHN BROWN-W. M. THACKERAY. 337 views of worn out, old things, and, above all, a learning the right use of their reason, and by knowing their own ignorance and weakness, finding true knowledge and strength. Taking up a book like Arnauld, and reading a chapter of his lively, manly sense, is like taking a run to the top of Arthur Seat. Exertion quickens your pulse, expands your lungs, makes your blood warmer and redder, fills your mouth with the pure waters of relish, strengthens and supples your legs ; and you come down the hill a happier, a better, and a hungrier man, and of a better mind. floret Subsidy*: "With Brains, Sir I" SAMUEL LAING. b. 1810. For all, but especially for the young, there is no help to self-improvement so great as to read good books in a generous spirit ; and nothing which dwarfs the mind so much as to debauch it by frivolous reading, and by the moral dram-drinking of sensational rubbish, until it loses all natural and healthy appetite for the pure and elevated. ^foJcrn Science and Modern Thought, 1885. W. M. THACKERAY. 18111863. Novels are sweets. All people with healthy literary appetites love them almost all women ; a vast number of clever, hard-headed men, judges, bishops, chan- cellors, mathematicians, are notorious novel-readers, as well as young boys and sweet girls, and their kind, tender mothers. Roundaixiut Papers: "On a Laijr t Idlf Boy" Then, above all, we had Walter Scott, the kindly, the generous, the pure the companion of what count- w 338 JT. M. THACKERAY-JOHN BRIGHT. less delightful hours; the purveyor of how much happiness ; the friend whom we recall as the constant benefactor of our youth ! How well I remember the type and the brownish paper of the old duodecimo, "Tales of My Landlord!" . . . Oh! for a half- holiday, a quiet corner, and one of those books again ! Those books, and perhaps those eyes with which we read them; and, it may be, the brains behind the eyes I It may be the tart was good; but how fresh the appetite was I ... The boy critic loves the story ; grown up, he loves the author who wrote the story. Hence the kindly tie is established between writer and reader, and lasts pretty nearly for life. Roundabout Papers: "De Juventute." JOHN BRIGHT, b. 1811. What is a great love of books ? It is something like a personal introduction to the great and good men of all past times. Books, it is true, are silent as you see them on their shelves ; but, silent as they are, when I enter a library I feel as if almost the dead were present, and I know if I put questions to these books they will answer me with all the faithfulness and fulness which has been left in them by the great men who have left the books with us. Have none of us, or may I not say are there any of us who have not, felt some of this feeling when in a great library? When you are within its walls, and see these shelves, these thousands of volumes, and consider for a moment who they are that wrote them, who has gathered them together, for whom they are in- tended, how much wisdom they contain, what they tell the future ages, it is impossible not to feel something of JOHN BRIGHT. 339 solemnity and tranquillity when you are spending time in rooms like these ; and if you come to houses of less note you find libraries that are of great estimation and which in a less degree are able to afford mental aliment to those who are connected with them; and I am bound to say and if anyone cares very much for any- thing else they will not blame me I say to them, you may have in a house costly pictures and costly orna- ments, and a great variety of decoration, yet, so far as my judgment goes, I would prefer to have one com- fortable room well stocked with books to all you can give me in the way of decoration which the highest art can supply. The only subject of lamentation is one feels that always, I think, in the presence of a library that life is too short, and I am afraid I must say also that oar industry is so far deficient that we seem to have no hope of a full enjoyment of the ample repast that is spread before us. In the houses of the humble a little library in my opinion is a most precious pos- session. . . . Some twenty years ago I was in Sutherlandshire, on the Helmsdale river, engaged in the healthful occupation of endeavouring to get some salmon out of it In the course of the day, walking down the river, I entered the cottage of a shepherd. There was no one at home, I think, but the shepherd's wife or mother, I forget which, but she was an elderly woman, matronly, very kind and very courteous to us. Whilst I was in the house I saw upon the window-sill a small and very thin volume, and I took the liberty of going up to it, and taking it in my hand, I found, to my surprise and delight, that it was an edition which I 340 JOHN BRIGHT. had never met with before an edition of " Paradise Regained " the work of a poet unsurpassed in any country or in any age, and a poem as to which I believe great authorities admit that if " Paradise Lost " did not exist "Paradise Regained" would be the finest poem in our language. I said I was surprised and delighted down in this remote country, in this solitary house, in this humble abode of the shepherd, I found this volume which seemed to me to transfigure the cottage. I felt as if that humble dwelling was illumined, as it was, indeed, by the genius of Milton, and, I may say, I took the liberty of asking how the volume came there, and who it was that read it. I learned that the good woman of the house had a son who had been brought up for the ministry, and I think at the time I was there he was then engaged in his labours as a Presbyterian minister in the colony of Canada. Now whenever I think of some of the rivers of Scotland, when I think of the river Helmsdale, if I turn, as my mind does, to that cottage, I always see, and shall never forget, that small, thin volume which I found on the window-sill, and the finding of which seemed to me to lift the dwellers in that cottage to a somewhat higher sphere. . . . My own impression is that there is no greater blessing that can be given to an artisan's family than a love of books. The home influence of such a possession is one which will guard them from many temptations and from many evils. How common it is in all classes too common but how common it is amongst what are termed the working classes I have seen it many times in my district where even an industrious and careful parent JOHN BRIGHT. 941 has found that his son or his daughter has been to him a source of great trouble and pain. No doubt, if it were possible, even in one of these homes, to have one single person who was a lover of books, and knew bow to spend an evening usefully with a book, and who could occasionally read something from the book to the rest of the family, perhaps to his aged parents, how great would be the blessing to the family, how great a safeguard would be afforded ; and then to the men themselves, when they come to the feebleness of age, and when they can no longer work, and when the sands of life are as it were ebbing out, what can be more advantageous, what more a blessing, than in these years of feebleness may be sometimes of suffer- ingit must be often of solitude if there be the power to derive instruction and amusement and refreshment from books which our great library will offer to every one ? To the young especially this is of great impor- tance, for if there be no seed-time, there will certainly be no harvest, and the youth of life is the seed-time of life. It is impossible for anybody to confer upon young men a greater blessing than to stimulate them to a firm belief that to them now, and to them during all their lives, it may be a priceless gain that they should associate themselves constantly with this library, and draw from it any books they like. The more they read the more in all probability they will like and wish to read. What can be better than that the fair poetic page, the great instructions of history, the gains of science all these are laid before us, and of these we may freely partake. Sptech at opening of Birmingham New Free Library, futu I, 1882. 34 LORD SHERBROOKE. LORD SHERBROOKE (ROBERT LOWE). b. 1811. Cultivate above all things a taste for reading. There is no pleasure so cheap, so innocent, and so remunera- tive as the real, hearty pleasure and taste for reading. It does not come to everyone naturally. Some people take to it naturally, and others do not ; but I advise you to cultivate it, and endeavour to promote it in your minds. In order to do that you should read what amuses you and pleases you. You should not begin with difficult works, because, if you do, you will find the pursuit dry and tiresome. I would even say to you read novels, read frivolous books, read anything that will amuse you and give you a taste for reading. On this point all persons could put themselves on an equality. Some persons would say they would rather spend their time in society ; but it must be remembered that if they had cultivated a taste for reading before- hand they would be in a position to choose their society, whereas, if they had not, the probabilities were that they would have to mix with people inferior to themselves. I hold that the English language is the richest in the world in all the noblest efforts of the human intellect. Our historians and orators might rank with those of any nation and clime, and there is hardly any subject which you could not find fully and properly treated. Therefore I advise you, in the first instance, to give your minds very much to the study of English, and of the admirable works to be found in that language. Speech to the Students of the Croydon Science ami Art Schools, 1869. C. SUMNER-y. CAMERON. 343 CHARLES SUMNER (AMERICAN SENATOR). 1811 1874. He (John Pickering] knew that scholarship of all kinds would gild the life of its possessor, enlarge the resources of the bar, enrich the voice of the pulpit, and strengthen the learning of medicine. He knew that it would afford a soothing companionship in hours of relaxation from labor, in periods of sad- ness, and in the evening of life; that, when once embraced, it was more constant than friendship, attending its votary, as an invisible spirit, in the toils of the day, the watches of the night, the changes of travel, and the alternations of fortune or health, Oration in 1846. I might fitly speak to you of books; and here, while considering principles to govern the student in his reading, it would be pleasant to dwell on the profitable delights, better than a "shower of cent per cent," on the society, better than fashion or dissipa- tion, and on that completeness of satisfaction, outvying the possession of wealth, and making the "library dukedom large enough," all of which are found in books. Address on Granville Sharp in 1854. JOHN CAMERON, b. about 1812. But now What of books as instruments for the evolution of latent mental power? Books abound they over-abound ; there is nothing of which we have so unmanageable a superfluity; their distracting variety 344 7- CAMERON F. BENNOCH. makes it difficult to choose, and hard to hold to those even that we have chosen till we have inwardly digested them. Education is in the ratio of difficulty overcome. The best book, therefore, in this regard, is that which puts the utmost strain upon your faculty of meditation. Choose the thinker who forces you to wrestle with him lifts you off your feet but to set you down on a higher level than you stood on before you grappled with him. A hundred writers that you can at a hop, step, and jump, lightly overleap, will not so avail to make you a philosophical acrobat, as one that you will, even at the hundredth attempt, find too high for you to leap over. Phases of Thought, by John Cameron, author of "The Notabilities of Wakefield;" "Dis- courses;" .&c. FRANCIS BENNOCH. b. 1812. My Books. I love my books as drinkers love their wine ; The more I drink, the more they seem divine; With joy elate my soul in love runs o'er, And each fresh draught is sweeter than before ! Books bring me friends where'er on earth I be, Solace of solitude, bonds of society ! I love my books ! they are companions dear, Sterling in worth, in friendship most sincere; Here talk I with the wise in ages gone, And with the nobly gifted of our own : If love, joy, laughter, sorrow please my mind, Love, joy, grief, laughter in my books I find. TTie Storm and other Poems. GEORGE GILFILLAff. 345 GEORGE GILFII.LAN. 1813 1878. Let us compare the different ways in which Crabbc and Foster (certainly a prose poet) deal with a library. Crabbe describes minutely and successfully the outer features of the volumes, their colours, clasps, the stub- born ridges of their bindings, the illustrations which adorn them, so well that you feel yourself among them, and they become sensible to touch almost as to sight. But there he stops, and sadly fails, we think, in bringing out the living and moral interest which gathers around a multitude of books, or even around a single volume. This Foster has amply done. The speaking silence of a number of books, where, though it were the wide Bodleian or Vatican, not one whisper could be heard, and yet where, as in an antechamber, so many great spirits are waiting to deliver their messages their churchyard stillness continuing even when their readers are moving to their pages, in joy or agony, as to the sound of martial instruments their awaking, as from deep slumber, to speak with miraculous organ, like the shell which has only to be lifted, and "pleased it remembers its august abodes, and murmurs as the ocean murmurs there " their power of drawing tears, kindling blushes, awakening laughter, calming or quickening the motions of the life's-blood, lulling to repose, or rousing to restlessness the meaning which radiates from their quiet countenances the tale of shame or glory which their title-pages tell the me- mories suggested by the character of their authors, and of the readers who have throughout successive centuries perused them the thrilling thoughts excited 346 GEORGE GILFILLAff CHARLES BRAY. by the sight of names and notes inscribed on their margins or blank pages by hands long since mouldered in the dust, or by those dear to us as our life's-blood, who had been snatched from our sides the aspects of gaiety or of gloom connected with the bindings and the age of volumes the effects of sunshine playing as if on a congregation of happy faces, making the duskiest shine, and the gloomiest be glad or of shadow suffusing a sombre air over all the joy of the proprietor of a large library, who feels that Nebu- chadnezzar watching great Babylon, or Napoleon re- viewing his legions, will not stand comparison with himself seated amid the broad maps, and rich prints, and numerous volumes which his wealth has enabled him to collect, and his wisdom entitled him to enjoy all such hieroglyphics of interest and meaning has Foster included and interpreted in one gloomy but noble meditation, and his introduction to Doddridge is the true "Poem on the Library." Gallery of Literary Portraits: "George Crabbe" CHARLES BRAY. 1811 1884. Habit is as supreme in mind as in body, and the object of moral culture is to make virtue into a habit. There are two habits, which, although they have not yet been classed among the virtues, are yet each worth a fortune in itself. One is a habit of looking at the bright side of things ; the other is a taste for good reading, which may be formed into a habit by cultiva- tion. I have cultivated both, on principle, and my happiness is now mainly dependent upon them. The CHARLES BRAY. 34; habitual state of my mind is one of cheerfulness, which the external world now finds it very difficult to depress. However untoward outside things may be, my mind soon springs back to its natural state, which is a happy one. For this I claim no merit ; I cannot help it ; the mind does so unconsciously, and this, I maintain, is the effect of culture, and is dependent