Part 5
Books are the best type of the influence of the past.... The theory of books is noble. The scholar of the first age received into him the world around; brooded thereon; gave it the new arrangement of his own mind, and uttered it again. It came into him, life; it went out from him, truth. It came to him, short-lived actions; it went out from him, immortal thoughts. It came to him, business; it went from him, poetry. It was dead fact; now, it is quick thought. It can stand, and it can go. It now endures, it now flies, it now inspires. Precisely in proportion to the depth of mind from which it issued, so high does it soar, so long does it sing.--R. W. EMERSON. _The American Scholar._
BOOKS A SUBSTANTIAL WORLD
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 ear; Two shall be named, pre-eminently dear,-- The gentle Lady married to the Moor; And heavenly Una with her milk-white Lamb.... 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.
W. WORDSWORTH. _Personal Talk._
TO WORDSWORTH
We both have run o'er half the space Listed for mortal's earthly race; We both have crossed life's fervid line, And other stars before us shine: May they be bright and prosperous As those that have been stars for us! Our course by Milton's light was sped, And Shakespeare shining overhead: Chatting on deck was Dryden too, The Bacon of the rhyming crew; None ever crossed our mystic sea More richly stored with thought than he; Though never tender nor sublime, He wrestles with and conquers Time. To learn my lore on Chaucer's knee, I left much prouder company; Thee gentle Spenser fondly led, But me he mostly sent to bed.
W. S. LANDOR. _Miscellaneous Poems._
THE SOULS OF BOOKS
I
Sit here and muse!--it is an antique room-- High-roofed, with casements, through whose purple pane Unwilling Daylight steals amidst the gloom, Shy as a fearful stranger. There THEY reign (In loftier pomp than waking life had known), The Kings of Thought!--not crowned until the grave When Agamemnon sinks into the tomb, The beggar Homer mounts the Monarch's throne! Ye ever-living and imperial Souls, Who rule us from the page in which ye breathe, All that divide us from the clod ye gave!-- Law--Order--Love--Intelligence--the Sense Of Beauty--Music and the Minstrel's wreath!-- 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 Shakespeare sung!
II
Hark! while we muse, without the walls is heard The various murmur of the labouring crowd, How still, within those archive-cells interred, The Calm Ones reign!--and yet they rouse the loud Passions and tumults of the circling world! From them, how many a youthful Tully caught The zest and ardour of the eager Bar; From them, how many a young Ambition sought Gay meteors glancing o'er the sands afar-- By them each restless wing has been unfurled, And their ghosts urge each rival's rushing car! They made yon Preacher zealous for the truth; They made yon Poet wistful for the star; Gave Age its pastime--fired the cheek of Youth-- The unseen sires of all our beings are,--
III
And now so still! This, Cicero, is thy heart; I hear it beating through each purple line. This is thyself, Anacreon--yet, thou art Wreathed, as in Athens, with the Cnidian vine. I ope thy pages, Milton, and, behold, Thy spirit meets me in the haunted ground!-- Sublime and eloquent, as while, of old, 'It flamed and sparkled in its crystal bound;' These _are_ yourselves--your life of life! 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.
What gives this beauty to the grave? the shroud Scarce wraps the Poet, than at once there cease Envy and Hate! 'Nine cities claim him dead, Through which the living Homer begged his bread!' And what the charm that can such health distil From withered leaves--oft poisons in their bloom? We call some books immoral! _Do they live?_ If so, believe me, TIME hath made them pure. In Books, the veriest wicked rest in peace-- God wills that nothing evil shall endure; The grosser parts fly off and leave the whole, As the dust leaves the disembodied soul! Come from thy niche, Lucretius! Thou didst give Man the black creed of Nothing in the tomb! Well, when we read thee, does the dogma taint? No; with a listless eye we pass it o'er, And linger only on the hues that paint The Poet's spirit lovelier than his lore. None learn from thee to cavil with their God; None commune with thy genius to depart Without a loftier instinct of the heart. Thou mak'st no Atheist--thou but mak'st the mind Richer in gifts which Atheists best confute-- FANCY AND THOUGHT! 'Tis these that from the sod Lift us! The life which soars above the brute Ever and mightiest, breathes from a great Poet's lute! Lo! that grim Merriment of Hatred;--born Of him,--the Master-Mocker of mankind, Beside the grin of whose malignant spleen Voltaire's gay sarcasm seems a smile serene,-- Do we not place it in our children's hands, Leading young Hope through Lemuel's fabled lands?-- God's and man's libel in that foul Yahoo!-- Well, and what mischief can the libel do? O impotence of Genius to belie Its glorious task--its mission from the sky! Swift wrote this book to wreak a ribald scorn On aught the Man should love or Priest should mourn-- And lo! the book, from all its ends beguiled, A harmless wonder to some happy child!
