Part 2

'Our books are taken down once a year, in the month of August, to be dusted, and, for the last four or five years, I have adopted a simple plan. When the books are well dusted I take about half an ounce of the best horn glue, and, having dissolved it in the usual way, I add to it about a pint of warm water and a teaspoonful of glycerine, and stir it well. Then dipping a soft sponge into the solution, I wash over the backs of the books. If the leather is much perished or decayed, it will unduly absorb the size, and a second touch over may be necessary. The glycerine will have the effect of preventing the glue from drying too hard or stiffening the leather. When dry, the books may be rubbed over with a chamois leather. The above process, I find, helps to nourish the leather, and to restore that property which the heated air has destroyed. It also freshens up and greatly improves the appearance of the volumes upon the shelves. The operation must be repeated once a year at least.'

Bottles of preparation are sold ready made up for this purpose. Mr. Blades warmly echoed the sentiment that housemaids and helps are seldom bibliophiles, and, if, peradventure, one Eve in a family can be indoctrinated with book reverence, there may be salvation for all the books. Mr. Blades himself had a fine library, and goes fully into the subject of the period of dusting and its methods.[9]

'Books _must_ now and then be taken down out of their shelves, but they should be tended lovingly and with judgment. If the dusting can be done just outside the room, so much the better. The books removed, the shelf should be lifted quite out of its bearings, cleansed, and wiped, and then each volume should be taken separately and gently rubbed on back and edges with a soft cloth. In returning the volumes to their places, notice should be taken of the binding, and especially when the books are in whole calf or morocco, care should be taken not to let them rub together. The best-bound books are soonest injured, and generally deteriorate in bad company. Certain volumes, indeed, have evil tempers, and will scratch the faces of all their neighbours who are too familiar with them. Such are books with metal clasps and rivets on their edges; and such, again, are those abominable old rascals, chiefly born in the fifteenth century, who are proud of being dressed in real boards with brass corners, and pass their lives with fearful knobs and metal bosses. . . . . When your books are being dusted, don't impute too much common sense to your assistants--take their ignorance for granted.'

Mr. Blades then points out certain dangers which beset the inexperienced handler of books. Never lift a book by one of its corners. Do not pile books up too high. Be careful not to rub the dust _into_ instead of _off_ the edges. If mildew or damp is discovered, carefully wipe it away, and let the book stand open for some days in a very dry spot--but not in front of a fire. Be careful that no grit is on the duster, or it will surely mark your books. Do not wedge books in too tightly. Common-sense must dictate what is right, but every volume should _fit easily_ in its place.

Children and servants are not to be classed as friendly to books, but little lapses on their part are much more easily tolerated than the ignorance of the person who ought to know better. Such people insist upon having their books bound in hideous bindings, and mutilated almost beyond recognition by the bookbinder's plough.

I will talk about bookbinding later, but this I will say, that in no way can a book be easier ruined than by being placed unconditionally in the hands of a bookbinder.

It is frequently supposed that the insect, known as the bookworm, is a great enemy to books. 'Tis true where the bookworm exists it does irreparable damage, but fortunately it is not an insect which may be found every day. In America, they have, I believe, greater trouble from these boring insects. They have 'fish bugs,' 'silver fish,' and 'bustle tails,' scientifically known as _Lepisma Saccharina_. Another is known as 'Buffalo Bug,' or 'Carpet Bug,' or the _Anthrenus varius_ of scientists. A third is _Blatta Australasia_, a species of cockroach.

The following maxims may be learned by heart, or if preferred, they can be bought by experience:

Do not bite your paper knife until it has the edge of a saw.

Do not cut books except with a proper ivory paper knife.

It is ruination to a good book not to cut it right through into the corners.

Do not turn the leaves of books down. Particularly, do not turn down the leaves of books printed on plate paper.

If you are in the habit of lending books, do not mark them. These two habits together constitute an act of indiscretion.

It is better to give a book than to lend it.

Never write upon a title-page or half-title. The blank fly-leaf is the right place.

Books are neither card-racks, crumb-baskets, or receptacles for dead leaves.

Books were not meant as cushions, nor were they meant to be toasted before a fire.

Valets and maids appear to take kindly to the packing of everything except books. I will therefore say that only small quantities (twelve volumes to twenty) should be packed in a parcel. Boxes, either wine-cases, or boxes specially made, should be used. Books being very solid and heavy should be packed in strong cases, and the method of packing them should be to place them upright alternately on back and edge in layers. By this means they can be fitted tightly to the case they are meant to travel in. Leather bound volumes should be wrapped up singly before being packed, and the box should be carefully lined with paper so that any roughness on the wood of the box may not damage the volumes.