in great measure upon the way I have accustomed myself to look at things. . . . Carlyle, in his " Reminiscences of his Father," vol. L, p. 9., says, "A virtue he had which I should learn to imitate. He never spoke of what was disagreeable and past. I have often won- dered and admired at this. The thing that he had nothing to do with, he did nothing with." I took people for what they were, and was not annoyed that they were not better ; consequently I gave no admission to envy, hatred, malice, or any kmd of uncharitable- ness. ... I knew there was good in all, and I appealed to that when I could find it, and if I could not find it, or if people, whether good or bad, were distasteful to me, and tended to create bad feeling in me, I kept out of their way. It may have been cowardly, but I dodged the evil rather than contend ; I did not see that anyone had a right to disturb my habitual calm. It is better to wait, if you can, and many evils will cure themselves, or you will get used to the new circumstances. As the Spanish proverb says, " If you cannot have what you like, you must try to like what you have." I always tried never to look at what I had lost, but at what I bad left. . . . The tone of mind, as to whether joy or sorrow shall habitually prevail, depends upon culture ; and culture 348 CHARLES BRAY, means exercise, and exercise begets habit, and in this case, habitual cheerfulness is the result. The second thing upon which my happiness has been greatly dependent, is the taste for good reading. By good reading I mean not mere newspapers, magazines, novels, and light literature, but such first-class works as enable you to travel not only over the whole world of nature, but of thought. A man who has acquired such a taste has never a spare moment or a dull one, unless when dreadfully bored by society, from which he escapes as much as possible. We ought always to have a good book on hand which we make time to read every day. As regards my present condition, I never have a minute to spare, or a minute that I cannot fill pleasur- ably. I have a heap of books for every varied mood, so that they never bore me. Books to me, that is those of our best writers, are ever new ; the books may be the same, but /am changed. Every seven years gives me a different, often a higher, appreciation of those I like. Every good book is worth reading three times at least. Phases of Opinion and Experience During a Long Life. An A utobiografhy, by Charles Bray, A uthor of The "Philosophy of Necessity " Ss*c. HENRY WARD BEECHER. 1813 1887. We form judgments of men from little things about their houses, of which the owner, perhaps, never thinks. In earlier years when travelling in the West, where taverns were scarce, and in some places unknown, and every settler's house was a house of entertainment, it HENRY WARD BEBCHBK. 349 was ft matter of some importance and some experience to select wisely where you should put up. And we always looked for flowers. If there were no trees for shade, no patch of flowers in the yard, we were sus- picious of the place. But no matter how rude the cabin, or rough the surroundings, if we saw that the window held a little trough for flowers, and that some vines twined about strings let down from the eaves, we were confident that there was some taste and carefulness in the log cabin. In a new country, where people have to tug for a living, no one will take the trouble to rear flowers unless the love of them is pretty strong ; and this taste, blossoming out of plain and uncultivated people, is itself a clump of harebells growing out of the seams of a rock. We were seldom misled. A patch of flowers came to signify kind people, clean beds, and good bread. But in other states of society other signs are more significant. Flowers about a rich man's house may signify only that he has a good gardener, or that he has refined neighbours, and does what he sees them do. But men are not accustomed to buy books unless they want them. If on visiting the dwelling of a man in slender means we find that he contents himself with cheap carpets and very plain furniture in order that he may purchase books, he rises at once in our esteem. Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house. The plainest row of books that cloth or paper ever covered is more significant of refinement than the most elaborately carved fitagere or sideboard. Give us a house furnished with books rather than furniture. 350 HENRY WARD BEECHER, Both, if you can, but books at any rate ! To spend several days in a friend's house, and hunger for some- thing to read, while you are treading on costly carpets, and sitting on luxuriant chairs, and sleeping upon down, is as if one were bribing your body for the sake of cheating your mind. Is it not pitiable to see a man growing rich, augmenting the comforts of home, and lavishing money on ostentatious upholstery, upon the table, upon everything but what the soul needs? We know of many, and many a rich man's house, where it would not be safe to ask for the commonest English Classics. A few garish Annuals on the table, a few pictorial monstrosities together with the stock re- ligious books of his "persuasion," and that is allj No poets, no essayists, no historians, no travels or biographies, no select fiction or curious legendary lore. But the wall paper cost three dollars a roll, and the carpet cost four dollars a yard ! Books are the windows through which the soul looks out A home without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them. It is a wrong to his family. He cheats them I Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with reading and grows upon it. And the love of knowledge, in a young mind, is almost a warrant against the inferior excitement of passions and vices. Let us pity these poor rich men who live barrenly in great bookless houses ! Let us congratulate the poor that, in our day, books are so cheap that a man may every year add a hundred volumes to his library for the "FANNY FERN." 351 price which his tobacco and his beer would cost him. Among the earliest ambitions to be excited in clerks, workmen, journeymen, and, indeed, among all that are struggling up in life from nothing to something, is that of forming and continually adding to a library of good books. A little library, growing larger every year, is an honourable part of a man's history. It is a man's duty to have books. A library is not a luxury, but one of the necessaries of life. Sermons. SARA P. PARTON (FANNY FERN). 18111872. Oh ! but books are such safe company ! They keep your Secrets well; they never boast that they made your eyes glisten, or your cheek flush, or your heart throb. You may take up your favourite Author, and love him at a distance just as warmly as you like, for all the sweet fancies and glowing thoughts that have winged your lonely hours so fleetly and so sweetly. Then you may close the book, and lean your cheek against the cover, as if it were the face of a dear friend ; shut your eyes and soliloquise to your heart's content, without fear of misconstruction, even though you should exclaim in the fulness of your enthusiasm, "What an adorable soul that man hasT You may put the volume under your pillow, and let your eye and the first ray of morning light fall on it together, and nothing shall rob you of that delicious pleasure. You may have a thousand petty, provoking, irritating annoyances through the day, and you shall come back again to 35" ANTHONY TROLLOPS. your dear old book, and forget them all in dream- land. It shall be a friend that shall be always at hand; that shall never try you by caprice, or pain you by forgetfulness, or wound you by distrust. Fern Leaves. ANTHONY TROLLOPE. 1815 1882. Now, my young friends, to whom I am addressing myself, with reference to this habit of reading, I make bold to tell you that it is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasures that God has prepared for his creatures. Other pleasures may be more ecstatic. When a young man looks into a girl's eye for love, and finds it there, nothing may afford him greater joy for the moment ; when a father sees a son return after a long absence, it may be a great pleasure for the moment ; but the habit of reading is the only enjoyment I know, in which there is no alloy. It lasts when all other pleasures fade. It will be there to support you when all other recreations are gone. It will be present to you when the energies of your body have fallen away from you. It will last you until your death. It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live. But, my friends, you cannot acquire that habit in your age. You cannot acquire it in middle age ; you must do it now, when you are young. You must learn to read and to like reading now, or you cannot do so when you are old. Speech at the Opening of the Art Exhibition at the Ballon Mechanics' Institution, Dec. 7, 1868. MARK PATTfSON. 353 MARK PATTISON. 1813 1884. Those who most read books don't want to talk about them. The conversation of the man who reads to any purpose will be flavoured by his reading ; but it will not be about his reading. The people who read in order to talk about it, are people who read the books of the season because they are the fashion books which come in with the season and go out with it " When a new book comes out I read an old one," said the poet Rogers. And Lord Dudley the great Lord Dudley, not the present possessor of the title writes to the Bishop of Llandaff: "I read new publications unwillingly. In literature I am fond of confining myself to the best company, which consists chiefly of my old acquaintance with whom I am desirous of be- coming more intimate. I suspect that nine times out of ten it is more profitable, if not more agreeable, to read an old book over again than to read a new one for the first time. . . . Is it not better to try to elevate and endow one's mind by the constant study and contemplation of the great models, than merely to know of one's own knowledge that such a book a'nt worth reading?" (Lord Dudley's Letters.) To a veteran like myself, who have watched the books of forty seasons, there is nothing so old as a new book. An astonishing sameness and want of individuality pervades modern books. The ideas they contain do not seem to have passed through the mind of the writer. They have not even that originality the only originality which John Mill in x 354 MARK PATTISON. his modesty would claim for himself "which every thoughtful mind gives to its own mode of conceiving and expressing truths which are common property" (Autobiogtaphy, p. 119). When you are in London step into the reading-room of the British Museum. There is the great manufactory out of which we turn the books of the season. It was so before there was any British Museum. It was so in Chaucer's time " For out of the olde fieldes, as men saythe, Cometh all this newe corn from yere to yere, And out of olde bookes in good faithe Cometh all this newe science that men lere." It continued to be so in Cervantes' day. " There are," says he in Don Quixote (32), " men who will make you books and turn them loose in the world with as much despatch as they would do a dish of fritters." It is not, then, any wonder that De Quincey should account it "one of the misfortunes of life that one must read thousands of books only to discover that one need not have read them." . . . And I cannot doubt that Bishop Butler had observed the same phenomenon when he wrote, in 1729: "The great number of books of amusement which daily come in one's way, have in part occasioned this idle way of considering things. By this means time, even in solitude, is happily got rid of without the pain of attention; neither is any part of it more put to the account of idleness, one can scarce forbear saying is spent with less thought, than great part of that which is spent in reading." Books and Critics, A Lecture. Fortnightly Review, vol. xxii., /. 659. "JANUARY SEARL&" 353 GEORGE SEARLE PHILLIPS (JANUARY SEARLE). b. about 1816 d. about 1882. Books are our household gods; and we cannot prize them too highly. They are the only gods in all the Mythologies that are ever beautiful and unchangeable; for they betray no man, and love their lovers. . . . Amongst the many things we have to be thankful for, as the result of modern discoveries, surely this of printed books is the highest of all ; and I for one, am so sensible of its merits that I never think of the name of Gutenberg without feelings of veneration and homage. . . . Who does not love John Gutenberg? the man that with his leaden types has made the invisible thoughts and imaginations of the Soul visible and readable to all and by all, and secured for the worthy a double immortality ? The birth of this person was an era in the world's history second to none save that of the Advent of Christ. The dawn of printing was the outburst of a new revelation, which, in its ultimate on- foldings and consequences, are alike inconceivable and immeasurable. Formerly, the Ecclesiastics monopolized the litera- ture of the world ; they were indeed in many cases the Authors and Transcribers of books; and we are in- debted to them for the preservation of the old learning. Now, every Mechanic is the possessor of a Library, and may have Plato and Socrates, as well as Chaucer and the Bards, for his companions. I call this a heavenly privilege, and the greatest of all known miracles, notwilli*UuKling it is so cheap and common. 356 "JANUARY SEARLE." Plato died above two thousand years ago, yet in these printed books he lives and speaks for ever. There is no death to thought ; which though it may never be imprisoned in lettered language, has nevertheless an existence and propagative vitality as soon as it is uttered, and endures from generation to generation, to the very end of the world. I think we should all of us be grateful for books ; they are our best friends and most faithful companions. They instruct, cheer, elevate, and ennoble us; and hi whatever mood we go to them, they never frown upon us, but receive us with cordial and loving sincerity : neither do they blab, or tell tales of us when we are gone, to the next comer ; but honestly, and with manly frankness, speak to our hearts in admonition or encouragement. I do not know how it is with other men, but I have so much reverence for these silent and beautiful friends that I feel in them to have an immortal and divine possession, which is more valuable to me than many estates and kingdoms. ... I like to be alone in my chamber, and obey the muse or the spirit We make too little of books, and have quite lost the meaning of con- templation. Our times are too busy ; too exclusively outward in their tendency; and men have lost their balance in the whirlpools of commerce and the fierce tornadoes of political strife. I want to see more poise in men, more self-possession ; and these can only be obtained by communion with books. I lay stress on the word communion, because although reading is common enough, communion is but little known as a modem experience. If an author be worth anything, he is worth bottoming. . . . Books should be our PHILIP JAMES BAILEY. 