Part 16
In error obstinate, in wrangling loud, For trifles eager, positive, and proud, Forth steps at last the self-applauding wight, Of points and letters, chaff and straws, to write: Sagely resolved to swell each bulky piece With venerable toys from Rome and Greece; How oft, in Homer, Paris curled his hair; If Aristotle's cap were round or square; If in the cave, where Dido first was sped, To Tyre she turned her heels, to Troy her head. Hence Plato quoted or the Stagyrite, To prove that flame ascends and snow is white: Hence much hard study, without sense or breeding, And all the grave impertinence of reading. If Shakespeare says, the noon-day sun is bright, His scholiast will remark, it then was light; Turn Caxton, Wynkyn, each old Goth and Hun, To rectify the reading of a pun. Thus, nicely trifling, accurately dull, How one may toil, and toil--to be a fool!--D. MALLET.
READING TO KILL TIME
As to the devotees of the circulating libraries, I dare not compliment their _pass-time_, or rather _kill-time_, with the name of _reading_. Call it rather a sort of beggarly daydreaming, during which the mind of the dreamer furnishes for itself nothing but laziness and a little mawkish sensibility; while the whole _material_ and imagery of the doze is supplied _ab extra_ by a sort of mental _camera obscura_ manufactured at the printing office, which _pro tempore_ fixes, reflects and transmits the moving phantasms of one man's delirium, so as to people the barrenness of an hundred other brains afflicted with the same trance or suspension of all common sense and all definite purpose. We should therefore transfer this species of _amusement_ (if indeed those can be said to retire _a musis_, who were never in their company, or relaxation be attributable to those whose bows are never bent) from the genus _reading_ to the comprehensive class characterized by the power of reconciling the two contrary yet co-existing propensities of human nature, namely, indulgence of sloth and hatred of vacancy. In addition to novels and tales of chivalry in prose or rhyme (by which last I mean neither rhythm nor metre) this genus comprises as its species gaming, swinging, or swaying on a chair or gate; spitting over a bridge; smoking; snuff-taking; _tête à tête_ quarrels after dinner between husband and wife; conning word by word all the advertisements of the daily advertizers in a public-house on a rainy day, &c., &c., &c.--S. T. COLERIDGE. _Biographia Literaria._
TALKING FROM BOOKS
Dr. Johnson this day, when we were by ourselves [on the journey to the Hebrides] observed, how common it was for people to talk from books; to retail the sentiments of others, and not their own; in short, to converse without any originality of thinking. He was pleased to say, 'You and I do not talk from books.'--J. BOSWELL. _Life of Johnson._
There are no race of people who talk about books, or perhaps, who read books, so little as literary men.--W. M. THACKERAY.
A SHORT CUT TO FAME
There is a sort of vanity some men have, of talking of and reading obscure and half-forgotten authors, because it passes as a matter of course, that he who quotes authors which are so little read, must be completely and thoroughly acquainted with those authors which are in every man's mouth. For instance, it is very common to quote Shakespeare; but it makes a sort of stare to quote Massinger. I have very little credit for being well acquainted with Virgil; but if I quote Silius Italicus, I may stand some chance of being reckoned a great scholar. In short, whoever wishes to strike out of the great road, and to make a short cut to fame, let him neglect Homer, and Virgil, and Horace, and Ariosto and Milton, and, instead of these, read and talk of Frascatorius, Sannazarius, Lorenzini, Pastorini, and the thirty-six primary sonneteers of Bettinelli;--let him neglect everything which the suffrage of ages has made venerable and grand, and dig out of their graves a set of decayed scribblers, whom the silent verdict of the public has fairly condemned to everlasting oblivion. If he complain of the injustice with which they have been treated, and call for a new trial with loud and importunate clamour, though I am afraid he will not make much progress in the estimation of men of sense, he will be sure to make some noise in the crowd, and to be dubbed a man of very curious and extraordinary erudition.--S. SMITH. _Moral Philosophy, Lecture IX. On the Conduct of the Understanding._
TITLE-READERS
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.--C. C. COLTON. _Lacon._
The author who speaks about his own books is almost as bad as a mother who talks about her own children.--B. DISRAELI, LORD BEACONSFIELD.
