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HOW TO READ AND WHAT TO READ.

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He pens a few lines of a satirical poem; skims through his letters; discusses his love affairs; gives audience to a political intriguer; but he who attempted so many things excelled in none. History preserves his name only as a warning. The student, therefore, must not confound desultoriness with versatility, the changeful humours of Alcibiades with the various intellectual pursuits of a Pericles. He must not fall into the fatal error of supposing that he is learning much because he touches many subjects, or reading widely because he dips into many books. It is excellent advice of Lord Lytton's when he urges that "while the ordinary inducement to reading is towards general delight and general instruction, it is well in youth to acquire the habit of reading with conscientious toil for a special purpose. Whatever costs us labour braces all the sinews of the mind to the effort; and whatever we study with a definite object fixes a much more tenacious hold on the memory than do the lessons of mere desultory reading."

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But first we must be discriminative in our reading.

This is

the principle laid down by Thomas Fuller when he says, that some books are only cursorily to be tasted of, namely, first, voluminous books, the task of a man's life to read them over; secondly, auxiliary books, only to be repaired to on occasions; thirdly, such as are mere pieces of formality, so that if you look on them you look through them, and he that peeps through the casement of the index sees as much as if he were in the house." The voluminous books, the auxiliary books, and the formality books can be put aside by the student in favour of books that will teach him something; books that will teach him how to live and how to die; books that will store his memory with knowledge, his imagination with splendid pictures; books that will stir all the better and higher impulses of his nature, appeal to all the purer and tenderer feelings of the heart. He must exercise the wisest discrimination in his choice of books, because the time spent on a bad book is time wasted, and time is not a commodity with which the student can afford to deal prodigally. Even of good books there are three classes: books that must be thoroughly digested in the way and manner already prescribed; books that may be dismissed after a second or third reading; books that call for nothing more than a single perusal. Or we may arrange them after the fashion of William Langland's three stages of doing; the Do Well, Do Better, Do Best. In this last supreme class how few the number! How few the number of those which justify the application to them of Milton's glorious words-books which "do contain a progeny of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are," ""which do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them;" which are "the precious life-blood" of master-spirits, "embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life!" In the noble prose-poem (the "Areopagitica") from which these

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THE READER HIS OWN CENSOR.

extracts are taken, Milton proceeds to oppose a public censorship of books and to defend the liberty of unlicensed printing. He quotes the example of Dionysius Alexandrinus, a person of great name in the Church for piety and learning, who had been wont to read the books of heretics, until a certain presbyter laid it scrupulously to his conscience how he durst venture himself among those defiling volumes. "The worthy man," says Milton, "loath to give offence, fell into a new debate with himself what was to be thought, when suddenly a vision sent from God (it is his own epistle that so avers it) confirmed him in these words, 'Read any books whatever come to thy hands, for thou art sufficient both to judge aright and to examine each matter.' To this revelation he assented the sooner, as he confesses, because it was answerable to that of the Apostle to the Thessalonians, 'Prove all things, hold fast that which is good.'"

Milton continues :- -"And he might have added another remarkable saying of the same author, 'To the pure all things are pure; not only meats and drinks, but all kind of knowledge, whether of good or evil. The knowledge cannot defile, nor consequently the books, if the will and conscience be not defiled. For books are as meats and viands are, some of good, some of evil substance; and yet God in that unapocryphal vision said without exception, Rise, Peter, kill and eat,' leaving the choice to each man's discretion. Wholesome meats to a vitiated stomach differ little or nothing from unwholesome, and best books to a naughty mind are not unapplicable to occasions of evil. Bad meats will scarce breed good nourishment in the healthiest connection; but herein the difference is of bad books, that they to a discreet and judicious reader serve in many respects to discover, to confute, to forewarn, and to illustrate." Milton's argument may be accepted so far as it is designed to prevent or limit the interference of the State, but it cannot be held valid as against that censorship which every reader should institute for himself. It may be injudicious for the State to institute an Index Expurgatorius, but it is clearly the student's duty and interest to do so. He must not be misled by the apostolic axiom that to the pure all things are pure, because the real difficulty here is that we cannot determine what are the pure. Suggestions and promptings of evil surround us from our boyhood upward, and that absolute purity which is incapable of being soiled by contact with impurities how few of us can profess! There are books which scarcely any young man can read without injury; but were it otherwise, were it possible for him to touch tar and not be defiled, what would he gain? Is it worth while to wade through a cloaca in search of a counterfeit coin? What better can we expect? Pearls do not lie at the bottom of rivers of filth. I have recently read with interest Mr. Besant's admirable little essay on Rabelais, but I do not see that he proves the value of his author as estimated against his moral delinquencies. The

"SEEK THOSE THINGS THAT ARE above.” ΙΟΙ

wit and persiflage of "Don Juan" seem to me dearly purchased at the cost of its indecency. In this direction, then, our reading must be discriminative; we must elect between the good and the bad, between the pure and the unclean, the solid and the superficial. As for what we do and think and believe, so are we answerable to the living God for what we read. That was a pathetic speech of Sir Walter Scott's in the dark, drear days of his declining years- "I am drawing near to the close of my career; I am fast shuffling off the stage. I have been perhaps the most voluminous author of the day; and it is a comfort to me to think that I have tried to unsettle no man's faith, to corrupt no man's principle, and that I have written nothing which on my deathbed I should wish blotted." Surely when for us, too, the sands in life's hour-glass are nearly run out, when the lengthening shadows warn us of the approach of evening, it will be a consolation to reflect that we have read no books which on our deathbed we should wish forgotten or unnamed.

