Part 9

What at first view appeared an inconsistency is a proof at once of this people's wisdom and refinement. Even allowing the works of their ancestors better written than theirs, yet those of the moderns acquire a real value, by being marked with the impression of the times. Antiquity has been in the possession of others; the present is our own: let us first therefore learn to know what belongs to ourselves, and then, if we have leisure, cast our reflections back to the reign of Shonsu, who governed twenty thousand years before the creation of the moon.

The volumes of antiquity, like medals, may very well serve to amuse the curious; but the works of the moderns, like the current coin of a kingdom, are much better for immediate use; the former are often prized above their intrinsic value, and kept with care, the latter seldom pass for more than they are worth, and are often subject to the merciless hands of sweating critics and clipping compilers: the works of antiquity were ever praised, those of the moderns read; the treasures of our ancestors have our esteem, and we boast the passion; those of contemporary genius engage our heart, although we blush to own it. The visits we pay the former resemble those we pay the great; the ceremony is troublesome, and yet such as we would not choose to forgo; our acquaintance with modern books is like sitting with a friend; our pride is not flattered in the interview, but it gives more internal satisfaction....

In England, where there are as many new books published as in all the rest of Europe together, a spirit of freedom and reason reigns among the people; they have been often known to act like fools, they are generally found to think like men.--O. GOLDSMITH. _Letters from a Citizen of the World._

THE CLASSICS ALWAYS MODERN

In science read, by preference, the newest works; in literature, the oldest. The classic literature is always modern. New books revive and re-decorate old ideas; old books suggest and invigorate new ideas.--E. G. E. L. BULWER-LYTTON, LORD LYTTON. _Caxtoniana._

ON READING OLD BOOKS

I hate to read new books. There are twenty or thirty volumes that I have read over and over again, and these are the only ones that I have any desire ever to read at all. It was a long time before I could bring myself to sit down to the _Tales of My Landlord_, but now that author's works have made a considerable addition to my scanty library.... Women judge of books as they do of fashions or complexions, which are admired only 'in their newest gloss'. That is not my way. I am not one of those who trouble the circulating libraries much, or pester the booksellers for mail-coach copies of standard periodical publications. I cannot say that I am greatly addicted to black-letter, but I profess myself well versed in the marble bindings of Andrew Millar, in the middle of the last century; nor does my taste revolt at Thurloe's _State Papers_, in russia leather; or an ample impression of Sir William Temple's _Essays_, with a portrait after Sir Godfrey Kneller in front. I do not think altogether the worse of a book for having survived the author a generation or two. I have more confidence in the dead than the living.... When I take up a work that I have read before (the oftener the better), I know what I have to expect. 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 _rifaccimentos_ 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. 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!

My father Shandy solaced himself with Bruscambille. Give me for this purpose a volume of _Peregrine Pickle_ or _Tom Jones_. Open either of them anywhere--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 odd 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 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.--W. HAZLITT. _The Plain Speaker._

ON READING NEW BOOKS

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 complaints that I hear made that Sir Walter writes no 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 yesterday or three hundred years ago. If it be urged that it has no modern, passing incidents, and 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 enjoyment 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.... The knowledge which so many other persons have of its contents deadens our curiosity and interest altogether. We set aside the subject as one on which others have made up their minds for us (as if we really could have ideas in their heads), and are quite on the alert for the next new work, teeming hot from the press, which we shall be the first to read, criticize, and pass an opinion on. Oh, delightful! To cut open the leaves, to inhale the fragrance of the scarcely dry paper, to examine the type to see who is the printer (which is some clue to the value that is set upon the work), to launch out into regions of thought and invention never trod till now, and to explore characters that never met a human eye before--this is a luxury worth sacrificing a dinner-party, or a few hours of a spare morning to. Who, indeed, when the work is critical and full of expectation, would venture to dine out, or to face a coterie of blue-stockings in the evening, without having gone through this ordeal, or at least without hastily turning over a few of the first pages, while dressing, to be able to say that the beginning does not promise much, or to tell the name of the heroine?

A new work is something in our power: we mount the bench, and sit in judgement on it; we can damn or recommend it to others at pleasure, can decry or extol it to the skies, and can give an answer to those who have not yet read it, and expect an account of it; and thus show our shrewdness and the independence of our taste before the world have had time to form an opinion. If we cannot write ourselves, we become, by busying ourselves about it, a kind of _accessories after the fact_.--W. HAZLITT. _Sketches and Essays._

A PREFERENCE FOR GREAT MODELS

By the by, I observe a point in which your taste and mine differ from each other materially. It is about new publications. I read them unwillingly. You abstain from them with difficulty, and as a matter of duty and self-denial. Their novelty has very little attraction for me; and 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 becoming more intimate; and 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. If I hear of a new poem, for instance, I ask myself first, whether it is superior to Homer, Shakespeare, Ariosto, Virgil, or Racine; and, in the next place, whether I already have all these authors completely at my fingers' ends. And when both questions have been answered in the negative, I infer that it is better (and, to me, it is certainly pleasanter) to give such time as I have to bestow on the reading of poetry to Homer, Ariosto and Co., and so of other things.