IV
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! And feel the Near less household than the Far! Traverse all space, and number every star. There is no Past, so long as Books shall live! A disinterred Pompeii wakes again For him who seeks you well; lost cities give Up their untarnished wonders, and the reign Of Jove revives and Saturn:--at our will Rise dome and tower on Delphi's sacred hill; Bloom Cimon's trees in Academe;--along Leucadia's headland, sighs the Lesbian's song; With Egypt's Queen once more we sail the Nile, And learn how worlds are bartered for a smile:-- Rise up, ye walls, with gardens blooming o'er, Ope but that page--lo, Babylon once more!
V
Ye make the Past our heritage and home: And is this all? No; by each prophet sage-- No; by the herald souls that Greece and Rome Sent forth, like hymns, to greet the Morning Star That rose on Bethlehem--by thy golden page, Melodious Plato--by thy solemn dreams, World-wearied Tully!--and, above ye all, By THIS, the Everlasting Monument Of God to mortals, on whose front the beams Flash glory-breathing day--our lights ye are To the dark Bourne beyond; in you are sent The types of Truths whose life is The TO-COME; In you soars up the Adam from the fall; In you the FUTURE as the PAST is given-- Even in our death ye bid us hail our birth;-- Unfold these pages, and behold the Heaven, Without one gravestone left upon the Earth.
E. G. E. L. BULWER-LYTTON, LORD LYTTON.
USEFUL AND MIGHTY THINGS
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.--C. KINGSLEY. _Village Sermons: On Books._
AN EXTRAORDINARY DELIGHT TO STUDY
To most kind of men it is an extraordinary delight to study. For what a world of books offers itself, in all subjects, arts, and sciences, to the sweet content and capacity of the reader!... What vast tomes are extant in law, physic, and divinity, for profit, pleasure, practice, speculation, in verse or prose, &c.! their names alone are the subject of whole volumes; we have thousands of authors of all sorts, many great libraries full well furnished, like so many dishes of meat, served out for several palates; and he is a very block that is affected with none of them.--R. BURTON. _The Anatomy of Melancholy._
SWEET AND HAPPY HOURS
BORNWELL. Learning is an addition beyond Nobility of birth; honour of blood Without the ornament of knowledge is A glorious ignorance.
FREDERICK. I never knew more sweet and happy hours Than I employed upon my books.
J. SHIRLEY. _The Lady of Pleasure._
THE PROUDER PLEASURES OF THE MIND
Books cannot always please, however good; Minds are not ever craving for their food; But sleep will soon the weary soul prepare For cares to-morrow that were this day's care: For forms, for feasts, that sundry times have past, And formal feasts that will for ever last. 'But then from study will no comforts rise?'-- Yes! such as studious minds alone can prize; Comforts, yea!--joys ineffable they find, Who seek the prouder pleasures of the mind: The soul, collected in those happy hours, Then makes her efforts, then enjoys her powers; And in those seasons feels herself repaid, For labours past and honours long delay'd. No! 'tis not worldly gain, although by chance The sons of learning may to wealth advance; Nor station high, though in some favouring hour The sons of learning may arrive at power; Nor is it glory, though the public voice Of honest praise will make the heart rejoice: But 'tis the mind's own feelings give the joy, Pleasures she gathers in her own employ-- Pleasures that gain or praise cannot bestow, Yet can dilate and raise them when they flow.
G. CRABBE. _The Borough._
A TASTE TO BE PRAYED FOR
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 as a taste, an instrument and a mode of pleasurable gratification. Give a man this taste, and the means of gratifying it, and you can hardly fail of making a happy man, unless, indeed, you put into his hands a most perverse selection of books. You place him in contact with the best society in every period of history--with the wisest, the wittiest--with the tenderest, the bravest, and the purest characters who have adorned humanity. You make him a denizen of all nations--a contemporary of all ages. The world has been created for him.--SIR J. HERSCHEL. _Address to the Subscribers to the Windsor Public Library._
MORE THAN MEAT, DRINK, AND CLOTHING
I should like you to see the additional book-room that we have fitted up, and in which I am now writing.... It would please you to see such a display of literary wealth, which is at once the pride of my eye, and the joy of my heart, and the food of my mind; indeed, more than metaphorically, meat, drink, and clothing for me and mine. I verily believe that no one in my station was ever so rich before, and I am very sure that no one in any station had ever a more thorough enjoyment of riches of any kind, or in any way. It is more delightful for me to live with books than with men, even with all the relish that I have for such society as is worth having.--R. SOUTHEY (Letter to G. C. Bedford).
THE BOOK THE HIGHEST DELIGHT
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.' In every man's memory, with the hours when life culminated, are usually associated certain books which met his views. Of a large and powerful class we might ask with confidence, What is the event they most desire? What gift? What but the book that shall come, which they have sought through all libraries, through all languages, that shall be to their mature eyes what many a tinsel-covered toy pamphlet was to their childhood, and shall speak to the imagination? Our high respect for a well-read man is praise enough of literature. If we encountered a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he read. We expect a great man to be a good reader; or in proportion to the spontaneous power should be the assimilating power. And though such are a most difficult and exacting class, they are not less eager. 'He that borrows the aid of an equal understanding,' said Burke, 'doubles his own; he that uses that of a superior elevates his own to the stature of that he contemplates.'
We prize books, and they prize them most who are themselves wise. Our debt to tradition through reading and conversation is so massive, our protest or private addition so rare and insignificant,--and this commonly on the ground of other reading or hearing,--that, in a large sense, one would say there is no pure originality. All minds quote.--R. W. EMERSON. _Quotation and Originality._
THE PLEASURE DERIVED FROM BOOKS
It is remarkable, the character of the pleasure we derive from the best books. They impress us with the conviction that one nature wrote, and the same reads. We read the verses of one of the great English poets, of Chaucer, of Marvell, of Dryden, with the most modern joy,--with a pleasure, I mean, which is in great part caused by the abstraction of all _time_ from their verses. There is some awe mixed with the joy of our surprise, when this poet, who lived in some past world, two or three hundred years ago, says that which lies close to my own soul, that which I also had wellnigh thought and said.--R. W. EMERSON. _The American Scholar._
OUR DEBT TO A BOOK
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-coloured 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.--R. W. EMERSON. _Thoughts on Modern Literature._
RICH FARE
A natural turn for reading and intellectual pursuits probably preserved me from the moral shipwreck, so apt to befall those who are deprived in early life of the paternal pilotage. At the very least, my books kept me aloof from the ring, the dog-pit, the tavern, and the saloon, with their degrading orgies. For the closet associate of Pope and Addison--the mind accustomed to the noble, though silent, discourse of Shakespeare and Milton--will hardly seek, or put up with, low company and slang. The reading animal will not be content with the brutish wallowings that satisfy the unlearned pigs of the world.
Later experience enables me to depose to the comfort and blessing that literature can prove in seasons of sickness and sorrow--how powerfully intellectual pursuits can help in keeping the head from crazing, and the heart from breaking,--nay, not to be too grave, how generous mental food can even atone for a meagre diet--rich fare on the paper for short commons on the cloth.
Poisoned by the malaria of the Dutch marshes, my stomach, for many months, resolutely set itself against fish, flesh, or fowl; my appetite had no more edge than the German knife placed before me. But, luckily, the mental palate and digestion were still sensible and vigorous; and whilst I passed untasted every dish at the Rhenish _table d'hôte_, I could yet enjoy my _Peregrine Pickle_, and the feast after the manner of the ancients. There was no yearning towards calf's head _à la tortue_, or sheep's heart; but I could still relish Head _à la Brunnen_ and the _Heart of Midlothian_.
Still more recently, it was my misfortune, with a tolerable appetite, to be condemned to lenten fare, like Sancho Panza, by my physician--to a diet, in fact, lower than any prescribed by the poor-law commissioners; all animal food, from a bullock to a rabbit, being strictly interdicted; as well as all fluids stronger than that which lays dust, washes pinafores, and waters polyanthus. But 'the feast of reason and the flow of soul' were still mine. Denied beef, I had _Bul_wer and _Cow_per,--forbidden mutton, there was _Lamb_,--and in lieu of pork, the great _Bacon_ or _Hogg_.
Then, as to beverage, it was hard, doubtless, for a Christian to set his face like a Turk against the juice of the grape. But, eschewing wine, I had still my _Butler_; and in the absence of liquor, all the _choice spirits_ from Tom Browne to Tom Moore.
Thus, though confined, physically, to the drink that drowns kittens, I quaffed mentally, not merely the best of our own home-made, but the rich, racy, sparkling growths of France and Italy, of Germany and Spain--the champagne of Molière, and the Monte Pulciano of Boccaccio, the hock of Schiller, and the sherry of Cervantes. Depressed bodily by the fluid that damps everything, I got intellectually elevated with Milton, a little merry with Swift, or rather jolly with Rabelais, whose Pantagruel, by the way, is quite equal to the best gruel with rum in it.
So far can literature palliate or compensate for gastronomical privations. But there are other evils, great and small, in this world, which try the stomach less than the head, the heart, and the temper--bowls that will not roll right--well-laid schemes that will 'gang aglee'--and ill winds that blow with the pertinacity of the monsoon. Of these, Providence has allotted me a full share; but still, paradoxical as it may sound, my _burden_ has been greatly lightened by a _load of books_. The manner of this will be best understood by a feline illustration. Everybody has heard of the two Kilkenny cats, who devoured each other; but it is not so generally known that they left behind them an orphan kitten, which, true to the breed, began to eat itself up, till it was diverted from the operation by a mouse. Now, the human mind, under vexation, is like that kitten, for it is apt to _prey upon itself_, unless drawn off by a new object; and none better for the purpose than a book; for example, one of Defoe's; for who, in reading his thrilling _History of the Great Plague_, would not be reconciled to a few little ones?
Many, many a dreary, weary hour have I got over--many a gloomy misgiving postponed--many a mental or bodily annoyance forgotten, by help of the tragedies and comedies of our dramatists and novelists! Many a trouble has been soothed by the still small voice of the moral philosopher--many a dragon-like care charmed to sleep by the sweet song of the poet, for all which I cry incessantly, not aloud, but in my heart, Thanks and honour to the glorious masters of the pen, and the great inventors of the press! Such has been my own experience of the blessing and comfort of literature and intellectual pursuits; and of the same mind, doubtless, was Sir Humphry Davy, who went for 'consolations in _Travel_', not to the inn or the posting house, but to his library and his books.--T. HOOD (Letter to the Manchester Athenaeum, 1843).
POWER AND GLADNESS
Books written when the soul is at spring-tide, When it is laden like a groaning sky Before a thunder-storm, are power and gladness, And majesty and beauty. They seize the reader As tempests seize a ship, and bear him on With a wild joy. Some books are drenchèd sands, On which a great soul's wealth lies all in heaps, Like a wrecked argosy. What power in books! They mingle gloom and splendour, as I've oft, In thunderous sunsets, seen the thunder-piles Seamed with dull fire and fiercest glory-rents. They awe me to my knees, as if I stood In presence of a king. They give me tears; Such glorious tears as Eve's fair daughters shed, When first they clasped a Son of God, all bright With burning plumes and splendours of the sky, In zoning heaven of their milky arms. How few read books aright! Most souls are shut By sense from grandeur, as a man who snores Night-capped and wrapt in blankets to the nose Is shut out from the night, which, like a sea, Breaketh for ever on a strand of stars.
A. SMITH. _A Life-Drama._
THE COMMODITY REAPED OF BOOKS
The commerce of books comforts me in age and solaceth me in solitariness. It easeth me of the burthen of a wearisome sloth: and at all times rids me of tedious companies: it abateth the edge of fretting sorrow, on condition it be not extreme and over-insolent. To divert me from any importunate imagination or insinuating conceit, there is no better way than to have recourse unto books; with ease they allure me to them, and with facility they remove them all. And though they perceive I neither frequent nor seek them, but wanting other more essential, lively, and more natural commodities, they never mutiny or murmur at me; but still entertain me with one and self-same visage....