The Pleasures of Life Part 5

Such s.n.a.t.c.hes of literature have indeed, special and peculiar charm. This is, I believe, partly due to the very fact of their being brief. Many readers miss much of the pleasure of reading by forcing themselves to dwell too long continuously on one subject. In a long railway journey, for instance, many persons take only a single book. The consequence is that, unless it is a story, after half an hour or an hour they are quite tired of it. Whereas, if they had two, or still better three books, on different subjects, and one of them of an amusing character, they would probably find that, by changing as soon as they felt at all weary, they would come back again and again to each with renewed zest, and hour after hour would pa.s.s pleasantly away. Every one, of course, must judge for himself, but such at least is my experience.

I quite agree, therefore, with Lord Iddesleigh as to the charm of desultory reading, but the wider the field the more important that we should benefit by the very best books in each cla.s.s. Not that we need confine ourselves to them, but that we should commence with them, and they will certainly lead us on to others. There are of course some books which we must read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest. But these are exceptions.

As regards by far the larger number, it is probably better to read them quickly, dwelling only on the best and most important pa.s.sages. In this way, no doubt, we shall lose much, but we gain more by ranging over a wider field. We may, in fact, I think, apply to reading Lord Brougham's wise dictum as regards education, and say that it is well to read everything of something, and something of everything. In this way only we can ascertain the bent of our own tastes, for it is a general, though not of course an invariable, rule, that we profit little by books which we do not enjoy.

Every one, however, may suit himself. The variety is endless.

Not only does a library contain "infinite riches in a little room," [3]

but we may sit at home and yet be in all quarters of the earth. We may travel round the world with Captain Cook or Darwin, with Kingsley or Ruskin, who will show us much more perhaps than ever we should see for ourselves. The world itself has no limits for us; Humboldt and Herschel will carry us far away to the mysterious nebulae, beyond the sun and even the stars: time has no more bounds than s.p.a.ce; history stretches out behind us, and geology will carry us back for millions of years before the creation of man, even to the origin of the material Universe itself. Nor are we limited to one plane of thought. Aristotle and Plato will transport us into a sphere none the less delightful because we cannot appreciate it without some training.

Comfort and consolation, refreshment and happiness, may indeed be found in his library by any one "who shall bring the golden key that unlocks its silent door." [4] A library is true fairyland, a very palace of delight, a haven of repose from the storms and troubles of the world. Rich and poor can enjoy it equally, for here, at least, wealth gives no advantage. We may make a library, if we do but rightly use it, a true paradise on earth, a garden of Eden without its one drawback; for all is open to us, including, and especially, the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, for which we are told that our first mother sacrificed all the Pleasures of Paradise. Here we may read the most important histories, the most exciting volumes of travels and adventures, the most interesting stories, the most beautiful poems; we may meet the most eminent statesmen, poets, and philosophers, benefit by the ideas of the greatest thinkers, and enjoy the grandest creations of human genius.

[1] Macaulay.

[2] Address, Liverpool College, 1873.

[3] Marlowe.

[4] Matthews.

CHAPTER IV.

THE CHOICE OF BOOKS.

"All round the room my silent servants wait My friends in every season, bright and dim, Angels and Seraphim Come down and murmur to me, sweet and low, And spirits of the skies all come and go Early and Late."

PROCTOR.

And yet too often they wait in vain. One reason for this is, I think, that people are overwhelmed by the crowd of books offered to them.

In old days books were rare and dear. Now on the contrary, it may be said with greater truth than ever that

"Words are things, and a small drop of ink, Falling like dew upon a thought, produces That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think."

Our ancestors had a difficulty in procuring them. Our difficulty now is what to select. We must be careful what we read, and not, like the sailors of Ulysses, take bags of wind for sacks of treasure--not only lest we should even now fall into the error of the Greeks, and suppose that language and definitions can be instruments of investigation as well as of thought, but lest, as too often happens, we should waste time over trash.

There are many books to which one may apply, in the sarcastic sense, the ambiguous remark said to have been made to an unfortunate author, "I will lose no time in reading your book."

There are, indeed, books and books, and there are books which, as Lamb said, are not books at all. It is wonderful how much innocent happiness we thoughtlessly throw away. An Eastern proverb says that calamities sent by heaven may be avoided, but from those we bring on ourselves there is no escape.

Many, I believe, are deterred from attempting what are called stiff books for fear they should not understand them; but there are few who need complain of the narrowness of their minds, if only they would do their best with them.

In reading, however, it is most important to select subjects in which one is interested. I remember years ago consulting Mr. Darwin as to the selection of a course of study. He asked me what interested me most, and advised me to choose that subject. This, indeed, applies to the work of life generally.