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I have been writing chiefly of immoral books-books openly or insidiously corrupt; but the caution is equally applicable to books bad in a literary sense; shams or inanities, worthless in thought and expression, the refuse of the circulating library, which it is a hopeless waste of time and effort to consider. Indifferent poetry, fictitious history, fashionable scepticism, sensational fiction: the student must dismiss these from his path; they are so many obstacles to his onward progress. Seek those things that are above," is the apostle's injunction; how shall we do so if we suffer our minds and hearts to be dragged downwards by the weight of folly, frivolity, and falsehood! What a motto is this for a library, what a watchword for the student! Seek," as Canon Liddon puts it, "seek that which instructs rather than that which stimulates; that which braces rather than that which is attractive; the exact science rather than the vague mass of ill-assorted 'views;' the poet who reveals human nature to itself, like Shakespeare, rather than the poet who flatters and fans sensual passion, like Byron." Yes, "seek the things that are above:" let this be your fixed, your immutable rule in the conduct of your studies.

Do you ask me how you shall determine what books are good and worth reading, what bad and fit only for the flames or the rubbish-heap? I reply that in most cases you have the consensus of public opinion and the authority of critical tradition for your guide. Against bad books the world has placed a black mark, indelibly conspicuous. You cannot but see it if you do not shut your eyes. As for those books which are daily issuing from the press, and by a specious novelty of style and treatment securing a temporary popularity, you can easily decide whether they will repay you for perusing them. A single chapter-nay, a pagewill reveal to you their tone and intention. You do not drink a

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TASTING and testing.

hogshead of wine to ascertain its quality; you are satisfied with a single glass; and if that glass be stale or sour or flavourless, you return the cask without delay. It may be labelled "Falernian," but you know that it came of no such generous vintage. "When

I read, I wish to read to good purpose, and there are some books which contradict on the very face of them what appear to me to be first principles. You surely will not say, 'I am bound to read such books. If a man tells me he has a very elaborate argument to prove that two and two make five, I have something else to do than to attend to his argument. If I find the first mouthful of meat which I take from a fine-looking joint on my table is tainted, 1 need not eat through it to be convinced I ought to send it away." John Foster remarks of Blair's once-celebrated sermons that, after reading five or six, we become assured that we most perfectly see the whole compass and reach of his powers, and that if there were twenty volumes, we might read on through the whole without ever coming to a bold conception, or a profound investigation, or a burst of genuine enthusiasm. But what would be the use of reading the twenty volumes? In fiction we are often introduced to the elderly lady with some pretension to accomplishments, who at the beginning of the year takes up her ponderous folio of divinity or theology, and day by day, until the year is ended, religiously reads page after page, not missing a sentence, a line, a word, a comma, finishing it with the last gasp of the year's last day. The student is under no such inexorable conditions. He is no more constrained to read a bad book than to listen to a stranger's worthless conversation; as he would rid himself of the one annoyance, so let him deliver himself from the other.

Having thus dwelt upon the advantages of reading and the principles on which it should be conducted, I pass on to indicate some of those literary masterpieces which, in pursuing the task of self-culture, the student should not fail to make his own.

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CHAPTER II.

ENGLISH POETRY: A COURSE OF READING.

N attempting to define a course of reading in English literature, I am aware that I lay myself open to adverse criticism. The space at my command is limited, while the field to be covered is very wide: hence there must be omissions, and among those omissions will probably be books which, in the opinion of some, ought to have found a place. Others will object, if the space be small, why attempt to crowd so much into it? I answer, because I believe that young men are often in want of such a guide as I hope to supply. They have, perhaps, little time at their disposal, but they want to read the best books of the best writers, and are, therefore, thankful to be told which are those books, who are those writers, in the common opinion of men of letters. For extracts" they have no taste; scraps cannot satisfy Barmecides when he sees spread before him a boundless feast. It may be said that we already possess several trustworthy manuals which furnish an accurate and comprehensive account of English writers. But these are too extended in their scope: they embrace the whole vast demesne of our literature instead of pointing out a route by which the ordinary traveller, with means and opportunities restricted, may survey its finest and most characteristic features. Now, it must be understood that I make no pretension to compile a guide or handbook or introduction to English literature. I intend no more than to indicate its chief treasures; to furnish the reader with just such a list of the best books by the best writers as has already been found useful by young men who have consulted me for this purpose. As a writer in the "Spectator" recently remarked, a young student needs a few plain signposts to direct him on his road; keeping them well in view, he may stray occasionally, without detriment, into any bypath that may attract his fancy. Well, I essay to erect these signposts for his use; though, perhaps, I shall accompany him now and then on a diversion into those pleasant nooks and corners where

"Daisies, vermeil-rimmed and white,
Hide in deep herbage."

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