THE BURNING OF DON QUIXOTE'S BOOKS
The priest and the barber of the place, who were Don Quixote's great friends, happened to be there [at Don Quixote's house]; and the housekeeper was saying to them aloud: What is your opinion, Señor Licentiate Pero Perez (for that was the priest's name) of my master's misfortune? for neither he, nor his horse, nor the target, nor the lance, nor the armour have been seen these six days past. Woe is me! I am verily persuaded, and it is as certainly true as I was born to die, that these cursed books of knight-errantry which he keeps, and is so often reading, have turned his brain; and now I think of it, I have often heard him say, talking to himself, that he would turn knight-errant, and go about the world in quest of adventures. The devil and Barabbas take all such books, that have thus spoiled the finest understanding in all La Mancha. The niece joined with her, and said moreover: Know, master Nicholas (for that was the barber's name), that it has often happened, that my honoured uncle has continued poring on these confounded books of disadventures two whole days and nights.... But I take the blame of all this to myself, that I did not advertise you, gentlemen, of my dear uncle's extravagances, before they were come to the height that they now are, that you might have prevented them by burning all those cursed books, of which he has so great a store, and which as justly deserve to be committed to the flames, as if they were heretical....
Whilst Don Quixote still slept on, the priest asked the niece for the keys of the chamber where the books were, those authors of the mischief; and she delivered them with a very good will. They all went in, and the housekeeper with them. They found above a hundred volumes in folio, very well bound, besides a great many small ones. And no sooner did the housekeeper see them, than she ran out of the room in great haste, and immediately returned with a pot of holy water and a bunch of hyssop, and said: Señor Licentiate, take this and sprinkle the room, lest some enchanter, of the many these books abound with, should enchant us in revenge for what we intend to do, in banishing them out of the world. The priest smiled at the housekeeper's simplicity, and ordered the barber to reach him the books one by one, that they might see what they treated of; for, perhaps, they might find some that might not deserve to be chastised by fire. No, said the niece, there is no reason why any of them should be spared.... The housekeeper said the same; so eagerly did they both thirst for the death of those innocents. But the priest would not agree to that, without first reading the titles at least....
That night the housekeeper set fire to, and burnt all the books that were in the yard [whither they had been cast], and in the house too; and some must have perished, that deserved to be treasured up in perpetual archives.--CERVANTES. _Don Quixote._
BRAINS SQUASHED BY BOOKS
There have indeed been minds overlaid by much reading, men who have piled such a load of books on their heads, their brains have seemed to be squashed by them.--A. W. and J. C. HARE. _Guesses at Truth._
FOLLY GENERATED BY BOOKS
Books are chiefly useful as they help us to interpret what we see and experience. When they absorb men, as they sometimes do, and turn them from observation of nature and life, they generate a learned folly, for which the plain sense of the labourer could not be exchanged but at great loss. It deserves attention that the greatest men have been formed without the studies which at present are thought by many most needful to improvement. Homer, Plato, Demosthenes, never heard the name of chemistry, and knew less of the solar system than a boy in our common schools. Not that these sciences are unimportant; but the lesson is, that human improvement never wants the means, where the purpose of it is deep and earnest in the soul.--W. E. CHANNING. _Self-Culture._
SURCLOYING THE STOMACH
Who readeth much, and never meditates, Is like a greedy eater of much food, Who so surcloys his stomach with his cates, That commonly they do him little good.
J. SYLVESTER. _Tetrasticha._
OVER-READING
As for the disgraces which learning receiveth from politics, they be of this nature; that learning doth soften men's minds, and makes them more unapt for the honour and exercise of arms; that it doth mar and pervert men's dispositions for matter of government and policy, in making them too curious and irresolute by variety of reading, or too peremptory or positive by strictness of rules and axioms, or too immoderate and overweening by reason of the greatness of examples, or too incompatible and differing from the times by reason of the dissimilitude of examples; or at least, that it doth divert men's travails from action and business, and bringeth them to a love of leisure and privateness; and that it doth bring into states a relaxation of discipline, whilst every man is more ready to argue than to obey and execute....
If any man be laborious in reading and study and yet idle in business and action, it groweth from some weakness of body or softness of spirit; such as Seneca speaketh of: _Quidam tam sunt umbratiles, ut putent in turbido esse quicquid in luce est_; and not of learning: well may it be that such a point of a man's nature may make him give himself to learning, but it is not learning that breedeth any such point in his nature.--F. BACON, LORD VERULAM. _Of the Advancement of Learning._
DEEP-VERSED IN BOOKS AND SHALLOW IN HIMSELF
Many books, Wise men have said, are wearisome; who reads Incessantly, and to his reading brings not A spirit and judgement, equal or superior, (And what he brings, what needs he elsewhere seek?) Uncertain and unsettled still remains, Deep-versed in books, and shallow in himself; Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys And trifles for choice matters, worth a sponge; As children gathering pebbles on the shore.