Book and parcel post volumes should have three or four thicknesses of paper, and if bound volumes a strawboard on either side as well as paper.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] Leighton (John), _Book-plate Annual_.

[9] _Enemies of Books._

_The Art of Reading._

First, how to read. The reason why so many people who read much know so little, is because they read isolated books instead of reading one book in connexion with another. The memory is trained by association, and if you read two books in succession on one subject you know more than twice as much as if you had read one book only. A good memory is a memory which assimilates. Every one has a good memory for something. A good memory rejects and sifts, and does not accept everything offered to it like a pillar-box. Do not join reading societies, because they kill individuality. Choose your subject, and work all round it. There is an extensive literature on the subject of 'The Art of Reading,' 'The Best Hundred Books,' &c. Most of it is useless and bewildering. The best advice I have ever seen in print about reading was by Sir Herbert Maxwell, and it appeared some years ago at the end of a _Nineteenth Century_ article. It is as follows:

'If any young person of leisure were so much at a loss as to ask advice as to what he should read, mine should be exceedingly simple--_Read anything_ bearing on a definite object. Let him take up any imaginable subject to which he feels attracted, be it the precession of the equinoxes or postage stamps, the Athenian drama or London street cries; let him follow it from book to book, and unconsciously his knowledge, not of that subject only, but of many subjects, will be increased, for the departments of the realm of knowledge are divided by no _octroi_. He may abandon the first object of his pursuit for another; it does not matter, one subject leads to another; he will have acquired the habit of acquisition; he will have gained that conviction of the pricelessness of time which makes it intolerable for a man to lie abed of a morning.'

The art of reading is a thing to learn, and with it comes the equally valuable art of skipping.

Mr. Balfour's advice to readers is to learn the arts of skipping and skimming, and the late Philip Gilbert Hamerton said:--'The art of reading is to skip judiciously. The art is to skip all that does not concern us, whilst missing nothing that we really need. No external guidance can teach this; for nobody but ourselves can guess what the needs of our intellect may be.'

No one knows how to skim and skip who has not first well threshed out some subject for himself. No one can tear the heart out of a book who has not first been through the student period. Advice is poured forth in lengthy magazine articles, and lectures, but as far as I know there is nothing which embodies such good sense on this subject, excepting Sir Herbert Maxwell's advice above, as a tiny pamphlet, about two inches square, written by Miss Lucy Soulsby, and sold for twopence. It is rather absurdly called _Things in Books Clothing_!

Below are printed only such passages, gathered from many sources, as I think are necessary to be known about the art of reading.

'It is true that the most absolute master of his own hours still needs thrift if he would turn them to account, and that too many _never_ learn this thrift, whilst others learn it late. . . . . Few intellectual men have the art of economising the hours of study. The very necessity which every one acknowledges of giving vast portions of life to attain proficiency in anything, makes us prodigal where we ought to be parsimonious, and careless where we have need of unceasing vigilance. The best time-savers are a love of soundness in all we learn or do, and a cheerful acceptance of inevitable limitations.'[10]

'In exchange for the varied pleasures of the fashionable life, the intellectual life can offer you but one satisfaction, for all its promises are reducible simply to this, that you shall come at last, after infinite labour, into contact with some great _reality_; that you shall know and do in such sort that you will feel yourself on firm ground, and be recognised--probably not much applauded, but yet recognised--as a fellow-labourer by other knowers and doers. Before you come to this, most of your present accomplishments will be abandoned by yourself as unsatisfactory and insufficient, but one or two of them will be turned to better account, and will give you, after many years, a tranquil self-respect, and, what is still rarer and better, a very deep and earnest reverence for the greatness which is above you. Severed from the vanities of the illusory, you will live with the realities of knowledge as one who has quitted the painted scenery of the theatre to listen by the eternal ocean or gaze at the granite hills.'[11]

'Reading, with me, incites to reflection instantly. I cannot separate the origination of ideas from the reception of ideas. The consequence is, as I read I always begin to think in various directions, and that makes my reading slow.'[12]

'When a particular object has to be attained, reading cannot be too special. There is an enormous waste of intelligence through a neglect of this fact, but otherwise reading should "come by nature." When I look through the list of The Best Hundred Books, I cannot help saying to myself, "Here are the most admirable and varied materials for the formation of a prig."'[13]