I am sometimes disposed to think that the readers of the next generation will be, not our lawyers and doctors, shopkeepers and manufacturers, but the laborers and mechanics. Does not this seem natural? The former work mainly with their head; when their daily duties are over the brain is often exhausted, and of their leisure time much must be devoted to air and exercise. The laborer and mechanic, on the contrary, besides working often for much shorter hours, have in their work-time taken sufficient bodily exercise, and could therefore give any leisure they might have to reading and study. They have not done so as yet, it is true; but this has been for obvious reasons. Now, however, in the first place, they receive an excellent education in elementary schools, and in the second have more easy access to the best books.

Ruskin has observed that he does not wonder at what men suffer, but he often wonders at what they lose. We suffer much, no doubt, from the faults of others, but we lose much more by our own ignorance.

"If," says Sir John Herschel, "I were to pray for a taste which should stand me in stead under every variety of circ.u.mstances, and be a source of happiness and cheerfulness to me through life, and a s.h.i.+eld 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, and 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."

It is one thing to own a library; it is quite another to use it wisely. I have often been astonished how little care people devote to the selection of what they read. Books, we know, are almost innumerable; our hours for reading are, alas! very few. And yet many people read almost by hazard.

They will take any book they chance to find in a room at a friend's house; they will buy a novel at a railway-stall if it has an attractive t.i.tle; indeed, I believe in some cases even the binding affects their choice. The selection is, no doubt, far from easy. I have often wished some one would recommend a list of a hundred good books. If we had such lists drawn up by a few good guides they would be most useful. I have indeed sometimes heard it said that in reading every one must choose for himself, but this reminds me of the recommendation not to go into the water till you can swim.

In the absence of such lists I have picked out the books most frequently mentioned with approval by those who have referred directly or indirectly to the pleasure of reading, and have ventured to include some which, though less frequently mentioned, are especial favorites of my own. Every one who looks at the list will wish to suggest other books, as indeed I should myself, but in that case the number would soon run up. [1]

I have abstained, for obvious reasons, from mentioning works by living authors, though from many of them--Tennyson, Ruskin, and others--I have myself derived the keenest enjoyment; and I have omitted works on science, with one or two exceptions, because the subject is so progressive.

I feel that the attempt is over bold, and I must beg for indulgence, while hoping for criticism; indeed one object which I have had in view is to stimulate others more competent far than I am to give us the advantage of their opinions.

Moreover, I must repeat that I suggest these works rather as those which, as far as I have seen, have been most frequently recommended, than as suggestions of my own, though I have slipped in a few of my own special favorites.

In any such selection much weight should, I think, be attached to the general verdict of mankind. There is a "struggle for existence" and a "survival of the fittest" among books, as well as among animals and plants. As Alonzo of Aragon said, "Age is a recommendation in four things--old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old books to read." Still, this can not be accepted without important qualifications. The most recent books of history and science contain or ought to contain, the most accurate information and the most trustworthy conclusions. Moreover, while the books of other races and times have an interest from their very distance, it must be admitted that many will still more enjoy, and feel more at home with, those of our own century and people.

Yet the oldest books of the world are remarkable and interesting on account of their very age; and the works which have influenced the opinions, or charmed the leisure hours, of millions of men in distant times and far-away regions are well worth reading on that very account, even if to us they seem scarcely to deserve their reputation. It is true that to many, such works are accessible only in translations; but translations, though they can never perhaps do justice to the original, may yet be admirable in themselves. The Bible itself, which must stand first in the list, is a conclusive case.

At the head of all non-Christian moralists, I must place the _Enchiridion_ of Epictetus, certainly one of the n.o.blest books in the whole of literature; it has, moreover, been admirably translated. With Epictetus, [2] I think must come Marcus Aurelius. The _a.n.a.lects_ of Confucius will, I believe, prove disappointing to most English readers, but the effect it has produced on the most numerous race of men const.i.tutes in itself a peculiar interest. The _Ethics_ of Aristotle, perhaps, appear to some disadvantage from the very fact that they have so profoundly influenced our views of morality. The _Koran_, like the _a.n.a.lects_ of Confucius, will to most of us derive its princ.i.p.al interest from the effect it has exercised, and still exercises, on so many millions of our fellow-men. I doubt whether in any other respect it will seem to repay perusal, and to most persons probably certain extracts, not too numerous, would appear sufficient.

The writings of the Apostolic Fathers have been collected in one volume by Wake. It is but a small one, and though I must humbly confess that I was disappointed, they are perhaps all the more curious from the contrast they afford to those of the Apostles themselves. Of the later Fathers I have included only the _Confessions_ of St. Augustine, which Dr. Pusey selected for the commencement of the _Library of the Fathers_, and which, as he observes, has "been translated again and again into almost every European language, and in all loved;" though Luther was of opinion that St.

Augustine "wrote nothing to the purpose concerning faith." But then Luther was no great admirer of the Father. St. Jerome, he says, "writes, alas!

very coldly;" Chrysostom "digresses from the chief points;" St. Jerome is "very poor;" and in fact, he says, "the more I read the books of the Fathers the more I find myself offended;" while Renan, in his interesting autobiography, compared theology to a Gothic Cathedral, "elle a la grandeur, les vides immenses, et le peu de solidite."

