Part 14

Dr. Johnson advised me to-day, to have as many books about me as I could; that I might read upon any subject upon which I had a desire for instruction at the time. 'What you read _then_ (said he) you will remember; but if you have not a book immediately ready, and the subject moulds in your mind, it is a chance if you again have a desire to study it.' He added, 'If a man never has an eager desire for instruction, he should prescribe a task for himself. But it is better when a man reads from immediate inclination.'

Another admonition of his was, never to go out without some little book or other in the pocket. 'Much time,' added he, 'is lost by waiting, by travelling, &c., and this may be prevented, by making use of every possible opportunity for improvement.'--J. BOSWELL. _Life of Johnson._

READ FEW BOOKS WELL

Read few books well. We forget names and dates; and reproach our memory. They are of little consequence. We feel our limbs enlarge and strengthen; yet cannot tell the dinner or the dish that caused the alteration. Our minds improve though we cannot name the author and have forgotten the particulars.

Read all books through; and bad books most carefully, lest you should lose one good thought, being determined never to look into them again. A man may read a great deal too much.--J. HORNE TOOKE. _Recollections of S. Rogers._

BOOKS AS FRUITFUL TREES

Under a strong persuasion that little of real value is derived by persons in general from a wide and various reading; but still more deeply convinced as to the actual mischief of unconnected and promiscuous reading, and that it is sure, in a greater or less degree, to enervate even where it does not likewise inflate; I hope to satisfy many an ingenious mind, seriously interested in its own development and cultivation, how moderate a number of volumes, if only they be judiciously chosen, will suffice for the attainment of every wise and desirable purpose; that is, in addition to those which he studies for specific and professional purposes. It is saying less than the truth to affirm that an excellent book (and the remark holds almost equally good of a Raphael as of a Milton) is like a well-chosen and well-tended fruit-tree. Its fruits are not of one season only. With the due and natural intervals, we may recur to it year after year, and it will supply the same nourishment and the same gratification, if only we ourselves return to it with the same healthful appetite.--S. T. COLERIDGE. _Prospectus to a Course of Lectures._

READING SEVERAL BOOKS AT A TIME

The advice I would give to any one who is disposed really to read for the sake of knowledge is, that he should have two or three books in course of reading at the same time. He will read a great deal more in that time and with much greater profit. All travels are worth reading, as subsidiary to reading, and in fact essential parts of it: old or new, it matters not--something is to be learnt from all. And the custom of making brief notes of reference to everything of interest or importance would be exceedingly useful.--R. SOUTHEY (Letter to Henry Taylor).

WHEN AND WHERE TO READ

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 Shakespeare enters. At such a season, the _Tempest_, or his own _Winter's Tale_.--

These two poets you cannot avoid reading aloud--to yourself, or (as it chances) to some single person listening. More than one--and it degenerates into an audience.

Books of quick interest, that hurry on for incidents, are for the eye to glide over only. It will not do to read them out. I could never listen to even the better kind of modern novels without extreme irksomeness.

A newspaper, read out, is intolerable.--C. LAMB. _Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading._

SMALL AUTHORS DANGEROUS

It is dangerous to have any intercourse or dealing with small authors. They are as troublesome to handle, as easy to discompose, as difficult to pacify, and leave as unpleasant marks on you, as small children. Cultivate on the other hand the society and friendship of the higher; first that you may learn to reverence them, which of itself is both a pleasure and a virtue, and then that on proper occasions you may defend them against the malevolent, which is a duty. And this duty cannot be well and satisfactorily performed with an imperfect knowledge, or with an inadequate esteem.--W. S. LANDOR. _Imaginary Conversations: Barrow and Newton._

BOOKS THAT PROVOKE THOUGHT

It is wholesome and bracing for the mind, to have its faculties kept on the stretch. It is like the effect of a walk in Switzerland upon the body. Reading an Essay of Bacon's, for instance, or a chapter of Aristotle or of Butler, if it be well and thoughtfully read, is much like climbing up a hill, and may do one the same sort of good.... For my own part, I have ever gained the most profit and the most pleasure also, from the books which have made me think the most: and, when the difficulties have once been overcome, these are the books which have struck the deepest root, not only in my memory and understanding, but likewise in my affections. For this point too should be taken into account. We are wont to think slightly of that, which it costs us a slight effort to win. When a maiden is too forward, her admirer deems it time to draw back. Whereas whatever has associated itself with the arousal and activity of our better nature, with the important and memorable epochs in our lives, whether moral or intellectual, is,--to cull a sprig from the beautiful passage in which Wordsworth describes the growth of Michael's love for his native hills--

Our living being, even more Than our own blood,--and could it less?--retains Strong hold on our affections, is to us A pleasurable feeling of blind love, The pleasure which there is in life itself.

If you would fertilize the mind, the plough must be driven over and through it. The gliding of wheels is easier and rapider, but only makes it harder and more barren. Above all, in the present age of light reading, that is, of reading hastily, thoughtlessly, indiscriminately, unfruitfully, when most books are forgotten as soon as they are finished, and very many sooner, it is well if something heavier is cast now and then into the midst of the literary public. This may scare and repel the weak: it will rouse and attract the stronger, and increase their strength by making them exert it. In the sweat of the brow is the mind as well as the body to eat its bread.--A. W. and J. C. HARE. _Guesses at Truth._

RULES FOR READING

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. As whole nations have derived their culture from a single book,--as the Bible has been the literature as well as the religion of large portions of Europe,--as Hafiz was the eminent genius of the Persians, Confucius of the Chinese, Cervantes of the Spaniards; so, perhaps, the human mind would be a gainer, if all the secondary writers were lost--say, in England, all but Shakespeare, Milton, and Bacon--through the profounder study so drawn to those wonderful minds. With this pilot of his own genius, let the student read one, or let him read many, he will read advantageously....

The three practical rules, then, which I have to offer, are,--1. 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.

Montaigne says, 'Books are a languid pleasure;' but I find certain books vital and spermatic, not leaving the reader what he was: he shuts the book a richer man. I would never willingly read any others than such.--R. W. EMERSON. _Books._

A DIET OF BOOKS

I would not be hurried by any love of system, by any exaggeration of instincts, to underrate the Book. We all know, that, as the human body can be nourished on any food, though it were boiled grass and the broth of shoes, so the human mind can be fed by any knowledge. And great and heroic men have existed, who had almost no other information than by the printed page. I only would say, that it needs a strong head to bear that diet. One must be an inventor to read well. As the proverb says, 'He that would bring home the wealth of the Indies must carry out the wealth of the Indies.' There is, then, creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labour and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world. We then see, what is always true, that, as the seer's hour of vision is short and rare among heavy days and months, so is its record, perchance, the least part of his volume. The discerning will read, in his Plato or Shakespeare, only that least part,--only the authentic utterances of the oracle; all the rest he rejects, were it never so many times Plato's and Shakespeare's.--R. W. EMERSON. _The American Scholar._

A COURSE OF READING

Let us turn our attention to the intellectual advantages accompanying the pursuit, since the proper function of books is in the general case associated with intellectual culture and occupation. It would seem that, according to a received prejudice or opinion, there is one exception to this general connexion, in the case of the possessors of libraries, who are under a vehement suspicion of not reading their books. Well, perhaps it is true in the sense in which those who utter the taunt understand the reading of a book. That one should possess no books beyond his power of perusal--that he should buy no faster than as he can read straight through what he has already bought--is a supposition alike preposterous and unreasonable. 'Surely you have far more books than you can read,' is sometimes the inane remark of the barbarian who gets his books, volume by volume, from some circulating library or reading club, and reads them all through, one after the other, with a dreary dutifulness, that he may be sure that he has got the value of his money.

It is true that there are some books--as Homer, Virgil, Horace, Milton, Shakespeare, and Scott--which every man should read who has the opportunity--should read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.... But is one next to read through the sixty and odd folio volumes of the Bollandist _Lives of the Saints_, and the new edition of the Byzantine historians, and the State Trials, and the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, and Moreri, and the Statutes at large, and the _Gentleman's Magazine_ from the beginning, each separately, and in succession? Such a course of reading would certainly do a good deal towards weakening the mind, if it did not create absolute insanity.

But in all these just named, even in the Statutes at large, and in thousands upon thousands of other books, there is precious honey to be gathered by the literary busy bee, who passes on from flower to flower. In fact, 'a course of reading,' as it is sometimes called, is a course of regimen for dwarfing the mind, like the drugs which dog-breeders give to King Charles spaniels to keep them small. Within the span of life allotted to man there is but a certain number of books that it is practicable to read through, and it is not possible to make a selection that will not, in a manner, wall in the mind from a free expansion over the republic of letters. The being chained, as it were, to one intellect in the perusal straight on of any large book, is a sort of mental slavery superinducing imbecility. Even Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_, luminous and comprehensive as its philosophy is, and rapid and brilliant the narrative, will become deleterious mental food if consumed straight through without variety. It will be well to relieve it occasionally with a little Boston's _Fourfold State_, or Hervey's _Meditations_, or Sturm's _Reflections for Every Day in the Year_, or _Don Juan_, or Ward's _History of Stoke-Upon-Trent_.--J. H. BURTON. _The Book-Hunter._