'Let us not be afraid of using a dictionary. _A_ dictionary? A dozen; at all events, until Dr. Murray's huge undertaking is finished. And even then, for no one dictionary will help us through some authors--say, Chaucer, or Spenser, or Sir Thomas Browne. Let us use our full lexicon, and Latin dictionary, and French dictionary, and Anglo-Saxon dictionary, and etymological dictionary, and dictionaries of antiquity, and biography, and geography, and concordances, anything and everything that will throw light on the meanings and histories of words.'[14]

'To master a book, perhaps the best possible way is to write an essay in refutation of it. You may be bound few things will escape you then. The next best way may perhaps be to edit and annotate it for students, though, if some recent hebdomadal animadversions upon certain Oxford styles of annotation are well founded, this is questionable. The worst way, I should think, would be to review it for a newspaper.'[15]

'Reading, and much reading, is good. But the power of diversifying the matter infinitely in your own mind, and of applying it to every occasion that arises is far better.'[16]

'A person once told me that he never took up a book except with the view of making himself master of some subject which he was studying, and that while he was so engaged he made all his reading converge to that point. In this way he might read parts of many books, but not a single one from "end to end." This I take to be an excellent method of study, but one which implies the command of many books.'[17]

'Never read a book without pencil in hand. If you dislike disfiguring the margins and fly-leaves of your own books, borrow a friend's; but by all means use a pencil, if only to jot down the pages to be re-read. To transcribe striking, beautiful, or important passages is a tremendous aid to the memory; these will live for years, clear and vivid as day, when the book itself has become spectral and shadowy in the night of oblivion. A manuscript volume of such passages, well indexed, will become in time one of the most valuable books in one's library.'[18]

'No man, it appears to me, can tell another what he ought to read. A man's reading, to be of any value, must depend upon his power of association, and that again depends upon his tendencies, his capacities, his surroundings, and his opportunities.'[19]

* * * * *

I am fully convinced that the above passages condense all that is best worth knowing upon the 'Art of Reading.'

Next in importance is what to read. Be very careful about reading books which are recommended, because they are books of the hour. Fools step in and say read this and that without thinking to put themselves in your place. Because a book suits one person, it is only a rare chance that it will suit a friend equally.

Before recommending a book to another with assurance, you must know the book well, and the friend to whom it is recommended you must know much better. Read the book which suggests something responsive and sympathetic. No one can tell you this as well as you can find it for yourself. Practice will teach you to choose a book, as practice has taught you to choose a friend. You will almost be able to choose it in the dark. There are affinities for books as for people, but this does not come at once.

The proper appreciation of the great books of the world is the reward of lifelong study. You must work up to them, and unconsciously you will become trained to find great qualities in what the world has decided is great. Novel reading is not a part of the intellectual life, it is a part of the fashionable life.

Lamb says that Bridget Elia 'was tumbled early, by accident or design, into a spacious library of good old English reading, without much selection or prohibition, and browsed at will upon that fair and wholesome pasturage.' And he adds, 'Had I twenty girls they should be brought up exactly in this fashion.'

Ruskin says, 'there need be no choosing at all. Keep the modern magazine and novel out of your girl's way; turn her loose into the old library every wet day, and let her alone. She will find out what is good for her.'

Mr. Ruskin notwithstanding, there will ever be a large public who will read nothing unless it has a story in it.

Nearly all readers of books may be divided into two classes, those who read as students towards some definite end, and those who read for amusement. The latter class are greatly in the majority, and I have no hesitation in saying that a love of fiction will always predominate over a love of research, even in its light form. The student class, among whom are many critics, usually fail to understand the position of the fiction lovers, with the result that the fiction readers and fiction itself get a great many jibes and taunts. To open this question would involve a long argument, and would bring about no good. All experience goes to prove that a very large section of the public, not being students, loves to read the books of the hour, and great pleasure may be got therefrom. The smaller section, trained to different habits, and regarding books in a more serious light, put their collection of books to different purposes, and, I know, get great pleasure therefrom. The two classes can run parallel together, and one class should not try to exterminate the other.[20] In country houses the books in billiard-rooms and in the bedrooms should appropriately be fiction. Not many guests at a house-party are in the frame of mind to take up serious books, nor are there the opportunities given for application which such would require. I think where the general house library is (as is very often the case) not a living room, there is then much more reason for separating fiction and light literature, and placing them in a very accessible position. It will often be found advisable, as fiction accumulates, to weed out and decide what volumes shall be bound and what rejected or placed in the servants' library. Shelves should therefore be reserved for books which are thus going through a period of probation.[21]

A fiction library may be made very interesting if it is so arranged as to represent the history of France or of England, or any country. From the boundless stores of fiction writers--in fact, from Scott alone almost--a sequence of volumes may be arranged which, if read in proper order, would make a very excellent romance history. Almost every interesting episode of history has had its story woven into romance. Thus there are, I believe, about eighteen historical romances relating to the Monmouth rebellion alone.