Among other devotional works most frequently recommended are Thomas a Kempis' _Imitation of Christ_, Pascal's _Pensees_, Spinoza's _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_, Butler's _a.n.a.logy of Religion_, Jeremy Taylor's _Holy Living and Dying_, Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_, and last, not least, Keble's beautiful _Christian Year_.

Aristotle and Plato again stand at the head of another cla.s.s. The _Politics_ of Aristotle, and Plato's _Dialogues_, if not the whole, at any rate the _Phaedo_, the _Apology_, and the _Republic_, will be of course read by all who wish to know anything of the history of human thought, though I am heretical enough to doubt whether the latter repays the minute and laborious study often devoted to it.

Aristotle being the father, if not the creator, of the modern scientific method, it has followed naturally--indeed, almost inevitably--that his principles have become part of our very intellectual being, so that they seem now almost self-evident, while his actual observations, though very remarkable--as, for instance, when he observes that bees on one journey confine themselves to one kind of flower--still have been in many cases superseded by others, carried on under more favorable conditions. We must not be ungrateful to the great master, because his lessons have taught us how to advance.

Plato, on the other hand, I say so with all respect, seems to me in some cases to play on words: his arguments are very able, very philosophical, often very n.o.ble; but not always conclusive; in a language differently constructed they might sometimes tell in exactly the opposite sense. If this method has proved less fruitful, if in metaphysics we have made but little advance, that very fact in one point of view leaves the _Dialogues_ of Socrates as instructive now as ever they were; while the problems with which they deal will always rouse our interest, as the calm and lofty spirit which inspires them must command our admiration. Of the _Apology_ and the _Phaedo_ especially it would be impossible to speak too gratefully.

I would also mention Demosthenes' _De Corona_, which Lord Brougham p.r.o.nounced the greatest oration of the greatest of orators; Lucretius, Plutarch's Lives, Horace, and at least the _De Officiis_, _De Amicitia_, and _De Senectute_ of Cicero.

The great epics of the world have always const.i.tuted one of the most popular branches of literature. Yet how few, comparatively, ever read Homer or Virgil after leaving school.

The _Nibelungenlied_, our great Anglo-Saxon epic, is perhaps too much neglected, no doubt on account of its painful character. Brunhild and Kriemhild, indeed, are far from perfect, but we meet with few such "live"

women in Greek or Roman literature. Nor must I omit to mention Sir T.

Malory's _Morte d'Arthur_, though I confess I do so mainly in deference to the judgment of others.

Among the Greek tragedians I include Aeschylus, if not all his works, at any rate _Prometheus_, perhaps the sublimest poem in Greek literature, and the _Trilogy_ (Mr. Symonds in his _Greek Poets_ speaks of the "unrivalled majesty" of the _Agamemnon_, and Mark Pattison considered it "the grandest work of creative genius in the whole range of literature"); or, as Sir M.

E. Grant Duff recommends, the _Persae_; Sophocles (_Oedipus Tyrannus_), Euripides (_Medea_), and Aristophanes (_The Knights_ and _Clouds_); unfortunately, as Schlegel says, probably even the greatest scholar does not understand half his jokes; and I think most modern readers will prefer our modern poets.

I should like, moreover, to say a word for Eastern poetry, such as portions of the _Maha Bharata_ and _Ramayana_ (too long probably to be read through, but of which Talboys Wheeler has given a most interesting epitome in the first two volumes of his _History of India_); the _Shah-nameh_, the work of the great Persian poet Firdusi; Kalidasa's _Sakuntala_, and the Sheking, the cla.s.sical collection of ancient Chinese odes. Many I know, will think I ought to have included Omar Khayyam.

In history we are beginning to feel that the vices and vicissitudes of kings and queens, the dates of battles and wars, are far less important than the development of human thought, the progress of art, of science, and of law, and the subject is on that very account even more interesting than ever. I will, however, only mention, and that rather from a literary than a historical point of view, Herodotus, Xenophon (the _Anabasis_), Thucydides, and Tacitus (_Germania_); and of modern historians, Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_ ("the splendid bridge from the old world to the new"), Hume's _History of England_, Carlyle's _French Revolution_, Grote's _History of Greece_, and Green's _Short History of the English People_.

Science is so rapidly progressive that, though to many minds it is the most fruitful and interesting subject of all, I cannot here rest on that agreement which, rather than my own opinion, I take as the basis of my list. I will therefore only mention Bacon's _Novum Organum_, Mill's _Logic_, and Darwin's _Origin of Species_; in Political Economy, which some of our rulers do not now sufficiently value, Mill, and parts of Smith's _Wealth of Nations_, for probably those who do not intend to make a special study of political economy would scarcely read the whole.