357 constant companions, for they stimulate thought, and hold a man to his purpose. Essays, Poems, and an Elucidation of the Bhagavat Gheeta and "The Choice of Books." PHILIP JAMES BAILEY, b. 1816. Worthy books Are not companions they are solitudes ; We lose ourselves in them and all our cares. We entreat Thee, that all men whom Thou Hast gifted with great minds may love Thee well, And praise Thee for their powers, and use them most Humbly and holily, and, lever-like, Act but in lifting up the mass of mind About them ; knowing well that they shall be Questioned by Thee of deeds the pen hath done, Or caused, or glozed ; inspire them with delight And power to treat of noble themes and things, Worthily, and to leave the low and mean Things bom of vice or day-lived fashion, in Their naked native folly : make them know Fine thoughts are wealth, for the right use of which Men are and ought to be accountable, If not to Thee, to those they influence : Grant this we pray Thee, and that all who read, Or utter noble thoughts may make them theirs, And thank God for them, to the betterment Of their succeeding life ; that all who lead The general sense and taste, too apt, perchance, To be led, keep in mind the mighty good They may achieve, and are in conscience, bound, And duty, to attempt unceasingly 35 FREDERICK WILLIAM ROBERTSON. To compass. Grant us, All-maintaining Sire ! That all the great mechanic aids to toil Man's skill hath formed, found, rendered, whether used In multiplying works of mind, or aught To obviate the thousand wants of life, May much avail to human welfare now And in all ages, henceforth and for ever 1 Let their effect be, Lord ! to lighten labour, And give more room to mind, and leave the poor Some time for self-improvement Let them not Be forced to grind the bones out of their arms For bread, but have some space to think and feel Like moral and immortal creatures. God ! Have mercy on them till such time shall come. Feslus. FREDERICK WILLIAM ROBERTSON. 18161853. It is very surprising to find how little we retain of a book, how little we have really made our own when we come to interrogate ourselves as to what account we can give of it, however we may seem to have mastered it by understanding it. Hundreds of books read once have passed as completely from us as if we have never read them ; whereas the discipline of mind got by writing down, not copying, an abstract of a book which is worth the trouble, fixes it on the mind for years, and, besides, enables one to read other books with more attention and more profit. Life and Letters of Fred. W. Robertson, M.A. ; edited by Stopford A. Brooke, M.A. JOHN G. SAXE. 359 JOHN G. SAXE. b. 1816. Ah 1 well I love these books of mine That stand so trimly on their shelves, With here and there a broken line (Fat "quartos" jostling modest "twelves" A curious company I own ; The poorest ranking with their betters, In brief a thing almost unknown, A pure Democracy of Letters. If I have favourites here and there, And, like a monarch, pick and choose, I never meet an angry stare That this I take, and that refuse ; No discords rise my soul to vex Among these peaceful book relations. No envious strife of age or sex To mar my quiet lucubrations. I call these friends, these quiet books, And well the title they may claim Who always give me cheerful looks (What living friend has done the same ?) And, for companionship, how few, As these, my cronies ever present, - Of all the friends I ever knew Have been so useful and so pleasant ? Poftnsbyjohn Godfrey Saxe, LL.D., Boston. ARTHUR HELPS. 1817 1875. So varied, extensive, and pervading arc human distresses, sorrows, short-comings, miseries, and mis- adventures, that a chapter of aid or consolation never y6o ARTHUR HELPS. comes amiss, I think. There is a pitiless, pelting rain this morning ; heavily against my study windows drives the north-western gale ; and altogether it is a very fit day for working at such a chapter. The indoor comforts which enable one to resent with com- posure, nay even to welcome, this outward conflict and hubbub, are like the plans and resources provided by philosophy and religion, to meet the various calamities driven against the soul in its passage through this stormy world. The books which reward me have been found an equal resource in both respects, both against the weather from without and from within, against physical and mental storms; and, if it might be so, I would pass on to others the comfort which a seasonable word has often brought to me. If I were to look round these shelves, what a host of well-loved names would rise up, in those who have said brave or wise words to comfort and aid theirbrethren in adversity. It seems as if little remained to be said ; but in truth there is always waste land in the human heart to be tilled. Companions of My Solitude. What are the objects men pursue in reading? They are these: amusement, instruction, a wish to appear well in society, and a desire to pass away time. Now even the lowest of these objects is facilitated by reading with method. The keenness of pursuit thus engendered enriches the most trifling gain, takes away the sense of dulness in details, and gives an interest to what would otherwise be most repugnant. No one who has never known the eager joy of some intellectual pursuit can understand the full pleasure of reading. ARTHUR HELPS. 361 In considering the present subject, the advantages to the world in general, of many persons being really versed in various subjects cannot be passed by. Were reading wisely undertaken, much more method and order would be offered to the consideration of the immediate business of the world ; and there would be men who might form something of a wise public with regard to the current questions of the day. 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. We see this with regard to the sacred writings. "A word spoken in due season, how good is it!" But there is a similar comfort on a lower level, to be obtained from other sources than sacred ones. 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 l>ecn without them ; and I contend that a man has something in himself to meet troubles 3 fa ARTHUR HELPS. and difficulties, small or great, who has stored in his mind some of the best things which have been said about troubles and difficulties. Moreover, the loneli- ness of sorrow is thereby diminished. It need not be feared that a man whose memory is rich in such resources will become a quoting pedant. Often, the sayings which are dearest to our heart, are least frequent on our lips ; and those great ideas which cheer men in their direst struggles, are not things which they are likely to inflict by frequent repetition upon those they live with. There is a certain reticence with us as regards anything we deeply love. There is a very refined use which reading is put to ; namely, to counteract the particular evils and tempta- tions of our callings, the original imperfections of our characters, the tendencies of our age, or of our own time of life. Those, for instance, who are versed in dull, crabbed work all day, of a kind which is always exercising the logical faculty and demanding minute, not to say, vexatious criticism, would, during their leisure do wisely to expatiate in writings of a large and imaginative nature. These, however, are often the persons who particularly avoid poetry and works of imagination, whereas they ought to cultivate them most. For it should be one of the frequent objects of every man who cares for the culture of his whole being, to give some exercise to those faculties which are not demanded by his daily occupations and not encouraged by his disposition. Friends in Council; a Series of Readings and Discourse Thereon: "Reading." ELIZA COOK-EARL IDDESLEIGH. 363 ELIZA COOK. b. 1818. Uncouth surroundings fashion uncouth thinking And uncouth manners in our common life. Nice eyes and ears retire with painful shrinking Where hardness and vulgarity are rife. A high bred nature frets with hopeless sinking In the rough household with the sloven wife ; While Taste and Order in the workman's cot, Shed Joy and Beauty on the humblest lot. Books ! ye are " Things of Beauty," fair indeed ; Ye gild with waneless lustre homely shelves. Ye have brought unction balm in many a need, Deftly and softly as Titania's elves. Some heavy thought has often lost its weight When "Robie Burns" has come to share the hour, Crooning his rhymes till the soul grows elate With deep responses to his minstrel power : When "Campbell" wraps us in sweet "Gertrude's" fate, Or rouses us to think we share the dower Of Freedom's heirs, whose Red Cross crests the seas, And, dauntless, "braves the battle and the breeze." Poetical Works. EARL IDDESLEIGH (STAFFORD NORTHCOTE). 18181887. The desultory reader must be no mere fingerer of books without thought how they are to be turned to account. He may be wise in not allowing himself to become a bookworm, but he must take care not to 364 EARL IDDESLE1GH. become what is much worse a book butterfly. What- ever is worth doing is worth doing well, and it is possible so to regulate and pursue a seemingly desultory course of reading as to render it more truly beneficial than an apparently deeper and severer method of study. This world of ours is an old world, full of the works and records of many generations. We are in daily contact with the fragments of the past, with traces here and remains there which attract our attention, either for their intrinsic beauty or utility, or as indica- tions of the manners and habits of mankind in former ages. Among these records assuredly there are none which are of greatef interest or of higher value than the records, mere fragments though they may often be, of human history and human thought which are to be found in books. The poet tells us how we may so read the great book of nature that we may find in the trees, the stones, the running brooks, lessons which may profit as much as sermons. But while cordially accepting this teaching, we may observe that the trees and the brooks would hardly convey all those useful lessons to us if we had not a considerable knowledge of books to begin with. The lover of nature will find much revealed to him which the mere bookworm will wholly fail to notice ; but, on the other hand, a well- read man who can apply the teaching of his books to the objects which he has around him will profit far more than his illiterate companion. I do not, how- ever, desire to dwell on what may be considered little more than a truism. What I wish to point out to you is that so great is the mass of our book heritage that it is absolutely impossible for any one, and doubly im- EARL IDDESLEIGH. 365 possible for us, who have other engagements in life, to make himself acquainted with the hundredth part of it. So that our choice lies for the most part between ignorance of much that we would greatly like to know and that kind of acquaintance which is to be acquired only by desultory reading. It is with a view to give you some hints as to the effects of particular methods of study upon your habits and your character that I am now inviting your attention to systems of reading. In the first place, I would offer a plea in favour of desultory reading at least, of a certain amount of it because it leaves a man more at liberty to pursue the particular line which suits his taste and his capacity. This is, I suppose, the ground on which Dr. Johnson commended the practice. "I would not advise," he says, "a rigid adherence to a particular plan of study. I myself have never persisted in any plan for two days together. A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good." Bacon, too, in his well-known essay, tells that there are some books 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. Both these high authorities therefore recognize the propriety of leaving the student some latitude in his choice of books and in his method of reading. But while this freedom is largely to be respected, it ought not to be allowed to degenerate into laxity. The tendency of a great many young men and of old ones too, for that matter is not only to read widely, but also to read 366 EARL IDDESLEIGH. indolently, and indolent reading is as much to be discouraged as diligent reading is to be commended. I may leave to yourselves the question of the amount of time you ought to give to the current literature of the day. Much of it is addressed to particular classes of persons and has an interest for them which it does not possess for others. Much, on the other hand, consists of popular renderings of subjects, sometimes admirable and useful to all, sometimes, it is to be feared, of little value or interest for any one. Habit and a little trying experience will soon teach you to discern how much of a periodical is worth the expenditure of much time. You will not be long before you acquire some skill in the arts of dipping and of skipping. Of novels I must speak in somewhat the same strain. There is probably no form of idleness so seductive or so enervating to the mind as indiscriminate novel reading. Yet some of the best and most truly instructive works in the world belong to this class. From "Don Quixote " to "Waverley," from "The Vicar of Wakefield" to "The Caxtons," from Miss Austen or Miss Edgeworth or Miss Ferrier to Charlotte Bront or George Eliot, you will find what Horace found in those great Homeric poems humour and wisdom, and a keen insight into the strength and the weakness of the human character. Think what a mine of wealth we possess in the novels of your own great master. What depths he sounds, what humours he makes us acquainted with ! From Jcanie Deans sacrificing herself to her sisterly love in all but her uncompromising devotion, to truth to the picture of the family affection and overmastering grief CHARLES KINGSLRY. 367 in the hut of poor Steenie Mucklebackit, or again from the fidelity of Meg Merrilies to that of Caleb Balder- stone, you have in these and a hundred other instances examples of the great power of discerning genius to seize upon the secrets of the human heart and to reveal the inner meanings of the events which history records upon its surface, but which we do not feel that we really understand till some finer mind has clothed the dry bones with flesh and blood and presented them to us in appropriate raiment. Rectorial Address to the Students of Edinburgh University, Nov. 3, 1885 : 11 The Pleasures, the Dangers, ana the Uses of Desul- tory Reading." CHARLES KINGSLEY. 1819 1875. Except a living man, there is nothing more wonderful than a book ! a message to us from the dead from human souls whom we never saw, who lived, perhaps, thousands of miles away ; and yet these, on those little sheets of paper, speak to us, amuse us, vivify us, teach us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as brothers. . . . I say we ought to reverence books, to look at them as useful and mighty things. If they are good and true, whether they are about religion or politics, farming, trade, or medicine, they are the message of Christ, the maker of all things, the teacher of all truth, which He has put into the heart of some man to speak, that he may tell us what is good for our spirits, for our bodies, and for our country. Would to God that all here would make the rule never to look into an evil book I . . . A flood of books, newspapers, writings 368 CHARLES KINGSLEY. of all sorts, good and had, is spreading over the whole land, and young and old will read them. We cannot stop that ; we ought not ; it is God's ordinance. It is more ; it is God's grace and mercy that we have a free press in England liberty for every man, that if he have any of God's truth to tell, he may tell it out boldly, in books or otherwise. A blessing from God ! One which we should reverence, for God knows it was dearly bought Before our forefathers could buy it for us, many an honoured man left house and home to die on the battlefield or on the scaffold, fighting and wit- nessing for the right of every man to whom God's word comes, to speak God's word openly to his countrymen. A blessing, and an awful one ! for the same gate which lets in good, lets in evil. The law dare not silence bad books. It dare not root up the tares, lest it root up the wheat also. The men who died to buy us liberty knew that it was better to let in a thousand bad books than shut out one good one. We cannot, then, silence evil books, but we can turn away our eyes from them ; we can take care that what we read, and what we let others read, should be good and whole- some. Village Sermons : "On Books" As in men, so in books, the soul is all with which our souls must deal ; and the soul of the book is what- soever beautiful, and true, and noble, we can find in it. Hypatia. EDWIN P. WHIPPLE (AMERICAN CRITIC). b. 1819. Books lighthouses erected in the sea of time. JOHN RUSK IN. 369 JOHN RUSKIN. b. 1819. Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books; and valuable books should, in a civilized country, be within the reach of every one, printed in excellent form, for a just price ; but not in any vile, vulgar, or, by reason of smallness of type, physically injurious form, at a vile price. For we none of us need many books, and those which we need ought to be clearly printed, on the best paper, and strongly bound. And though we are, indeed, now, a wretched and poverty-struck nation, and hardly able to keep soul and body together, still, as no person in decent circumstances would put on his table confessedly bad wine, or bad meat without being ashamed, so he need not have on his shelves ill-printed or loosely and wretchedly-stitched books ; for, though few can be rich, yet every man who honestly exerts himself may, I think, still provide, for himself and his family, good shoes, good gloves, strong harness for his cart or carriage horses, and stout leather binding for his books. And I would urge upon every young man, as the beginning of his due and wise provision for his house- hold, to obtain as soon as he can, by the severest economy, a restricted, serviceable, and steadily how- ever slowly increasing, series of books for use through life; making his little library, of all the furniture in his room, the most studied and decorative piece ; every volume having its assigned place, like a little statue in its niche, and one of the earliest and strictest lessons to the children of the house being how to turn the pages Y 3J JOHN RUSK IN. of their own literary possessions lightly and deliberately, with no chance of tearing or dogs' ears. Preface to " Sesame and Lilies" But, granting that we had both the will and the sense to choose our friends well, how few of us have the power ! or, at least, how limited, for most, is the sphere of choice! Nearly all our associations are determined by chance or necessity; and restricted within a narrow circle. We cannot know whom we would ; and those whom we know, we cannot have at our side when we most need them. All the higher circles of human intelligence are, to those beneath, only momentarily and partially open. We may, by good fortune, obtain a glimpse of a great poet, and hear the sound of his voice; or put a question to a man of science, and be answered good-humouredly. We may intrude ten minutes' talk on a cabinet minister, answered probably with words worse than silence, being deceptive ; or snatch, once or twice in our lives, the privilege of throwing a bouquet in the path of a Princess, or arresting the kind glance of a Queen. And yet these momentary chances we covet ; and spend our years, and passions, and powers in pursuit of little more than these ; while, meantime, there is a society continually open to us, of people who will talk to us as long as we like, whatever our rank or occupa- tion; talk to us in the best words they can choose, and with thanks if we listen to them. And this society, because it is so numerous and so gentle, and can be kept waiting round us all day long, not to grant audience, but to gain it; kings and statesmen lingering JOHN RUSKIN. 371 patiently in those plainly furnished and narrow ante- rooms, our book-case shelves, we make no account of that company, perhaps never listen to a word they would say, all day long ! You may tell me, perhaps, or think within your- selves, that the apathy with which we regard this company of the noble, who are praying us to listen to them, and the passion with which we pursue the com- pany, probably of the ignoble, who despise us, or who have nothing to teach us, are grounded in this, that we can see the faces of the living men, and it is them- selves, and not their sayings, with which we desire to become familiar. But it is not so. Suppose you never were to see their faces ; suppose you could be put behind a screen in the statesman's cabinet, or the prince's chamber, would you not be glad to listen to their words, though you were forbidden to advance beyond the screen ? And when the screen is only a little less, folded in two, instead of four, and you can be hidden behind the cover of the two boards that bind a book, and listen, all day long, not to the casual talk, but to the studied, determined, chosen addresses of the wisest of men ; this station of audience, and honourable privy council, you despise! . . . Will you go and gossip with your housemaid, or your stable boy, when you may talk with queens and kings; or flatter yourselves that it is with any worthy con- sciousness of your own claims to respect that you jostle with the common crowd for entree here, and audience there, when all the while this eternal court is open to you, with its society wide as the world, multitudinous as its days, the chosen, and the mighty, of every place yn yoHff R us KIN. and time ? Into that you may enter always ; in that you may take fellowship and rank according to your wish ; from that, once entered into it, you can never be outcast but by your own fault ; by your aristocracy of companionship there, your own inherent aristocracy will be assuredly tested, and the motives with which you strive to take high place in the society of the living, measured, as to all the truth and sincerity that are in them, by the place you desire to take in this company of the Dead. "The place you desire," and the place you fit yourself for, I must also say ; because, observe, this court of the past differs from all living aristocracy in this : it is open to labour and to merit, but to nothing else. No wealth will bribe, no name overawe, no artifice deceive, the guardian of those Elysian gates. In the deep sense, no vile or vulgar person ever enters there. At the portieres of that silent Faubourg St. Germain, there is but brief question, " Do you deserve to enter?" "Pass. Do you ask to be the companion of nobles? Make yourself noble, and you shall be. Do you long for the conversation of the wise ? Learn to understand it, and you shall hear it. But on other terms? no. If you will not rise to us, we cannot stoop to you. The living lord may assume courtesy, the living philosopher explain his thought to you with con- siderable pain ; but here we neither feign nor interpret ; you must rise to the level of our thoughts if you would be gladdened by them, and share our feelings, if you would recognise our presence." . . . I say first we have despised literature. What do we, as a nation, care about books? How much do JOHN R US KIN. 37) you think we spend altogether on our libraries, public or private, as compared with what we spend on out horses ? If a man spends lavishly on his library, you call him mad a biblio-maniac. But you never call any one a horse-maniac, though men ruin themselves every day by their horses, and you do not hear of people ruining themselves by their books. Or, to go lower still, how much do you think the contents of the bookshelves of the United Kingdom, public and private, would fetch, as compared with the contents of its wine cellars ? What position would its expenditure on litera- ture take, as compared with its expenditure on luxurious eating ? We talk of food for the mind, as of food for the body : now a good book contains such food inex- haustibly ; it is a provision for life, and for the best part of us ; yet how long most people would look at the best book before they would give the price of a large turbot for it ! Though there have been men who have pinched their stomachs and bared their backs to buy a book, whose libraries were cheaper to them, I think, in the end than most men's dinners are. We are few of us put to such trial, and more the pity; for, indeed, a precious thing is all the more precious to us if it has been won by work or economy ; and if public libraries were half as costly as public dinners, or books cost the tenth part of what bracelets do, even foolish men and women might sometimes suspect there was good in reading, as well as in munching and sparkling ; whereas the very cheapness of literature is making even wise people forget that if a book is worth reading, it is worth buying. No book is worth any- thing which is not worth muck; nor is it serviceable 374 JOHN RUSK IK. 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 weapon he needs in an armoury, or a housewife bring the spice she needs from her store. Bread of flour is good ; but there is bread, sweet as honey, if we would eat it, in a good book ; and the family must be poor indeed which once in their lives, cannot, for such multipliable barley-loaves, pay their baker's bill. We call ourselves a rich nation, and we are filthy and foolish enough to thumb each other's books out of circulating libraries 1 . . . Nevertheless I hope it will not be long before royal or national libraries will be founded in every con- siderable city, with a royal series of books in them ; the same series in every one of them, chosen books, the best in every kind, prepared for that national series in the most perfect way possible; their text printed all on leaves of equal size, broad of margin, and divided into pleasant volumes, light in the hand, beautiful, and strong, and thorough as examples of binders' work; and that these great libraries will be accessible to all clean and orderly persons at all times of the day and evening ; strict law being enforced for this cleanliness and quietness. I could shape for you other plans, for art galleries, and for natural history galleries, and for many precious, many, it seems to me, needful, things ; but this book plan is the easiest and needfullest, and would prove a considerable tonic to what we call our British constitu- tion, which has fallen dropsical of late, and has an evil thirst, and evil hunger, and wants healthier feeding. JOHN RUSK IN. 373 You have got its com laws repealed for it ; try if you cannot get corn laws established for it, dealing in a better bread; bread made of that old enchanted Arabian grain, the Sesame, which opens doors; doors, not of robbers', but of Kings' Treasuries. Friends, the treasuries of true kings are the streets of their cities; and the gold they gather, which for others is as the mire of the streets, changes itself, for them and their people, into a crystalline pavement for evermore. Sesame and Lilies : Of King? Treasuries. I know many persons who have the purest taste in literature, and yet false taste in art, and it is a pheno- menon which puzzles me not a little; but I have never known any one with false taste in books, and true taste in pictures. It is also of the greatest importance to you, not only for art's sake, but for all kinds of sake, in these days of book deluge, to keep out of the salt swamps of literature, and live on a little rocky island of your own, with a spring and a lake in it, pure and good. I cannot, of course, suggest the choice of your library to you, every several mind needs different books ; but there are some books which we all need, and assuredly, if you read Homer,* Plato, ^Eschylus, Herodotus, Dante, t Shakspeare, and Spenser, as much * Chapman's, if not the original f Carey's or Cay ley's, if not the original. I do not know which are the best translations of Plato. Herodotus and ./Kschylus can only be read in the original. It may seem strange that I name books like these for "beginners:" but all the greatest books contain food for all ages; and an intelligent and rightly bred youth or girl ought to enjoy much, even in Plato, by the time they are fifteen or sixteen. 37 JOHN RUSK IN. as you ought, you will not require wide enlargement of shelves to right and left of them for purposes of perpetual study. Among modern books, avoid gene- rally magazine and review literature. Sometimes it may contain a useful abridgment or a wholesome piece of criticism; but the chances are ten to one it will either waste your time or mislead you. If you want to understand any subject whatever, read the best book upon it you can hear of; not a review of the book. If you don't like the first book you try, seek for another ; but do not hope ever to understand the subject without pains, by a reviewer's help. Avoid especially that class of literature which has a knowing tone; it is the most poisonous of all. Every good book, or piece of book, is full of admiration and awe ; it may contain firm assertion, or stern satire, but it never sneers coldly, nor asserts haughtily, and it always leads you to reverence or love something with your whole heart. It is not always easy to distinguish the satire of the venomous race of books from the satire of the noble and pure ones ; but in general you may notice that the cold-blooded Crustacean and Batrachian books will sneer at sentiment ; and the warm-blooded, human books, at sin. Then, in general, the more you can restrain your serious reading to reflective or lyric poetry, history, and natural history, avoiding fiction and the drama, the healthier your mind will become. Of modern poetry keep to Scott, Wordsworth, Keats, Crabbe, Tennyson, the two Brownings, Lowell, Longfellow, and Coventry Patmore, whose "Angel in the House" is a most finished piece of writing, and the sweetest JOHN RUSK IN. 377 analysis we possess of quiet modem domestic feeling ; while Mrs. Browning's "Aurora Leigh" is, as far as I know, the greatest poem which the century has pro- duced in any language. Cast Coleridge at once aside, as sickly and useless ; and Shelley, as shallow and verbose ; Byron, until your taste is fully formed, and you are able to discern the magnificence in him from the wrong. Never read bad or common poetry, nor write any poetry yourself ; there is, perhaps, rather too much than too little in the world already. Of reflective prose, read chiefly Bacon, Johnson, and Helps, Carlyle is hardly to be named as a writer for "beginners," because his teaching, though to some of us vitally necessary, may to others be hurtful. If you understand and like him, read him ; if he offends you, you are not yet ready for him, and perhaps may never be so ; at all events, give him up, as you would sea-bathing if you found it hurt you, till you are stronger. Of fiction, read Sir Charles Grandison, Scott's novels, Miss Edge worth's, and, if you are a young lady, Madame de Genlis', the French Miss Edgeworth ; making these, I mean, your constant companions. Of course you must, or will, read other books for amusement, once or twice ; but you will find that these have an element of perpetuity in them, existing in nothing else of their kind ; while their peculiar quietness and repose of manner will also be of the greatest value in teaching you to feel the same characters in art. Read little at a time, trying to feel interest in little things, and reading not so much for the sake of the story as to get acquainted with the 378 JOHN RUSKIN. pleasant people into whose company these writers bring you. A common book will often give you much amusement, but it is only a noble book which will give you dear friends. Remember also that it is of less importance to you in your earlier years, that the books you read should be clever than that they should be right. I do not mean oppressively or repulsively instructive ; but that the thoughts they express should be just, and the feelings they excite generous. It is not necessary for you to read the wittiest or the most suggestive books ; it is better, in general, to hear what is already known, and may be simply said. Much of the literature of the present day, though good to be read by persons of ripe age, has a tendency to agitate rather than confirm, and leaves its readers too fre- quently in a helpless or hopeless indignation, the worst possible state into which the mind of youth can be thrown. It may, indeed, become necessary for you, as you advance in life, to set your hand to things that need to be altered in the world, or apply your heart chiefly to what must be pitied in it, or condemned ; but, for a young person, the safest temper is one of reverence, and the safest place one of obscurity. Certainly at present, and perhaps through all your life, your teachers are wisest when they make you content in quiet virtue, and that literature and art are best for you which point out, in common life and familar things, the objects for hopeful labour, and for humble love. The Elements of Drawing, in Three Letters to Beginners ; Appendix II. : "Things to bt Studied," Second Edition. 12*57. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 379 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, b. 1819. The very gnarliest and hardest of hearts has some musical strings in it. But they are tuned differently in every one of us, so that the selfsame strain, which wakens a thrill of sympathetic melody in one, may leave another quite silent and untouched. For what- ever I love, my delight amounts to an extravagance. There are verses which I cannot read without tears of exultation which to others are merely indifferent. Those simple touches scattered here and there, by all great writers, which make me feel that I, and every most despised and outcast child of God that breath.es, have a common humanity with those glorious spirits, overpower me. Poetry has a key which unlocks some more inward cabinet of my nature than is accessible to any other power. I cannot explain it or account for it, or say what faculty it appeals to. The chord which vibrates strongly becomes blurred and invisible in pro- portion to the intensity of its impulse. Often the mere rhyme, the cadence and sound of the words, awaken this strange feeling in me. Not only do all the happy associations of my early life, that before lay scattered, take beautiful shapes, like iron dust at the approach of the magnet; but something dim and vague beyond these, moves itself in me with the uncertain sound of a far-off sea. My sympathy with the remotest eld becomes that of a bystander and an actor. . . . The grand symphony of Wordsworth's Ode rolls through me, and I tremble, as the air does with the gathering thunders of the organ. My clay seems to have a sympathy with the mother earth whence it was taken, to have a memory of all that our orb has ever 380 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. witnessed of great and noble, of sorrowful and glad. With the wise Samian, I can touch the mouldering buckler of Euphorbus and claim an interest in it deeper than that of its antiquity. I have been the bosom friend of Leander and Romeo. I seem to go behind Musaeus and Shakspeare, and to get my intelligence at first hand. Sometimes in my sorrow, a line from Spenser steals in upon my memory as if by some vitality and external volition of its own, like a blast from the distant trump of a knight pricking towards the court of Faerie, and I am straightway lifted out of that sadness and shadow into the sunshine of a previous and long-agone experience. Often, too, this seemingly lawless species of association overcomes me with a sense of sadness. Seeing a waterfall or a forest for the first time, I have a feeling of something gone, a vague regret, that in some former state, I have drank up the wine of their beauty, and left to the defrauded present only the muddy lees. Yet, again, what divine over-compensation, when the same memory (shall I call it ?), or phantasy, lets fall a drop of its invisible elixir into my cup, and I behold to-day, which before showed but forlorn and beggared, clothed in the royal purple, and with the golden sceptre of a line of majestical ancestry I Conversations on Some of the Old Poets. 1844. One of the most delightful books in my father's library was White's Natural History of Selborne. For me it has rather gained in charm with years. I used to read it without knowing the secret of the pleasure I found in it, but as I grow older I begin to JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 381 detect some of the simple expedients of this natural magic. Open the book where you will, it takes you out of doors. In our broiling July weather one can walk out with this genially garrulous Fellow of Oriel, and find refreshment instead of fatigue. You have no trouble in keeping abreast of him as he ambles along on his hobby-horse, now pointing to a pretty view, now stopping to watch the motions of a bird or an insect, or to bag a specimen for the Honourable Daines Barrington or Mr. Pennant. In simplicity of taste and natural refinement he reminds one of Walton ; in tenderness toward what he would have called the brute creation, of Cowper. . . . Since I first read him, I have walked over some of his favourite haunts, but I still see them through his eyes rather than by any recollection of actual and personal vision. The book has also the delightfulness of absolute leisure. Mr. White seems never to have had any harder work to do than to study the habits of his feathered fellow- townsfolk, or to watch the ripening of his peaches on the wall. His volumes are the journal of Adam in Paradise, " Annihilating all that's made To a green thought in a green shade." It is positive rest only to look into that garden of his. It is vastly better than to See great Diocletian walk In the Salonian garden's noble shade, for thither ambassadors intrude to bring with them the noises of Rome, while here the world hai no entrance. No rumour of the revolt of the American Colonies 3 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL seems to have reached him. "The natural term of an hog's life " has more interest for him than that of an empire. Burgoyne may surrender and welcome ; of what consequence is that compared with the fact that we can explain the odd tumbling of rooks in the air by their turning over " to scratch themselves with one claw?" All the couriers in Europe spurring rowel-deep make no stir in Mr. White's little Chart- reuse ; but the arrival of the house-martin a day earlier or later than last year is a piece of news worth sending express to all his correspondents. Another secret charm of this book is its inadvertent humour, so much the more delicious because unsuspected by the author.* My Study Windows: "My Garden Acquaintance" Then, warmly walled with books, While my wood-fire supplies the sun's defect, Whispering old forest -sagas in its dreams, I take my May down from the happy shelf Where perch the world's rare song-birds in a row, Waiting my choice to open with full breast, And beg an alms of spring-time, ne'er denied In-doors by vernal Chaucer, whose fresh woods Throb thick with merle and mavis all the year. * The compiler quotes the passage given above with no ordinary pleasure. When a youth, he was so smitten with the charms of " The Natural History of Sclborne " which had been lent to him by a friend that he resolved to transcribe the entire work, before returning it to its owner. By this labour of love he became possessor of a copy which he could call his own, and thenceforth every rural walk or excursion was made more enjoyable, from his familiarity with its contents. In those early days he could truly and gratefully say of its pages Jfrnoctattt ntbis, fere- grinantur, rusticantur. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 383 . . Nay, I think Merely to bask and ripen is sometimes The student's wiser business ; the brain That forages all climes to line its cells, Ranging both worlds on lightest wings of wish, Will not distil the juices it has sucked To the sweet substance of pellucid thought, Except for him who hath the secret learned To mix his blood with sunshine, and to take The winds into his pulses. Unjfr Therefore with thee I love to read Our brave old poets : at thy touch how stirs Life in the withered words ! how swift recede Time's shadows! and how glows again Through its dead mass the incandescent verse, As when upon the anvils of the brain It glittering lay, cyclopically wrought By the fast-throbbing hammers of the poet's thought ! What warm protection dost thou bend Round curtained talk of friend with friend, While the gray snow-storm, held aloof, To softest outline rounds the roof, Or the rude North with baffled strain Shoulders the frost-starred window-panel Now the kind nymph to Bacchus borne By Morpheus' daughter, she that seems Gifted upon her natal mom By him with fire, by her with dreams, Nicotia, dearer to the Muse Than all the grape's bewildering juice, 384 WALT WHITMAN. We worship, unforbid of thee ; And, as her incense floats and curls In airy spires and wayward whirls, Or poises on its tremulous stalk A flower of frailest revery, So winds and loiters, idly free, The current of unguided talk, Now laughter-rippled, and now caught In smooth, dark pools of deeper thought. Meanwhile thou mellowest every word, A sweetly unobtrusive third ; For thou hast magic beyond wine, To unlock natures each to each ; The unspoken thought thou canst divine ; Thou fill'st the pauses of the speech With whispers that to dream-land reach, And frozen fancy-springs unchain In Arctic outskirts of the brain ; Sun of all inmost confidences ! To thy rays doth the heart unclose Its formal calyx of pretences, That close against rude day's offences, And open its shy midnight rose. A Winter- Evening Hymn to My Fire. WALT WHITMAN, b. 1819. Without doubt, some of the richest and most powerful and populous communities of the antique world, and some of the grandest personalities and events, have, to after and present times, left themselves entirely unbequeathed. Doubtless, greater than any WALT WHITMAN. 385 that have come down to us, were among those lands, heroisms, persons, that have not come down to us at all, even by name, date, or location. Others have arrived safely, as from voyages over wide, centuries- stretching seas. The little ships, the miracles that have buoyed them, and by incredible chances safely conveyed them, (or the best of them, their meaning and essence,) over long wastes, darkness, lethargy, ignorance, &c., have been a few inscriptions a few immortal compositions, small in size, yet compassing what measureless values of reminiscence, contemporary portraitures, manners, idioms and beliefs, with deepest inference, hint and thought, to tie and touch forever the old, new body, and the old, new soul. These ! and still these ! bearing the freight so dear dearer than pride dearer than love. All the best experience of humanity, folded, saved, freighted to us here ! Some of these tiny ships we call Old and New Testament, Homer, Eschylus, Plato, Juvenal, &c. Precious minims ! I think, if we were forced to choose, rather than have you, and the likes of you, and what belongs to, and has grown of you, blotted out and gone, we could better afford, appalling as that would be, to lose all actual ships, this day fastened by wharf, or floating on wave, and see them, with all their cargoes, scuttled and sent to the bottom. Gathered by geniuses of city, race, or age, and put by them in highest of art's forms, namely, the literary form, the peculiar combinations, and the outshows of that city, age, or race, its particular modes of the universal attributes and passions, its faiths, heroes, lovers and gods, wars, traditions, struggles, crimes, z 386 WALT WHITMAN. emotions, joys, (or the subtle spirit of these,) having been passed on to us to illumine our own selfhood, and its experiences what they supply, indispensable and highest, if taken away, nothing else in all the world's boundless store-houses could make up to us, or ever again return. For us, along the great highways of time, those monuments stand those forms of majesty and beauty. For us those beacons burn through all the nights. Unknown Egyptians, graving hieroglyphs ; Hindus, with hymn and apothegm and endless epic ; Hebrew prophet, with spirituality, as in flashes of lightning, conscience, like red-hot iron, plaintive songs and screams of vengeance for tyrannies and enslavement ; Christ, with bent head, brooding love and peace, like a dove ; Greek, creating eternal shapes of physical and esthetic proportion ; Roman, lord of satire, the sword, and the codex ; of the figures, some far-off and veiled, others nearer and visible ; Dante, stalking with lean form, nothing but fibre, not a grain of superfluous flesh ; Angelo, and the great painters, architects, musicians ; rich Shakspeare, luxuriant as the sun, artist and singer of Feudalism in its sunset, with all the gorgeous colours, owner thereof, and using them at will ; and so to such as German Kant and Hegel, where they, though near us, leaping over the ages, sit again, impassive, imperturbable, like the Egyptian gods. Of these, and the like of these, is it too much, indeed, to return to our favourite figure, and view them as orbs and systems of orbs, moving in free paths in the spaces of that other heaven, the kosmic intellect, the soul ? WALT WHITMAN. 387 The altitude of literature and poetry has always been Religion and always will be. The Indian Vedas, the Nakas of Zoroaster, The Talmud of the Jews, the Old Testament also, the Gospel of Christ and his disciples, Plato's works, the Koran of Mohammed, the Edda of Snorro, and so on toward our own day, to Sweden- borg, and to the invaluable contributions of Leibnitz, Kant, and Hegel, these, with such poems only in which, (while singing well of persons and events, of the passions of man, and the shows of the material universe,) the religious tone, the consciousness of mystery, the recognition of the future, of the unknown, of Deity, over and under all, and of the divine purpose, are never absent, but indirectly give tone to all exhibit literature's real heights and elevations, tower- ing up like the great mountains of the earth. The process of reading is not a half-sleep, but in the highest sense, an exercise, a gymnast's struggle; that the reader is to do something for himself, must be on the alert, must himself or herself construct indeed the poem, argument, history, metaphysical essay the text furnishing the hints, the clue, the start or framework. Not the book needs so much to be the complete thing, but the reader of the book does. That were to make a nation of supple and athletic minds, well-trained, in- tuitive, used to depend on themselves, and not on a few coteries of writers. . . . This America of ours is the daughter, not by any means of the British isles exclusively, but of the Continent, and all Continents. ... Of the great poems of Asian antiquity, the Indian epics, the Book of Job, 3 88 "GEORGE ELIOT." the Ionian Iliad, the unsurpassedly simple, loving, perfect idyls of the life and death of Christ, in the New Testament, and along down, of most of the char- acteristic imaginative or romantic relics of the con- tinent, as the Cid, Cervantes' Don Quixote, &c., I should say they substantially adjust themselves to us, and, far off as they are, accord curiously with our bed and board, to-day, in 1870, in Brooklyn, Washington, Canada, Ohio, Texas, California and with our notions, both of seriousness and of fun, and our standards of heroism, manliness, and even the Democratic require- ments. I cannot dismiss English, or British imaginative literature without the cheerful name of Walter Scott. In my opinion he deserves to stand next to Shak- speare. Both are, in their best and absolute quality, continental, not British both teeming, luxuriant, true to their lands and origin, namely, feudality, yet ascend- ing into universalism. Then, I should say, both deserve to be finally considered and construed as shining suns, whom it were ungracious to pick spots upon. Democratic Vistas. (Author's Edition. CarnJen, New Jersey.) 1876. MARIAN EVANS (GEORGE ELIOT). 1820 1881. At last Maggie's eyes glanced down on the books that lay on the window-shelf, and she half forsook her reverie to turn over listlessly the leaves of the "Portrait Gallery," but she soon pushed this aside to examine "GEORGE ELIOT." 389 the little row of books tied together with string. " Beauties of the Spectator," " Rasselas," " Economy of Human Life," "Gregory's Letters" she knew the sort of matter that was inside all these : the ' ' Christian Year " that seemed to be a hymn-book, and she laid it down again ; but Thomas & Ktmpis ? the name had come across her in her reading, and she felt the satisfaction, which every one knows, of getting some ideas to attach to a name that strays solitary in the memory. She took up the little, old, clumsy book with some curiosity : it had the corners turned down in many places, and some hand, 'now for ever quiet, had made at certain passages strong pen-and-ink marks, long since browned by time. Maggie turned from leaf to leaf, and read where the quiet hand pointed . . . " Know that the love of thyself doth hurt thee more than anything in the world. ... If thou seekest this or that, and wouldst be here or there to enjoy thy own will and pleasure, thou shall never be quiet nor free from care : for in everything somewhat will be wanting, and in every place there will be some that will cross thee. . . . Both above and below, which way soever thou dost turn thee, everywhere thou shalt find the Cross : and everywhere of necessity thou must have patience, if thou wilt have inward peace, and enjoy an everlasting crown. . . ." A strange thrill of awe passed through Maggie while she read, as if she had been awakened in the night by a strain of solemn music, telling of beings whose souls had been astir while hers was in stupor. She went on from one brown mark to another, where the quiet hand seemed to point, hardly conscious that she was 390 "GEORGE ELIOT." reading seeming rather to listen while a low voice said ". . . I have often said unto thee, and now again I say the same, Forsake thyself, resign thyself, and thou shall enjoy much inward peace. . . . Then shall all vain imaginations, evil perturbations, and superfluous cares fly away; then shall immoderate fear leave thee, and inordinate love shall die." . . . She read on and on in the old book, de- vouring eagerly the dialogues with the invisible Teacher, the pattern of sorrow, the source of all strength ; returning to it after she had been called away, and reading till the sun went down behind the willows. . . . She knew nothing of doctrines and systems of mysticism or quietism ; but this voice out of the far-off middle ages was the direct communication of a human soul's belief and experience, and came to Maggie as an unquestioned message. I suppose that is the reason why the small old- fashioned book, for which you need only pay sixpence at a book-stall, works miracles to this day, turning bitter waters into sweetness : while expensive sermons and treatises, newly issued, leave all things as they were before. It was written down by a hand that waited for the heart's prompting ; it is the chronicle of a solitary, hidden anguish, struggle, trust and triumph not written on velvet cushions to teach endurance to those who are treading with bleeding feet on the stones. And so it remains to all time a lasting record of human needs and human consolations : the voice of a brother who, ages ago, felt and suffered and re- nounced in the cloister, perhaps with serge gown and tonsured head, with much chanting and long fasts, GEORGE DAWSON. 391 and with a fashion of speech different from ours but under the same silent far-off heavens, and with the same passionate desires, the same strivings, the same failures, the same weariness. The Mill on the Floss, Rook iv., Chap. 3. GEORGE DAWSON. 1821 1876. The great consulting room of a wise man is a library. When I am in perplexity about We, I have but to come here, and, without fee or reward, I commune with the wisest souls that God has blest the world with. If I want a discourse on immortality Plato comes to my help. If I want to know the human heart Shakspearc opens all its chambers. Whatever be my perplexity or doubt I know exactly the great man to call to me, and he comes in the kindest way, he listens to my doubts and tells me his convictions. So that a library may be regarded as the solemn chamber in which a man can take counsel with all that have been wise and great and good and glorious amongst the men that have gone before him. If we come down for a moment and look at the bare and immediate utilities of a library we find that here a man gets himself ready for his calling, arms himself for his profession, finds out the facts that are to determine his trade, prepares himself for his examination. The utilities of it are endless and price- less. It is too a place of pastime ; for man has no amusement more innocent, more sweet, more gracious, more elevating, and more fortifying than he can find in a library. If he be fond of books, his fondness will discipline him as well as amuse him. . . . 39 2 GEORGE DAWSON. I go into my library as to a hermitage and it is one of the best hermitages the world has. What matters the scoff of the fool when you are safely amongst the great men of the past ? How little of the din of this stupid world enters into a library, how hushed are the foolish voices of the world's hucksterings, barterings, and bickerings ! How little the scorn of high or low, or the mad cries of party spirit can touch the man who in this best hermitage of human life draws around him the quietness of the dead and the solemn sanctities of ancient thought ! Thus, whether I take it as a question of utility, of pastime or of high discipline I find the library with but one or two exceptions the most blessed place that man has fashioned or framed. The man who is fond of books is usually a man of lofty thought, of elevated opinions. A library is the strengthener of all that is great in life and the repeller of what is petty and mean ; and half the gossip of society would perish if the books that are truly worth reading were but read. When we look through the houses of a large part of the middle classes of this country we find there every- thing but what there ought most to be. There are no books in them worth talking of. If a question arises of geography they have no atlases. If the question be when a great man was bom they cannot help you. They can give you a gorgeous bed, with four posts, marvellous adornments, luxurious hangings and lac- quered shams all round; they can give you dinners ad nauseam and wine that one can, or cannot, honestly praise. But useful books are almost the last things that are to be found there ; and when the mind is empty of those things that books can alone fill it with, then GEORGE DAWSON. 393 the seven devils of pettiness, frivolity, fashionablcncss, gentility, scandal, small slander and the chronicling of small beer come in and take possession of the mind. Half this nonsense would be dropped if men would only understand the elevating influences of their com- muning constantly with the lofty thoughts and the high resolves of men of old times. But as we cannot dwell upon all the uses and beauties of a library, let us pass on to see that this is a Corpora- tion Library, and in that we see one of the greatest and happiest things about it, for a library, supported, as this is, by rates and administered by a Corporation, is the expression of a conviction on your part (hat a town like this exists for moral and intellectual purposes. It is a proclamation that a great community like this is not to be looked upon as a fortuitous concourse of human atoms, or as a miserable knot of vipers strug- gling in a pot, each aiming to get his head above the other in the fierce struggle of competition. It is a declaration that the Corporation of a great town like this has not done all its duty when it has put in action a set of ingenious contrivances for cleaning and lighting the streets, for breaking stones, for mending ways ; and has not fulfilled its highest functions even when it has given the people of the town the best system of drainage though that is not yet attained. Beyond all these things the Corporation of a borough like this has every function to discharge that is discharged by the master of a household to minister to men by every office, that of the priest alone excepted. And mark this : I would rather a great book or a great picture fell 394 GEORGE DAWSON. into the hands of a Corporation than into the hands of an individual, for great and noble as has been the spirit of many of our collectors, when a great picture is in the hands of a nobleman however generous, or of a gentleman however large-hearted he may be, he will have his heirs, narrow-minded fools perhaps, or a suc- cessor pitifully selfish and small ; and this great picture that God never intended to be painted for the delight of but one noble family, or the small collection of little people it gathers around it, may be shut >ip through the whim of its owner or the caprice of its master, or in self-defence against the wanton injury that some fool may have done it. But the moment you put great works into the hands of a Corporate body like this you secure permanence of guardianship in passionless keeping. A Corporation cannot get out of temper, or if it does it recovers itself quickly. A Corporation could not shut up this Library. It is open for ever. It is under the protection of the English law in all its majesty. Its endurance will be the endurance of the English nation. Therefore when a Corporation takes into its keeping a great picture or a great collection of books, that picture and those books are given to the multitude and are put into the best keeping, the keeping of those who have not the power, even if they had the will, to destroy. The time of private ownership has, I hope, nearly come to an end not that I would put an end to it by law or by any kind of violence; but I hope we shall in the open market bid against the nobility, gentry, and private collectors, for it is a vexation when a great picture or a great collection of books is shut up in a private boose. . . . GEORGE DAWSON. yn If I had my will there should not be a single cheap book in this room. If you want cheap books buy them. You can have "Waverley" for sixpence and the choice of two editions. The object of a Library like this is to buy dear books to buy books that the lover of books cannot afford to buy; to put at the service of the poorest, books that the richest can scarce afford. . . . The object is to bring together in this room a supply of what the private man cannot compass, and what the wisest man only wants to put to occasional use. One of the great offices of a Reference Library like this is to keep at the service of everybody what everybody cannot keep at home for his own service. It is not convenient to every man to have a very large telescope ; I may wish to study the skeleton of a whale but my house is not large enough to hold one ; I may be curious in micro- scopes but I may have no money to buy one of my own. But provide an institution like this and here is the telescope, here is the microscope, and here the skeleton of the whale. Here are the great picture, the mighty book, the ponderous atlas, the great histories of the world. They are here always ready for the use of every man without his being put to the cost of purchase or the discomfort of giving them house room. Here are books that we only want to consult occasionally and which are very costly. These are the books proper for a Library like this mighty cyclo- paedias, prodigious charts, books that only Governments can publish. It is almost the only place where I would avoid cheapness as a plague and run away from mean printing and petty pages with disgust. . . . 396 CHARLES BUXTON. There are few things, Mr. Mayor, that I would more willingly share with you than the desire that, in days to come, when some student, in a fine rapture of grati- tude, as he sits in this room, may for a moment call to mind the names of the men, who by speech and by labour, by the necessary agitation or the continuous work, took part in founding this Library. There are few places I would rather haunt after my death than this room, and there are few things I would have my children remember more than this, that this man spoke the discourse at the opening of this glorious Library, the first-fruits of a clear understanding that a great town exists to discharge towards the people of that town the duties that a great nation exists to discharge towards the people of that nation that a town exists here by the grace of God, that a great town is a solemn organism through which should flow, and in which should be shaped, all the highest, loftiest, and truest ends of man's intellectual and moral nature. . . . This Corporation has undertaken the highest duty that is possible to it : it has made provision for its people for all its people and it has made a provision of God's greatest and best gifts unto man. Inaugural Address, on the Opening of the Birmingham Free Reference Library, Oct. 26, 1 866. CHARLES BUXTON. 1822 1871. Readers abuse writers and say their writing is wretched stuff, stale nonsense, and so on. But what might not writers justly say of their readers 1- What poor, dull, indolent, feeble, careless minds do they ROBERT LElGHTOtf. 397 bring to deal with thoughts whose excellence lies deep ! A reader's highest achievement is to succeed in forming a true and dear conception of the author from his works. . . . We are richer than we think. And now and then it is not a bad thing to make a catalogue raisonnc of the things that are helping to make us happy. It is astonishing how long the list is. The poorest of us has property, the value of which is almost boundless ; but there is not one of us who might not so till that property as to make it yield tenfold more. Our books, gardens, families, society, friends, talk, music, art, poetry, scenery, might all bring forth to us far greater wealth of enjoyment and improvement if we tried to squeeze the very utmost out of them. Notes of Thought. ROBERT LEIGHTON. 1822 1869. Books. I cannot think the glorious world of mind, Embalm'd in books, which I can only see In patches, though I read my moments blind, Is to be lost to me. I have a thought that, as we live elsewhere, So will these dear creations of the brain ; That what I lose unread, 111 find, and there Take up my joy again. O then the bliss of blisses, to be freed From all the wonts by which the world is driven ; With liberty and endless time to read The libraries of Heaven ! )9 8 ROBER T LEIGHTON. Books and Thoughts. , $ As round these well-selected shelves one looks, Remembering years of reading leisure flown, It kills all hope to think how many books He still must leave unknown. But when to thoughts, instead of books, he comes, Request grows less for what he cannot read, If he reflects how many learne'd tomes One thought may supersede. So, let him be a toiling, unread mnn, And the idea, like an added sense, Of God informing all his life, he can With many a book dispense. The fine conviction, too, that Death, like Sleep, Wakes into higher dreams this thought will brook Denial of the libraries, and keep The key of many a book. Recordt and otker Poenu> For Many Books. I would that we were only readers now, And wrote no more, or in rare heats of soul Sweated out thoughts when the o'er-burdened brow Was powerless to control. Then would all future books be small and few, And, freed of dross, the soul's refined gold ; So should we have a chance to read the new, Yet not forego the old. But as it is, Lord help us, in this flood Of daily papers, books and magazines ! We scramble blind as reptiles in the mud, And know not what it meant. 7- A. LANGPORD. 399 Is it the myriad spawn of vagrant tides, Whose growth would overwhelm both sea and shore, Yet often necessary loss, provides Sufficient and no more ? Is it the broadcast sowing of the seeds, And from the stones, the thorns, and fertile soil, Only enough to serve the world's great needs Rewards the sower's toil ? Is it all needed for the varied mind ? Gives not the teeming press a book too much Not one, but hi its dense neglect shall find Some needful heart to touch? Ah, who can say that even this blade of grass No mission has superfluous as it looks? Then wherefore feel oppressed I cry, Alas There are too many books 1 Reuben, and other Poems, J. A. LANGFORD. b. 1823. The love of books is a love which requires neither justification, apology, nor defence. It is a good thing in itself: a possession to be thankful for, to rejoice over, to be proud of, and to sing praises for. With this love in his heart no man is ever poor, ever without friends, or the means of making his life lovely, beautiful, and happy. In prosperity or adversity, in joy or sorrow, in health or sickness, in solitude or crowded towns, books are never out of place, never without the power to comfort, console, and bless. They add 4 M y. A. LANGFORD. wealth to prosperity, and make sweeter the sweet uses of adversity ; they intensify joy and take the sting from, or give a bright relief to sorrow ; they are the glorifiers of health and the blessed consolers of sickness; they people solitude with the creations of thought, the children of fancy, and the offsprings of imagination, and to the busy haunts of men they lend a purpose and an aim, and tend to keep the heart unspotted in the world. It is better to possess this love than to inherit a kingdom, for it brings wealth which money can never buy, and which power is impotent to secure. It is better than gold, " yea, than much fine gold," and splendid palaces and costly raiment. No possession can surpass, or even equal, a good library to the lover of books. Here are treasured up for his daily use and delectation riches which increase by being consumed, and pleasures which never cloy. It is a realm as large as the universe, every part of which is peopled by spirits who lay before his feet their precious spoils as his lawful tribute. For him the poets sing, the philo- sophers discourse, the historians unfold the wonderful march of life, and the searchers of nature reveal the secrets and mysteries of creation. No matter what his rank or position may be, the lover of books is the richest and the happiest of the children of men. . . . The only true equalisers in the world are books; the only treasure-house open to all comers is a library ; the only wealth which will not decay is know- ledge ; the only jewel which you can carry beyond the grave is wisdom. To live in this equality, to share in these treasures, to possess this wealth, and to secure this jewel may be the happy lot of every one. All J. A. LANGPORD-RORERT COLLYRR. 401 that is needed for the acquisition of these inestimable treasures is, the love of books. . . . As friends and companions, as teachers and con- solers, as recreators and amusers books are always with us, and always ready to respond to our wants. We can take them with us in our wanderings, or gather them around us at our firesides. In the lonely wilder- ness, and the crowded city, their spirit will be with us, giving a meaning to the seemingly confused movements of humanity, and peopling the desert with their own bright creations. Without the love of books the richest man is poor ; but endowed with this treasure of treasures, the poorest man is rich. He has wealth which no power can diminish; riches which are always increasing; possessions which the more he scatters the more they accumulate ; friends who never desert him, and pleasures which never cloy. The fraise of Books. ROBERT COLLYER. b. 1823. Those who must be their own helpers need not be one whit discouraged. The history of the world is full of bright examples of the value of self-training, as shown by the subsequent success won as readers, and writers, and workers in every department of life by those who apparently lacked both books to read and time to read them, or even the candle wherewith to light the printed page. ' ' Do you want to know how I manage to talk to you in this simple Saxon? I will tell you. I read Bunyan, Crusoe, and Goldsmith when I was a boy, morning, noon, and night. All the rest was task AA 4 o2 ROBERT COLLYER. work, these were my delight, with the stories in the Bible, and with Shakspeare when at last the mighty master came within our doors. The rest were as senna to me. These were like a well of pure water, and this is the first step I seem to have taken of my own free will toward the pulpit. ... I took to these as I took to milk, and, without the least idea what I was doing, got the taste for simple words into the very fibre of my nature. There was day-school for me until I was eight years old, and then I had to turn in and work thirteen hours a day. . . . From the days when we used to spell out Crusoe and old Bunyan there had grown up in me a devouring hunger to read books. It madesmall matter what they were, so they were books. Half a volume of an old encyclopaedia came along the first I had ever seen. How many times I went through that I cannot even guess. I remember that I read some old reports of the Missionary Society with the greatest delight. There were chapters in them about China and Labrador. Yet I think it is in reading as it is in eating, when the first hunger is over you begin to be a little critical, and will by no means take to garbage if you are of a wholesome nature. And I remember this because it touches this beautiful valley of the Hudson. I could not go home for the Christmas of 1839, and was feeling very sad about it all, for I was only a boy ; and sitting by the fire, an old farmer came in and said : 'I notice thou's fond o" reading, so I brought thee summat to read.' It was Irying's 'Sketch Book." I had never heard of the work. I went at it, and was 'as them that dream.' No such delight had touched me since the old days of Crusoe. I saw the Hudson ROBERT COH.YER. 403 and the Catskills, took poor Rip at once into my heart, as everybody has, pitied Ichabod while I laughed at him, thought the old Dutch feast a most admirable thing, and long before I was through, all regret at my lost Christmas had gone down the wind, and I had found out there are books and books. That vast hunger to read never left me. If there was no candle, I poked my head down to the fire ; read while I was eating, blowing the bellows, or walking from one place to another. I could read and walk four miles an hour. The world centred in books. There was no thought in my mind of any good to come out of it ; the good lay in the reading. I had no more idea of being a minister than you elder men who were boys then, in this town, had that I should be here to-night to tell this story. Now, give a boy a passion like this for anything, books or business, painting or farming, mechanism or music, and you give him thereby a lever to lift his world, and a patent of nobility, if the thing he does is noble. There were two or three of my mind about books. We became companions, and gave the roughs a wide berth. The books did their work too, about that drink, and fought the devil with a finer fire. I remember while I was yet a lad reading Macaulay's great essay on Bacon, and I could grasp its wonderful beauty. There has been no time when I have not felt sad that there should have been no chance for me at a good educa- tion and training. I miss it every day, but such chances as were left lay in that everlasting hunger to still be reading. I was tough as leather, and could do the double stint, and so it was that, all unknown to myself, I was as one that sowcth good seed in his field. " 404 ROBERT COLLYER. And these are among the sure criterions to me of a bad book. If, when I read a book about God, I find ihat it has put Him farther from me ; or about man, that it has put me farther from him ; or about this universe, that it has shaken down upon it a new look of desolation, turning a green field into a wild moor ; or about life, that it has made it seem a little less worth living on all accounts than it was ; or about moral principles, that they are not quite so clear and strong as they were when this author began to talk ; then I know that, on any of these five cardinal things in the life of a man his relation to God, to his fellows, to the world about him, and the world within him, and the great principles on which all things stable centre that, for me, is a bad book. It may chime in with some lurking appetite in my own nature, and so seem to be as sweet as honey to my taste, but it comes to bitter, bad results. It may be food for another. I can say nothing to that. He may be a pine, while I am a palm. I only know this, that in these great first things, if the book I read shall touch them at all, it shall touch them to my profit or else I will not read it Right and wrong shall grow more clear ; life in and about me more divine ; I shall come nearer to my fellows and God nearer to me, or the thing is a poison. Faust, or Calvin, or Carlyle, if any one of these car- dinal things is the grain and grist of the book, and that is what it comes to when I read it, I am being drugged and poisoned, and the sooner I know it the better. I want bread, and meat, and milk, not brandy, or opium, or hasheesh. y. MAIN FR1SWELL. 40] If the book be of religion, and brings God nearer to my heart and life ; if it be of humanity, and brings me nearer to the heart and life of man ; if it be of philosophy, and makes this universe glow to me with a new grace ; or of metaphysics, and brings me more truly to myself ; if it be poem, or story, adven- ture, or history, or biography, and I feel that it makes me more of a man, more dutiful, and sincere, and trusty, then no matter who wrote it or what men say about it, the judgment is set in my own soul. Addresses ; Sermons, &c. t by the Rev. Robert Collyer, Chicago, u. s. JAMES HAIN FRISWELL. 1827 1878. When a man loves books he has in him that which will console him under many sorrows and strengthen him in various trials. Such a love will keep him at home, and make his time pass pleasantly. Even when visited by bodily or mental affliction, he can resort to this book-love and be cured. . . . And when a man is at home and happy with a book, sitting by his fireside, he must be a churl if he does not communicate that happiness. Let him read now and then to his wife and children. Those thoughts will grow and take root in the hearts of the listeners. Good scattered about is indeed the seed of the sower. A man who feels sympathy with what is good and noble is, at the time he feels that sympathy, good and noble himself. To a poor man book-love is not only a consoling preservative, but often a source of happiness, power, and wealth. It lifts him from the mechanical drudgery 4 o6 C. KEG AN PAUL. of the day. It takes him away from bad companions, and gives him the close companionship of a good and fine-thinking man ; for, while he is reading Bacon or Shakspeare, he is talking with Bacon or Shakspeare. While his body is resting, his mind is working and growing. . . . It is true that this priesthood is of no Church, and is not in orders ; but it is not the less important on that account. What a power does a writer hold who addresses every week, or every day, or month, a larger congregation than a hundred churches could hold ! There are many writers of the present day who address as many, nay, more than the number indicated, if we put it at its largest. This importance of the priesthood of letters is carried yet further if we remember that the words of a preacher fall on our ears and are often forgotten, while those of the writer remain. Ink-stains are difficult to get out : there is nothing so imperishable as a book, The Gentle Life ; Second Series : " On Book Love" C. KEGAN PAUL. b. 1828. To go into a library is like the wandering into some great cathedral church and looking at the monuments on the walls. Every one there was in his or her day the pattern of all the virtues, the best father, the tenderest wife, the most devoted child. Never were such soldiers and sailors as those whose crossed swords or gallant ships are graven in marble above their tombs ; every dead sovereign was virtuous as Marcus Aurelius, every bishop as blameless as Berkeley. The inscrip- C. KEGAff PAUL. 40, tions arc all of the kind which George IV. put on the statue of George III. at the end of the " Long Walk " .it Windsor. Having embittered his father's life while that father had mind enough to know the baseness of his son, he called him " pater optimus, " best of fathers ! This same George, it may be said in a parenthesis, gave to the library of Eton School, not such a tomb of dead books as is the library of Eton College, the dead Delphin Classics, which have been well described as "the useless present of a royal rake." Yet those names so forgotten which meet us in the Church were not without their influence. If there be one statement more than another to be disputed among those made by Shakspcare's Mark Antony, it is " The evil that men do lives after them, The good is oft interred with their bones." It has a truth, but a less truth than that the good more often lives, and passes into other lives to be renewed and carried forward with fresh vigour in the coming age. Were it not so the human race would steadily deteriorate, weltering down into a black and brutal corruption, ever quickening, if at all, into lower forms. As it is we know that the race, with all its imperfec- tions, " moves upward, working out the beast, and lets the ape and tiger die." The great men stand like stars at distant intervals, individuals grander, perhaps, than ever will be again, each in his own way ; but still the average level of every succeeding age is higher than that which went before it. We may never again have an Homer, Aristotle, Archimedes, St. Paul, Cccsar, or Charlemagne ; but in all things those great ones who 4 o8 ALEXANDER SMITH. forecast philosophy, or science, or mediaeval civilization bear sway over us still, " the living are under the dominion of the dead." Those lesser forgotten ones of whom we have spoken have carried on the torch of life in his or her own home circle, were influential even if not widely known, and have helped to make humanity what she is and will be, our lady, our mistress, our mother, and our queen. As perhaps no human life was ever wholly worth- less, and the worst use to which you can put a man, as has been said, is to hang him, so no book is wholly worthless, and none should ever be destroyed. We have probably all had the same experience, that we have never parted with a book, however little we fancied it would be wanted again, without regretting it soon afterwards. There is a spark of good remaining in the most un virtuous person or book. " The Production and Life of Books. " Fortnightly Review, April , 1 883. ALEXANDER SMITH. 1830 1867. In my garden I spend my days ; in my library I spend my nights. My interests are divided between my geraniums and my books. With the flower I am in the present ; with the book I am in the past. I go into my library, and all history unrolls before me. I breathe the morning air of the world while the scent of Eden's roses yet lingered in it, while it vibrated only to the world's first brood of nightingales, and to the laugh of Eve. I see the pyramids building ; I hear the shoutings of the armies of Alexander ; I feel ALEXANDER SMITH. 