J. MILTON. _Paradise Regained._
SWALLOWING THE HUSKS
The heart May give an useful lesson to the head, And learning wiser grow without his books. Knowledge and wisdom, far from being one, Have oft-times no connexion. Knowledge dwells In heads replete with thoughts of other men; Wisdom in minds attentive to their own. Knowledge, a rude unprofitable mass, The mere materials with which Wisdom builds, Till smoothed and squared and fitted to its place, Does but encumber whom it seems to enrich. Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much; Wisdom is humble that he knows no more. Books are not seldom talismans and spells, By which the magic art of shrewder wits Holds an unthinking multitude enthralled. Some to the fascination of a name Surrender judgement, hood-winked. Some the style Infatuates, and through labyrinths and wilds Of error leads them by a tune entranced. While sloth seduces more, too weak to bear The insupportable fatigue of thought, And swallowing, therefore, without pause or choice, The total grist unsifted, husks and all. But trees, and rivulets whose rapid course Defies the check of winter, haunts of deer, And sheep-walks populous with bleating lambs, And lanes in which the primrose ere her time Peeps through the moss that clothes the hawthorn root, Deceive no student. Wisdom there, and truth, Not shy, as in the world, and to be won By slow solicitation, seize at once The roving thought, and fix it on themselves.
W. COWPER. _The Winter Walk at Noon._
Much reading is like much eating, wholly useless without digestion.--R. SOUTH.
If I had read as much as other men, I should have been as ignorant as they.--T. HOBBES.
READING AND ILLITERACY
You might read all the books in the British Museum (if you could live long enough) and remain an utterly 'illiterate', uneducated person; but ... if you read ten pages of a good book, letter by letter,--that is to say, with real accuracy,--you are for evermore in some measure an educated person.--J. RUSKIN. _Sesame and Lilies._
READING AS INTELLECTUAL INDOLENCE
Do I boast of my omnivorousness of reading, even apart from 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_, or out of proportion to what we _think_. I should be wiser, I am persuaded, 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 Americans call 'whittling'.--E. B. BROWNING (Letter to R. H. Horne).
BOOKS AND MEN
He that sets out on the journey of life, with a profound knowledge of books, but a shallow knowledge of men, with much sense of others, but little of his own, will find himself as completely at a loss on occasions of common and of constant recurrence, as a Dutchman without his pipe, a Frenchman without his mistress, an Italian without his fiddle, or an Englishman without his umbrella.--C. C. COLTON. _Lacon._
Study is like the heaven's glorious sun, That will not be deep-searched with saucy looks; Small have continual plodders ever won, Save base authority from others' books.
W. SHAKESPEARE. _Love's Labour's Lost._
BOOKS AND LIFE
Who, loving leisure and his studious ease, And books, and what of noblest lore they bring, Will not confess that sometimes, called aside To humbler work and less delightful tasks, He has been tempted to exclaim in heart-- 'How pleasant were it might we only dwell, And ever hold sweet converse undisturbed Thus with the choicest spirits of the world In council, and in letters, and in arms. Easy to live with, always at command, They come at bidding, at our word depart, Friends whose society not ever cloys. Glorious it were by intercourse with these To learn whatever men have thought or done, And travel the great orb of knowledge round. But oh! how most unwelcome the constraint, How harsh the summons bidding us to pause, And for a season turn from our high toils, From that serener atmosphere come down, And grow perforce acquainted with the woe, The strife, the discord of the actual world, And all the ignoble work beneath the sun.'
* * * * *
But other feelings occupied my heart, And other words found utterance from my lips, When that day's work was finished, and my feet Again turned homeward--alteration strange Of feeling, with a better, humbler mind. For I was thankful now ... ... that thus I was Compelled, as by a gentle violence Not in the pages of dead books alone, Nor merely in the fair page nature shows, But in the living page of human life To look and learn--not merely left to spin Fine webs and woofs around me like the worm, Till in mine own coil I had hid myself And quite shut out the light of common day, And common air by which men breathe and live.
* * * * *
It was brought home unto my heart of hearts There was no doom more pitiable than his, Who at safe distance hears life's stormy waves, Which break for ever on a rugged shore, In which are shipwrecked mariners, for their lives Contending some, some momently sucked up, But as a gentle murmur afar off To soothe his sleep, and lull him in his dreams: Who, while he boasts he has been building up A palace for himself, in sooth has reared What shall be first his prison, then his tomb.
R. C. TRENCH. _Anti-Gnosticus._
THE MIGHTY DEAD
Studious let me sit, And hold high converse with the mighty dead-- Sages of ancient time, as gods revered, As gods beneficent, who blessed mankind With arts and arms, and humanized a world. Roused at the inspiring thought, I throw aside The long-lived volume.
