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 ^^ 
 
 MmSG^ 
 
PRIVATE LIBRARY 
 
 OF >^'^ / 
 CHARLES A. KOTOID. 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
^ 
 
THE 
 
 Choice of Books 
 
 A 
 
 K-^^ 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES F. RICHARDSON 
 
 NEW YOKE: 
 
 JOHN B. ALDEN, PUBLISHEB, 
 
 1883. 
 
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 ^^ 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Motive op Reading 7 
 
 The Reading Habit 12 
 
 What Books to Read 27 
 
 The Best Time to Read 45 
 
 How Much to Read , 57 
 
 Remembering What One Reads 76 
 
 The Use o^ Note-Books 85 
 
 The Cultivation of Taste 95 
 
 Poetry no 
 
 The Art of SiarpiNG 121 
 
 The Use of Translations 129 
 
 How TO Read Periodicals 138 
 
 Reading Aloud and Reading Clubs 149 
 
 What Books to Own 163 
 
 The Use of Public Libraries 182 
 
 The True Service op Reading 195 
 
 247481 
 
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Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive 
 
 in 2007 witii funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 littp://www.archive.org/details/choiceofbooksOOrichrich 
 
QUOTATIONS FROM AUTHORS CITED. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Abbott 167 
 
 About 169 
 
 Adams 188 
 
 Addison 198 
 
 Alcott 124 
 
 Allibone 23 
 
 Aristotle 112 
 
 Arnold. , 34, 113 
 
 Atkinson. .58, 90, 99, 112, 140 
 Bacon.. . .60, 99, 112, 122, 125 
 
 Baxter 200 
 
 Beecher 57, 88, 163 
 
 Bible, the 7. 99, i54 
 
 Blackwood's Magazine. 79 
 
 BoARDiiAN 178 
 
 Boswell - 173 
 
 Eraitiiwaite 49, 60 
 
 Bulwer 96 
 
 Burns 10 
 
 Butler 35 
 
 Carlyle. 29, 197 
 
 Cato 202 
 
 Channing 25 
 
 Chaucer 167 
 
 Christian Union 155 
 
 •( 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Clarke 201 
 
 Coleridge 60, 201 
 
 CoLLYER - 19 
 
 CONGDON 1 70 
 
 cowper ii 
 
 Cutter 187 
 
 De Quincey 32 
 
 Disraeli 8 
 
 Durfee 92 
 
 Emerson.. . .27, 102, 127, 130, 
 177, 202 
 
 Fenelon 26 
 
 Fuller 90 
 
 Gibbon 26, 1 73 
 
 GoscHEN 114 
 
 Hale 18, 66, 160, 190 
 
 Hamerton. 47, 51, 54, 79, 126, 
 131, 138, 144 
 
 Harrison 35, 37, 39, 61 
 
 Helps 168 
 
 Herrick 199 
 
 Herschel 24 
 
 Holmes 168 
 
 Homes 191 
 
 Hovey 87 
 
 5) 
 
</• \ 
 
 Quotations fi^ofn^ 'Authors Cited, 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Hugo 103 
 
 Jacquemont 51 
 
 Johnson 46, 173, 178 
 
 Keats 196 
 
 Lamb .. 175 
 
 Langfojid 174, 202 
 
 Library Journal 189, 191 
 
 Literary World 67, 100 
 
 Locke 58 
 
 Lowell 202 
 
 Luther 69 
 
 Lyly 201 
 
 McCosn 8 
 
 Milton 9, 62, 199, 202 
 
 Newman 82 
 
 Pattison 73 
 
 Payn 106 
 
 Pendleton 191 
 
 Perkins 10, 140 
 
 Petrarch 23, 61 
 
 Porter.... 77, 78,98, no, 113, 
 142, 195 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Potter 10, 68, 98, 149 
 
 Quick 73 
 
 Reed 88 
 
 RusKiN .^ 17, 29, i6g 
 
 Saturday Review 119 
 
 Schopenhauer 63 
 
 Scudder 145 
 
 SCHAIRP 116 
 
 Shakespeare 28 
 
 Shelley 112 
 
 SiMcox 17 
 
 Spencer 13, 70 
 
 Spenser 199 
 
 Stedman 12 
 
 Stewart 58 
 
 Thoreau 29 
 
 Waller 24 
 
 Ware 47 
 
 Whately 125 
 
 White 149 
 
 Wyttenbach 46 
 
THE CHOICE OF BOOKS. 
 
 THE MOTIVE OF READING. 
 
 " Of making many books there is no end," said 
 the wisest of men three thousand years ago ; and 
 he added the equally true statement that " much 
 study " — that is, much reading — *• is a weariness 
 of the flesh." A fourteenth century commenta- 
 tor, in considering this text, drew the conclusion 
 that no books may rightly be read save "the 
 bokis of hooli scripture," and " other bokis, that, 
 ben nedeful to the understonding of hooli script- 
 ure." Modern readers, reared outside the close 
 atmosphere of mediaeval cloisters, are of course 
 not so narrow in their interpretation of this text ; 
 but all will agree that a wise choice must be 
 made from the great stores of literature that the 
 ages have accumulated, from the days of papyrus 
 scrolls and birch-bark writings, to these times, 
 when scarcely any country town is without its 
 
8 The Choice of Books, 
 
 printing-press. ''We are now," says Disraeli, 
 '' in want of an art to teach how books are to be 
 read, rather, than to read them ; such an art is 
 'practicable." 
 
 The very first thing to be remembered by h;m 
 who would study the art of reading is that noth- 
 ing can take the place of personal enthusiasm 
 and personal work. However wise may be the 
 friendly adviser, and however full and perfect 
 the chosen hand-book of reading, neither can do 
 more than to stimulate and suggest. Notning 
 can take the place of a direct famiharity with 
 books themselves. To know one good book well, 
 is better than to know something about a hun- 
 dred good books, at second hand. The taste for 
 reading and the habit of reading must always be 
 developed from within ; they can never be given 
 from without. 
 
 ! All plans and systems of reading, therefore, 
 should be taken, as far as possible, into one s 
 heart of hearts, and be made a part of his OAvn 
 mind and thought. Unless this can be done, they 
 are worse than useless. Dr. McCosh says : " The 
 book to read is not the one that thinks for you, 
 but the one which makes you think." It is plain, 
 then, that a " course of reading " may be a great 
 
The Motive of Reading, 9 
 
 good or a great evil, according to its use. The 
 late Bishop Alonzo Potter, one of the most judi- 
 cious of literary helpers, offered to readers this 
 sound piece of advice : " Do not be so enslaved 
 by any system or course of study, as to think it 
 may not be altered." However conscious one 
 may be of his own deficiencies, and however he 
 may feel the need of outside aid, he should never 
 permit his own independence and self-respect to 
 be obliterated. " He who reads incessantly," 
 says Milton, 
 
 "And to his reading brings not 
 A spirit and judgment equal or superior, 
 Uncertain and unsettled still remains, 
 Deep versed in books, but shallow in himself." 
 
 The general agreement of intelHgent people 
 as to the merit of an author or the worth of a 
 book, is, of course, to be accepted until one finds 
 some valid reason for reversing it. But nothing' 
 is to be gained by pretending to like what one 
 really dishkes, or to enjoy what one does not 
 find profitable, or even intelligible. If a reader 
 is not honest and sincere in this matter, there is 
 small hope for him. The lowest taste may be 
 cultivated and improved, and radically changed } 
 but pretense and artificiality can never grow 
 
lo The Choice of Books, 
 
 into anything better. They must be wholly 
 rooted out at the start. If you dislike Shake- 
 speare's " Hamlet," and greatly enjoy a trashy 
 story, say so with sincerity and sorrow, if occa- 
 sion requires, and hope and work for a reversal 
 of your taste. " It's guid to be honest and true," 
 says Burns, and nowhere is honesty more needed 
 than here. 
 
 It should always be borne in mind that the 
 busiest reader must leave unread all but a mere 
 fraction of the good books in the world. " Be 
 not alarmed because so many books are recom- 
 mended," says Bishop Potter ; '' and do not at- 
 tempt to read much or fast ;" but " dare to be ig- 
 norant of many things." Therearenow 1,100,000 
 printed books in the library of the British Mu- 
 seum alone ; and the library of the BibHotheque 
 Nationale of Paris contains more than 3,000,000 
 volumes. An experienced librarian has esti- 
 mated that not less than 25,000 new books now 
 appear annually ; and yet the reading of a book 
 a fortnight, or say twenty-five books a year, is 
 quite as much as the average reader can possi- 
 bly achieve — a rate at which only 1,250 books 
 could be read in half a century. Since this is 
 so, he must be very thoughtless and very timid 
 
The Motive of Reading, 1 1 
 
 who feels any shame in confessing that he is 
 wholly ignorant of a great many books; and on 
 the other hand, none but a very superficial and 
 conceited reader will venture to express surprise 
 at the deficiencies of others, when a little thought 
 would make his own so clearly manifest. In 
 Cowper's words : 
 
 Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much ; 
 Wisdom is humble that he knows no more. 
 
t2 The Choice of Books, 
 
 THE READING HABIT. 
 
 There are some persons who are so fortunate 
 .as to be unable to tell when they formed the 
 habit of reading ; who find it a constant and ever 
 increasing advantage and pleasure, their whole 
 lives long ; and who will not lay it down so long 
 as they live. There are men and women in the 
 world whose youth and whose old age are so 
 bound up in the reading habit that, if questioned 
 as to its first inception and probable end, they 
 could only reply, like Dimple-chin and Grizzled- 
 face, in Mr. Stedman's pretty poem of " Toujours 
 Amour : " " Ask some }- ounger lass than I ; " 
 " Ask some older sage than I." Happy are those 
 whose early surroundings thus permit them to 
 form the reading habit unconsciously ; whose 
 parents and friends surround them with good 
 books and periodicals ; and whose time is so ap- 
 portioned, in childhood and youth, as to permit 
 them to give a fair share of it to reading, as wxli 
 as to study in school, on the one hand, and phj^s- 
 ical labor, on the other. It is plain that a great 
 
The Reading Habit, 13 
 
 duty and responsibility thus rests upon the par- 
 ents and guardians and teachers of the young, 
 at the very outset. It is theirs to furnish the 
 books, and to stimulate and suggest, in every 
 wise way, the best methods of reading. 
 
 Just where, in this early formation of the read- 
 ing habit, absolute direction should end and ad- 
 vice begin, is a matter which the individual 
 parent or guardian must decide for himself, in 
 large measure. Perhaps there is greater danger 
 of too much direction than of too much sugges- 
 tion. It is well to give the young reader, in 
 great part, the privilege of forming his own plans 
 and making his own choice. Of this promotion 
 of self-development Herbert Spencer says : " In 
 education the process of self-development should 
 be encouraged to the fullest extent. Children 
 should be led to make their own investigations, 
 and to draw their own inferences. They should 
 be told as little as possible, and induced to dis- 
 cover as much as possible. Humanity has pro- 
 gressed solely by self-instruction : and that to 
 achieve the best results each mind must progress 
 somewhat after the same fashion, is continually 
 proved by the marked success of self-made men. 
 Those who have been brought up under the 
 
14 The Choice of Books, 
 
 ordinary school-drill, and have carried away with 
 them the idea that education is practicable only 
 in that style, will think it hopeless to make chil- 
 dren their own teachers. If, however, they will 
 call to mind that the all-important knowledge of 
 surrounding objects which a child gets in its 
 early years is got without help, if they will re- 
 member that the child is self-taught in the use 
 of its mother's tongue ; if they will estimate the 
 amount of that experience of life, that out-of- 
 school wisdom which every boy gathers for 
 himself; if they will mark the unusual intelli- 
 gence of the uncared for London gamin, as shown 
 in all directions in which his faculties have been 
 tasked ; if, further, they will think how many 
 minds have struggled up- unaided, not only 
 through the mysteries of our irrationally-plan- 
 ned curriculum, but through hosts of other obsta- 
 cles besides, they will find it a not unreasonable 
 conclusion, that if the subjects be put before him 
 in right order and right form, any pupil of ordi- 
 nary capacity will surmount his successive diffi- 
 culties with but little assistance. Who indeed 
 can watch the ceaseless observation and inquiry 
 and inference going on in a child's mind, or listen 
 to its acute remarks on matters within the range 
 
The Reading Habit. iS 
 
 of its faculties, without perceiving that these 
 powers which it manifests, if brought to bear 
 systematically upon anj^ studies within the same 
 range, would readily master them without help ? 
 This need for perpetual telling is the result of, 
 our stupidity, not of the child's. We drag it' 
 away from the facts in which it is interested, and 
 which it is actively assimilating of itself ; we put 
 before it facts far too complex for it to under- 
 stand, and therefore distasteful to it ; finding that 
 it will not voluntarily acquire these facts, we 
 thrust them into his mind by force of threats 
 and punishment ; by thus denying the knowledge 
 it craves, and cramming it with knowledge it 
 cannot digest, we produce a morbid state of its 
 faculties, and a consequent disgust for knowledge 
 in general ; and when as a result partly of the 
 stolid indifference we have brought on, and 
 partly of still continued unfitness in its studies, 
 the child can understand nothing without expla- 
 nation, and becomes a mere passive recipient of 
 our instruction, we infer that education must 
 necessarily be carried on thus. Having by our 
 method induced helplessness, we straightway 
 make the helplessness a reason for our method." 
 After making all needed deductions from the 
 
1 6 The Choice of Books, 
 
 somewhat impatient spirit in which Mr. Spencer 
 here speaks, it can hardly be questioned that the 
 young reader — and most of these suggestions 
 apply equally well to those who begin to read 
 later in life — will do much for himself ; and that, 
 on the whole, he stands in greater need of a judi- 
 cious guide and helper than of a rigorous ruler 
 and taskmaster. Of course, if he lacks both guid^ ' 
 ance and government, the latter is better than 
 nothing; and there are times when only stern 
 commandment will avail. But the rule should 
 be made in accordance with the large purpose 
 of helpfulness. The reading habit is a growthj 
 a development, not a creation ; and all measures 
 for its cultivation, whether from without or with- 
 in, should be made with this fact in mind. And 
 where strict and even stern regulation is neces. 
 sary, the direction will be most profitable that 
 best succeeds in causing itself to be assimilated 
 in the mind of the governed, as a part of that 
 mind, and not as a foreign addition. 
 
 Whether the reader, thus helped by wise coun- 
 selors, be young or old, he should soon become 
 familiar with the advantage of making his read- 
 ing a part of his daily life. Miss Edith Simcox, 
 one of the wisest of living Englishwomen, thus 
 
The Readino; Habit, 17 
 
 •cb 
 
 presses this point : " No part of a child's school 
 knowledge can be safely allowed to remain long 
 detached from its daily life. The history and 
 geography of lesson books must join on to that 
 of the newspapers ; it is almost worse to know 
 the name and date of a writer or a hero, without 
 an independent famiharity with the nature of 
 his books or actions, than to be frankly ignorant 
 of all at once ; and in every branch of science it 
 is admitted that a knowledge of definitions and 
 formulas is useless apart from experimental ac- 
 quaintance with the actual bodies described. 
 An inaccurate general knowledge, that would 
 not stand the test of examination, may even in 
 some cases have more educational value than a 
 few correct and barren facts; and our educa- 
 tional results will not be thoroughly satisfactory 
 if detailed information is imparted faster than 
 circumstantial impressions about its color and 
 bearing." 
 
 Mr. Ruskin, too, has recently spoken of the 
 duty of brightening the beginnings of education, 
 and of the evils of cramming, against which, hap- 
 pily, the tide of the best contemporary thought 
 is now setting strongly, — never to ebb, let us 
 hope. " Make your children," he says, " happy 
 
1 8 ' The Choice of Books, 
 
 in their youth ; let distinction come to them, if 
 it will, after well spent and well-remembered 
 years ; but let them now break and eat the bread 
 of Heaven with gladness and singleness of heart, 
 and send portions to them, for whom nothing is 
 prepared ; and so Heaven send you its grace, 
 before meat, and after it." Of the necessity of 
 making attractive the beginnings of reading, 
 Edward Everett Hale says : " In the first place, 
 we must make this business agreeable. Which- 
 ever avenue we take into the maze must be one 
 of the pleasant avenues, or else, in a world which 
 the good God has made very beautiful, the 
 young people will go a-skating, or a-fishing, or 
 a-swimming, or a-voy aging, and not a-reading, 
 and no blame to them." How much can be 
 done by others in making the literary path pleas- 
 ant, is known to the full by those whose first 
 steps were guided therein by a wise father, or 
 mother, or teacher, or friend. How strongly the 
 / lack of the helpful hand is felt, none who have 
 missed it will need to be told. 
 
 But those who must be their own helpers need 
 not be one whit discouraged. The history of 
 the world is full of bright examples of the value 
 of self-training, as shown by the subsequent sue- 
 
The Reading Habit, 19 
 
 cess won as readers, and writers, and workers in 
 every department of life, by those who appar- 
 ently lacked both books to read and time to read 
 them, or even the candle wherewith to light the 
 printed page. It would be easy to fill this whole 
 series of chapters with accounts of the way in 
 which the readmg habit has been acquired and 
 followed in the face of every obstacle. But a 
 single bit of personal reminiscence may be taken 
 as the type of thousands ; not only because of its 
 touching beauty and its telling force, but because 
 it is the latest to be told. To-morrow some 
 other man of eminence will add no less strong 
 testimony to the possibility of self-education. It 
 is the story told by Robert Collyer, who worked 
 his way from the anvil in a little English town, 
 up to a commanding position among American 
 preachers and writers. " Do you want to know," 
 he asked, " how I manage to talk to you in this 
 simple Saxon ? I will tell you. I read Bunyan, 
 Crusoe, and Goldsmith when I was a boy, morn- 
 ing, noon, and night. All the rest was task 
 work ; these were my delight, with the stories in 
 the Bible, and with Shakespeare, when at last 
 the mighty master came within our doors. The 
 rest were as senna to me. These were like a 
 
20 The Choice of Books. 
 
 V 
 
 well of pure water, and this is the first step I 
 seem to have taken of my own free will toward 
 
 the pulpit I took to these as I took to 
 
 milk, and, without the least idea what I was do- 
 ling, got the taste for simple words into the very 
 'fiber of my nature. There was day-school for 
 me until I was eight years old, and then I had to 
 
 turn in and work thirteen hours a day 
 
 From the days when we used to spell out Crusoe 
 and old Bunyan there had grown up in me a de- 
 vouring hunger to read books. It made small 
 matter what they were, so they were books. 
 Half a volume of an old encyclopsedia came 
 along — the first I had ever seen. How many 
 times I went through that I cannot even guess. 
 I remember that I read some old reports of the 
 Missionary Society with the greatest delight. 
 There were chapters in them about China and 
 Labrador. Yet I think it is in reading, as it is in 
 eating, when the first hunger is over you begin 
 to be a little critical, and will by no means take 
 to garbage if you are of a wholesome nature. 
 And I remember this because it touches this 
 beautiful valley of the Hudson. I could not go 
 home for the Christmas of 1839, ^^^^ ^^^s feeling 
 very sad about it all, for I was only a boy ; and 
 
The Reading Habit, 21 
 
 sitting by the fire, an old farmer came In and 
 said: 'I notice thou's fond o* reading-, so I 
 brought thee summat to read.' It was Irving's 
 * Sketch Book.' I had never heard of the work. 
 I went at it, and was ' as them that dream.' No 
 such dehght had touched me since the old days 
 of Crusoe. I saw the Hudson and the Catskills, 
 took poor Rip at once into m}^ heart, as every- 
 body has, pitied Ichabod while I laughed at him, 
 thought the old Dutch feast a most admirable 
 thing, and long before I was through, all regret 
 at my lost Christmas had gone down the wind, 
 and I had found out there are books and books. 
 That vast hunger to read never left me. If there 
 was no candle, I poked my head down to the 
 fire ; read while I was eating, blowing the bel- 
 lows, or walking from one place to another. I 
 could read and walk four miles an hour. The 
 world centered in books. There was no thought 
 in my mind of any good to come out of it ; the 
 good lay in the reading. I had no more idea of 
 being a minister than j^ou elder men who were 
 boys then, in this town, had that I should be here 
 to-night to tell this story. Now, give a boy a 
 passion like this for anything, books or business, 
 painting or farming, mechanism or music, and 
 
22 The Choice of Books, 
 
 you give him thereby a lever to lift his world, 
 and a patent of nobility, if the thing he does is 
 noble. There were two or three of my mind 
 about books. We became companions, and gave 
 the roughs a wide berth. The books did their 
 work, too, about that drink, and fought the devil 
 with a finer fire. I remember while I was yet a 
 lad reading Macaulay's great essay on Bacon, 
 and 1 could grasp its wonderful beauty. There 
 has been no time when I have not felt sad that 
 there should have been no chance for me at a 
 good education and training. I miss it every 
 day, but such chances as were left lay in thai 
 everlasting hunger to still be reading. I was 
 tough as leather, and could do the double stints 
 and so it was that, all unknown to myself, I was 
 as one that soweth good seed in his field." 
 
 With young or old, there is no such helpei 
 toward the reading habit as the cultivation oi 
 this warm and undying feeling of the friendli, 
 ness of books, — in which subject Frederick Deni. 
 son Maurice found enough to write a whoLe 
 book. If a parent or other guide seems but a 
 task-master ; if his rules are those of a statute- 
 book, and his society like that of an officer of the 
 law, there is small hope that his help can be made 
 
The Reading Habit, 23 
 
 either serviceable or profitable. But with the 
 growth of the friendly feeling comes a state of 
 mind which renders all things possible. When 
 one book has become a friend and fellow, the 
 world has grown that much broader and more 
 beautiful. Petrarch said of his books, considered 
 as his friends (I borrow the translation from the 
 excellent treasure-house of quotations on books 
 and reading, prefixed by Dr. AUibone to his 
 *' Dictionary of Authors ") : " I have . friends, 
 whose society is extremely agreeable to me ; 
 they are of all ages, and of every country. They 
 have distinguished themselves 'both in the cabi- 
 net 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 the 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 ex- 
 hilarate my spirits, while others give fortitude to 
 my mind, and teach me the important lesson how 
 
24 The Choice of Books. 
 
 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 safely rely in all emergencies." 
 '' In my study," quaintly said Sir Wilham Waller, 
 '' I am sure to converse with none but wise men ; 
 but abroad it is impossible for me to avoid the 
 society of fools." Sir John Herschel called 
 books " the best society in every period of his- 
 tory :" " Were I to pray for a taste which should 
 stand me in stead under every variety of circum- 
 stances, and be a source of happiness and cheer- 
 fulness to me during life, and a shield against its 
 ills, however things might go amiss, and the 
 world frown upon me, it would be a taste for 
 reading. Give a man this taste, and the means 
 of gratifying it, and you can hardly fail of mak- 
 ing him a happy man ; unless, indeed, you put 
 into his hands a most perverse selection of books. 
 You place him in contact with the best society 
 in every period of history — with the wisest, the 
 wittiest, the tenderest, the bravest, and the purest 
 characters who have adorned humanity. You 
 make him a denizen of all nations, a contempo- 
 rary of all ages. The world has been created 
 for him." Among his books, William Ellery 
 
The Reading Habit, 25 
 
 Channing could say : " In the best books, great 
 men talk to us, with us, and give us their most 
 precious thoughts. Books are the voices of the 
 distant and the dead. Books are the true level- 
 ers. They give to all who will faithfully use 
 them, the society and the presence of the best 
 and greatest of our race. No matter how poor 
 I am ; no matter though the prosperous of my 
 own time will not enter my obscure dwelKng, if 
 learned men and poets will enter and- take up 
 their abode under my roof, — if Milton will cross 
 my threshold to sing to me of Paradise; and 
 Shakespeare open to me the world of imagina- 
 tion and the workings of the human heart ; and 
 Franklin enrich me with his practical wisdom, — 
 I shall not pine for want of intellectual compan- 
 ionship, and I may become a cultivated man, 
 though excluded from what is called the best 
 
 society in the place where I live Nothing 
 
 can supply the place of books. They are cheer- 
 ing and soothing companions in solitude, illness, 
 or affliction. The wealth of both continents 
 could not compensate for the good they impart. 
 Let every man, if possible, gather some good 
 books under his roof, and obtain access for him- 
 self and family to some social library. Almost 
 
26 The Choice of Books, 
 
 any luxury should be sacrificed to this." An4 
 one cannot wonder that Fenelon said : " If the 
 crowns of all the kingdoms of the empire were 
 laid down at my feet in exchange for my books 
 and my love of reading, I would spurn them all ;", 
 or that the historian Gibbon wrote: "A taste 
 for books is the pleasure and glory of my life. 
 I would not exchange it for the glory of the 
 Indies." 
 
 All these words of wise readers show that he 
 who rightly cultivates the reading habit can not 
 only have the best of friends ever at hand, but 
 can at length say with all modesty, if he reads 
 aright and remembers well: " My mind to me a 
 kingdom is." 
 
 The foregoing pages are from " The Choice of Books," by- 
 Charles F. Richardson, a very beautiful volume of 208 pages, 
 its sixteen chapters treating of the following subjects : 
 
 The Motive of Reading. 
 The Reading Habit. 
 What Books to Read. 
 The Best Time to Read. 
 How Much to Read. 
 Remembering What One 
 
 Reads. 
 The Use of Note-Books. 
 The Cultivation of Taste. 
 
 Poetry. 
 
 The Art of Skipping. 
 
 The Use of Translations. 
 
 How to Read Periodicals. 
 
 Reading Aloud and Reading 
 
 Clubs. 
 What Books to Own, 
 The Use of Public Libraries. 
 The True Service of Reading. 
 
 The volume is sold at prices as follows: Cloth binding, 25 
 cents; half Russia, red edges, 35 cents; gilt, gilt edges, 35 
 cents. 
 
What Books to Read, 27 
 
 WHAT BOOKS TO READ. 
 
 " What books shall I. read ? " This question 
 virtually includes in its answer the consideration 
 of the whole world of letters, and is of such 
 manifest importance that no individual utterance, 
 however sincere and competent, can entirely 
 cover the ground. Different tastes and needs 
 call for different suggestions. In this chapter, 
 therefore, I prefer to express my own conclu- 
 sions principally in the words of mightier men. 
 
 Coming thus definitely to the choice of partic- 
 ular books, we find that only the smaller and 
 pettier guides presume to mark out definite 
 courses of reading: The master minds never 
 forget that books were made for readers, not 
 readers for books. " The best rule of reading," 
 says Emerson, " will be a method from nature, 
 and not a mechanical one of hours and pages. 
 It holds each student to a pursuit of his native 
 aim, instead of a desultory miscellany. Let him 
 read what is proper to him, and not waste his 
 memory on a crowd of mediocrities. As whole 
 nations have derived their culture from a single 
 
28 The Choice of Books, 
 
 book — as the Bible has been the literature as 
 well as the religion of large portions of Europe 
 — as Haiiz was the eminent genius of the Per- 
 sians, Confucius of the Chinese, Cervantes of 
 the Spaniards ; so, perhaps, the human mind 
 would be a gainer, if all the secondary writers 
 were lost — say, in England, all but Shakespeare, 
 Milton, and Bacon — through the profounder 
 study so drawn to those wonderful minds. 
 With this pilot of his own genius, let the student 
 read one, or let him read many, he will read ad- 
 vantageously." 
 
 This advantage of following the common con- 
 sent of the best critics as to what are the world's 
 best books, is further pressed by Mr. Emerson 
 when he urges us to '' be sure to read no mean 
 books ;" and when, in more definite language, he 
 lays down his three well-known rules ; '' i. Never 
 read any book that is not a year old. 2. Never 
 read any but famed books. 3. Never read any 
 but what you like ; or, in Shakespeare's phrase — 
 
 No profit goes where is no pleasure ta'en ; 
 In brief, sir, study what you most affect." 
 
 The first of these rules is clearly not to be 
 followed in every case. It is, indeed, modified 
 by the third rule, which must sometimes take 
 
What Books to Read, 29 
 
 precedence of it. But there can be no question 
 that the great majority of readers are in much 
 more danger of wasting their time over books 
 that are new, than of losing sight of contempo- 
 rary Kterature through an exclusive devotion to 
 the standard books of past ages. 
 
 Carlyle says that all books are to be divided 
 into two classes, sheep and goats. " Readers 
 are not aware of the fact," he says, " but a fact it 
 is of daily increasing magnitude, and already of 
 terrible importance to readers, that their first 
 grand necessity in reading is to be vigilantly, 
 conscientiously select ; and to know everywhere 
 that books, like human souls, are actually divided 
 into what we may call sheep and goats — the lat- 
 ter put inexorably on the left hand of the judge ; 
 and tending, every goat of them, at all moments, 
 whither we know, and much to be avoided, and, 
 if possible, ignored b}^ all sane creatures." 
 i Thoreau expressed the same thought more 
 bombastically, but not more forcibly, when he 
 said : *' Read not the Times ; read the Eterni- 
 ties." Ruskin further and more minutely marks 
 the same distinction by noting the difference be- 
 tween books of the hour, and books of all time. 
 "All books," says he, "are divisible into two 
 
30 The Choice of Books, 
 
 classes, the books of the hour, and the books of 
 all time. Mark this distinction — it i^ not one of 
 quality only. It is not merely the bad book that 
 does not last, and the good one that does. It is 
 a distinction of species. There are good books 
 for the hour, and good books for all time ; bad 
 books for the hour, and bad ones for all time. I 
 must define the two kinds before I go farther. 
 The good book of the hour, then — I do not 
 speak of the bad ones — is simply the useful or 
 pleasant talk of some person whom you cannot 
 
 otherwise converse with, printed for you 
 
 These bright accounts of travels ; good-humored 
 and witty discussions of question ; lively or pa- 
 thetic story-teUing in the form of novel ; firm 
 fact-telling by the real agents concerned in the 
 events of passing history ; all these books of the 
 hour, multiplying among us as education be- 
 comes more general, are a peculiar characteristic 
 and possession of the present age ; we ought to 
 be entirely thankful for them, and entirely 
 ashamed of ourselves if we make no good use of 
 them. But we make the worst possible use, if 
 we allow them to usurp the place of true books ; 
 for, strictly speaking, they are not books at all, 
 but merely letters or newspapers in good print. 
 
What Books to Read, 31 
 
 Our friend's letter may be delightful, or neces- 
 sary, to-day ; whether worth keeping or not, is 
 to be considered. The newspaper may be en- 
 tirely proper at breakfast time ; but assuredly it 
 is not reading for all day. So, though bound up 
 in a volume, the long letter which gives you so 
 pleasant an account of the inns, and roads, and 
 weather last year at such a place, or which tells 
 you that amusing story, or gives you the real 
 circumstances of such and such events, however 
 valuable for occasional reference, may not be, in 
 the real sense of the word, a ' book ' at all, nor, 
 in the real sense, to be * read.' A book is essen- 
 tially not a talked thing, but a written thing ; 
 and written, not with the view of mere commu- 
 nication, but of permanence. The book of talk 
 is printed only because its author cannot speak 
 to thousands of people at once ; if he could, he 
 would — the volume is mere multiplication of his 
 voice. You cannot talk to your friend in India ; 
 if you could, you would ; you write instead : 
 that is mere conveyance of voice. But a book 
 is written, not to multiply the voice merely, not 
 to carry it merely, but to preserve it. The au- 
 thor has something to say which he perceives 
 to be true and useful, or helpfullj^ beautiful. So 
 
32 The Choice of Books. 
 
 far as he knows, no one has yet said it ; so far as 
 he knows, no one else can say it ; he is bound to 
 say it, clearly and melodiously if he may, clearly, 
 at all events. In the sum of his life he finds this 
 to be the thing, or group of things, manifest tOy 
 him ; this the piece of true knowledge, or sight, 
 which his share of sunshine and earth has per- 
 mitted him to sei^. He would fain set it down 
 forever ; engrave it on rock, if he could ; saying, 
 * This is the best of me ; for the rest, I ate, and 
 drank, and slept, loved, and hated, like another ; 
 my life was as the vapor, and is not ; but this I 
 saw and knew ; this, if anything of mine, is 
 worth your memory.' That is his ' writing ;' it 
 is, in his small human way, and with whatever 
 degree of true inspiration is in him, his inscrip- 
 tion, or scripture. That is a ' Book.' " 
 
 Ruskin thus makes clear the fact that the real 
 value of any book, to a particular reader, is to 
 be measured by its serviceableness to that reader. 
 " There is a Hterature of knowledge, and a liter- 
 ature of power," says De Quincey ; and knowl- 
 edge that can never be transmuted into power, 
 becomes mere intellectual rubbish. The choice 
 of books would be greatly aided if the reader, in 
 taking up a volume, would always ask himself 
 
What Books to Read. 33 
 
 just why he is going to read it, and of what 
 service it is to be to him. This question, if sin- 
 cerely put, and truthfully answered, is pretty 
 sure to lead him to the great books — or at least 
 to the books that are great for him. 
 
 Homer, Plutarch, Herodotus, and Plato ; Vir- 
 gil, Livy, and Tacitus ; Dante, Tasso, and Pe- 
 trach ; Cervantes ; Thomas a Kempis ; Goethe 
 and Schiller; Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, 
 Milton, Bacon, Sir Thomas Browne, Bunyan, 
 Addison, Gray, Scott, and Wordsworth ; Haw- 
 thorne, Emerson, Motley, Longfellow, Bryant, 
 Lowell, Holmes, and Whittier — he who reads 
 these, and such as these, is not in serious danger 
 of spending his time amiss. But not even such 
 a list as this is to be received as a necessity by 
 every reader. One may find Cowper more 
 profitable than Wordsworth ; to another, the 
 reading of Bancroft may be more advantageous 
 than that of Herodotus ; while a third may gain 
 more immediate and lasting good from historical 
 novels like Ebers's " Uarda," or Kingsley's 
 " Hypatia," than from a long and patient at- 
 tempt to master Grote's '' History of Greece," 
 or Gibbon's " Decline and Fall of the Roman 
 
 Empire." Each individual reader must try to 
 3 
 
34 The Choice of Books, 
 
 determine, first of all,~what is best for himself. 
 In forming his decision let him make the utmost 
 use of the best guides, not forgetting that the 
 average opinion of educated men is pretty sure 
 to be a correct opinion ; but let him never put 
 aside his own honesty and individuality. He 
 must choose his books as he chooses his friends, 
 because of their integrity and helpfulness, and 
 because of the pleasure their society gives him. 
 
 Mr. Matthew Arnold, not all of whose advice 
 is to be implicitly received, well emphasizes the 
 necessity of reading with one's highest aims in 
 view, when he says : '' The poor require culture 
 as much as the rich ; and at present their educa- 
 tion, even when they get education, gives them 
 hardly anything of it ; yet hardly less of it, per- 
 haps, than the education of the rich gives to the 
 rich. For when we say that culture is. To know 
 the best that has been thought and said to the 
 world, we imply that, for culture, a system di- 
 rectly tending to this end is necessary in our 
 reading. Now there is no such s}' stem yet pres- 
 ent to guide the reading of the rich, any more 
 than of the poor. Such a system is hardly even 
 thought of ; a man who wants it must make u 
 for himself. And our reading being so without 
 
What Books to Read. 35 
 
 purpose as it is, nothing can be truer than what 
 Butler says, that really, in general, no part of 
 our time is more idly spent than the time spent 
 in reading. Still, culture is indispensably neces- 
 sar}^, and culture implies reading ; but reading 
 with a purpose to guide it, and with system. 
 He does a good work who does anything to 
 help this ; indeed, it is the one essential service 
 now to be rendered to education. And the 
 plea that this or that man has no time for cul- 
 ture will vanish as soon as we desire culture so 
 much that we begin to examine seriously our 
 present use of our time." 
 
 " Every book that we take up without a pur- 
 pose," says Mr. Frederick Harrison, " is an op- 
 portunity lost of taking up a book with a purpose ; 
 every bit of stray information which we cram 
 into our heads without any sense of its import- 
 ance, is for the most part a bit of the most useful 
 information driven out of our heads and choked 
 off from our minds. It is so certain that infor- 
 mation, that is, the knowledge, the stored 
 thoughts and observations of mankind, is now- 
 grown to proportions so utterly incalculable and 
 prodigious, that even the learned whose lives 
 are given to study can but pick up some crumbs 
 
3^ The Choice of Books. 
 
 that fall from the table of truth. They delve 
 and tend but a plot in that vast and teeming 
 kingdom, whilst those whom active life leaves 
 with but a few cramped hours of study can 
 hardly come to know the very vastness of the 
 field before them, or how infinitesimally small is 
 the corner they can traverse at the best. We 
 know all is not of equal value. We know that 
 books differ in value as much as diamonds differ 
 from the sand on the seashore, as much as our 
 living friend differs from a dead rat. We know 
 that much in the myriad-peopled world of books 
 ' — very much in all kinds — is trivial, enervating, 
 inane, even noxious. And thus, where we have 
 infinite opportunities of Avasting our efforts to no 
 end, of fatiguing our minds without enriching 
 them, of clogging the spirit without satisfying it, 
 there, I cannot but think, the very infinity of 
 opportunities is robbing us of the actual power 
 of using them. And thus I come often, in my 
 less hopeful moods, to watch the remorseless 
 cataract of daily literature which thunders over 
 the remnants of the past, as if it were a fresh im- 
 pediment to the men of our day in the way of 
 systematic knowledge and consistent powers of 
 thought; as if- it were destined one day to over- 
 
What Books to Read, 37 
 
 whelm the great inheritance of mankind in prose 
 and verse." 
 
 A reader who is ever seeking for a book that 
 shall not only be helpful in some sense, but help- 
 ful in a high sense, is not likely to waste his 
 time over that which is merely respectable in- 
 stead of that which is really great. " I am not 
 presumptuous enough," says Mr. Harrison fur- 
 ther, " to assert that the larger part of modern 
 literature is not worth reading in itself, that the 
 prose is not readable, entertaining, one may say, 
 highly instructive. Nor do I pretend that the 
 verses which we read so zealously in place of 
 Milton's are not good verses. On the contrary, 
 I think them sweetly conceived, as musical and 
 as graceful as the verse of any age in our history. 
 I say it emphatically, a great deal of our modern 
 literature is such that it is exceedingly difficult 
 to resist it, and it is undeniable that it gives us 
 real information. It seems perhaps unreasonable 
 to many, to assert that a decent readable book 
 which gives us actual instruction can be other- 
 wise than a useful companion, and a solid gain. 
 I dare say many people are ready to cry out 
 upon me as an obscurantist for venturing to 
 doubt a genial confidence in all literature simply 
 
38 The Choice of Books, 
 
 as such. But the question which weighs upon 
 me with such really crushing urgency is this: — 
 What are the books that in our little remnant of 
 reading time it is most vital for us to know? 
 For the true use of books is of such sacred value 
 to us that to be simply entertained is to cease to 
 be taught, elevated, inspired by books ; merely to 
 gather information of a chance kind is to close 
 the mind to knowledge of the urgent kind." 
 