OF READING

Read not Milton, for he is dry; nor Shakespeare, for he wrote of common life: Nor Scott, for his romances, though fascinating, are yet intelligible: Nor Thackeray, for he is a Hogarth, a photographer who flattereth not: Nor Kingsley, for he shall teach thee that thou shouldest not dream, but do. Read incessantly thy Burke; that Burke who, nobler than he of old, Treateth of the Peer and Peeress, the truly Sublime and Beautiful: Likewise study the 'creations' of 'the Prince of modern Romance'; Sigh over Leonard the Martyr, and smile on Pelham the puppy: Learn how 'love is the dram-drinking of existence'; And how we 'invoke, in the Gadara of our still closets, The beautiful ghost of the Ideal, with the simple wand of the pen.' Listen how Maltravers and the orphan 'forgot all but love', And how Devereux's family chaplain 'made and unmade kings': How Eugene Aram, though a thief, a liar, a murderer, Yet, being intellectual, was amongst the noblest of mankind. So shalt thou live in a world peopled with heroes and master-spirits; And if thou canst not realize the Ideal, thou shalt at least idealize the Real.

C. S. CALVERLEY. _Proverbial Philosophy._

POETS AS COMMENTATORS

I hold that no man can have any just conception of the history of England who has not often read, and meditated, and learnt to love the great poets of England. The greatest of them, such as Chaucer, Shakespeare, Massinger, George Herbert, Milton, Cowley, Dryden, Pope, and Burns, often throw more rich and brilliant colours, and sometimes even more clear and steady lights, on the times and doings of our forefathers, than are to be gathered out of all the chroniclers together, from the Venerable Bede to the philosophical Hume. They are at least the greatest and best commentators on those chroniclers.--SIR JAMES STEPHEN. _Desultory and Systematic Reading._

THE METHOD OF READING PROFANE HISTORY

In perusal of history, first, provide you some writers in chronology and cosmography. For if you be ignorant of the times and places when and where the things you read were done, it cannot choose but breed confusion in your reading, and make you many times grossly to slip and mistake in your discourse. When, therefore, you set to your book, have by you Helvicus, his _Chronology_, and a map of the country in which you are conversant; and repair unto them to acquaint you with time and place, when and where you are. If you be versing the ancient histories, then provide you Ptolemy's maps, or Ortelius, his _Conatus Geographici_: if the latter, then some of the modern cards....

Before you come to read the acts of any people, as those that intend to go to bowls will first see and view the ground upon which they are to play, so it shall not be amiss for you first to take a general view of that ground, which you mean more particularly to traverse, by reading some short epitome.... This will give you a general taste of your business, and add light unto particular authors....

From the order of reading and the matters in reading to be observed, we come to the method of observation. What order we are for our best use to keep in entering our notes into our paper-books.

The custom which hath most prevailed hitherto was commonplacing, a thing at the first original very plain and simple; but by after-times much increased, some augmenting the number of the heads, others inventing quainter forms of disposing them: till at length commonplace books became like unto the Roman Breviary or Missal. It was a great part of clerkship to know how to use them. The vastness of the volumes, the multitude of heads, the intricacy of disposition, the pains of committing the heads to memory, and last, of the labour of so often turning the books to enter the observations in their due places, are things so expensive of time and industry, that although at length the work comes to perfection, yet it is but like the silver mines in Wales, the profit will hardly quit the pains. I have often doubted with myself whether or no there were any necessity of being so exactly methodical. First, because there hath not yet been found a method of that latitude, but little reading would furnish you with some things, which would fall without the compass of it. Secondly, because men of confused, dark and cloudy understandings, no beam or light of order and method can ever rectify; whereas men of clear understanding, though but in a mediocrity, if they read good books carefully, and note diligently, it is impossible but they should find incredible profit, though their notes lie never so confusedly. The strength of our natural memory, especially if we help it, by revising our own notes; the nature of things themselves, many times ordering themselves, and _tantum non_, telling us how to range them; a mediocrity of care to see that matters lie not too chaos-like, will with very small damage save us this great labour of being over-superstitiously methodical. And what though peradventure something be lost, _Exilis domus est_, &c. It is a sign of great poverty of scholarship, where everything that is lost is missed; whereas rich and well-accomplished learning is able to lose many things with little or no inconvenience.--J. HALES. _Golden Remains._