Is it not better to try, at least, to elevate and adorn 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 an't worth reading?--J. W. WARD, EARL OF DUDLEY (Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff).

THE VALUE OF MODERN BOOKS

The great productions of Athenian and Roman genius are indeed still what they were. But though their positive value is unchanged, their relative value, when compared with the whole mass of mental wealth possessed by mankind, has been constantly falling. They were the intellectual all of our ancestors. They are but a part of our treasures. Over what tragedy could Lady Jane Grey have wept, over what comedy could she have smiled, if the ancient dramatists had not been in her library? A modern reader can make shift without _Oedipus_ and _Medea_, while he possesses _Othello_ and _Hamlet_. If he knows nothing of _Pyrgopolynices_ and _Thraso_, he is familiar with _Bobadil_, and _Bessus_, and _Pistol_, and _Parolles_. If he cannot enjoy the delicious irony of Plato, he may find some compensation in that of Pascal. If he is shut out from _Nephelococcygia_, he may take refuge in _Lilliput_.... We believe that the books which have been written in the languages of Western Europe, during the last two hundred and fifty years--translations from the ancient languages of course included,--are of greater value than all the books which at the beginning of that period were extant in the world.--LORD MACAULAY. _Lord Bacon._

A SORT OF THIRD ESTATE

Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or, rather, each generation for the next succeeding. The books of an older period will not fit this. Yet hence arises a grave mischief. The sacredness which attaches to the act of creation--the act of thought--is transferred to the record. The poet chanting, was felt to be a divine man: henceforth the chant is divine also. The writer was a just and wise spirit: henceforward it is settled, the book is perfect; as love of the hero corrupts into worship of his statue. Instantly, the book becomes noxious: the guide is a tyrant. The sluggish and perverted mind of the multitude, slow to open to the incursions of Reason, having once so opened, having once received this book, stands upon it, and makes an outcry if it is disparaged. Colleges are built on it. Books are written on it by thinkers, not by Man Thinking; by men of talent, that is, who start wrong, who set out from accepted dogmas, not from their own sight of principles. Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote these books.

Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the book-worm. Hence, the book-learned class, who value books as such; not as related to nature and the human constitution, but as making a sort of Third Estate with the world and the soul. Hence, the restorers of readings, the emendators, the bibliomaniacs of all degrees.

Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst.--R. W. EMERSON. _The American Scholar._

OLD AND NEW BOOKS

Old books, as you well know, are books of the world's youth, and new books are fruits of its age. How many of all these ancient folios round me are like so many old cupels? The gold has passed out of these long ago, but their pores are full of the dross with which it was mingled.--O. W. HOLMES. _The Professor at the Breakfast-Table._

SECURITY IN OLD BOOKS

What a sense of security in an old book which Time has criticized for us! What a precious feeling of seclusion in having a double wall of centuries between us and the heats and clamours of contemporary literature! How limpid seems the thought, how pure the old wine of scholarship that has been settling for so many generations in those silent crypts and Falernian _amphorae_ of the Past! No other writers speak to us with the authority of those whose ordinary speech was that of our translation of the Scriptures; to no modern is that frank unconsciousness possible which was natural to a period when reviews were not; and no later style breathes that country charm characteristic of days ere the metropolis drew all literary activity to itself, and the trampling feet of the multitude had banished the lark and the daisy from the fresh privacies of language. Truly, as compared with the present, these old voices seem to come from the morning fields and not the paved thoroughfares of thought....

There are volumes which have the old age of Plato, rich with gathering experience, meditation, and wisdom, which seem to have sucked colour and ripeness from the genial autumns of all the select intelligences that have steeped them in the sunshine of their love and appreciation;--these quaint freaks of russet tell of Montaigne; these stripes of crimson fire, of Shakespeare; this sober gold, of Sir Thomas Browne; this purpling bloom, of Lamb;--in such fruits we taste the legendary gardens of Alcinoüs and the orchards of Atlas; and there are volumes again which can claim only the inglorious senility of Old Parr or older Jenkins, which have outlived their half-dozen of kings to be the prize of showmen and treasuries of the born-to-be-forgotten trifles of a hundred years ago....

There is to us a sacredness in a volume, however dull; we live over again the author's lonely labours and tremulous hopes; we see him, on his first appearance after parturition, 'as well as could be expected,' a nervous sympathy yet surviving between the late-severed umbilical cord and the wondrous offspring, doubtfully entering the Mermaid, or the Devil Tavern, or the Coffee-house of Will or Button, blushing under the eye of Ben or Dryden or Addison, as if they must needs know him for the author of the _Modest Enquiry into the Present State of Dramatique Poetry_, or of the _Unities briefly considered by Philomusus_, of which they have never heard and never will so much as hear the names; we see the country-gentlemen (sole cause of its surviving to our day) who buy it as a book no gentleman's library can be complete without; we see the spendthrift heir, whose horses and hounds and Pharaonic troops of friends, drowned in a Red Sea of claret, bring it to the hammer, the tall octavo in tree-calf following the ancestral oaks of the park. Such a volume is sacred to us. But it must be the original foundling of the book-stall, the engraved blazon of some extinct baronetcy within its cover, its leaves enshrining memorial-flowers of some passion smothered while the Stuarts were not yet unkinged, suggestive of the trail of laced ruffles, burnt here and there with ashes from the pipe of some dozing poet, its binding worn and weather-stained, that has felt the inquisitive finger, perhaps, of Malone, or thrilled to the touch of Lamb, doubtful between desire and the odd sixpence. When it comes to a question of reprinting we are more choice. The new duodecimo is bald and bare, indeed, compared with its battered prototype that could draw us with a single hair of association.--J. R. LOWELL. _Library of Old Authors._

TO MY BOOK

It will be looked for, book, when some but see Thy title, Epigrams, and named of me, Thou shouldst be bold, licentious, full of gall, Wormwood and sulphur, sharp, and toothed withal, Become a petulant thing, hurl ink and wit As madmen stones; not caring whom they hit. Deceive their malice, who could wish it so; And by thy wiser temper let men know Thou art not covetous of least self-fame, Made from the hazard of another's shame: Much less with lewd, profane, and beastly phrase, To catch the world's loose laughter, or vain gaze. He that departs with his own honesty For vulgar praise, doth it too dearly buy.

BEN JONSON.

HIS PRAYER FOR ABSOLUTION

For those my unbaptizèd rhymes, Writ in my wild unhallowed times; For every sentence, clause, and word, That's not inlaid with thee, my Lord, Forgive me, God, and blot each line Out of my book that is not thine. But if, 'mongst all, thou findst here one Worthy thy benediction; That one of all the rest shall be The glory of my work and me.

R. HERRICK. _Noble Numbers._

BOOKS THAT DO HURT

In our forefathers' time, when papistry, as a standing pool, covered and overflowed all England, few books were read in our tongue, saving certain books of chivalry, as they said for pastime and pleasure; which, as some say, were made in monasteries by idle monks or wanton canons. As one for example, 'Morte Arthur', the whole pleasure of which book standeth in two special points, in open manslaughter and bold bawdry.... This is good stuff for wise men to laugh at, or honest men to take pleasure at: yet I know, when God's Bible was banished the court, and 'Morte Arthur' received into the prince's chamber.

What toys the daily reading of such a book may work in the will of a young gentleman, or a young maid, that liveth wealthily or idly, wise men can judge, and honest men do pity. And yet ten 'Morte Arthurs' do not the tenth part so much harm, as one of these books made in Italy and translated in England.... Suffer these books to be read, and they shall soon displace all books of godly learning.--R. ASCHAM. _The Schoolmaster._

BOOKS AND THIEVES

A good book steals the mind from vain pretences, From wicked cogitations and offences; It makes us know the world's deceiving pleasures, And set our hearts on never-ending treasures. So when thieves steal our cattle, coin, or ware, It makes us see how mutable they are: Puts us in mind that we should put our trust Where felon cannot steal or canker rust. Bad books through eyes and ears do break and enter, And take possession of the heart's frail centre, Infecting all the little kingdom man With all the poisonous mischief that they can, Till they have robbed and ransacked him of all Those things which men may justly goodness call; Rob him of virtue and of heavenly grace, And leave him beggared in a wretched state. So of our earthly goods, thieves steal the best, And richest jewels, and leave us the rest. Men know not thieves from true men by their looks, Nor by their outsides no man can know books. Both are to be suspected, all can tell, And wise men, ere they trust, will try them well: Some books not worth the reading for their fruits, Some thieves not worth the hanging, for their suits. And as with industry, and art, and skill One thief doth daily rob another still, So one book from another, in this age, Steals many a line, a sentence, or a page. And as the veriest thief may have some friend So the worst books some knave will still defend.

* * * * *

Still books and thieves in one conceit do join, For, if you mark them, they are all for coin.

J. TAYLOR. _An Arrant Thief._

MOUNTEBANK AUTHORS