 This union of freedom with authority — of a 
 choice for one's self, and a willingness to believe 
 that the world is right in setting Shakespeare 
 above Swinburne, and Homer above Tupper — 
 is, I believe, the true and the only guide in the 
 selection of books to read. Jn the long run, 
 nothing but truth, simplicity, purity, and a lofty 
 purpose approves a book to the favor of the 
 ages ; and nothing else ought to approve it to 
 the individual reader. Thus the end is reached 
 and the choice is made, not by taking a book be- 
 cause a " course of reading " commands you to 
 do so, but because you come to see for yourself 
 the wisdom of the selection. The pure and 
 wholesome heart of humanity — that thing which 
 we call conscience — is the guide of readers as it 
 is of every other class of workers in life. 
 
What Books to Read, 39 
 
 In this connection it should be strongly em- 
 phasized that nothing is so fatal to sound habits 
 of reading as the loss of hearty enthusiasm, and 
 the substitution therefor of artificiality and dilet- 
 tanteism. I cannot better put the wide applica- 
 bihty of this truth, in matters of literature, than 
 by making another quotation from Mr. Harrison, 
 who is in some ways one of the wisest and most 
 helpful of recent literary counselors. In the 
 passages I have chosen will be found wholesome 
 suggestions on other topics connected with the 
 general subject of reading, — a subject which is 
 ever branching out in new directions on this side 
 and on that. " I have no intention," says Mr. 
 Harrison, " to moralize or to indulge in a homily 
 against the reading of what is deliberately evil. 
 There is not so much need for this now, and I 
 am not discoursing on the whole duty of man. 
 I take that part of our reading which is by itself 
 no doubt harmless, entertaining, and even gently 
 instructive. But of this enormous mass of lit- 
 erature how much deserves to be chosen out, to 
 be preferred to all the great books of the world, 
 to be set apart for those precious hours which 
 are all that the most of us can give to solid read- 
 ing ? The vast proportion of books are books 
 
40 The Choice of Books. 
 
 that we shall never be able to read. A serious 
 percentage of books are not Avorth reading at all. 
 The really vital books for us we also know to be 
 a very trifling portion of the whole. And yet 
 we act as if every book were as good as any 
 other, as if it were merely a question of order 
 which we take up first, as if any book were good 
 enough for us, and as if all were alike honorable, 
 precious, and satisfying. Alas ! books cannot 
 be more than the men who write them, and as a 
 large proportion of the human race now write 
 books, with motives and objects as various as hu- 
 man activity, books as books are entitled a priori, 
 until their value is proved, to the same attention 
 and respect as houses, steam-engines, pictures, 
 fiddles, bonnets, and other thoughtful or orna- 
 mental products of human industr3^ In the 
 shelves of those libraries which are our pride, 
 libraries public or private, circulating or very 
 stationary, are to be found those great books of 
 the world, ' rari nantes in gurgite vas to,' those 
 books which are'^ruly 'the precious life-blood of 
 a master spirit.' But the very familiarity which 
 their might}^ fame has bred in us makes us indif- 
 ferent ; we grow weary of what every one is 
 supposed to have read, and we take down some- 
 
What Books to Read. 41 
 
 thing which looks a little eccentric, or some au- 
 thor on the mere ground that we never heard of 
 him before How does the trivial, pro- 
 vided it is the new, that which stares at us in the 
 advertising columns of the day, crowd out the 
 immortal poetry and pathos of the human race, 
 vitiating our taste for those exquisite pieces 
 which are a household word, and weakening our 
 mental relish for the eternal works of genius ! 
 Old Homer is the very fountain-head of pure 
 poetic enjoyment, of all that is spontaneous, sim- 
 ple, native, and dignified in life. He takes us 
 into the ambrosial world of heroes, of human 
 vigor, of purity, of grace. Now Homer is one 
 of the few poets the life of whom can be fairly 
 preserved in a translation. Most men and women 
 can say that they have read Homer, just as most 
 of us can say that we have studied Johnson's 
 Dictionary. But how few of us take him up, 
 time after time, with fresh delight! How few 
 have ever read the entire ' Ihad ' and ' Odyssey * 
 through ! Whether in the resounding lines of 
 the old Greek, as fresh and ever-stirring as the 
 waves that tumble on the sea-shore, filling the 
 soul with satisfying, silent wonder at its restless 
 unison ; whether in the quaint lines of Chapman, 
 
42 The Choice of Books. 
 
 or the clarion couplets of Pope, or the cleser 
 versions of Cowper, Lord Derby, or Philip 
 Worsley, or even in the new prose version of 
 the ' Odyssey,' Homer is always fresh and rich. 
 And yet how seldom does one find a friend spell- 
 bound over the Greek Bible [Homer] of antiqui- 
 ty, while they wade through torrents of maga- 
 zine quotations from a petty versifier of to-day, 
 and in an idle vacation will graze as content- 
 edly as cattle in a fresh meadow, through the 
 chopped straw of a circulating library. A gen- 
 eration which will listen to ' Pinafore ' for three 
 hundred nights, and will read M. Zola's seven- 
 teenth romance, can no more read Homer than 
 it could read a cuneiform inscription. It will 
 read about Homer just as it will read about a 
 cuneiform inscription, and will crowd to see a 
 few pots which probably came from the neigh- 
 borhood of Troy. But to Homer and the prim- 
 eval type of heroic man in his beauty, and his 
 simpleness, and joyousness, the cultured gener- 
 ation is really dead, as completely as some 
 spoiled beauty of the ball-room is dead to the 
 bloom of the heather or the waving of the daffo- 
 dils in a glade. It is a true psychological pro- 
 blem, this nausea which idle culture seems to 
 
What Books to Read, ^ 43 
 
 produce for all that is manly and pure in heroic 
 poetry. One knows — at least every schoolboy 
 has known — that a passage of Homer, .rolling 
 along in the hexameter or trumped out by Pope, 
 will give one a hot glow of pleasure and raise a 
 finer throb in the pulse ; one knows that Homer 
 is the easiest, most artless, most diverting of all 
 poets ; that the fiftieth reading rouses the spirit 
 even more than the first — and yet we find our- 
 selves (we are all alike) painfully psha-ing over 
 some new and uncut barley-sugar in rhyme,which 
 a man in the street asked us if we had read ; or it 
 may be some learned lucubration about the site 
 of Troy, by some one wc chanced to meet at 
 dinner. It is an unwritten chapter in the history 
 of the human mind, how this literary prurience 
 after new print unmans us for the enjoyment of 
 the old songs chanted forth in the sunrise of 
 human imagination. To ask a man or woman 
 who spends half a lifetime in sucking magazines 
 and new poems, to read a book of Homer, would 
 be like asking a butcher's boy to whistle ' Ade- 
 laida.' The noises and sights and talk, the whirl 
 and volatility of Hfe around us, are too strong 
 for us. A society which is forever gossiping in 
 a sort of perpetual ' drum,' loses the very faculty 
 
44 The Choice of Books, 
 
 of caring for anything but ' early copies ' and the 
 last tale out. Thus, like the tares in the noble 
 parable of the Sower, a perpetual chatter about 
 books chokes the seed which is sown in the 
 greatest books in the world. I speak of Homer, 
 but fifty other great poets and creators of eter- 
 nal beauty would serve my argument as well." 
 
 Has it not been made clear, in the words of 
 thoughtful counselors by which, in this chapter, 
 I have sought to strengthen and make plain my 
 own sincerest convictions concerning the proper 
 selection of books, that the reader must always 
 •search for — 
 
 Books that are wholesome ; 
 
 Books that are helpful to him personally ; — 
 and that, if by following these rules, he does not 
 find that his choice usually falls upon books 
 which the greatest minds call great, the fault is 
 more likely to be in himself than in them. 
 
The Best Time to Read, 45 
 
 THE BEST TIME TO READ. 
 
 . In the choice of the time for reading, as in 
 that of the books to read, large hberty must be 
 given to individual needs and habits. There is 
 no hour of the twenty-four which may not, 
 under certain circumstances, be profitably spent 
 in reading. In the lonely watches of a sleepless 
 night ; in the precious hours of early morning ; 
 in the busy forenoon, the leisurely afternoon, or 
 in the long winter evenings; — whenever the 
 time and inclination comes, that is your time for 
 reading. If the inclination does not come Avith 
 the time, if the mind is weary, and the attention 
 hard to fix, then it is better to lose that special 
 time so far as reading is concerned, and to take 
 up something else. A much shorter time chosen 
 under more favorable circumstances, — if it is 
 only five minutes in a busy day, — will more than 
 make up the loss. 
 
 Everybody has some time to read, how^ever 
 much he may have to do. Many a woman has 
 read to excellent purpose while mixing bread, or 
 waiting for the meat to brown, or tending the. 
 
4^ The Choice of Books, 
 
 baby, — simply by reading a sentence when she 
 could. INIen have become well-read at the black- 
 smith's forge, or the printer's case, or behind the 
 counter. No time is too short, and no occupa- 
 tion is too mean, to be made to pay tribute to a 
 real desire for knowledge. I know of a woman 
 who read " Paradise Lost," and two or three 
 other standard Avorks, aloud to her husband in a 
 single winter, while he was shaving, that being 
 the only available time. " There is no business, 
 no avocation whatever," says Wj^ttenbach, 
 *' which will not permit a man, who has an incli- 
 nation, to give a little time, every day, to the 
 studies of his youth ;" and this truth is equally 
 apphcable to the studies taken up in middle Hfe 
 or old age. '' Whilst you stand deliberating 
 which book j'our son shall read first, another 
 boy has read both ; read anything five hours a 
 da}^, and you will soon be learned ;" said Dr. 
 Johnson. Five hours a day is a large amount of 
 time, but five minutes a day, spent over good 
 books, will give a man a great deal of knowledge 
 worth having, before a year is out. It is the 
 time thus spent that counts for more, to one's 
 intellectual self, than all the rest of the day 
 occupied in mere manual labor. "There is 
 
The Best Time to Read, 47 
 
 nothing in the recollections of my childhood," 
 says Mary C. Ware, " that I look back upon with 
 so much pleasure as the reading aloud my books 
 to my mother. She was then a woman of many 
 cares, and in the habit of engaging in every 
 variety of household work. Whatever she might 
 be doing in kitchen, or dairy, or parlor, she was 
 always ready to listen to me, and to explain 
 whatever I did not understand. There was al- 
 ways with her an undercurrent of thought about 
 other things, mingling with all her domestic 
 duties, lightening and modifying them, but never 
 leading her to neglect them, or to perform them 
 imperfectly. I believe it is to this trait of her 
 character that she owes the elasticity and ready 
 social sympathy that still animates her under the 
 weight of almost fourscore years." 
 
 There is a need of a constant mental economy 
 in the choice of time for reading, be it much or 
 little. ^' It is true," says Philip Gilbert Hamer- 
 ton, " 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." Nor is it only 
 those whose pursuits are not distinctly literary 
 who fail to make the best use of the passing 
 
48 The Choice of Books. 
 
 hours. '' Few intellectual men," says Mr. Ham- 
 erton, " have the art of economizing the hours 
 of study. The very necessity, which every one 
 acknowledges, of giving vast portions of hfe to 
 attain proficiency in anything, makes us prod- 
 igal where we ought to be parsimonious, and 
 careless where we have need of unceasing vigi- 
 lance. The best time-savers are a love of sound- 
 ness in all we learn or do, and a cheerful accept- 
 ance of inevitable limitations. There is a certain 
 point of proficiency at which an acquisition be- 
 gins to be of use, and unless we have the time 
 and resolution necessary to reach that point, our 
 labor is as completely thrown away as that of 
 the mechanic who began to make an engine but 
 never finished it. Each of us has acquisitions 
 which remain permanently unavailable from 
 their unsoundness : a language or two that we 
 can neither speak nor write, a science of which 
 the elements have not been mastered, an art 
 which we cannot practice with satisfaction either 
 to others or to ourselves. Now the time spent 
 on these unsound accomplishments has been in 
 great measure wasted ; not quite absolutely 
 wasted, since the mere labor of trying to learn 
 has been a discipfine for the mind, but wasted so 
 
The Best Time to Read, 49 
 
 far as the accomplishments themselves are con- 
 cerned. And this mental discipline, on which so 
 much stress is laid by those whose interest it is 
 to encourage unsound accomplishments, might be 
 obtained more perfectly if the subjects of study 
 were less numerous and more thoroughly under- 
 stood." 
 
 We are not to understand from this that noth- 
 ing is to be studied with which we do not intend 
 to become profoundly acquainted, for much 
 knowledge must of necessity be fragmentary and 
 incomplete. The adviser is merely warning us 
 against purposeless intellectual trifling. "Too 
 many readers," says J. B. Braithwaite, " allow 
 their moments of leisure to be wasted in a kind 
 of ' busy idleness '; they look over a great variety 
 of books, but for want of settled dihgence, their 
 unsteady wanderings in prose or poetry are at- 
 tended with no satisfactory result. There is a 
 yet larger class of listless triflers, who give way 
 to lounging and indolent habits of mind, wholly 
 unworthy of intelligent and responsible beings. 
 If they take up a book after the labors of the day, 
 it is too often a feeble attempt to think, as it were, 
 by proxy ; and even this seems, not unfrequently, 
 too great an exertion, and the future can alone 
 
50 The Choice of Books, 
 
 fully disclose how many are the precious hours, 
 now never to be recalled, which have been 
 thoughtlessly trifled away over a newspaper, a 
 review, or other publication of the day, with 
 scarcely an object besides that of whiling away 
 the time. For these and many other kindred 
 evils there is no remedy more efficacious than a 
 sound and healthy purpose, rightly directed, and 
 steadily maintained. This is the magnet that can 
 discover and gather to itself, even from the dust, 
 the scattered particles within the range of its 
 attraction. With this all our reading will be im- 
 proved to the greatest advantage : whilst without 
 it the perusal of the best books will be desultory 
 and comparatively unimproving; the best ma- 
 terials may be collected, but they will be in rude 
 heaps that incumber, rather than adorn the 
 ground. And how great is the danger, where 
 there is no fixed aim, that life may be frittered 
 away in empty and profitless, because purpose- 
 less, occupation." 
 
 The Germans, who certainly have great re- 
 sults to show for the time they spend in reading 
 and other intellectual pursuits, may profitably 
 teach us two lessons concerning the best time to 
 read : that brain-work should be steady and un- 
 
The Best Time to Read, 51 
 
 interrupted while it lasts, and that it should be 
 varied by periods of rest and changed employ- 
 ment. " In the charming and precious letters of 
 Victor Jacquemont," says Hamerton, " a man 
 whose life was dedicated to culture, and who not 
 only lived for it, but died for it, there is a pas- 
 sage about the intellectual labors of Germans, 
 which takes due account of the expenditure of 
 time." This letter runs as follows : '^ Being as- 
 tonished at the prodigious variety and at the 
 extent of knowledge possessed by the Germans, 
 I begged one of my friends, Saxon by birth, and 
 one of the foremost geologists in Europe, to tell 
 me how his countrymen managed to know so 
 many things. Here is his answer, nearly in his 
 own words : * A German (except myself, who am 
 the idlest of men) gets up earl}^, summer and 
 winter, at about five o'clock. He works four 
 hours before breakfast, sometimes smoking all 
 the time, which does not intefere with his appli- 
 cation. His breakfast lasts about half an hour, 
 and he remains, afterwards, another half hour 
 talking with his wife and playing with his chil- 
 dren. He returns to his work for six hours, 
 dines without hurrying himself, smokes an hour 
 after dinner, playing again with his children, and 
 
52 The Choice of Books, 
 
 before he goes to bed he works four hours more. 
 He begins agam every day, and never goes out. 
 This is how it comes to pass that Oersted, the 
 greatest natural philosopher in Germany, is at 
 the same time the greatest physician ; this is how 
 Kant, the metaphysician, was one of the most 
 learned astronomers in Europe ; and how Goethe, 
 who is at present the first and most fertile author 
 in Germany in almost all kinds of literature, is 
 an excellent botanist, mineralogist, and natural 
 philosopher.' " This persistency of the German 
 character evokes grand results even from dull 
 brains, which one would think were steeped in 
 beer and shriveled by excessive smoking. The 
 advantages of persistency and a " change of 
 works," in the choice of time for brain labor, Mr. 
 Hamerton thus further presses : " The encourag- 
 ing inference which you may draw from this in 
 reference to your own case is that, since all intel- 
 lectual men have had more than one pursuit, you 
 may set off your business against the most ab- 
 sorbing of their pursuits, and for the rest be still 
 almost as rich in time as they have been. You 
 may study literature as some painters have 
 studied it, or science as some literary men have 
 studied it. The first step is to establish a regu- 
 
The Best Time to Read, 53 
 
 lated economy of your time, so that, without in- 
 terfering with a due attention to business and to 
 health, you may get two clear hours every day 
 for reading of the best kind. It is not much, some 
 men would tell you it is not enough, but I pur- 
 posely fix the expenditure of time at a low figure 
 because I want it to be always practicable, con- 
 sistently with all the duties and necessary pleas- 
 ures of your life. If I told you to read four 
 hours every day, I know beforehand what would 
 be the consequence. You would keep the rule 
 for three or four days, by an effort, then some 
 engagement would occur to break it, and you 
 would have no rule at all. And please observe 
 that the two hours are to be given quite regular- 
 ly, because, when the time given is not much, 
 regularity is quite essential. Two hours a day, 
 regularly, make more than seven hundred hours 
 in a year, and in seven hundred hours, wisely and 
 uninterruptedly occupied, much may be done in 
 anything. Permit me to insist upon that word 
 uninterruptedly. Few people realize the full 
 evil of an interruption, few people know all that 
 is implied by it." 
 
 Thus to avoid interruption we may properly 
 separate ourselves at times from the society of 
 
54 The Choice of Books, 
 
 our ordinary companions at home or abroad, 
 when such separation is essential to sound read- 
 ing and thinking. I do not mean that this sepa- 
 ration should be carried, as it too often is, to the 
 extent of positive discourtesy and selfishness. 
 Sometimes the best possible hour for reading is 
 that spent over books with husband or wife or 
 friend. But as between time well spent with 
 books, and time foolishly spent in " society," there 
 can be no doubt as to the proper choice. Read- 
 ers must give up something, and that something 
 often proves to be an undue devotion to the cus- 
 toms and rules of fashionable social intercourse, 
 than which there is no more formidable foe to 
 the reading habit. 
 
 " There is a degree of incompatibility," Mr. 
 Hamerton says further, "between the fashion- 
 able and the intellectual lives, which makes it 
 necessary, at a certain time, to choose one or the 
 other as our own. There is no hostility, there 
 need not be any uncharitable feeling on one side 
 or the other, but there must be a resolute choice 
 between the two. If you decide for the intel- 
 lectual life, 3^ou will incur a definite loss to set 
 against your gain. Your existence may have 
 calmer and profounder satisfactions, but it will be 
 
The Best Time to Read, 55 
 
 less amusing, and even in an appreciable degree 
 less human ; less in harmony, I mean, with the 
 common instincts and feelings of humanity. For 
 the fashionable world, although decorated by 
 habits of expense, has enjoyment for its object, 
 and arrives at enjoyment- by those methods which 
 the experience of generations have proved most 
 efhcacious. Variety of amusement, frequent 
 change of scenery and society, healthy exercise, 
 pleasant occupation of the mind without fatigue 
 — these things do indeed make existence agree- 
 able to human nature, and the science of living 
 agreeably is better understood in the fashionable 
 society of England than by laborious students 
 and savans. The life led by that society is the 
 true heaven of the natural man, who likes to have 
 frequent feasts and a hearty appetite, who enjoys 
 the varying spectacle of wealth, and splendor, 
 and pleasure, who loves to watch, from the 
 Olympus of his personal ease, the curious results 
 of labor in which he takes no part, the interest- 
 ing ingenuity of the toiling world below. In 
 exchange for these varied pleasures of the spec- 
 tator, 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 
 
5 6 The Choice of Books. 
 
 infinite labor, into contact with some great real- 
 ity — that you shall know, and do in such sort, 
 that you will feel yourself on firm ground and 
 be recognized, probably not much applauded, 
 but yet recognized — as a fellow-laborer by other, 
 knowers and doers. Before you come to this, 
 most of your present accomplishments, w411 be 
 abandoned by yourself as unsatisfactory and in- 
 sufficient, but one or two of them will be turned 
 to better account, and will give you after many 
 years a tranquil self-respect, and, w^hat is still 
 rarer and better, a very deep and earnest rever- 
 ence for the greatness which is above you. Sev- 
 ered from the vanities of the illusory, you will 
 live with the realities of knowledge, as one who 
 has quitted the painted scenery of the theater to 
 listen by the eternal ocean or gaze at the granite 
 hills." 
 
 From all that has been said, the reader has 
 seen how closely the best choice of time for read- 
 ing is connected with the best use of that time. 
 If we devote to books the hours or the minutes 
 we can catch, and choose our reading with a full 
 sense of the wideness of the field of selection and 
 the narrowness of the time in which we can work 
 in that field, we shall hardly go astray in our de- 
 
How Much to Read. 57 
 
 HOW MUCH TO READ. 
 
 The amount which it is advisable for one to 
 read can no more be settled off-hand, in a general 
 way, than the quantity of his food or the proper 
 limit of his physical exercise. Tastes, necessities, 
 and opportunities differ ; some persons can un- 
 doubtedly read very much faster than others, 
 and yet get as much profit from their reading. 
 And it is hardly necessary to say that a novel is 
 " quicker reading " than a history of Greece ; or 
 that a clever bit of vers de society need not occupy 
 the mind so long as a passage of equal length 
 from Milton or Homer. Then, again, a clear and 
 luminous writer like Longfellow does not delay 
 the reader as does an obscure and artificial poet 
 like Robert Browning. 
 
 In general terms, one has passed the proper 
 limit of reading when he reads without suitable 
 apprehension, and understanding, and promise 
 of retention in memory, of the page before him, 
 whether it be novel or history, humorous poem 
 or didactic verse. " Reading with me incites to 
 reflection instantly," says Mr. Beecher ; " I can- 
 
58 The Choice of Books, 
 
 not 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." Dugald Stewart 
 thus emphasizes this duty of thoughtfulness in 
 reading : '' Nothing, in truth, has such a ten- 
 dency to weaken, not only the powers of inven- 
 tion, but the intellectual powers in general, as a 
 habit of extensive and various reading without 
 reflection. The activity and force of the mind 
 are gradually impaired in consequence of disuse ; 
 and, not unfrequently, all our principles and 
 opinions come to be lost in the infinite multipli- 
 city and discordancy of our acquired ideas." 
 
 John Locke tells us, in homely but sensible 
 phrase, that " Those who have read of every- 
 thing are thought to understand everything too ; 
 but it is not always so. Reading furnishes the 
 mind only with the materials of knowledge ; it 
 is thinking that makes what we read ours. We 
 are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough 
 to cram ourselves with a great load of collec- 
 tions : unless we chew them over again, they 
 will not give us strength and nourishment." W. 
 P. Atkinson thus enforces the same lesson : " The 
 most important question for the good student 
 
How Much to Read, 59 
 
 and reader is not, amidst this multitude of books 
 which no man can number, how much he shall 
 read. The really important questions are, first, 
 what is the quality of what he does read ; and, 
 second, what is his manner of reading it. There 
 IS an analogy which is more than accidental be- 
 tween physical and mental assimilation and di- 
 gestion ; and, homely as the illustration may seem, 
 it is the most forcible I can use. Let two sit 
 down to a table spread with food : one possessed 
 of a healthy appetite, and knowing something of 
 the nutritious qualities of the various dishes be- 
 fore him ; the other cursed with a pampered and 
 capricious appetite, and knowing nothing of the 
 results of chemical and physiological investiga- 
 tion. One shall make a better meal, and go away 
 stronger and better fed, on a dish of oatmeal, than 
 the other on a dinner that has emptied his 
 pockets. Shall we study plfysiological chemis- 
 try and know all about what is food for the body, 
 and neglect mental chemistry, and be utterly 
 careless as to what nutriment is contained in the 
 food Ave give our minds ? I am not speaking here 
 of vicious literature ; we don't spread our tables 
 with poisons. I speak only of the varying 
 amount of nutritive matter contained in books." 
 
6o The Choice of Books, 
 
 J. B. Braithwaite, another sensible writer on 
 this topic, says : '' The mind requires nourishing 
 food. Trifling reading enfeebles it." Lord Ba- 
 con wisely says : '' Read not to contradict and 
 confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor 
 to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and con- 
 sider. This is the great secret both of reading 
 to profit, and of making the best choice of what 
 we read. If books were more commonly judged 
 by their real weight, how many popular works 
 would at once shrink into insignificance ! It is 
 melancholy to think of the miUions of immortal 
 minds, that accustom themselves to reading, 
 which when weighed in the balance is found to 
 contain little less than the lightness of vanity. 
 How many that might have attained the stature 
 of full grown men have thus become enervated, 
 dwarfish, deformed or crippled. With desires 
 formed for the highest enjoyments, and under- 
 standings capable of the noblest improvement, 
 the reading of trifling' and pernicious books, the 
 habit of mental association with low, mean and 
 unworthy thoughts, has prostrated the energies 
 of thousands, and debased them below them- 
 selves." 
 
 Coleridge concluded, in speaking of such friv- 
 
How Much to Read, 6i 
 
 olous and make-believe attention of unworthy 
 readers to unworthy books : " Some readers are 
 like the hour-glass — their reading is as the sand. 
 It runs in and runs out, but leaves not a vestige 
 behind. Some like a sponge, which imbibes 
 everything, and returns it in the same state, only 
 a little dirtier. Some like a jelly-bag, which 
 allows all that is pure to pass away, and retains 
 only the refuse and dregs. The fourth class may 
 be compared to the slave of Golcon-da, who, 
 casting away all that is worthless, preserves only 
 the pure gems." The usefulness of books lies 
 not only in themselves but in the mind of the 
 reader. Petrarch says : " Books have brought 
 some men to knowledge, and some to madness. 
 As fullness sometimes hurteth the stomach more 
 than hunger, so fareth it with the wits, and, as of 
 meats, so likewise of books, the use ought to be 
 limited according to the quality of him that 
 useth them." 
 
 " To stuff our minds with what is simply triv- 
 ial, simply curious, or that which at best has but 
 a low nutritive power," says Frederick Harrison, 
 " this is to close our minds to what is solid and 
 
 enlarging and spiritually sustaining I 
 
 think the habit of reading wisely is one of the 
 
62 The Choice of Books, 
 
 most difficult habits to acquire, needing strong 
 resolution and infinite pains ; and I hold the 
 habit of reading for mere reading's sake, instead 
 of for the sake of the stuff we gain from reading, 
 to be one of the worst and commonest and most 
 unwholesome habits we have. Why do we still 
 suffer the traditional hypocrisy about the dignity 
 of literature, literature I mean in the gross, which 
 includes about equal parts of what is useful and 
 what is useless? Why are books as books, 
 writers as writers, readers as readers, meritori- 
 ous and honorable, apart from any good in them, 
 or anything that we can get from them ? Why 
 do we pride ourselves on our powers of absorb- 
 ing print, as our grandfathers did on their gifts 
 in imbibing port, when we know that there is a 
 mode of absorbing print which makes it impos- 
 sible we can ever learn anything good out of 
 books? Our stately Milton said in a passage 
 which is one of the watchwords of the English 
 race, ' as good almost kill a man as kill a good 
 book.' But has he not also said that he would 
 * have a vigilant eye how books demean them- 
 selves as well as men, and do sharpest justice on 
 them as malefactors?' Yes! they do kill the 
 good book who deliver up their few and precious 
 
How Much to Read, 63 
 
 hours of reading to the trivial book ; they make 
 it dead for them ; they do what Hes in them to 
 destroy ' the precious Hfe-blood of a master spirit, 
 embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life 
 beyond life ;' they ' spill that seasoned life of man 
 preserved and stored up in books.' For in the 
 wilderness of books most men, certainly all busy 
 men, must strictly choose. If they saturate their 
 minds with the idler books, the ' good book,' 
 Avhich Milton calls ' an immortaUty rather than a 
 life,' is dead to them : it is a book sealed up and 
 buried." 
 
 And just here, even at the risk of repeating 
 what has been said before, in this series of chap- 
 ters, I want to quote some words of the German 
 pessimistic philosopher Schopenhaiier : " It is the 
 case with literature as with life ; wherever we 
 turn we come upon the incorrigible mob of 
 humankind, whose name is Legion, swarming 
 everywhere, damaging everything, as flies in 
 summer. Hence the multiphcity of bad books, 
 those exuberant w^eeds of literature w^hich choke 
 the true corn. Such books rob the public of 
 time, money, and attention, which ought proper- 
 ly to belong to good literature and noble aims, 
 and they are written with a view merely to make 
 
64 The Choice of Books, 
 
 money or occupation. They are therefore not 
 merely useless, but injurious. Nine-tenths of our 
 current literature has no other end but to in- 
 veigle a thaler or two out of the public pocket, 
 for which purpose author/ pubUsher and printer ' 
 are leagued together. A more pernicious, sub- 
 tler, and bolder piece of trickery is that by which 
 penny-a-liners and scribblers succeed in destroy- 
 ing good taste and real culture Hence, 
 
 the paramount importance of acquiring the art 
 not to read ; in other words, of not reading such 
 books as occupy the pubhc mind, or even those 
 which make a noise in the world, and reach sev- 
 eral editions in their first and last years of exis- 
 tence. We should recollect that he who writes 
 for fools finds an enormous audience, and we 
 should devote the ever scant leisure of our cir- 
 cumscribed existence to the master spirits of all 
 ages and nations, those who tower over human- 
 ity, and whom the voice of Fame proclaims : 
 only such writers cultivate and instruct us. Of 
 bad books we can never read too little ; of the 
 good never too much. The bad are intellectual 
 poison and undermine the understanding. Be- 
 cause people insist on reading not the best 
 books written for all time, but the newest con- 
 
How Much to Read. 65 
 
 temporary literature, writers of the day remain 
 in the narrow circle of the same perpetually re- 
 volving ideas, and the age continues to wallow 
 in its own mire Mere acquired know- 
 ledge belongs to us only like a wooden leg and 
 wax nose. Knowledge attained by means of 
 thinking resembles our natural limbs, and is the 
 only kind that really belongs to us. Hence the 
 difference between the thinker and the pedant. 
 The intellectual possession of the independent 
 thinker is like a beautiful picture which stands 
 before us, a living thing with fitting light and 
 shadow, sustained tones, perfect harmony of 
 color. That of the merely learned man may be 
 compared to a palette covered with bright col- 
 ors, perhaps even arranged with some system, 
 but wanting in harmony, coherence and mean- 
 ing Onl}^ those writers profit us whose 
 
 understanding is quicker, more lucid than our 
 own, by whose brain we indeed think for a time, 
 who quicken our thoughts, and lead us whither 
 alone we could not find our way." 
 
 When one perceives that he is turning page 
 
 alter page without noting what is printed there- 
 
 ( n, without reflecting on the information afforded 
 
 him or without knowing why he is reading at 
 
 3 
 
66 The Choice of Books. 
 
 all, it is time for him to stop, whether he has read 
 one page or one thousand. We take it for 
 granted, as was urged in a previous chapter, that 
 every wise reader will determine first of all why 
 he has chosen a particular book : whether for 
 instruction, or guidance, or warning, or mere 
 amusement. In any case — and this remark ap- 
 phes to books taken up for amusement and rec- 
 reation, as well as to the gravest history or the 
 most abstruse mathematical treatise — when the 
 book ceases to perform its legitimate function, it 
 is time to lay it down and engage in some other 
 occupation. " Do not read too much at a time," 
 says Edward E. Hale ; " stop when you are tired, 
 and in whatever w^ay make some review of what 
 you read, even as you go along." Here, as in 
 every other division of the general subject, the 
 duty of attention to purpose should ever be borne' 
 in mind. If your purpose is to learn, read just 
 enough to learn ; if to rest your mind, read just 
 enough to do that. When a history becomes 
 a tiresome burden, or a biography but an idle 
 amusement, or a novel a burdensome task, then 
 you may be quite sure that you have read too 
 much. 
 
 Some persons read both too much and too 
 
Haw Much to Read, 67 
 
 little ; they handle a great many volumes on a 
 vast number of topics, but having failed to as- 
 similate what they have read, they feel at last 
 the dearth that comes from a dissipation of 
 power. " There is a great deal too much read- 
 ing at random," says the Boston Literary World ; 
 " of this book to-day, and of that to-morrow, 
 with no careful method governing the selection, 
 and no high purpose gathering up the results 
 into a definite good. One cannot read all the 
 books that are published ; one cannot even know 
 by name the books that have been written ; the 
 only possible achievement is to adopt some eclec- 
 tic system and abide by it rigorously ; to do a 
 little reading upon a few choice topics, and do it 
 thoroughly and well." The same adviser goes 
 on to urge that " it is an excellent way to fix 
 upon same epoch in history, or some noted figure 
 in biography, or some important department of 
 science and art ; and to govern one's reading by 
 its requirements. Concentrate fact, fiction and 
 fancy all upon the theme ; illuminate all parts of 
 it by every aid that can be brought to bear upon 
 it, and make it a fife work to master it in all its 
 aspects and relations. Such a course will give 
 constant interest to a pursuit which even with 
 
68 The Choice of Books, 
 
 those who are fondest of it may sometimes flag ; 
 it will economize thought and time ; and it will 
 enrich the mind w^ith the best fruits of study." 
 Bishop Potter advises the same method : " Study 
 subjects rather than books ; therefore compare 
 different authors on the same subjects ; the state- 
 ments of authors, with information collected from 
 other sources, and the conclusions drawm by a 
 writer, with the rules of sound logic." Should 
 one thus regulate his time for intellectual work, 
 he would find that any essential or habitual de- 
 viation from this plan would be, so far as the plan 
 is concerned, a waste of time, and an overplus of 
 reading. If one is determined to read Green's 
 '' Short History of the Enghsh People," for in- 
 stance, he is reading too much if he sits up half 
 the night to finish the last novel of Mr. Howells 
 or Thomas Hardy. If, on the other hand, he is 
 preparing for a village reading-club a careful 
 analysis of the general method of Mr. Howells 
 or Mr. Hardy as a novehst, he will be reading 
 too much if he gives himself a *' stint " of two 
 hundred of Green's pages in a day. What under 
 certain circumstances would be praiseworthy 
 and advantageous, under others is blameworthy 
 and injurious. 
 
How Much to Read. 69 
 
 In this connection a word should be said con- 
 cerning re-reading. Luther says: "All who 
 would study with advantage, in any art whatso- 
 ever, ought to betake himself to the reading of 
 some sure and certain books oftentimes over ; for 
 to read many books produceth confusion, rather 
 than learning, like as those who dwell every- 
 where are not anywhere at home." It is well to 
 re-read good books ; almost every one has a 
 favorite author or authors, to whom he turns 
 with constant delight and profit, and the habit of 
 a second, or third, or fourth reading of a good 
 book, or chapter of a book, greatly aids the un- 
 derstanding and the memory. But this habit 
 may easily be carried too far. We must forget 
 something, — much. God has so ordered our 
 mental powers, and it is useless and wicked for 
 us to quarrel with the ordering. Therefore we 
 should not attempt to read a few books constant- 
 1}^, to the entire or virtual neglect of others. 
 There are too many noble volumes that we must 
 leave untouched, at the best. Read carefully and 
 thoughtfully, and re-read wisely; but do liot 
 lament unduly your failures of memory, nor 
 strive to correct them by excessive devotion to 
 one little niche in the wide cathedral of litera- 
 ture. 
 
70 The Choice of Books. 
 
 In closing this chapter of advice concerning 
 the proper amount of reading, strong words of 
 counsel are needed to two classes — those who 
 would cram their own minds and the minds of 
 others, even to the ultimate result of mental and 
 physical injury, insanity or death ; and those on 
 the other extreme, who do not need the least 
 advice concerning the limitation of their read 
 ing, for the very good reason that they never 
 read at all. 
 
 Of the evils of intellectual cramming, let these 
 grave words of Herbert Spencer, apphcable alike 
 to young and old, speak with unmistakable em- 
 phasis : " On old and young the pressure of 
 modern life puts a still increasing strain. Go 
 where you will, and before long there come under 
 your notice cases of children or youths of either 
 sex more or less injured by undue study. Here, 
 to recover from a state of debility thus produced, 
 a year's rustication has been found necessary. 
 There, you find a chronic congestion of the brain 
 that has already lasted many months, and threat- 
 ens to last much longer. Now you hear of a 
 fever that resulted from the over-excitement in 
 some way brought on at school. And again the 
 instance is that of a youth who has already had 
 
How Much to Read. 71 
 
 once to desist from his studies, and who, since he 
 has returned to them, is frequently taken out of 
 his class in a fainting fit. We state facts — facts 
 that have not been sought for, but have been 
 thrust upon our observation during the last two 
 years, and that too within a very limited range. 
 Nor have we by any means exhausted the list. 
 Quite recently we had the opportunity of mark- 
 ing how the evil becomes hereditary, the case 
 being that of a lady of robust parentage whose 
 system was so injured by the regime of a Scotch 
 boarding-school, where she was underfed and 
 overworked, that she invariably suffers from ver- 
 tigo on rising in the morning, and whose chil- 
 dren, inheriting this enfeebled brain, are several 
 of them unable to bear even a moderate amount 
 of study without headache or giddiness. At the 
 present time we have daily under our eyes a 
 young lady whose system has been damaged for 
 life by the college course through which she has 
 passed. Taxed as she was to such an extent that 
 she had no energy left for exercise, she is, now 
 that she has finished her ecTucation, a constant 
 complainant. Appetite small and very capric- 
 ious, mostly refusing meat ; extremities perpetu- 
 ally cold, even when the weather is warm ; a 
 
72 The Choice of Books, 
 
 feebleness which forbids anything but the slow- 
 est walking, and that only for a short time ; pal- 
 pitation on going upstairs ; greatly impaired vis- 
 ion — these, joined with checked growth and lax 
 tissue, are among the results entailed. And to 
 her case we may add that of her friend and fel- 
 low-student, who is similarly weak, who is liable 
 to faint even under the excitement of a quiet 
 party of friends, and who has at length been 
 obliged by her medical attendant to desist from 
 study entirely. If injuries so conspicuous are 
 thus frequent, how very general must be the 
 smaller and inconspicuous injuries. To one case 
 where positive illness is directly traceable to 
 over-apphcation, there are probably at least half 
 a dozen cases where the evil is unobtrusive and 
 slowly accumulating — cases where there is fre- 
 quent derangement of the functions, attributed 
 to this or that special cause, or to constitutional 
 delicacy ; cases where there is retardation and 
 premature arrest of bodily growth ; cases where 
 a latent tendency to consumption is brought out 
 and established ; cases where a predisposition is 
 given to that now common cerebral disorder 
 brought on by the hard work of adult life. How 
 commonly constitutions are thus undermined, 
 
Hcnv Much to Read, fz 
 
 will be clear to all who, after noting the frequent 
 ailments of hard-worked professional and mer- 
 cantile men, will reflect on the disastrous effects 
 which undue application must produce upon 
 the undeveloped systems of the young. The 
 young are competent to bear neither as much 
 hardship, nor as much physical exertion, nor as 
 much mental exertion, as the full grown. Judge, 
 then, if the full grown so manifestly suffer from 
 the excessive mental exertion required of them, 
 how great must be the damage which a mental 
 exertion, often equally excessive, inflicts upon the 
 young!" 
 