'Much of love,' said Lord Bowen, 'has only been learned under the instruction of some woman who has herself only learned it from a book. Authoresses, indeed, have not unfrequently betrayed the key to some of their sex's secrets. Were it not for _Northanger Abbey_ and Miss Austen, some of the old mysteries of girlish friendship would have remained untold, and we should never have known or understood the curiosity which may lurk in a refined bosom at seventeen. Man would scarcely have guessed but for _Jane Eyre_ the impression which can be made, it seems, upon a heart by a middle-aged gentleman with the manners of a bear and the composure of a prig. Furthermore, it is through women's novels that we have had brought home to us most adequately what women who have tasted it, or seen it, can best relate, the despicable egotism of a weak man. Anzoleto in _Consuelo_, Tito in _Romola_.'[22]

It is important for every one to fix upon a time for everyday study, and remember to read when you have a disposition so to do. Do not think that spare moments not spent in reading are lost. Some spare time must be kept for thinking. If you have 'nerves,' it is no good to read then; read when the mind is quiet and receptive. This will probably be when dressing in the morning, or at night before going to bed. Keep a small bookcase in your dressing-room; in so doing you will learn the art of going to bed well. Read at any time when curiosity is aroused as to any person, place, or subject, and keep reference books at hand to answer questions intelligently. Napoleon read all the new novels in a travelling carriage, and pitched them out of the window as each was finished. Active minds, to read advantageously, should seek a quiet _sanctum_ of their own.

A very admirable suggestion was made a short time since, I think by Dr. Ernest Hart, that it should be more a custom to have bookcases in bedrooms. Many persons, and, I believe, notably Mr. Gladstone, read before going to bed. I think all bedrooms should have a selection of favourite books, and I do not think that novels are nearly so suitable as books of short essays and sketches. Few people would sit up sufficiently long to read a novel through, and many would therefore not begin what they knew they would be unable to finish.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] P. G. Hamerton.

[11] P. G. Hamerton.

[12] H. W. Beecher.

[13] James Payn.

[14] _Blackwood's Magazine_, February, 1896.

[15] _Blackwood's Magazine_, February, 1896.

[16] Burke.

[17] Thirlwall.

[18] _Blackwood's Magazine_, February, 1896.

[19] J. S. Blackie.

[20] H. D. Traill.

[21] See Mr. Gladstone's ideas on the subject, in _Gladstone in the Evening of his Days_, p. 145.

[22] Bowen's lecture on _Novel Reading_.

_Common-place Books._

Very numerous methods have been suggested whereby memory may be assisted and the assimilation of our reading proceed without indigestion. A reader is often pictured with note-book in hand, supposed to be memorising what he is reading. There is no doubt that note-books are very useful, but no note-book or commonplace-book should take the place of the natural memory--and every one has a good memory for something.

Thomas Fuller has wittily said, 'Adventure not all thy learning in one bottom, but divide it between thy memory and thy note-books. . . . . A commonplace-book contains many notions in garrison, whence an owner may draw out an army into the field on competent warning.'

Every one has his and her own way of keeping a commonplace-book. Mr. Sala, I remember, once gave a minute account of his jottings in this way:[23] 'Todd's _Index Rerum_ was, in its day, very little else than an alphabeted book--a forerunner of what stationers now sell in various sizes called _Where is it?_ The simplest form of commonplace-book is a plain quarto MS. book ruled in an ordinary way, and in this entries may be made without being alphabeted. Do not write extracts or notes right across the line, but make your entries thus, having the keyword clear and easy to be seen:--

'PICUS DE MIRANDOLA.--His extraordinary gifts. His being sought after by women. Compare with H. T. Buckle. See also Hallam's _Literary History_, Part I. chap. iii.'

In the matter of note-books, I am sure that it is best for every one to make notes in the way best suited to his convenience. Many, I think, find that taking notes while reading a book is an undesirable interruption. To such, it may be suggested to have slips of paper about half an inch wide, and four or five inches long, and insert these at the pages which contain anything notable. Then, when the book is finished, go through and transcribe or memorise such passages as are thus marked. I think it a great mistake to attempt too rigid a system in note-books, or too much red tape of any kind, because whenever this is done, the time and thought, which should be given to the matter of the extract helping to fix it upon the memory, is given instead to the secondary matter of keeping your note-books very neat.

FOOTNOTE: