The Pleasures of Life Part 4

In Bernard of Morlaix's beautiful lines--

"Pax erit illa fidelibus, illa beata, Irrevocabilis, Invariabilis, Intemerata.

Pax sine crimine, pax sine turbine, pax sine rixa, Meta Laboribus, inque tumultibus anchora fixa; Pax erit omnibus unica. Sed quibus? Immaculatis Pectore mitibus, ordine stantibus, ore sacratis."

What greater reward can we have than this; than the "peace which pa.s.seth all understanding," "which cannot be gotten for gold, neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof." [9]

[1] Colton, _Lacon, or Many Things in Few Words_.

[2] _i.e._ spirit.

[3] Omar Khayyam.

[4] Two robbers destroyed by Theseus.

[5] Epictetus.

[6] Emerson.

[7] Epictetus.

[8] King Alfred's _Boethius_.

[9] Job.

CHAPTER III

A SONG OF BOOKS.

"Oh for a booke and a shadie nooke, Eyther in doore or out; With the grene leaves whispering overhead Or the streete cryes all about.

Where I maie reade all at my ease, Both of the newe and old; For a jollie goode booke whereon to looke, Is better to me than golde."

OLD ENGLISH SONG.

Of all the privileges we enjoy in this nineteenth century there is none, perhaps, for which we ought to be more thankful than for the easier access to books.

The debt we owe to books was well expressed by Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham, author of _Philobiblon_, written as long ago as 1344, published in 1473, and the earliest English treatise on the delights of literature:--"These," he says, "are the masters who instruct us without rods and ferules, without hard words and anger, without clothes or money.

If you approach them, they are not asleep; if investigating you interrogate them, they conceal nothing; if you mistake them, they never grumble; if you are ignorant, they cannot laugh at you. The library, therefore, of wisdom is more precious than all riches, and nothing that can be wished for is worthy to be compared with it. Whosoever therefore acknowledges himself to be a zealous follower of truth, of happiness, of wisdom, of science, or even of the faith, must of necessity make himself a lover of books." But if the debt were great then, how much more now.

This feeling that books are real friends is constantly present to all who love reading. "I have friends," said Petrarch, "whose society is extremely agreeable to me; they are of all ages, and of every country. They have distinguished themselves both in the cabinet and in the field, and obtained high honors for their knowledge of the sciences. It is easy to gain access to them, for they are always at my service, and I admit them to my company, and dismiss them from it, whenever I please. They are never troublesome, but immediately answer every question I ask them. Some relate to me the events of past ages, while others reveal to me the secrets of Nature. Some teach me how to live, and others how to die. Some, by their vivacity, drive away my cares and exhilarate my spirits; while others give fort.i.tude to my mind, and teach me the important lesson how to restrain my desires, and to depend wholly on myself. They open to me, in short, the various avenues of all the arts and sciences, and upon their information I may safely rely in all emergencies. In return for all their services, they only ask me to accommodate them with a convenient chamber in some corner of my humble habitation, where they may repose in peace; for these friends are more delighted by the tranquillity of retirement than with the tumults of society."

"He that loveth a book," says Isaac Barrow, "will never want a faithful friend, a wholesome counsellor, a cheerful companion, an effectual comforter. By study, by reading, by thinking, one may innocently divert and pleasantly entertain himself, as in all weathers, so in all fortunes."

Southey took a rather more melancholy view:

"My days among the dead are pa.s.s'd, Around me I behold, Where'er these casual eyes are cast, The mighty minds of old.

My never-failing friends are they, With whom I converse day by day."

Imagine, in the words of Aikin, "that we had it in our power to call up the shades of the greatest and wisest men that ever existed, and oblige them to converse with us on the most interesting topics--what an inestimable privilege should we think it!--how superior to all common enjoyments! But in a well-furnished library we, in fact, possess this power. We can question Xenophon and Caesar on their campaigns, make Demosthenes and Cicero plead before us, join in the audiences of Socrates and Plato, and receive demonstrations from Euclid and Newton. In books we have the choicest thoughts of the ablest men in their best dress."

"Books," says Jeremy Collier, "are a guide in youth and an entertainment for age. They support us under solitude, and keep us from being a burthen to ourselves. They help us to forget the crossness of men and things; compose our cares and our pa.s.sions; and lay our disappointments asleep.

When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride, or design in their conversation."

Sir John Herschel tells an amusing anecdote ill.u.s.trating the pleasure derived from a book, not a.s.suredly of the first order. In a certain village the blacksmith having got hold of Richardson's novel, _Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded_, used to sit on his anvil in the long summer evenings and read it aloud to a large and attentive audience. It is by no means a short book, but they fairly listened to it all. At length, when the happy turn of fortune arrived, which brings the hero and heroine together, and sets them living long and happily together according to the most approved rules, the congregation were so delighted as to raise a great shout, and procuring the church keys, actually set the parish bells a-ringing.

"The lover of reading," says Leigh Hunt, "will derive agreeable terror from _Sir Bertram_ and the _Haunted Chamber_; will a.s.sent with, delighted reason to every sentence in _Mrs. Barbauld's Essay_; will feel himself wandering into solitudes with _Gray_; shake honest hands with _Sir Roger de Coverley_; be ready to embrace _Parson Adams_, and to chuck _Pounce_ out of the window instead of the hat; will travel with _Marco Polo_ and _Mungo Park_; stay at home with _Thomson_; retire with _Cowley_; be industrious with _Hutton_; sympathizing with _Gay_ and _Mrs. Inchbald_; laughing with (and at) _Buncle_; melancholy, and forlorn, and self-restored with the s.h.i.+pwrecked mariner of _De Foe_."

Carlyle has wisely said that a collection of books is a real university.

The importance of books has been appreciated in many quarters where we might least expect it. Among the hardy Nors.e.m.e.n runes were supposed to be endowed with miraculous power. There is an Arabic proverb, that "a wise man's day is worth a fool's life," and another--though it reflects perhaps rather the spirit of the Califs than of the Sultans,--that "the ink of science is more precious than the blood of the martyrs."

Confucius is said to have described himself as a man who "in his eager pursuit of knowledge forgot his food, who in the joy of its attainment forgot his sorrows, and did not even perceive that old age was coming on."

Yet, if this could be said by the Arabs and the Chinese, what language can be strong enough to express the grat.i.tude we ought to feel for the advantages we enjoy! We do not appreciate, I think, our good fortune in belonging to the nineteenth century. Sometimes, indeed, one may even be inclined to wish that one had not lived quite so soon, and to long for a glimpse of the books, even the school-books, of one hundred years hence. A hundred years ago not only were books extremely expensive and c.u.mbrous, but many of the most delightful were still uncreated--such as the works of Scott, Thackeray, d.i.c.kens, Bulwer Lytton, and Trollope, not to mention living authors. How much more interesting science has become especially, if I were to mention only one name, through the genius of Darwin! Renan has characterized this as a most amusing century; I should rather have described it as most interesting: presenting us as it does with an endless vista of absorbing problems; with infinite opportunities; with more interest and less danger than surrounded our less fortunate ancestors.

Cicero described a room without books, as a body without a soul. But it is by no means necessary to be a philosopher to love reading.

Reading, indeed, is by no means necessarily study. Far from it. "I put,"

says Mr. Frederic Harrison, in his excellent article on the "Choice of Books," "I put the poetic and emotional side of literature as the most needed for daily use."

In the prologue to the _Legende of Goode Women_, Chaucer says:

"And as for me, though that I konne but lyte, On bokes for to rede I me delyte, And to him give I feyth and ful credence, And in myn herte have him in reverence, So hertely, that ther is game noon, That fro my bokes maketh me to goon, But yt be seldome on the holy day, Save, certynly, when that the monthe of May Is comen, and that I here the foules synge, And that the floures gynnen for to sprynge, Farwel my boke and my devocion."

But I doubt whether, if he had enjoyed our advantages, he could have been so certain of tearing himself away, even in the month of May.

Macaulay, who had all that wealth and fame, rank and talents could give, yet, we are told, derived his greatest happiness from books. Sir G.

Trevelyan, in his charming biography, says that--"of the feelings which Macaulay entertained toward the great minds of bygone ages it is not for any one except himself to speak. He has told us how his debt to them was incalculable; how they guided him to truth; how they filled his mind with n.o.ble and graceful images; how they stood by him in all vicissitudes-- comforters in sorrow, nurses in sickness, companions in solitude, the old friends who are never seen with new faces; who are the same in wealth and in poverty, in glory and in obscurity. Great as were the honors and possessions which Macaulay acquired by his pen, all who knew him were well aware that the t.i.tles and rewards which he gained by his own works were as nothing in the balance compared with the pleasure he derived from the works of others."

There was no society in London so agreeable that Macaulay would have preferred it at breakfast or at dinner "to the company of Sterne or Fielding, Horace Walpole or Boswell." The love of reading which Gibbon declared he would not exchange for all the treasures of India was, in fact, with Macaulay "a main element of happiness in one of the happiest lives that it has ever fallen to the lot of the biographer to record."

"History," says Fuller, "maketh a young man to be old without either wrinkles or gray hair, privileging him with the experience of age without either the infirmities or the inconveniences thereof."

So delightful indeed are books that we must be careful not to forget other duties for them; in cultivating the mind we must not neglect the body.

To the lover of literature or science, exercise often presents itself as an irksome duty, and many a one has felt like "the fair pupil of Ascham (Lady Jane Gray), who, while the horns were sounding and dogs in full cry, sat in the lonely oriel, with eyes riveted to that immortal page which tells how meekly and bravely (Socrates) the first martyr of intellectual liberty took the cup from his weeping jailer." [1]

Still, as the late Lord Derby justly observed, [2] those who do not find time for exercise will have to find time for illness.

Books, again, are now so cheap as to be within the reach of almost every one. This was not always so. It is quite a recent blessing. Mr. Ireland, to whose charming little _Book Lover's Enchiridion_, in common with every lover of reading. I am greatly indebted, tells us that when a boy he was so delighted with White's _Natural History of Selborne_, that in order to possess a copy of his own he actually copied out the whole work.

Mary Lamb gives a pathetic description of a studious boy lingering at a bookstall:

"I saw a boy with eager eye Open a book upon a stall, And read, as he'd devour it all; Which, when the stall man did espy, Soon to the boy I heard him call, 'You, sir, you never buy a book, Therefore in one you shall not look.'

The boy pa.s.sed slowly on, and with a sigh He wished he never had been taught to read, Then of the old churl's books he should have had no need."