 And on the other side, I would that these true 
 words of two eminent English educators could 
 at least be read aloud, if no more, in the hearing 
 of those who will not read for themselves. R. 
 H. Quick, after quoting Mark Pattison's state- 
 ment that " the dearth of books is only the out- 
 ward and visible sign of the mental torpor which 
 reigns in those destitute regions," — the middle- 
 class homes of England, — goes on to say : " I 
 much doubt if he would find more books in the 
 middle-class homes of the Continent. There is 
 only one kind of reading that is nearly universal 
 — ^the reading of newspapers ; and the news- 
 
74 The Choice of Books, 
 
 paper lacks the element of permanence, and be- 
 longs to the domain of talk rather than of litera- 
 ture. Even when we get among the so-called 
 * educated,' we find that those who care for litera- 
 ture form a very small minority. The rest have 
 of course read Shakespeare and Milton and Wal- 
 ter Scott and Tennyson, but they do not read 
 them. The lion's share of our time and thoughts 
 and interests must be given to our business or 
 profession, whatever that may be ; and in few 
 instances is this connected with literature. For 
 the rest, whatever time or thought a man can 
 spare from his calling is mostly given to his fam- 
 ily, or to society, or to some hobby which is not 
 literature. And love of literature is not seen in 
 such reading as is common. The literary spirit 
 shows itself, as I said, in appreciating beauty of 
 expression ; and how far beauty of expression is 
 cared for we may estimate from the fact that few 
 people think of reading anything a second time. 
 The ordinary reader is profoundly indifferent 
 about style, and will not take the trouble to 
 understand ideas. -He keeps to periodicals or 
 light fiction, which enables the mind to loll in its 
 easy chair (so to speak), and see pass before it a 
 series of pleasing images. An idea, as Mark 
 
How Much to Read. 7$ 
 
 Pattison says, is an excitant, comes from mind 
 and calls forth mind ; an image is a sedative ; 
 and most people, when they take ud a book, are 
 seeking a sedative/* 
 
7,6 The Choice of Books, 
 
 REMEMBERING WHAT ONE READS. 
 
 Scarcely anything is more annoying to readers 
 than the fact that they forget so much of what 
 they read. In history, dates and names pass 
 from the mind ; poems once known by heart fade 
 away from recollection ; and the characters, the 
 plots, or perhaps the very titles of stories which 
 were once familiar depart as utterly as though 
 they had never been known at all. 
 
 In connection with this question of the reten- 
 tion or non-retention of what one reads, it should 
 never be forgotten, as was remarked in the pre- 
 ceding chapter, that God has evidently arranged 
 the powers of the human mind in such a way 
 that we must forget a great deal, however care- 
 fully we strive to remember all we can. A large 
 part of our knowledge, too, is to be considered 
 as nutriment, or as intellectual exercise ; and we 
 should no more lament its loss than because we 
 do not remember what we had for breakfast a 
 year ago to-day, or the exact length of the in- 
 vigorating walk we took on that breezy morn- 
 ing, week before last. Some books are by no 
 
Remembering What One Reads, 77 
 
 means read without profit if a part, or even the 
 whole, of them be forgotten beyond recall. And 
 it is a consolation to reflect that the very best 
 use to which some of our past reading can be 
 put is to be forgotten as speedily as possible. 
 If we have lost some things that were good and 
 pleasant, we have luckily blotted from our minds 
 not a little that was noxious and unattractive. 
 
 But a " poor memory " is a thing that can be 
 materially strengthened ; and after all reserva- 
 tions have been made, we should not forget the 
 duty of remembering all we really ought to re- 
 member, so far as the natural powers of our minds 
 permit. The first and the last aid to a memory 
 is a habit of paying strict attention to what we 
 read. " Special efforts should be made to retain 
 what is gathered from reading," says President 
 Porter, " if any such efforts are required. Some 
 persons read with an interest so wakeful and 
 responsive, and an attention so fixed and ener- 
 getic, as to need no appliances and no efforts in 
 order to retain what they read. They look upon 
 a page and it is imprinted upon the memory. . . 
 But there are others who read only to lose and 
 to forget. Facts and truths, words and thoughts, 
 are alike evanescent. We shall not attempt to 
 
78 The Choice of Books. 
 
 explain here the nature of these differences. We 
 are concerned only to devise the remedy ; we 
 insist that those who labor under these difficul- 
 ties should use special appliances to avoid or 
 overcome them. But that upon which we insist 
 most of all, is that what we read we should seek 
 to make our own, only in the manner and after 
 the measure of which we are capable." Presi- 
 dent Porter then goes on to advise each reader 
 to follow his natural bent and aptitudes ; not to 
 worry, if he has not a good verbal memory, over 
 his inabihty to remember choice phrases or 
 striking stanzas, nor to vex- his soul over his fail- 
 ure to retain names and dates. " When a man 
 reads," he says, "he should put himself into the 
 most intimate intercourse with his author, so 
 that all his energies of apprehension, judgment 
 and feeling may be occupied with, and aroused 
 by, what his author furnishes, whatever it may 
 be. If repetition or review will aid him in this, 
 as it often will, let him not disdain or neglect 
 frequent reviews. If the use of the pen, in brief 
 or full notes, in catch-words or other S3^mbols, 
 will aid him, let him not shrink from the drudg- 
 ery of the pen. and the commonplace book. . . . 
 But there is no charm or efficacv in such 
 
Remembering What One Reads, 79 
 
 mechanism by itself. It is only valuable as a 
 means to an end, and that end is to quicken the 
 intellectual energies by arousing and holding the 
 attention." '' What a man wants for himself in 
 memory," says a writer in Blackwood's Maga- 
 zine, " is not a master-power but a servant : the 
 memory that keeps his past of learning and ex- 
 perience alive in him ; one recognized not as 
 itself but by results." 
 
 Hamerton has expressed an opinion that what 
 is called a '* defective memory " is by no means 
 an unmixed evil. He says there is such a thing 
 as a " selecting memory, which is not only useful 
 for what it retains, but for what it rejects." 
 What really interests us, we can usually retain 
 without recourse to any elaborate system of 
 mnemonics. That which does not properly 
 interest us we cannot thus retain. " Had Goethe 
 been a poor student," says Mr. Hamerton, 
 " bound down to the exclusive legal studies, 
 which did not greatly interest him, it is likely 
 that no one would ever have suspected his 
 immense faculty of assimilation. In this way 
 men who are set by others to load their memo- 
 ries with what is not their proper intellectual 
 food, never get the credit of having any memory 
 
8o The Choice of Books, 
 
 at all, and end by themselves believing that they 
 have none. These bad memories are often the 
 best ; the)^ are often the selecting memories. 
 They seldom win distinction in examinations; 
 but in literature and art. They are quite incom- 
 parably superior to the miscellaneous memories 
 that receive only as boxes and drawers receive 
 what is put into them. A good hterary or 
 artistic memory is nc^t like a postToihce that takes 
 in everything, but like a very well edited period- 
 ical which prints nothing that does not harmon- 
 ize with its intellectual life." 
 
 I fully believe in training and disciplining and 
 developing the memory. But I also believe that 
 the very essence of that training is the cultiva- 
 tion of a habit of friendliness, kinship, and inti- 
 macy with the printed page. Mere mnemonic de- 
 vices, says the wise writer from whom I have just 
 quoted, are like tying a frying-pan to one coat- 
 tail and a child's kite to another. The true art 
 of memory is the art of perceiving the relations 
 and uses of things, not their external character- 
 istics ; and above all, not their artificial relations 
 to some essentially foreign object or symbol. 
 The purpose of memory is to help us ; when a 
 memory-machine fails to help us, and cumbers 
 
Remembermg What One Reads, 8i 
 
 and overshadows that which it pretends to aid, 
 it is worse than Avorthless. 
 
 Again, it should be kept in mind that no one 
 brain has a right to tyrannize over another, or 
 to lay down laws for it, in this matter of mem- 
 ory. For instance, I myself remember instinct- 
 ively, and without effort, the name of the 
 author, pubhsher, and printer of whatever book 
 I take in my hand, and also its size, shape, color 
 of binding, and style of typography.. Two or 
 three readings of a college catalogue leave upon 
 my mind the surnames. Christian names, and 
 residences of a majority of the persons there 
 recorded. Guide books and city directories are 
 a rest and recreation to me ; the names, locations, 
 and pastors of the majority of all the churches 
 in the cities I have visited are retained in mind 
 without effort; and frequently, when visiting a 
 town for the first time, this habit of memory 
 leads me to be considered a local antiquary and 
 specialist. Now, these things seem so natural 
 to me, and are acquired so absolutely without 
 effort of any kind, that I can hardly understand 
 why ever}^ one else does not remember them 
 equally well. But I have not the slightest right 
 to prescribe a course of guide-books, college 
 
82 The Choice of Books. 
 
 catalogues, or city directories for others, anj 
 more than they have to demand that I recite 
 Coleridge's " Ancient Mariner," or give the dates 
 of the Third Punic War, or the signing of the 
 Magna Charta, or Braddock's defeat, which I 
 remember with as much difficulty as any reader 
 of this chapter. In other words, no one has a 
 right to insist that another person shall remem- 
 ber as or what he himself remembers. But it 
 should always be demanded of every reader that 
 he conscientiously try to strengthen his memory 
 by seeking to understand the nature and purpose 
 of what he reads, its serviceableness to himself, 
 and to the world through him, and its relations 
 to his particular mental constitution and his wise 
 intellectual regimen. 
 
 This diversity of memories is admirably stated 
 by Cardinal Newman. " We can," he says, 
 "form an abstract idea of memory, and call it 
 one facult}^ which has for its subject-matter all 
 past facts of our personal experience ; but this is 
 really only an illusion ; for there is no such gift of 
 universal memory. Of course we all remember 
 in a way as we reason, in all subject-matters; 
 but I am speaking of remembering rightl}^, as I 
 spoke of reasoning rightly. In real fact, mem- 
 
Remembering What One Reads, 83 
 
 ory, as a talent, is not one indivisible faculty, but 
 a power of retaining and recalling- the past in 
 this or that department of our experience, not in 
 any whatever. Two memories, which are both 
 specially retentive, may also be incommensurate. 
 Some men can recite the canto of a poem, or 
 good part of a speech, after once reading it, but 
 have no head for dates. Others have great 
 capacity for the vocabulary of languages, but 
 recollect nothing of the small occurrences of the 
 day or year. Others never forget any statement 
 which they have read, and can give volume and 
 page, but have no memory for faces. I have 
 known those who could, without effo;-t, run 
 through the succession of days on which Easter 
 fell for years back ; or could say where they 
 were, or what they were doing, on a given day 
 in a given year ; or could recollect the Christian 
 names of friends and strangers; or could enu- 
 merate in exact order the names on all the shops 
 from Hyde Park corner to the Bank ; or had so 
 mastered the University Calendar as to be able 
 to bear an examination in the academical history 
 of any M. A. taken at random. And I believe 
 in most of these cases the talent, in its excep- 
 tional character, did not extend beyond several 
 
^4 The Choice of Books, 
 
 classes of subjects. There are a hundred mem^ 
 ories as there are a hundred virtues." 
 
The Use of Note-Books, 85 
 
 THE USE OF NOTE-BOOKS. 
 
 A SEPARATE chapter on the use of note-books 
 would hardly be necessary, in this series of papers 
 on right methods of reading, were it not that 
 many people so misapprehend the real service of 
 note-books, and make them a burden rather than 
 a help. Note-books, like all other aids to read- 
 ing and reflection, and the utilization of knowl- 
 edge, should be valued for the true assistance 
 they may render, and for that alone. "But it 
 very often happens that one who is beginning to 
 read comes to the conclusion that method in 
 reading, especially in the preservation of its 
 results, is the one thing essential, and that nothing 
 is so useful, toward this end, as an elaborate 
 note-book system. Therefore he purchases a 
 large alphabetized blank-book, and having begun 
 to read " Taine's English Literature," let us say, 
 he makes elaborate entries of matters contained 
 in the first few chapters. But as his note-book 
 must also record everything that impresses him' 
 as likely to have any future usefulness, he sets 
 down with equal painstaking the leading points 
 
36 The Choice of Books* 
 
 of an article in the last Atlantic Monthly, or 
 copies entire an interesting- paragraph from the 
 Springfield Republican. After a few days, or 
 perhaps weeks, he finds it inconvenient to hunt 
 up note-book, pen, and ink, every time he takes 
 a volume in his hand, and so he gradually lessens 
 the number of entries ; and thus the book soon 
 becomes an unserviceable and unused chronicle 
 of a few straggling facts, — to be remanded to the 
 closet shelf, or to be cut up, at last, for scribbling 
 paper. In the end, such a note-book becomes a 
 weight and an incumbrance upon the reading 
 habit, rather than a helper to it. 
 
 A note-book, then, should be started upon a 
 plan too modest rather than too ambitious, and 
 should never be allowed to get above the hum- 
 ble place of a servant. One little blank book, 
 costing a dime, is far more useful, if employed 
 only for the entry of important references or 
 memoranda, and such only, than the most elabo- 
 rate index rerum or commonplace-book, if made 
 too cumbersome to be of real service. And it is 
 generally true that a note-book should follow the 
 reading habit, rather than precede it. If you 
 have not done something toward filling your 
 brain first, do not expect to make up the defi- 
 ciency by your note-book entries. 
 
The Use of Note- Books, 87 
 
 Some readers and writers make little use of 
 note-books, and some find them extremely ser- 
 viceable. W.A. Hovey, the editor of the Bos- 
 ton Evening Transcript, says in one of his 
 *' Causerie " papers : '' The brain is the best and 
 most rehable memorandum book; it is always 
 at hand, use enlarges' its capacity and increases 
 its usefulness and reliability, and no one can read 
 it but its owner." I must say that for one, I 
 quite agree with Mr. Hovey ; finding all sorts 
 of memorandum books of little use to me, and 
 employing nothing more than the most inexpen- 
 sive pocket blank-books, to be torn up when 
 their usefulness has passed ; or now and then a 
 series of envelopes, with their special subjects 
 written upon them. But in this matter, no one 
 reader can lay down the law for another. Some 
 of the wisest of American authors- have pursued 
 to the fullest extent the plan of using note-books 
 all their lives, and w4th adm.irable results. Mr. 
 Emerson's note-books are famous the world 
 over, and it is said, doubtless with entire truth, 
 that some of his most renowned essays are little 
 more than transcripts of them. His entries of 
 course include his own conclusions and reflec- 
 tions as well as those of others. It was my good 
 
88 The Choice of Books, 
 
 fortune to be permitted to see, some years ago^ 
 the remarkable and substantially similar methods 
 by which two other American authors — A, 
 Bronson Alcott and Ray Palmer — have pre 
 served well-nigh the entire body of the letters 
 they have received in the whole course of their 
 literary lives. In both cases these valuable 
 libraries of correspondence reach to a long file 
 of volumes ; and Mr. Alcott has combined with 
 his a diary of each day's events for a lifetime. 
 Such collections as these are in a true sense 
 monumental, and amount, at length, to valuable 
 contributions to the intellectual history of the 
 time. Mr. Beecher does not use note-books 
 himself, but advises young men to get into the 
 habit of using them. *' The great point," says 
 he, "is to read nothing without reflection." 
 
 The late WiUiam B. Reed, one of the best 
 American writers of purely literary essays, says 
 of the right use of quotation books : " As in 
 every house, we are told, there is a skeleton, and 
 in every doctor's shop a case of instruments for 
 emergencies, mysteriously veiled from vulgar 
 gaze, so in all libraries, and especially if it be one 
 of a Avriter or public speaker, are there corners 
 where are put away for convenient use, not only 
 
The . Use of Note- Books, 89 
 
 commonplace-books, happily out of date, but 
 indexes rerum, and ' Burton's Anatomy,' and 
 ' Murray's Handbooks for Geographical Illus- 
 tration,' and lexicons and concordances (all 
 honors to'those immortal C's, Cruden and Mrs. 
 Cowden Clarke), a thesaurus or two, and finally 
 'dictionaries of quotations.' It depends very 
 much upon their nature whether such diction- 
 aries are good or bad. The young student uses 
 them, and for this end they were first devised, to 
 furnish him with quotations with which to 
 garnish what he writes, and show his scholar- 
 ship. This is spurious. It is, the poet tells us, 
 the page of knowledge which is ' rich with the 
 spoils of time.' It is out of the depths of a full 
 mind that bright literary illustrations bubble up 
 to the surface, and any critical eye can detect 
 without fail a got-up quotation, or one which a 
 mere dictionary supplies. Not so the ' diction- 
 ary,' as it were, which aids memory, and, given 
 a fragment or sometimes even a word, enables 
 the scholar to find the context. They are not 
 merely valuable, but, as auxiliaries, they are 
 essential to complete literary work. So it is 
 with written note-books; they cannot take the 
 place of thought ; but they can strengthen and 
 arm it." 
 
90 The Choice of Books, 
 
 Professor W. P. Atkinson, of the Massachu- 
 setts Institute of Technology, speaks warmly of 
 the use of note-books, in his published lecture 
 on reading. '' I cannot close," says he, "without 
 giving you one little piece of purely practical 
 advice. I advise you all to become what I am 
 myself, a devoted disciple of Captain Cuttle, and 
 to bind, on your brows, his admirable maxim, 
 'When found, make a note of.' Witty old 
 Thomas Fuller says : ' 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.' This 
 is one of those notions which I have kept in the 
 garrison of my note-book for many years. The 
 great secret of reading consists in this, that it 
 does not matter so much what we read or how 
 we read it, as what Ave think and how we think 
 it. Reading is only the fuel ; and, the mind 
 once on fire, any and all material will feed the 
 flame, provided only it have any combustible 
 matter in it. And we cannot tell from what 
 quarter the next material will come. The 
 thought we need, the facts we are in search of, 
 
The Use of Note- Books. 91 
 
 may make their appearance in the corner of the 
 newspaper, or in some forgotten volume long 
 ago consigned to dust and oblivion. Hawthorne, 
 in the parlor of a country inn, on a rainy day, 
 could find mental nutriment in an old directory. 
 That accomplished philologist, the late Lord 
 Strangford, could find ample amusement for an 
 hour's delay at a railway station in tracing out 
 the etymology of the names in Bradshaw. The 
 mind that is not awake and alive will find a 
 library a barren wilderness. Now, gather up 
 the scraps and fragments of thought on what- 
 ever subject you may be studying, — for of course 
 by a note-book I do not mean a mere receptacle 
 for odds and ends, a literary dust-bin, — but 
 acquire the habit of gathering everything when- 
 ever and w^herever you find it, that belongs in 
 your line or lines or study, and you will be sur- 
 prised to see how such fragments will arrange 
 themselves into an orderly whole by the very 
 organizing power of your own thinking, acting 
 in a definite direction. This is a true process of 
 self-education ; but you see it is no mechanical 
 process of mere aggregation. It requires activ- 
 ity of thought, — but without that, what is any 
 reading but mere passive amusement ? And it 
 
9^ The Choice of Books, 
 
 requires method. I have myself a sort of hter- 
 ary book-keeping. I keep a day-book, and at my 
 leisure I post my literary accounts, bringing 
 together in proper groups the fruits of much 
 casual reading." 
 
 I may. appropriately close this chapter with 
 some words of advice on the use of note-books, 
 which Mr. Charles A. Durfee, a competent 
 authority on the subject, has written for the 
 benefit of my readers. " Note-books," says Mr. 
 Durfee, " are to literary men what books of ac- 
 count are to business men, and are practically 
 useful only as they are kept systematically and 
 with unity of purpose. But where a balance- 
 sheet tells the whole story in business, some 
 methodical plan must be substituted to render 
 the contents of note-books available at all times. 
 The natural desire on the part of energetic 
 literary men to economize time and labor in the 
 taking and keeping of notes leads to confusion, 
 and in time they find themselves surrounded by 
 a mass of material disheartening to think of, and 
 impossible to consult with readiness. 
 
 " A few suggestions resulting from long ex- 
 perience may be of value. Note-books should 
 not be so small as to become too numerous, or 
 
The Use of Note- Books, 93 
 
 so large as to be cumbersome. Each book should 
 be paged and have a volume number. An under- 
 scored heading should precede each note with 
 dividing lines between entries. By observing 
 these precautions the books can be indexed in an 
 alphabeted blank-book, and consulted as if they 
 were the successive volumes of any indexed 
 work. For ordinary purposes such a plan would 
 be sufficient, but those whose lives are devoted 
 to general literature or special branches require 
 to give more attention to details. No blank- 
 book index can long remain convenient, as the 
 entries lose their alphabetical place. 
 
 " To obviate this, for permanent use, a card- 
 index is indispensable, being always perfect in 
 arrangement, inasmuch as the newly made cards 
 are inserted in their precise positions. In the 
 case of blank-book indexes this is impossible as 
 soon as a few titles have been interhned, which 
 defaces and obscures the page. Cards cut from 
 heavy manilla paper arranged in boxes or trays, 
 separated by lettered divisions of card-board 
 projecting above the rest, form an index, which, 
 from its expansiveness, cheapness, and portabil- 
 ity, meets every requirement. 
 
 " A card measuring two inches by five inches 
 
94 The Choice of Books, 
 
 has been generally adopted in our leading libra- 
 ries for such purposes. Such a system renders 
 unnecessary the keeping of separate note-books 
 for different subjects, as a properly prepared 
 index will be classified under adequate headings, 
 and serve as a guide and summary to the entire 
 literary matter, however extensive, of the most 
 industrious workers." 
 
The Cultivation of Taste, 95 
 
 THE CULTIVATION OF TASTE. 
 
 Taste can be cultivated. This remark, one 
 would say, is of obvious truth, and needs no dis- 
 cussion whatever ; but, in point of fact, scarcely 
 anything related to the reading habit is more 
 frequently ignored or practically denied. " I 
 have no taste for poetry ;" " I never could enjoy 
 history ;" "Biography may be very well,' but I 
 never could read it ;" " I suppose Walter Scott 
 and George Eliot are more profitable reading 
 than G. P. R. James or Miss Braddon, but my 
 taste prefers the latter ;" — such remarks as these 
 are sure to encounter one who is seeking to raise 
 the standard of reading. Forgetting that growth 
 and development are the almost unvarying 
 method of nature in every line, too many people 
 profess to believe, and certainly act as though 
 they believe, that a present literary taste is an 
 inflexible and unalterable thing, to be accepted 
 without question, and no more to be changed by 
 us than Our residence upon the earth instead of 
 upon the moon. 
 
 Lord Lytton is not an author to whom I am 
 
9^ The Choice of Books, 
 
 accustomed to look for the highest conceptions 
 of life or the wisest rules for its conduct ; but on 
 this subject of the cultivation of taste he puts 
 some excellent words into the mouth of one of 
 the characters of his novels, who explains that 
 good sense and good taste are the result of a 
 constant habit of right thinking and acting ; of 
 self-denial ; and of regulation, rather than acci- 
 dent or natural temperament. '' Good sense," 
 says he, "is not a merely intellectual attribute. 
 It is rather the result of a just equilibrium of all 
 our faculties, spiritual and moral. The dis- 
 honest, or the toys of their own passions, may 
 have genius ; but they rarely, if ever, have good 
 sense in the conduct of hfe. They may often 
 win large prizes, but it is by a game of chance, 
 not skill. But the man whom I perceive walk- 
 ing an honorable and upright career, just to 
 others and also to himself, .... is a more dig- 
 nified representative of his Maker than the mere 
 child of genius. Of such a man, we say, he has 
 good sense ; yes, but he has also integrity, se^f- 
 respect and self-denial. A thousand trials which 
 his sense braves and conquers, are temptations 
 also to his probity, his temper ; in a word, to all 
 the many sides of his complicated nature. Now, 
 
The Cultivation of Taste. 97 
 
 I do not think he will have this good sense any 
 more than a drunkard will have strong nerves, 
 unless he be in the constant habit of keeping his 
 mind clear from the intoxication of envy, vanity, 
 and the various emotions that dupe and mislead 
 us. Good sense is not, therefore, an abstract 
 quality, or a solitary talent ; it is the natural re- 
 sult of the habit of thinking justly, and, therefore, 
 seeing clearly, and is as different from the sagac- 
 ity that belongs to a diplomatist or ah attorney, 
 as the philosophy of Socrates differed from the 
 rhetoric of Gorgias. As a mass of individual 
 excellences make up this attribute in a man, so 
 a mass of such men thus characterized give 
 character to a nation. Your England is, there- 
 fore, renowned for its good sense, but it is 
 renowned also for the excellences which accom- 
 pany strong sense in an individual : high honesty 
 and faith in its dealings, a warm love of justice 
 and fair play, a general freedom from the vio- 
 lent crimes common on the Continent, and the 
 energetic perseverance in enterprise once com- 
 menced, which results from a bold and healthful 
 disposition." 
 
 A bold and healthful disposition, such as Lord 
 
 Lytton thus ascribes to his typical Englishman, 
 4 
 
98 The Choice of Books, 
 
 is ever on the watch for something better rather 
 than something worse ; for something that will 
 develop and strengthen, rather than something 
 that will merely pass muster. So it is in the 
 choice of books. " It is nearly an axiom, that 
 people will not be better than the books they 
 read," says Bishop Potter. If a person never 
 strives " to look up and not down," in his selec- 
 tion of books, he need not expect to see any im- 
 provement in his intellectual faculties, or in his 
 personal character so far as influenced by those 
 faculties. President Porter well says : " Inspira- 
 tion, genius, individual tastes, elective affinities, 
 do not necessarily include self-knowledge, self- 
 criticism or self-control. If the genius of a man 
 lies in the development of the individual person 
 that he is, his manhood hes in finding out by 
 self-study what he is and what he may become, 
 and in wisely using the means that are fitted to 
 form and perfect his individuality." The person 
 who reads as he ought to read, therefore, will 
 try to discover what his best intellectual nature 
 is now, and what it may grow to be in time to 
 come. He will seek to add strength and facility 
 to his mind, and he will constantly strive to cor- 
 rect such tendencies as he finds to be injurious 
 
The Cultivation of Taste, 99 
 
 or not positively beneficial, substituting therefor, 
 as soon as may be, a higher purpose and a more 
 creditable achievement. 
 
 We must learn to know books, as we learn to 
 know other good things. " Who can overesti-. 
 mate the value of good books?" — asks W. P. 
 Atkinson, — " those ships of thought, as Bacon so 
 finely calls them, voyaging through the sea of 
 time, and carrying their precious freight so 
 safely from generation to generation ! Here are 
 the finest minds giving us the best wisdom r^ 
 present and all past ages ; here are intellects 
 gifted far beyond ours, ready to give us the 
 results of lifetimes of patient thought ; imaginav 
 tions open to the beauty of the universe, far 
 beyond what it is given us to behold : characters 
 whom we can only vainly hope to imitate, but 
 whom it is one of the highest privileges of life 
 to know. Here they all are ; and to learn to 
 know them is the privilege of the educated 
 man. 
 
 We cannot come to know them by accident, or 
 by relying on past habitudes. " When I became 
 a man," said Saint Paul, " I put away childish 
 things ;" and so must the manly reader put away 
 the childish habit of reading story-books alone, 
 
100 The Choice of Books, 
 
 or looking at pictures, or preferring amusement 
 to instruction and mental development. Too 
 many readers — one is tempted to say the ma- 
 jority of readers — never get beyond the picture- 
 book stage ; and, indeed, there are men and 
 women in the world who read fewer books and 
 poorer books than when they were little chil- 
 dren. 
 
 Not only in the selection of books, but in the 
 reading of them, must one's choice be guided, 
 and, so far as may be, elevated. I will quote 
 here some sound advice offered by The Literary 
 World, of Boston : " Almost every article of food 
 has its poison ; and a most important function of 
 our internal economy consists in its intelligent 
 discrimination between the good and the evil; 
 its careful assimilation of the good, and its rigor- 
 ous rejection of the evil. The good it gathers 
 into the vessels which are the storehouse of life, 
 but the bad it casts away. The peach with its 
 prussic acid, the pie-plant with its oxalic acid, 
 tea with its tannic acid, the tomato, and even the 
 potato, each with its own deleterious ingredient, 
 are all illustrations of substances which contain 
 what, in sufficient quantities, might be the death 
 of man, were he not provided with the power of 
 
The Cultivation '.of ^ . T^sh) \ •/ i '\\ \^^ 
 
 separating between the forces of death and Hfe. 
 Were if not for the safeguards which we invol- 
 untarily practice we could not eat with safety 
 half the things which now not only feed the body 
 but gratify the taste. Something very like this 
 power is needed with respect to the books we 
 read. Our minds should cultivate the gift, in 
 keeping with that of our physical organs within, 
 whereby, feasting upon the rich and varied diet 
 with which they are supplied, they may reserve 
 only what is nutritious, or palatable, without 
 being harmful, and at the same time throw ofiE 
 what is calculated to offend and injure. Few 
 books can be mentioned in the general depart- 
 ments of literature which do not, like the foods 
 we have mentioned above, contain the good and 
 the bad combined. History is full of dangerous 
 episodes, biography of specious examples, poetry 
 of inflaming imagings, and fiction of demoraliz- 
 ing license. And yet the worst of the books that 
 are notoriously bad probably have some good in 
 them ; pictures which may be looked upon with- 
 out harm, and lessons which it would be profit- 
 able to learn. A great art in reading, then, one 
 which should be inculcated in theory, and in the 
 practice of • which the oldest and wisest of us 
 
tea' The Choice of Books. 
 
 should constantly be drilling ourselves, is this 
 art of so carrying the mind along the paths of 
 another's thought that it shall retain only the 
 good and the true and the beautiful, while the 
 bad and the false and the repulsive shall instantly 
 pass out of sight and recollection. Only as 
 vire are masters of this art are we safe in the 
 midst of the perils to which reading exposes us ; 
 and in this art, which may be settled by practice 
 into a habit, our youth particularly should be 
 zealously educated." 
 
 The great authors are the good authors, in 
 whom feebleness, or coarseness, or whimsicahty, 
 or meanness and malice, are accidental rather than 
 essential. When we are reading the master- 
 books we need reject little ; we can absorb much. 
 And in our highest and truest moments we may 
 share their greatness, and stand, so to speak, on 
 their level ; for it is the apprehension of great- 
 ness that makes it great for us ; and this very 
 apprehension is an honor to us, and the measure 
 of our own powers and attainments. Emerson 
 does not make an overstatement when he says : 
 " There is something of poverty in our criticism. 
 We assume that there are few great men, all the 
 rest are little ; that there is but one Homer, but 
 
The Cultivation of Taste, 103 
 
 one Shakespeare, one Newton, one Socrates. 
 But the soul in her beaming hour does not ac- 
 knowledge these usurpations. We should know 
 how to praise Socrates, or Plato, or Saint John, 
 without impoverishing us. In good hours we 
 do not find Shakespeare or Homer over great — 
 only to have been translators of the happy pres- 
 ent — and every man and woman divine possibil- 
 ities. 'Tis the good reader that makes the good 
 book ; a good head cannot read amiss ; in every 
 book he finds passages which seem confidences 
 or asides hidden from all else and unmistakably 
 meant for his ear." 
 
 And behind the book stands the author ; if the 
 reader chooses the book or the chapter as he 
 ought, he shares the author's best self and best 
 hours ; he associates with a hero rather than a 
 dandy, with an intellectual giant, not a dwarf ; 
 and thereby he shows to what his own tastes 
 have grown. There is truth and wisdom in the 
 aged Victor Hugo's curious and Frenchy, but 
 grave and deep-felt, preface to the recently made 
 edition of his complete works : " Every man who 
 writes a book ; that book is himself. Whether 
 he knows it or not, whether he wishes it or not, 
 it is so. From every work, whatever it may be, 
 
104 The Choice of Books, 
 
 mean or illustrious, there is shaped a figure, that 
 of the writer. It is his punishment if he be 
 small ; it is his recompense if he be great. If we 
 read of the siege of Troy, we see Achilles, 
 Hector, Ulysses, Ajax, Agamemnon ; we feel 
 throughout the entire work a majesty which is 
 that of the writer. Has Zoilus written? Let us 
 examine what he has left. He was a gramma- 
 rian, a commentator, a glossarist : in every line 
 we read : Zoilus. . But when the * Iliad ' is open 
 before you, you hear the voice of the centuries 
 say : Homer. In the same manner appear to 
 us ^schylus, Aristophanes, Herodotus, Pindar, 
 Theocritus, Plautus, Virgil, Horace, Juvenal, 
 Tacitus, Dante. It is the same with the little ; 
 but . why name them ? The book exists ; it is 
 what the author has made it ; it is history, philos- 
 ophy, an epic ; it belongs to the loftiest regions 
 of art ; it dwells in the lower regions ; it is what 
 he is ; uncombined, insulated, arising for ever by 
 his side, is this shadow of himself, the figure of 
 the author. Only at the close of a long life, 
 laborious and stormy, given wholly to thought 
 and to action, do these truths reveal themselves. 
 Responsibility, the inseparable companion of 
 liberty, shows itself. The man who traces these 
 
The Cultivation of Taste, 105 
 
 lines comprehends them. He is calm. As im- 
 movable as if before the Infinite, he is not 
 troubled. To all the questions which ignorance 
 may propound he has but one reply : I am a 
 conscience. This reply every man can make or 
 has made. If he has made it with all the candor 
 of a sincere soul, that suffices. As to him, feeble, 
 ignorant, confined, but having endeavored to 
 seek the good, he will say without fear to the 
 great darkness, he will say to the unknown, he 
 will say to the mystery : I am a conscience. 
 And he will seem to feel the unity of the life uni- 
 versal in the complete tranquillity of that which 
 is most simple before that which is most pro- 
 found. There is a supreme talent which is often 
 given alone, which requires none other, which is 
 often concealed, and which has often more power 
 the more it is hidden ; this talent is esteem. Of 
 the value of the work here given in its entirety 
 to the public, the future must decide. But that 
 which is certain, that which at present contents 
 the author, is that in these times where we are, 
 in this tumult of opinions, in the violence of pre- 
 judice, whatever may be the passions, the anger, 
 the hate, no reader, whoever he may be, if he be 
 himself worthy of esteem, can consider the book 
 without an estimate of the author." 
 
io6 The Choice of Books, 
 
 As I have said in a preceding chapter, the cul- 
 tivation of taste is not hastened, but is seriously 
 retarded, by pretending that one likes what he 
 does not like. Sincerity and honesty are essen- 
 tial, no matter how low may be the present taste, 
 or how serious the problem of elevating it. 
 Nothing is gained by attempting to deceive 
 others, or one's self, in the matter. The very 
 expression of a low or degraded taste stimulates 
 one to endeavor to raise it ; whereas deceit or 
 pretense are pretty sure to be transparent, and 
 are even more injurious when successful than 
 when they fail to deceive. A wholesome igno- 
 rance can easily be lifted above its former level ; 
 but of silly falsehood there is much less hope. 
 A recent writer on " Sham Admiration in Litera- 
 ture " has said that there is a " well-nigh univer- 
 sal habit of literary lying — of a pretense of ad- 
 miration for certain works of which in reality 
 we know very little, and for which, if we knew 
 more, we should perhaps care less. There are 
 certain books which are standard, and as it were 
 planted in the British soil, before which the 
 majority of us bow the knee and doff the cap 
 with a reverence that, in its ignorance, reminds 
 one of fetish worship, and, in its affectation, of 
 
The Cultivation of Taste, 107 
 
 the passion for high art. The works without 
 which, we are told at book auctions, * no gentle- 
 man's Hbrary can be considered complete,* are 
 
 especially the objects of this adoration A 
 
 good deal of this mock worship is of course due 
 to abject cowardice. A man who says he 
 doesn't like the ' Rambler,' runs, with some 
 folks, the risk of being thought a fool ; but he is 
 sure to be thought that, for something or an- 
 other, under any circumstances ; and, at all events, 
 why should he not content himself, when the 
 * Rambler ' is belauded, with holding his tongue, 
 and smiling acquiescence ? It must be conceded 
 that there are a few persons who really have 
 read the ' Rambler,' a work, of course, I am 
 merely using as a type of its class. In their 
 young days it was used as a school-book, and 
 thought necessary as a part of polite education ; 
 and as they have read little or nothing since, it is 
 only reasonable that they should stick to their 
 colors. Indeed, the French satirist's boast that 
 he could predicate the views of any man with 
 regard to both worlds, if he were only supplied 
 with the simple data of his age and his income, 
 is quite true, in general, with regard to literary 
 taste. Given the age ©f the ordinary individual 
 
io8 The Choice of Books. 
 
 — that is to say of the gentleman * fond of books, 
 but who has really no time for reading ' — and it 
 is easy enough to guess his literary idols. They 
 are the gods of his youth, and, whether he has 
 been * suckled in a creed outworn ' or not, he 
 knows no other. These persons, however, rare- 
 ly give their opinion about literary matters, 
 except on compulsion ; they are harmless and 
 truthful. The tendency of society in general, on 
 the other hand, is not only to praise the * Ram- 
 bler,' which they have not read, but to express a 
 noble scorn for those who have read it and don't 
 like it." This writer goes on to discuss " hypoc- 
 risy in literature " at length, and shows how 
 many are ignorant of, or do not really like the 
 authors of whom everybody talks ; and how 
 their social career is marked by all sorts of 
 equivocations and falsehoods with reference to 
 those authors. '' It is partly in consequence of 
 this," he says, '' that works, not only of acknowl- 
 edged but genuine excellence, such as those I 
 have been careful to select, are, though so uni- 
 versally praised, so little read. The poor student 
 attempts them, but failing — from many causes no 
 doubt, but also sometimes from the fact of their 
 not being there — to find those unrivaled beau- 
 
The CultiiHition of Taste. 109 
 
 ties which he has been led to expect in every 
 sentence, he stops short, where he would other- 
 wise have gone on. He says to himself, ' I have 
 been deceived,' or ' I must be a born fool ;' 
 
 whereas he is wrong in both suppositions 
 
 The habit of mere adhesion to received opinion 
 in any matter is most mischievous, for it strikes 
 at the root of independence of thought ; and in 
 literature it tends to make the public taste 
 mechanical." And a taste that is both mechan- 
 ical and false is surely not likely to be beneficial 
 to society at large or to the individual reader. 
 The remedy proposed by the writer from whom 
 I have quoted is this : " It is not every one, of 
 course, who has an opinion of his own upon 
 every subject, far less on that of literature ; but 
 every one can abstain from expressing an opinion 
 that is not his own." 
 
 And certainly I do not know a better starting- 
 point than this, if one is really desirous of culti 
 vating his taste. Do not pretend to like what 
 you do not like. Do not pretend to know what 
 you do not know. Do not be content with your 
 taste as it is, but try to improve it ; not expect- 
 ing that you will ever like all that great men 
 have written. 
 
no The Choice of Books. 
 
 POETRY. 
 
 Some people read a great deal of poetry, with 
 constant zest and unfailing advantage ; others, 
 though they may be " great readers " of other 
 classes of hterature, find httle pleasure or profit 
 in poetry. Is it a duty to read poetry ? Should 
 those who seem to have no natural taste for it, 
 endeavor to cultivate a taste ; or should they 
 rest content with the conclusion that some minds 
 appreciate, and profit by, poetical compositions, 
 while other minds have no capacity for their 
 enjoyment ? 
 
 It may not be a downright duty to like poetry, 
 or to try to like it ; but certainly it is a misfor- 
 tune that so large and lovely a division of the 
 world's literature should be lost to any reader. 
 The absence of a poetic taste is a sad indication 
 of a lack of the imaginative faculty ; and with- 
 out imagination what is Hfe ? " The study and 
 reading of poetry," sa3^s President Porter, " ex- 
 ercises and cultivates the imagination, and in 
 this way imparts intellectual power. It is im- 
 possible to read the products of any poet's 
 
Poetry, 1 1 1 
 
 imagination without using our own. To read 
 what he creates is to recreate in our own minds 
 the images and pictures which he first conceived 
 and then expressed in language." 
 
 If a reader finds that the ideal has little or no 
 place in his intellectual life or in his daily pro- 
 cesses of thought and feeling, then he should 
 consider, with all soberness, the fact that a God- 
 given power is slipping away from him — a power 
 without which his best faculties must become 
 atrophied ; without which he loses the greater 
 half of the enjoyment of life, day by day ; with- 
 out which, in very truth, he cannot see all the 
 glory of the open door of the Kingdom of 
 Heaven. Children are poets ; they see fairy- 
 land in a poor broken set of toy crockery or in a 
 ragged company of broken-nosed dolls. Their 
 powers of imagination ought never to be lost in 
 the humdrum affairs of a work-a-day world ; 
 their habit of finding the real in the ideal is one 
 which cannot be laid aside without great detri- 
 ment to the individual life and character. There 
 may, then, be persons who " have no capacity for 
 poetry," and who cannot cultivate a taste for it ; 
 but this inability, if real, is to be mourned as a 
 mental blindness and deafness, shutting out 
 whole worlds from sight and hearing. 
 
112 The Choice of Books, 
 
 There is, of course, a great deal of imaginative 
 literature which is not poetry, in the technical 
 sense ; but if one can read Hawthorne or Rich- 
 ter with pleasure, he is quite sure to find no 
 stumbhng-block in Schiller's " Lay of the Bell," 
 or Drake's " Culprit Fay." It is the poetic spirit 
 that we should recognize and take to our hearts, 
 whatever be the outward form in which it may 
 be enshrined. 
 
 What is the poetic spirit ? Many have been 
 the attempts to define it ; but, after all, we can 
 only say, in the words Shelley wrote in his 
 '' Hymn to the Spirit of Nature :" " All feel, yet 
 see thee never." Or again, is not poetry to be 
 described, as nearly as we may describe it, in 
 two more lines from the same fine poem ? — 
 
 Lamp of Earth, where'er thou movest 
 Its dim shapes are clad with brightness. 
 
 In W. P. Atkinson's excellent lecture on read- 
 ing is a passage concerning poetry, which is both 
 imaginative and practical. " I have no thought," 
 says he, "of attempting here a definition of 
 poetry, though I should like to come and give 
 you a lecture on the art of reading it. Whether 
 we call it, with Aristotle, imitation ; whether we 
 say more worthily, with Bacon, ' that it was ever 
 
Poetry. 113 
 
 thought to have some participation of divineness 
 because it doth raise and erect the mind by sub- 
 mitting the shows of things to the desires of the 
 mind, whereas reason doth buckle and bow the 
 mind unto the nature of things ;' whether, in 
 more modern times, we define it, with Shelley, 
 as * the best and happiest thoughts of the best 
 and happiest minds ;' or say, with Matthew Ar- 
 nold, that ' poetry is simply the most beautiful, 
 impressive and widely effective mode of saying 
 things ;' and, again, that ' it is to the poetical 
 literature of an age that we must in general look 
 for the most perfect and the most adequate 
 interpretation of that age ;' or whether we say 
 with the greatest poet of the last generation, that 
 * poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowl- 
 edge, the impassioned expression which is in the 
 countenance of all science ' — all I am concerned 
 to say here is, that poetry is that branch of the 
 literature of power pre-eminently worthy of 
 study, and that without study we shall know but 
 little about it." 
 
 We need not think then, that the reading of 
 poetry is a matter of whim or accident, to be 
 undertaken without thought or study. Presi- 
 dent Porter says that " a taste for poetry, espe- 
 
114 The Choice of Books, 
 
 daily that of the highest order, is to a great 
 extent the product of special culture." The 
 foundation for this culture lies in the individual 
 mind ; for its development he must seek his ma- 
 terial from the treasures around him, and must 
 work out his methods of utilizing that material 
 w^ith the same care — or even greater — which he 
 applies to other departments of intellectual exer- 
 cise. Let him, if he finds his taste in need of 
 cultivation, begin with such poems as he likes ; 
 read them more than once ; learn their teachings ; 
 apprehend their inner spirit and purpose. What- 
 ever the beginning, it is sure to lead to some- 
 thing better, if the reader will but resolutely 
 determine to know what the writer meant to 
 say ; to see the picture that he portrayed ; and 
 to share his enthusiasm and warmth of feeling. 
 
 Mr. G. J. Goschen, an English banker and 
 political economist, declares that the cultivation 
 of the imagination is essential to the highest suc- 
 cess in politics, in learning, and in the commer- 
 cial business of life. No one is too dull, or too 
 prosaic, or too much absorbed in the routine of 
 " practical life " to be absolved from the care of 
 his imaginative powers ; and no one is likely to 
 find that this care will not repay him even in a 
 
Poetry. 115 
 
 practical sense. He who thinks wisely, he who 
 perceives quickly that which others do not see 
 at all, is better equipped for any work than one 
 whose mind works slowly and feebly, and whose 
 apprehensions have grown rusty from disuse. 
 
 Poetry is not for the few, but for the many, for 
 all. The world's great poems, absolutely with- 
 out exception, have been poems whose meaning 
 has been perfectly clear and whose language has 
 been simple, — poems which have addressed 
 themselves to the plain and common sense of 
 the ages. Obscurity and whimsicality may be- 
 long to the Brownings of literature — to the star- 
 gazing Transcendentalists of 1840, or to the 
 posturing " impressionists " of to-day. But 
 Homer, and Virgil, and Dante, and Chaucer, 
 and Shakespeare need no mystical commentary 
 to explain their meaning ; like Mark Antony, 
 they " only speak right on." If a poem is ob- 
 scure, you may know by that mark alone that it 
 is a second-rate — or tenth-rate — affair, and that 
 it is not worth your while to vex your brain 
 over it at all. If a poet has not made himself 
 clear, it is his fault and not yours, if you are a 
 person of average intellectual capacity. Feel 
 not abashed if you do not comprehend the 
 
ii6 The Choice of Books, 
 
 *' Orphic " or the " intense ;" most hkely the author 
 did not comprehend it himself. Sunlight, air, 
 water — these are not for the few ; nor is poetry 
 •to be cooped and confined any more than these. 
 Principal Shairp thus speaks of this inherent 
 quality of the best poetry — a quality which all 
 men may apprehend if they will : " The pure 
 style is that which, whether it describes a scene, 
 a character, or a sentiment, lays hold of its inner 
 meaning, not its surface ; the type which the 
 thing embodies, not the accidents ; the core or 
 heart of it, not the accessories. . . . Descriptions 
 of this kind, while they convey typical concep- 
 tions, yet retain perfect individuality. They are 
 done by a few strokes, in the fewest possible 
 words ; but each stroke tells, each word goes 
 home. Of this kind is the poetry of the Psalms 
 and of the Hebrew prophets. It is seen in the 
 brief, impressive way in which Dante presents 
 the heroes or heroines of his nether world, as 
 compared with Virgil's more elaborate pictures. 
 In all of Wordsworth that has really impressed 
 the world, this will be found to be the chief 
 characteristic. It is seen especially in his finest 
 lyrics and his most impressive sonnets. Take 
 only three poems that stand together in his 
 
Poetry, 117 
 
 works, ' Glen Almain,' ' Stepping Westward,* 
 ' The Solitary Reaper.' In each you have a 
 scene and its sentiment brought home with the 
 minimum of words, the maximum of power. It 
 is distinctive of the pure style that it relies not 
 on side effects, but on the total impression — that 
 it produces a unity in which all the parts are 
 subordinated to one paramount aim. The 
 imagery is appropriate, never excessive. You 
 are not distracted by glaring single lines or too 
 splendid images. There is one tone, and that 
 all-pervading — reducing all the materials, how- 
 ever diverse, into harmony with the one total 
 result designed. This style in its perfection is 
 not to be attained by any rules of art. The 
 secret of it lies further in than rules of art can 
 reach, even in this : that the writer sees his 
 object, and this only ; feels the sentiment of it, 
 and this only ; is so absorbed in it, lost in it, that 
 he altogether forgets himself and his style, and 
 cares only in fewest, most vital words to convey 
 to others the vision his own soul sees. ... The 
 ornate style in poetry is altogether different from 
 this. No doubt the multitude of uneducated 
 and half-educated readers, which every day 
 increases, loves a highly ornamented, not to say 
 
ii8 The Choice of Books, 
 
 a meretricious, style both in literature and in the 
 arts ; and if these demand it, writers and artists 
 will be found to furnish it. There remains, 
 therefore, to the most educated the task of 
 counterworking this evil. ' With them it lies to 
 elevate the thought and to purify the taste of 
 less cultivated readers, and so to remedy one of 
 the evils incident to democracy. To high think- 
 ing and noble living the pure style is natural. 
 But these things are severe, require moral 
 bracing, minds not luxurious but which can 
 endure hardness. Softness, self-pleasing, and 
 moral limpness find their congenial element in 
 excess of highly-colored ornamentation. On the 
 whole, when once a man is master of himself and 
 of his materials, the best rule that can be given 
 him is to forget style altogether, and to think 
 only of the reality to be expressed. The more 
 the mind is intent on the reality, the simpler, 
 truer, more telling the style will be. The advice 
 which the great preacher gives for conduct 
 holds not less for all kinds of writing : ' Aim at 
 things, and your words will be right without 
 aiming. Guard against love of display, love of 
 singularity, love of seeming original. Aim at 
 meaning what you say, and saying what you 
 
Poetry. 119 
 
 mean.' When a man who is full of his subject 
 and has matured his powers of expression sets 
 himself to speak thus simply and sincerely, what- 
 ever there is in him of strength or sweetness, of 
 dignity or grace, of humor or pathos, will find 
 its way out naturally into his language. That 
 language will be true to his thought, true to the 
 man himself." 
 
 How different is such poetical language from 
 the poetry of the obscure, or the mock- 
 sentimental, or the positively base ! What The 
 Saturday Review has said of Byron is true of 
 many another poet : " Even Byron's best passages 
 will not stand critical examination. They excite 
 rather than transport, and when the reader ex- 
 amines seriously what he has felt, the impression 
 of a vague contagious excitement is all that he 
 retains. In reading Byron, the reader dimly 
 feels that he is in the presence of a very eloquent 
 person who is, or would like to be thought, in a 
 state of great excitement about something, and 
 that it is his duty to become excited too." 
 
 True poetry has a far nobler mission than to 
 puzzle, of to amuse, or to excite ; it is the voice 
 of all that is best in humanity, speaking from 
 man to man. Not all of us can thus speak, but 
 
I20 The Choice of Books, 
 
 we can all hear, and incorporate what we hear 
 in our best and truest life, day by day. 
 
The Art of Skipping. 121 
 
 THE ART OF SKIPPING. 
 
 It is a fortunate thing that one of the most 
 hackneyed quotations concerning books and 
 reading should also be one of the most sensible 
 ones : Lord Bacon's saying that " Some Books 
 are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and 
 some few to be chewed and digested ; that is, 
 some books are to be read only in parts ; others 
 to be read, but not curiously ; and some few to 
 be read wholly, and with diligence and atten- 
 tion." 
 
 The following of this piece of advice has done 
 a great deal of good ; and no harm is likely to 
 come from its wise observance. Some people 
 profess to believe that a book that is worth read- 
 ing at all is Avorth reading straight through, — a 
 piece of foolishness that would be paralleled by 
 an insistance upon eating a table-full every time 
 one sits down to a meal. A person who makes 
 up his mind to read all of a book or none, must 
 be fully convinced of the solemn truth of the 
 saying that " a book's a book, although there's 
 nothing in't." Against such lack of wisdom the 
 
122 The Choice of Books, 
 
 sturdy common sense of Lord Bacon's remark 
 may be put. The reader need but rest assured 
 of its unquestionable truth, and spend his time 
 in trying to discover what books are to be tasted, 
 what swallowed, and what digested ; rather than 
 vex his soul in questioning whether the general 
 advice is sound or not. 
 
 A. book that is worth reading all through, is 
 pretty sure to make its worth known. There is 
 something in the literary conscience which tells 
 a reader whether he is wasting his time or not. 
 An hour or a minute may be sufficient oppor- 
 tunity for forming a decision concerning the 
 worth or worthlessness of the book. If it is utter- 
 ly bad and valueless, then skip the whole of it, as 
 soon as you have made the discovery. If a part 
 is good and a part bad, accept the one and reject 
 the other. If you are in doubt, take warning at 
 the first intimation that you are misspending 
 your opportunity and frittering away your time 
 over an unprofitable book. Reading that is of 
 questionable value is not hard to find out ; it 
 bears its notes and marks in unmistakable plain- 
 ness, and it puts forth, all unwittingly, danger 
 signals of which the reader should take heed. 
 
 The art of skipping is, in a word, the art of 
 
The Art of Skipping, 123 
 
 noting and shunning that which is bad, or frivol- 
 ous, or misleading, or unsuitable for one's indi- 
 vidual needs. If you are convinced that the 
 book or chapter is bad, you cannot drop it too 
 quickly. If it is simply idle and foolish, put it 
 away on that account,^unless you are properly 
 seeking amusement from idleness and frivolity. If 
 it is deceitful and disingenuous, your task is not 
 so easy, but your conscience will give you warn- 
 ing, and the sharp examination which should 
 follow, will tell you that you are in poor literary 
 company. 
 
 But there are a great many books which are 
 good in themselves, and yet are not good at all 
 times or for all readers. No book, indeed, is 
 of universal value and appropriateness. As has 
 been said in previous chapters of this series, the 
 individual must always dare to remember that he 
 has his own legitimate tastes and wants, and that 
 it is not only proper to follow them, but highly 
 improper to permit them to be overruled by the 
 tastes and wants of others. It is right for one to 
 neglect entirely, or to skip through, pages which 
 another should study again and again. Let each 
 reader ask himself: Why am I reading this.'^ 
 What service will it be to me ? Am I neglect- 
 
124 The Choice of Books. 
 
 ing something else that would be more bene- 
 ficial ? Here, as in every other question in- 
 volved in the choice of books, the golden key to 
 knowledge, a key that will only fit its own 
 proper doors, is purpose. 
 
 Thus the reader is the pupil and the compan- 
 ion and the fellow- worker of the author, not his 
 slave. *' It is a wise book that is good from title- 
 page to the end," says A. Bronson Alcott. Such 
 a book should be read through ; but the books 
 that are wise in spots should be read in spots. 
 Again, Mr. Alcott says : " I value books for 
 their suggestiveness even more than for the 
 information they may contain ; — volumes that 
 may be taken in hand and laid aside, read at odd 
 moments, containing sentences that take posses- 
 sion of my thought and prompt to the following 
 them into their wider relations with life and 
 things." This suggestiveness of books read at 
 odd moments is one of the great advantages of 
 judicious skipping. From this habit comes, often, 
 a riper and wholesomer harvest than would 
 spring from the most painstaking devotion to 
 regulated and routine reading and study. One 
 page, one sentence, thus planted in the fertile 
 soil of a receptive mind, is better than a whole 
 
The Art of Skipping. 125 
 
 library read from a mere sense of duty, and 
 without reference to one's own true welfare, as 
 indicated by his nature and his needs. 
 
 No one thus wisely choosing what he may best 
 read need be in any fear that he is a superficial 
 reader. " Did you ever happen to see/' asks a 
 writer whose name I Tiave unfortunately lost, — 
 "did you ever happen to see, in shrewd, old, 
 hard-headed Bishop Whately's annotations on 
 Lord Bacon's essays, a good passage about what 
 is and what is not superficiality ? It is in the 
 sentence in Bacon's Essay on Studies, ' Crafty 
 men contemn studies.' * This contempt,' says 
 the bishop, * whether of crafty men or narrow- 
 minded men, finds its expression in the word 
 * smattering,' and the couplet is become almost a 
 proverb : 
 
 A little learning is a dangerous thing : 
 Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring. 
 
 But the poet's remedies for the dangers of a 
 little learning are both of them impossible. No 
 one can drink deep enough to be in truth any- 
 thing more than superficial; and every human 
 being that is not a downright idiot must taste. 
 And the bishop, in his downright way, goes on 
 to give practical illustrations of the usefulness of 
 
126 The Choice of Books, 
 
 a little knowledge, and proceeds : ' What, then, 
 is the smattering, the imperfect and superficial 
 knowledge that does deserve contempt? A 
 slight and superficial knowledge is justly con- 
 demned when it is put in the place of more full 
 and exact knowledge. Such an acquaintance 
 with chemistry and anatomy, for instance, as 
 would be creditable and not useless to a lawyer, 
 would be contemptible for a physician ; and such 
 an acquaintance with law as would be desirable 
 for him, would be a most discreditable smatter- 
 ing for a lawyer." 
 
 Hamerton has some wise words on this sub- 
 ject : " It becomes a necessary part," says he, 
 *' of the art of intellectual living, so to order our 
 work as to shield ourselves if possible, at least 
 during a certain portion of our time, from the 
 evil consequences of hurry. The whole secret 
 
 lies in a single word — selection The art 
 
 is to select the reading which will be most use- 
 ful to our purpose, and, in writing, to select the 
 words which will express our meaning with the 
 greatest clearness in a little space. The art of 
 reading is to skip judiciously. Whole libraries 
 may be skipped in these days, when we have the 
 results of them in our modern culture without 
 
The Art of Skipping, 127 
 
 going over the ground again. And even of the 
 books we decide to read, there are almost always 
 large portions which do not concern us, and 
 which we are sure to forget the day after we 
 have read them. The art is to skip all that does 
 not concern us, whilst missing nothing that we 
 really need. No external guidance can teach us 
 this ; for nobody but ourselves can guess what 
 the needs of our intellect may be. But let us 
 select with decisive firmness, independently of 
 other people's advice, independently of the 
 authority of custom." 
 
 Of course it follows that, to some extent, we 
 can let others do the work of selection for us, 
 subject to correction whenever necessary. " In 
 comparing the number of good books with the 
 shortness of life, many might well be read by 
 proxy, if we had good proxies," says Emerson. 
 Sensible literary guides must be followed to a 
 large extent, whether in their recommendation of 
 one book as against another, or of certain poems 
 or prose extracts in comparison with others. 
 Books of selection it is true, sometimes omit 
 things we would have greatly liked ; but who 
 will pretend to say that he always finds every- 
 thing that would have pleased or profited him, 
 
128 . The Choice of Books, 
 
 even when he makes his own choice ? As no 
 worker in any field of labor can, in this social 
 world, dispense with the help of others, so it is 
 especially necessary for readers to follow the 
 guidance of pioneers and wise critics; and to 
 make use of the selections these critics have 
 made, as well as their indication of whole books. 
 And sometimes, as Emerson's remark shows us, 
 we may not only delegate to others the work of 
 choice and selection, but also that of reading 
 itself. 
 
Tlu Use of Translations, 129 
 
 THE USE OF TRANSLATIONS. 
 
 A FEW words concerning the use of translations 
 of the masterpieces of other languages may be 
 properly given here, because it is a subject con- 
 cerning which most guides to reading have 
 nothing whatever to say and to which the ma- 
 jority of intelligent readers, even, have given 
 very little thought. Great as is the neglect of 
 good reading in one's own language, still greater 
 is the lack ot attention to English translations of 
 the noble books of other literatures than our 
 own. 
 