J. THOMSON. _The Seasons._
THE MESSAGE OF BOOKS
If books are only dead things, if they do not speak to one, or answer one when one speaks to them, if they have nothing to do with the common things that we are busy with--with the sky over our head, and the ground under our feet--I think that they had better stay on the shelves.... What I regret is that many of us spend much of our time in reading books, and in talking of books--that we like nothing worse than the reputation of being indifferent to them, and nothing better than the reputation of knowing a great deal about them; and yet that, after all, we do not know them in the same way as we know our fellow-creatures, not even in the way we know any dumb animal that we walk with or play with. This is a great misfortune, in my opinion, and one which I am afraid is increasing as what we call 'the taste for literature' increases. It is very pleasant to think in what distant parts of the earth it [the English language] is spoken, and that in all those parts these books which are friends of ours are acknowledged as friends. And there is a living and productive power in them. They have produced an American literature, which is coming back to instruct us. They will produce by and by an Australian literature, which will be worth all the gold that is sent to us from the diggings.--F. D. MAURICE. _The Friendship of Books._
OVERRATING THE VIRTUE OF BOOKS
In modern times instruction is communicated chiefly by means of Books. Books are no doubt very useful helps to knowledge, and in some measure also, to the practice of useful arts and accomplishments, but they are not, in any case, the primary and natural sources of culture, and, in my opinion, their virtue is not a little apt to be overrated, even in those branches of acquirement where they seem most indispensable. They are not creative powers in any sense; they are merely helps, instruments, tools; and even as tools they are only artificial tools, superadded to those with which the wise prevision of Nature has equipped us, like telescopes and microscopes, whose assistance in many researches reveals unimagined wonders, but the use of which should never tempt us to undervalue or to neglect the exercise of our own eyes. The original and proper sources of knowledge are not books, but life, experience, personal thinking, feeling, and acting. When a man starts with these, books can fill up many gaps, correct much that is inaccurate, and extend much that is inadequate; but, without living experience to work on, books are like rain and sunshine fallen on unbroken soil.--J. S. BLACKIE. _On Self-culture._
How well he's read, to reason against reading!
W. SHAKESPEARE. _Love's Labour's Lost._
BOOKS AN ENEMY TO HEALTH
This plodding occupation of books is as painful as any other, and as great an enemy unto health, which ought principally to be considered. And a man should not suffer himself to be inveigled by the pleasure he takes in them.... Books are delightful; but if by continual frequenting them, we in the end lose both health and cheerfulness (our best parts) let us leave them. I am one of those who think their fruit can no way countervail this loss.... As for me, I love no books but such as are pleasant and easy, and which tickle me, or such as comfort or counsel me, to direct my life and death....
If any say to me, It is a kind of vilifying the Muses to use them only for sport and recreation, he wots not as I do, what worth, pleasure, sport, and pastime is of: I had well nigh termed all other ends ridiculous. I live from hand to mouth, and, with reverence be it spoken, I live but to myself: there end all my designs. Being young I studied for ostentation; then a little to enable myself and become wiser; now for delight and recreation, never for gain.... Books have and contain divers pleasing qualities to those that can duly choose them. But no good without pains; no roses without prickles. It is a pleasure not absolutely pure and neat; no more than all others; it hath his inconveniences attending on it, and sometimes weighty ones: the mind is therein exercised, but the body (the care whereof I have not yet forgotten) remaineth there--whilst without action, and is wasted, and ensorrowed. I know no excess more hurtful for me, nor more to be avoided by me, in this declining age.--MONTAIGNE.
WHAT PROFITS IT
And yet, alas! when all our lamps are burned, Our bodies wasted, and our spirits spent, When we have all the learnèd volumes turned, Which yield men's wits both help and ornament, What can we know or what can we discern?
SIR J. DAVIES. _On the Immortality of the Soul._
BOOKS AND EYESIGHT
Why, all delights are vain; but that most vain Which, with pain purchased doth inherit pain: As, painfully to pore upon a book, To seek the light of truth; while truth the while Doth falsely blind the eyesight of his look: Light seeking light doth light of light beguile: So, ere you find where light in darkness lies, Your light grows dark by losing of your eyes.
W. SHAKESPEARE. _Love's Labour's Lost._
WHEN TO READ
'Tis an honest injury to nature to steal from her some hours of repose; unsufferable to the soul to let the golden hours of the morning pass without advantage, seeing she is then more capable of culture, and seems to be renewed as well as the day. It were an excellent posture to paint Caesar in, as he swum with a book in the one hand, and a sword in the other; since he made his tent an academy, and was at leisure to read the physiognomy of the heavens in military tumults. This shows he knew how to prize time, and hated idleness as much as a superior; and indeed, to speak to Christians, we ought to look how we spend our hours here, knowing they are but the preludium of that which shall be no time but Eternity.
Judgement is long ere it be settled, experience being the best nurse of it, and we see seldom learning and wisdom concur, because the former is got _sub umbra_, but business doth winnow observations, and the better acquaintance with breathing volumes of men; it teacheth us both better to read them and to apply what we have read....