EPITOMES

Epitome is good privately for himself that doth work it, but ill commonly for all other that use other men's labour therein: a silly poor kind of study, not unlike to the doing of those poor folk, which neither till nor sow nor reap themselves, but glean by stealth upon other men's grounds. Such have empty barns for dear years.... Epitome hurteth most of all in divinity itself. Indeed books of commonplaces be very necessary to induce a man into an orderly general knowledge, how to refer orderly all that he readeth, _ad certa rerum capita_, and not wander in study.... But to dwell in epitomes, and books of commonplaces, 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 sunburnt ministers as we have; whose learning is gotten in a summer heat, and washed away with a Christmas snow again.--R. ASCHAM. _The Schoolmaster._

ABSTRACTS OF BOOKS

My abstracts of each book were made in the French language: my observations often branched into particular essays; and I can still read, without contempt, a dissertation of eight folio pages on eight lines (287-94) of the fourth _Georgic_ of Virgil....

This various reading, which I now conducted with discretion, was digested, according to the precept and model of Mr. Locke, into a large commonplace book; a practice, however, which I do not strenuously recommend. The action of the pen will doubtless imprint an idea on the mind as well as on the paper: but I much question whether the benefits of this laborious method are adequate to the waste of time; and I must agree with Dr. Johnson (_Idler_, No. 74), 'that what is twice read is commonly better remembered than what is transcribed'....

I will embrace this occasion of recommending to the young student a practice which about this time [1759] I myself adopted. After glancing my eye over the design and order of a new book, I suspended the perusal till I had finished the task of self-examination, till I had revolved, in a solitary walk, all that I knew, or believed, or had thought on the subject of the whole work, or of some particular chapter: I was then qualified to discern how much the author added to my original stock; and if I was sometimes satisfied by the agreement, I was sometimes armed by the opposition of our ideas.--E. GIBBON. _Autobiography._

BESCRIBBLING WITH NOTES

Somewhat to aid the weakness of my memory and to assist her great defects; for it hath often been my chance to light upon books which I supposed to be new and never to have read, which I had, not understanding, diligently read and run over many years before, and all bescribbled with my notes: I have a while since accustomed myself to note at the end of my book (I mean such as I purpose to read but once) the time I made an end to read it, and to set down what censure or judgement I gave of it; that so it may at least at another time represent unto my mind the air and general idea I had conceived of the author in reading him.--MONTAIGNE.

BOOKS TO BE MARKED

If the books which you read are your own, mark with a pen or pencil the most considerable things in them which you desire to remember. Then you may read that book the second time over with half the trouble, by your eye running over the paragraphs which your pencil has noted. It is but a very weak objection against this practice to say, 'I shall spoil my book;' for I persuade myself that you did not buy it as a bookseller, to sell it again for gain, but as a scholar, to improve your mind by it; and if the mind be improved, your advantage is abundant, though your book yields less money to your executors.--I. WATTS. _Logic._

UNDERSCORING

'On a subsequent evening, when I called by invitation to consult some other volumes, the conversation turned on the practice of underscoring books of study. Sir William spoke highly of the practice, as attended with many advantages, especially in the saving of time and labour. Intelligent underlining gave a kind of abstract of an important work, and by the use of different coloured inks to mark a difference of contents, and discriminate the doctrinal from the historical or illustrative elements of an argument or exposition, the abstract became an analysis very serviceable for ready reference. He mentioned that this principle had been carried to a ludicrous extreme in the publication of a coloured New Testament by an Anglicized German, Wirgmann by name.... In this book, entitled _Divarication of the New Testament into Doctrine and History_, the pages were all coloured, most of them parti-coloured, the doctrine being throughout visually separated from the history by this device; the doctrine being, if I remember rightly, blue, and the history red. The author expressed his belief that all the sects of Christendom had arisen from a confusion of these elements, and that his grand discovery in the "Divarication" would annihilate sects, establish pure Christianity as a sacred science, and become hereafter a Euclid in Theology.'--SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. _Life_ by J. Veitch.

THE PARSON'S ACCESSORY KNOWLEDGE

The Country Parson hath read the Fathers also, and the Schoolmen, and the later writers, or a good proportion of all, out of all which he hath compiled a book, and Body of Divinity, which is the storehouse of his sermons, and which he preacheth all his life; but diversely clothed, illustrated, and enlarged. For though the world is full of such composures, yet every man's own is fittest, readiest, and most savoury to him. Besides, this being to be done in his younger and preparatory times, it is an honest joy ever after to look upon his well-spent hours.--G. HERBERT. _A Priest to the Temple._

COMMONPLACE BOOKS