409 the ground shake beneath the march of Cambyses. I sit as in a theatre, the stage is time, the play is the play of the world. What a spectacle it is! What kingly pomp, what processions file past, what cities burn to heaven, what crowds of captives are dragged at the chariot-wheels of conquerors I I hiss or cry " Bravo" when the great actors come on shaking the stage. I am a Roman emperor when I look at a Roman coin. I lift Homer, and I shout with Achilles in the trenches. The silence of the unpeopled Syrian plains, the out-comings and in-goings of the patriarchs, Abraham and Ishmael, Isaac in the fields at even-tide, Rebekah at the well, Jacob's guile, Esau's face reddened by desert sun-heat, Joseph's splendid funeral procession all these things I find within the boards of my Old Testament What a silence in those old books as of a half-peopled world what bleating of flocks what green pastoral rest what indubitable human existence ! Across brawling centuries of blood and war, I hear the bleating of Abraham's flocks, the tinkling of the bells of Rebekah's camels. O men and women, so far separated yet so near, so strange yet so well-known, by what miraculous power do I know ye all ! Books are the true Elysian fields where the spirits of the dead converse, and into these fields a mortal may venture unappalled. What king's court can boast such company? What school of philosophy such wisdom? The wit of the ancient world is glancing and flashing there. There is Pan's pipe, there are the songs of Apollo. Seated in my library at night, ami looking on the silent faces of my books, I am occa- sionally visited by a strange sense of the supernatural. 4 io ALEXANDER SMITH. They arc not collections of printed pages, they are ghosts. I take one down and it speaks with me in a tongue not now heard on earth, and of men and things of which it alone possesses knowledge. I call myself a solitary, but sometimes I think I misapply the term. No man sees more company than I do. I travel with mightier cohorts around me than ever did Timour or Genghis Khan on their fiery marches. I am a sovereign in my library, but it is the dead, not the living that attend my levees. Dreamt horp: a Book of Essays Written in the Country, by Alexandei Smith, Author of "A Life's Drama," &"c. To define the charm of style is as difficult as to define the charm of beauty or of fine manners. It is not one thing, it is the result of a hundred things. Everything a man has is concerned in it. It is the amalgam and issue of all his faculties, and it bears the same relation to these that light bears to the sun, or the perfume to the flower. And apart from its value as an embalmer and preserver of thought, it has this other value, that it is a secret window through which we can look in on the writer. A man may work with ideas which he has not originated, which do not in any special way belong to himself; but his style in which is included his way of approaching a subject, and his method of treating it is always personal and characteristic. We decipher a man by his style, find out secrets about him, as if we over -heard his soliloquies, and had the run of his diaries, just as in conversation, and in the ordinary business of life, we draw our impressions, not so much from what a man says, as from the manner and the tone of voice ALEXANDER SMITH. 411 in which the thing is said. The cunning reader draws conclusions from emphasis, takes notes of the half- perceptible sneer, makes humour stand and deliver its secret, and estimates what bitterness it has taken to congeal into sharpness the icy spear of wit. After this fashion, in every book the writer's biography may more or less clearly be read. For a man needs not to speak directly about himself to be personally commu- nicative. And, in truth, it is in the amount of this kind of personal revelation that the final value of a book resides. We read books, not so much for what they say as for what they suggest. Take up an essay of Montaigne's ; you are startled by no remarkable breadth or weight of idea, but you arc constantly encountering sentences through which you can look in on the author as through a stereo- scopic lens. You take up an essay of Charles Lamb's, and in the quaint setting of his thoughts like a piquant face in a Quaker bonnet you are continually renewing and improving your acquaintance with the shiest, most delicate, and, in some respects, the noblest and purest of modern spirits. People never weary of reading Montaigne and Lamb, for while the thoughts they express have sufficient merit as thoughts, they arc at the same time biographies in brief. They may have written finely or foolishly, seriously or with levity, but they have always written with a certain personal Savour. . . . Every sentence of the great writer is like an autograph. There is no chance of mistaking Milton's large utterance, or Jeremy Taylor's images, or Sir Thomas Browne's quaiutncss, or Charles Lamb's 4 i z "MATTHEW BROWNE." cunning turns of sentence. These are as distinct and individual as the features of their faces or their signa- tures. If Milton had endorsed a bill with half-a-dozen blank verse lines, it would be as good as his name, and would be accepted as good evidence in court. If Lamb had never gathered up his essays into those charming volumes, he could be tracked easily by the critical eye through all the magazines of his time. The identity of these men can never be mistaken. Every printed page of theirs is like a coat of arms, every trivial note on ordinary business like the impression of a signet ring. Last Leaves: Sketches and Criticisms. Edited, with a Memoir ; by P. P. Alexander, M.A. W. H. RANDS (MATTHEW BROWNE). d. 1882. I am not at all afraid of urging overmuch the pro- priety 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 con- ceivable 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 "MATTHEW BROWNE." 41 j 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. It never seems to occur to some people, who deliver upon the books they read very unhesitating judgments, that they may be wanting, either by congenital defect, or defect of experience, or defect of reproductive memory, in the qualifications which are necessary for judging fairly of any particular book. Yet the first question a practised and conscientious reader asks himself is, whether he has any natural or accidental disability for the task of criticism in any given case. It may surprise many persons to hear of the possibility of such a thing ; but perhaps it may be made clear by examples. As to congenital defect We all admit that some individuals are born with better "ears" for music, and better "eyes" for colour, and more "taste" for drawing than others, and we willingly defer, other things being equal, to the decisions upon the points in question of those who are by nature the best gifted. It is quite a common thing to meet people who, in spite of culture, continue unmusical all their lives long, or unable to catch perspective, or draw a wheel round or a chimney straight, or discriminate fine shades of colour at all. What is the value of the opinions of such persons upon questions of the fine arts ? Scarcely anything, of course. Now a book is in nowise dis- tinguished, for our present purpose, from a picture or a sonata. It is sure, if it be a good book, to appeal, in some of its parts, to special aptitudes of sensibility on the part of its readers ; but if the reader lacks the 4 i 4 "MATTHEW BROWNE." aptitudes, where is the author? And cases in point are not so rare as might be supposed. There are thou- sands of people who are wanting in sensibility to beauty in general ; in the feeling of personal attachment ; in the feelings of the hearth ; the feelings of the forum ; the feelings of the altar. It is not at all uncommon to come across characters in which the ordinary natural susceptibility to devotional ideas, nay to fervid ideas in general, seems wholly left out. It is as if they had come into the world with a sense short. Again, you may meet people who have no idea of humour. Allow any latitude you please for taste in this matter and, of course, taste differs it still remains true that a total absence of the sense of fun is occa- sionally seen hi society. This is, indeed, quite a commonplace. Now, we must remember, that in speaking of qualities we, after all, draw arbitrary boundary lines. There are many deficiencies as many as there are human beings, which cannot be labelled compound deficiencies, so to speak, which affect the total appreciativeness of our minds to a degree which we ourselves cannot measure, though a healthy self- consciousness may keep us on our guard : and, of course, our estimates of literature, as of other forms of art, must be affected by such shortcomings in our natural make. Poor indeed must our experience be as readers of books if we have never found a page, which once we thought empty, now full of life and light and meaning. True, it is the business of the artist to make us feel with him and see with him; some fault may be his, FREDERIC HARRISON. 4 t 5 and yet not all the fault. At least, he may claim that we should bring to him a tolerably patient and receptive mind, not a repelling, refusive mind ; in a word, that we should treat him with decency, if we profess to attend to him at all. Akin to defect of experience is defect of retrospective or reproductive memory the power of feeling one's past over again. It is very common for a man to take up a book which he once admired with passion, and to find scarcely anything in it. What, then, is the natural thought, the one that he is most likely to make? That his judgment is more mature, I suppose. Well, it may be, and it ought to be ; but certainly the author of the work may claim that his reader should ask himself another question, namely, Have I lost anything in general or specific sensibility since I first read this book? I have myself had to ask this question, and to answer it against myself. Lapse of time must alter us ; and we are, perhaps, too apt to fancy ourselves wiser when we are only something more hard, and something more dull. It has happened to me, indeed, to agree with a writer upon first reading, to disagree with him upon second reading, after an interval of a year or two; and then again, upon third reading, after another interval, to have to come back to my first opinion. Views and Opinions: "On forming' Opinions of Books" FREDERIC HARRISON, b. 1831. Far be it from me to gainsay the inestimable value of good books, or to discourage any man from reading the best ; but I often think that we forget that other side 4 tfl FREDERIC HARRISON. to this glorious view of literature : the misuse of books, the debilitating waste of life in aimless promiscuous vapid reading, or even, it may be, in the poisonous inhalation of mere literary garbage and bad men's worst thoughts. For what can a book be more than the man who wrote it? The brightest genius, perhaps, never puts the best of his own soul into his printed page; and some of the most famous men have certainly put the worst of theirs. Yet are all men desirable companions, much less teachers, fit to be listened to, able to give us advice, even of those who get reputation and command a hearing? Or, to put out of the question that writing which is positively bad, are we not, amidst the multi- plicity of books and of writers, in continual danger of being drawn off by what is stimulating rather than solid, by curiosity after something accidentally noto- rious, by what has no intelligible thing to recommend it, except that it is new? Now, to stuff our minds with what is simply trivial, simply curious, or that which at best has but a low nutritive power, this is to close our minds to what is solid and enlarging, and spiritually sustaining. Whether our neglect of the great books comes from our not reading at all, or from an incorrigible habit of reading the little books, it ends in just the same thing. And that thing is ignorance of all the greater literature of the world. To neglect all the abiding parts of knowledge for the sake of the evanescent parts is really to know nothing worth knowing. It is in the end the same thing, whether we do not use our minds for serious study at all, or whether we exhaust them by an impotent FREDERIC HARRISON. 417 voracity for idle and desultory "information," as it is called a thing as fruitful as whistling. Of the two plans I prefer the former. At least, in that case, the mind is healthy and open. It is not gorged and enfeebled by excess in that which cannot nourish, much less enlarge and beautify our nature. But there is much more than this. Even to those who resolutely avoid the idleness of reading what is trivial, a difficulty is presented, a difficulty every day increasing by virtue even of our abundance of books. What are the subjects, what are the class of books we are to read, in what order, with what connection, to what ultimate use or object? Even those who are resolved to read the better books are embarrassed by a field of choice practically boundless. The longest life, the greatest industry, the most powerful memory, would not suffice to make us profit from a hundredth part of the world of books before us. ... A man of power, who has got more from books than most of his contemporaries, has lately said : "Form a habit of reading, do not mind what you read, the reading of better books will come when you have a habit of reading the inferior." I cannot agree with him. I think a habit of reading idly debilitates and corrupts the mind for all wholesome reading; I think the habit of reading wisely is one of the most difficult h.ibits to acquire, needing strong resolution and infinite pains ; and I hold the habit of reading for mere reading's sake, instead of for the sake of the stuff we gain from reading, to be one of the worst and commonest and most unwholesome habits we have. Why do we still suffer the traditional hypocrisy about the dignity of BB 4 i8 FREDERIC HARRISON. literature, literature I mean, in the gross, which includes about equal parts of what is useful and what is useless ? Why are books as books, writers as writers, readers as readers, meritorious and honourable, apart from any good in them, or anything that we can get from them? Why do we pride ourselves on our powers of absorbing print, as our grandfathers did on theii gifts in imbibing port, when we know that there is a mode of absorbing print which makes it impossible we can ever learn any- thing good out of books? Our stately Milton said in a passage which is one of the watchwords of the English race, "as good almost kill a Man as kill a good Book." But has he not also said that he would "have a vigilant eye how Bookes demeane themselves, as well as men ; and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors"? . . . Yes ! they do kill the good book who deliver up their few and precious hours of reading to the trivial book; they make it dead for them ; they do what lies in them to destroy "the precious life-blood of a master spirit, imbalm'd and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life;" they "spill that season'd life of man preserv'd and stor'd up in Bookes." For in the wilderness of books most men, certainly all busy men, must strictly choose. If they saturate their minds with the idler books, the "good book," which Milton calls "an immortality rather than a life," is dead to them : it is a book sealed up and buried. Men who are most observant as to the friends they make, or the conversation they join in, are carelessness itself as to the books to whom they entrust themselves, PRBDRRIC HARRISON. 4 t and the printed language with which they saturate their minds. Yet can any friendship or society be more important to us than that of the books which form so large a part of our minds and even of our characters? Do we in real life take any pleasant fellow to our homes and chat with some agreeable rascal by our firesides, we who will take up any pleasant fellow's printed memoirs, we who delight in the agreeable rascal when he is cut up into pages and bound in calf ? . . . The vast proportion of books are books that we shall never be able to read. A serious percentage of books are not worth reading at all. The really vital books for us we also know to be a very trifling portion of the whole. And yet we act as if every book were as good as any other, as if it were merely a question of order which we take up first, as if any book were good enough for us, and as if all were alike honourable, precious, and satisfying. Alas ! books cannot be more than the men who write them ; and as a large propor- tion of the human race now write books, with motives and objects as various as human activity, books, as books, are entitled