 An intelligent comprehension of one's needs in 
 the choice of books should certainly include due 
 attention to the literature of France, or Germany, 
 or Italy, or Greece, or Spain ; — or, in other 
 words, such a comprehension should never for- 
 get that good literature is not an insular affair, 
 bounded by the limits of one country, or by the 
 letters of one language. Of course it is both 
 natural and proper that the greater part of our 
 reading should be of books of American or Eng- 
 lish authorship ; but our culture and training 
 
130 The Choice of Books, 
 
 will be greatly impoverished if, because of a par- 
 tial or complete unfamiliarity with the languages 
 in which they wrote, we take no account of 
 Homer, or Virgil, or Dante, or Goethe. 
 
 Speaking in general terms, the entire body of 
 the best literature of other lands is accessible in 
 adequate English translations. And of the use 
 which may be made of them, let Emerson speak, 
 in one of the most familiar passages of his essay 
 on books : " The respectable and sometimes 
 excellent translations of Bohn's Library have 
 done for literature what railroads have done for 
 internal intercourse. I do not hesitate to read 
 all the books I have named, and all good books, 
 in translations. What is really best in any book 
 is translatable — any real insight or broad human 
 sentiment. Nay, I observe that, in our Bible, 
 and other books of lofty moral tone, it seems 
 easy and inevitable to render the rhythm and 
 music of the original into phrases of equal 
 melody. The Italians have a fling at translators 
 — i traditori traduttori ; but I thank them. I 
 rarely read any Greek, Latin, German, Italian, 
 sometimes not a French book, in the original, 
 which I can procure in a good version. I like to 
 be beholden to the great metropolitan English 
 
The Use of Tra7islattons, 131 
 
 speech, the sea which receives tributaries from 
 every region under heaven. I should as soon 
 think of swimming across Charles river "when I 
 wish to go to Boston, as of reading all my books 
 in originals, when I have them rendered for me 
 in my mother-tongue." If such a man as Emer- 
 son thus recognizes the utility of translations, 
 surely the average reader cannot afford to ignore 
 them ; whether from his feeling that he must 
 read books in the original or not at all, or because 
 he carelessly permits himself to forget that vast 
 land which lies beyond the bounds of his imme- 
 diate literary horizon. 
 
 Mr. Emerson is one of the scholarly men of his 
 age ; an author who has, in an especial degree, 
 made the wisdom of all times pay tribute to 
 him. If any contemporary writer could properly 
 be " above " reading translations, he might be 
 supposed to be that one ; and yet he takes 
 advanced ground in the matter, and speaks ten 
 times as boldly as a mere village pedant would 
 dare to speak. Let us also hear what Hamerton 
 has to say on the same subject — bearing in mind 
 that his testimony is of special value, because he 
 might well be thought likely to take exactly the 
 contrary view, inasmuch as he has lived in 
 
132 The Choice of Books, 
 
 France and England, married a French wife, and 
 uses the French and Enghsh languages with 
 absolute indifference. He says : '' Mature life 
 brings so many professional or social duties that 
 it leaves scant time for culture, and those who 
 care for culture most earnestly and sincerely, are 
 the very persons who will economize tim.e to the 
 utmost. Now, to read a language that has been 
 very imperfectly mastered is felt to be a bad 
 economy of time. Suppose the case of a man 
 occupied in business who has studied Greek 
 rather assiduously in youth and yet not enough 
 to read Plato with facility. He can read the 
 original, but he reads it so slowly that it would 
 cost him more hours than he can spare, and this 
 is why he has recourse to a translation. In this 
 case there is no indifference to Greek culture ; 
 on the contrary, the reader desires to assimilate 
 what he can of it, but the very earnestness of 
 his wish to have free access to ancient thought 
 makes him prefer it in modern language." 
 
 Hamerton also points out effectively that even 
 an intelligent and apparently deep study of 
 another language may not bring with it an 
 insight into its spirit, or a true knowledge of its 
 richest treasures : " Suppose a society of French- 
 
The Use of Translations, 133 
 
 men, in some secluded little French village, 
 where no Englishman ever penetrates, and that 
 these Frenchmen learn English from diction- 
 aries, and set themselves to speak English 
 with each other, without anybody to teach them 
 the colloquial language or its pronunciation, 
 without ever once hearing the sound of it from 
 English lips, what sort of English would they 
 create among themselves ? This is a question 
 that I happen to be able to answer very accu- 
 rately, because I have known two Frenchmen 
 who studied English literature just as the French- 
 men of the sixteenth century studied the litera- 
 ture of ancient Rome. One of them, especially, 
 had attained what would certainly in the case of 
 a dead language be considered a very high 
 degree of scholarship indeed. Most of our 
 great authors were known to him, even down to 
 the close critical comparison of different read- 
 ings. Aided by the most powerful memory I 
 ever knew, he had amassed such stores that the 
 acquisitions, even of cultivated Englishmen, 
 would in many cases have appeared inconsider- 
 able beside them. But he could not write or 
 speak English in a manner tolerable to an Eng- 
 lishman; and although he knew nearly all the 
 
134 The Choice of Books, 
 
 words in the language, it was dictionary knowl- 
 edge, and so different from an Englishman's 
 apprehension of the same words that it was only 
 a sort of pseudo-English that he knew, and not 
 our living tongue. His appreciation of our 
 authors, especially our poets, differed so widely 
 from English criticism and feeling that it was 
 evident that he did not understand them as we 
 understand them. Two things especially proved 
 this : he frequently mistook declamatory versifi- 
 cation for poetry of an elevated order ; whilst, 
 on the other hand, his ear failed to perceive the 
 music of the musical poets, as Byron and Tenny- 
 son. How could he hear their music, he to 
 whom our English sounds were all unknown? 
 Here, for example, is the way he read 
 »Clariber:— 
 
 At ev ze bittle bommess 
 
 Azvart ze zeeket Ion 
 At none ze veeld be ommess 
 
 Aboot ze most edston 
 At meedneeg ze mon commess 
 
 An lokez dovn alon 
 Ere songg ze lintveet svelless 
 Ze clirvoiced mavi dvelle^^s 
 
 Ze fledgling srost lispess 
 Ze slombroos vav ootvelless 
 
 Ze babblang ronnel creespess 
 Ze ollov grot replee-ess 
 Vere Claribel lovlee-ess." 
 
The Use of Translations, i35 
 
 Plainly, then, " liberally educated " people, as 
 such, have no right to affect superiority over 
 such persons as venture to assert that English 
 translations of foreign works are not only per- 
 missible reading, but that they sometimes convey 
 a far better idea of foreign literature than may 
 be obtained from any save the most complete 
 and successful study of other tongues. The 
 average college graduate is almost certain to be 
 a mere baby in his knowledge of the ancient and 
 modem literature of Europe, though he has pro- 
 fessed to study Latin six or seven years, and 
 Greek f qur or five years, and French and German 
 two or three terms. Of this study, fully nine- 
 tenths has been of grammatical forms, and ety- 
 mological niceties, and syntactical constructions ; 
 and his translating has been done by piecemeal, 
 in such a way as to destroy pretty effectually all 
 idea of the largeness and noble quality of the 
 text in hand — and still more of the literature of 
 which that text is a part. Etymology is not 
 literature ; syntax is not literature ; the conjuga- 
 tion of a verb is not literature. They may or 
 may not be the gateways of an adequate knowl- 
 edge of literature ; — more often they are not, in 
 our usual scheme of college education. What- 
 
13^ The Choice of Books, 
 
 ever advantages may be derived from the 
 grammatical study of a language — and they 
 are great, perhaps essential — the student should 
 not imagine that grammatical study, unsupple- 
 mented by something more, is literary study. 
 I am not decrying grammar. I am only say- 
 ing that philology is one thing, and a knowl- 
 edge of the spirit and life of a foreign literature 
 is quite another thing. There are old and 
 eminent colleges at the north which do far 
 less toward leading their students toward the 
 literatures of their own and other languages than 
 is done by more than one small and feebip insti- 
 tution at the west or south. So far as literary 
 culture is concerned, then, these venerable and 
 illustrious colleges are failures, and these new 
 and feebly equipped " universities " of newer 
 communities are successes. An institution of 
 learning which fetters its classes in chains whose 
 links are mere grammatical niceties, is not to be 
 accounted a literary institution at all, in compar- 
 ison with one which directs its students to the 
 fair fields of belles-lettres, and strives to imbue 
 them with the idea that the spirit and life of 
 Homer is something beyond and above the 
 anatomy of the Greek verb. A college of the 
 
The Use of Translations, 137 
 
 former kind may, indeed, graduate scholars, but 
 an institution of the latter kind may send forth 
 in a single day, as in the Bowdoin class of 1825, 
 a Longfellow and a Hawthorne — the foremost 
 poet and the foremost prose writer of a country. 
 Every reader, whether college bred or not, 
 whether he can read his Bible in half a dozen 
 languages or in English alone, should therefore 
 remember that it is his bounden duty to know 
 somewhat of the world's literature. If he can 
 know it at first hand, in the original tongue, so 
 much the better ; but if, as must usually happen, 
 he must look to English translations, let him not 
 forget that a Keats, who knew not a word of 
 Greek, got nearer the heart of Greek literature 
 than a hundred Porsons could ever do. Better 
 is a single book of Bryant's Homer — so far as 
 Greek letters are concerned — than five years of 
 mere verbal grubbing over the grammar and 
 dictionary. 
 
13^ The Choice of Books* 
 
 HOW TO READ PERIODICALS. 
 
 It is wholly unadvisable to attempt to reg- 
 ulate one's plans of reading with the intention 
 of leaving out newspapers and other periodi- 
 cals, as *' wastes of time." There is no doubt 
 that the average book is far more profitable 
 reading than the average copy of a newspaper ; 
 but it by no means follows that the best book is 
 at all times a better thing to read than the best 
 newspaper. In this age of many periodicals, a 
 very large share of the best literature first 
 appears in them ; and, aside from literature 
 proper, one's scheme of reading is very defective 
 if it takes no account of the news of the day. A 
 reader has no right to be well acquainted with 
 ancient history, or with the treasures of poetry 
 or romance, if such acquaintance has been pur- 
 chased at the price of entire ignorance of the 
 great events and the leading principles of con- 
 temporary life. 
 
 In Hamerton's" " Intellectual Life " — a book 
 from which I have already quoted so many 
 times as to show my appreciation of it as a 
 
Haw to Read Periodicals. 139 
 
 helper to sound habits of mental regimen — is a 
 chapter addressed " to a friend (highly cultiva- 
 ted) who congratulated himself on having 
 entirely abandoned the habit of reading news- 
 papers." Mr. Hamerton admits that this friend 
 will have a definite gain to show for whatever 
 may be his loss ; and that some five hundred 
 hours a year will be saved to him as a time- 
 income which may be applied to whatever pur- 
 pose he may select. " In those five hundred 
 hours," says he to his friend, " which are now 
 your own, you may acquire a science, or obtain a 
 more perfect command over one of the languages 
 which you have studied. Some department 
 of your intellectual labors which has hitherto 
 been unsatisfactory to you, because it was too 
 imperfectly cultivated, may henceforth be as 
 orderly and as fruitful as a well-kept garden. 
 You may become thoroughly conversant with 
 the works of more than one great author whom 
 you have neglected, not from lack of interest, 
 but for want of time." But against these gains 
 must be set the loss of political and social intelli- 
 gence ; of the ability to deal with the practical 
 questions of the hfe in which one lives ; and of 
 a large part of that community of knowledge 
 
HO The Choice of Books, 
 
 which is so essential to the right development of 
 a mind and of a character. In a word, total 
 abstinence from the reading of periodicals must 
 make a person to some extent both ignorant and 
 selfish. " He who has not learned to read his 
 daily newspaper," says W. P. Atkinson, " will 
 hardly read Gibbon and Grote to any purpose : 
 he who cannot see history in the streets of 
 Boston will trouble himself to no purpose with 
 books about Rome or Pompeii." President 
 Porter avers that '' it must be acknowledged that 
 periodicals are in many respects a great intellect- 
 ual convenience. They abbreviate labor and 
 place the results of the research of a few at the 
 service and disposal of the many. . . . Often- 
 times an article is better than a book." The 
 same thought is thus worded by F. B. Perkins : 
 " Read periodicals ; not idly and wastefully, but 
 so as to keep up with the truth of the present as 
 well as to learn the truth of the past. More and 
 more, wise and good thoughts are pubHshed in 
 these temporary forms. . . . The important 
 thing is to avoid being limited to one journal ; to 
 see as many as possible, and to learn to choose 
 what is valuable and to skip the rest." 
 
 Admitting thus the utility of the reading of 
 
How to Read Periodicals. i4'i 
 
 periodicals, and even insisting upon the necessity 
 and duty of reading them, it must nevertheless 
 be said in the plainest manner that an alarming 
 amount of time is wasted over them, or worse 
 than wasted. When we have determined that 
 newspapers and magazines ought to be read, let us 
 by no means flatter ourselves that all our read- 
 ing of them is commendable or justifiable. I am 
 quite safe in saying that the individual who hap- 
 pens to be reading these lines wastes more than 
 half the time that he devotes to periodicals ; and 
 that he wastes it because he does not regulate 
 that time as he ought. " To learn to choose 
 what is valuable and to skip the rest " is a good 
 rule for reading periodicals ; and it is a rule 
 whose observance will reduce, by fully one half, 
 the time devoted to them, and will save time and 
 strength for better intellectual employments, — 
 to say nothing of the very important fact that 
 disciphne in this line will prevent the reader 
 from falling into that demoralizing and altogether 
 disgraceful inabiHty to hold the mind upon any 
 continuous subject of thought or study, which is 
 pretty sure to follow in the train of undue or 
 thoughtless reading of periodicals. And when, 
 as too often happens, a man comes to read noth- 
 
142 The Choice of Books, 
 
 ing save his morning paper at breakfast or on the 
 train, and his evening paper after his day's work 
 is over, that man's brain, so far as reading is 
 concerned, is only half alive. It cannot carry on 
 a long train of thought or study ; it notes super- 
 ficial things rather than inner principles ; it seeks 
 to be amused or stimulated, rather than to be 
 instructed. 
 
 How, then, shall we set to work to put in 
 practice that important truth which President 
 Porter states thus : " One should use the news- 
 paper as a servant and not as a master " ? 
 
 In the first place, there are very many period- 
 icals that are not worth reading at all — " story 
 papers " in particular, that neither instruct nor 
 profitably amuse. Then, there are among the 
 newspapers of the day a large number which 
 look at men and things from the standpoint of 
 the superficial cynic or the " man of the world." 
 When a paper lacks sincerity and purpose in 
 what it says, and habitually sneers and jests, that 
 paper is a good one to let alone. To this class 
 belong too many of our daily newspapers, in 
 which a real apprehension of the seriousness of 
 life, and of its nobiHty and beauty, seems utterly 
 lacking. The habitual reading of such papers is 
 
How to Read Periodicals, 143 
 
 enough to make one a joker without wit, a critic 
 without knowledge, a loafer rather than a work- 
 er, a grimacing, monjcey-like looker-on rather 
 than a soldier in the battle of life. These are 
 strong words ; but if the reading of certain 
 papers I could name, and which my readers 
 could name, does not have this effect, it is due to 
 the reader rather than to the newspaper. 
 
 In the reading of papers which are worthy of 
 being read, we should bring every article or 
 item, so far as may be, before the tribunal of our 
 intellectual conscience, and demand of it what 
 is its purpose, and what its utility to ourselves. 
 If a thing is useless to us, then we may advan- 
 tageously let it alone. A paper or a magazine is 
 not all for everybody ; some things in it are for 
 you, some for me, some for others. We can 
 readily tell what belongs to us and what to 
 somebody else. Again, in the things which we 
 may properl}^ read, we should bear it in mind 
 not to exceed the proper proportion of time to 
 be devoted to a particular subject. It is often 
 enough to know that an event has taken place, 
 without reading all the particulars. News- 
 papers are pretty sure to violate the true 
 perspective of events ; and their violation of 
 
144 The Choice of Books. 
 
 perspective we must correct for ourselves. One 
 very valuable help toward reducing the time we 
 spend over newspapers .is to keep in check the 
 attention we are all too ready to give to specula- 
 tions as to what may happen if certain contin- 
 gencies arise in the future. " A large proportion 
 of newspaper writing," says Hamerton, '' is occu- 
 pied with speculations on what is likely to hap- 
 pen in the course of a few months ; therefore, by 
 waiting until the time is past, we know the event 
 without having wasted time in speculations 
 which could not affect it." We should put our- 
 selves in the position of one who bears in mind 
 the *' long result of time," as well as the particu- 
 lar duties and experiences of the day. The cul- 
 tivation of this principle will also do much to 
 remove the dangerous influence of an undue 
 devotion to the ephemeral excitements and bit- 
 terness of partisan politics, in w^hich newspapers 
 of course play an . active part. Hamerton even 
 goes so far as to advise the avoidance of all 
 literature that h^s a controversial tone. This is 
 urging more than is practicable, or advisable; 
 but we can at least read newspapers in such a 
 manner that we need not be ashamed of our- 
 selves after election-day. 
 
How to Read Periodicals, i45 
 
 Some sound hints on newspaper reading, with 
 especial reference to fixing its place in our intel- 
 lectual employment of time, and to its regulation 
 by intelligent purpose, have lately been offered 
 by Horace E. Scudder. " In the daily life of a 
 vast number of people," he says, " reading the 
 newspaper is as regular an occupation as taking 
 breakfast. The day does not seem begun unless 
 the newspaper is read. Ask one of these readers 
 as he lays the paper down, * Is there any news? * 
 and ten to one he will be unable to recall what 
 he has just read. He has not necessarily read 
 inattentively. He has, perhaps, been so absorbed 
 that he failed to see the impatience of some one 
 near him anxious also to get a view of the paper. 
 But his mind has been directed to a great variety 
 of subjects, in all of which he may have an easy 
 interest, and he has settled off-hand a number of 
 cases which have come up for judgment. It is 
 easy to look at the paper philosophically as con- 
 taining an epitome of the life of the world during 
 the past twenty-four hours, and, no doubt, in our 
 modern comprehensiveness of interest, we feel as 
 lively an interest in Afghanistan as our fathers 
 felt in Canada ; but it remains a fact that there 
 i§ quite ^§ much dissipation of thought as con- 
 
146 The Choice of Books, 
 
 centration in reading" the daily newspaper. It 
 rarely serves as a mental stimulus, or leaves one 
 with a conscious elevation of spirit. We do not 
 disparage the daily use of the newspaper, but 
 we desire to fix its place, and to remind ourselves 
 that it cannot be a substitute for reading and 
 thinking. The very construction of a newspaper 
 takes it out of the region of literature. It has 
 been argued that in process of time educative 
 processes will show Macaulays and Froudes 
 holding the reporters' pencils. It seems to be 
 intended by such phrases to denote the elevation 
 of reporting to a place in literary art, and those 
 writers are taken for models who have held their 
 readers chiefly by the brilliancy of their style. 
 Well, this is not impossible, for the merits which 
 such writers have, lie largely on the surface, and 
 call for little leisure either in writer or reader. 
 But the daily newspaper in all its parts must 
 speak quickly and to the point. What is so old 
 as yesterday's paper ? When people go to sea 
 they haste to buy the very latest edition of half 
 a dozen dailies ; their land life is still upon them, 
 and they are driven by it. But an hour or two 
 of neglect after the steamer leaves its port has 
 lost them the opportunity of reading. The ha 
 
Haw to Read Periodicals. H? 
 
 rizon of sea and sky find no place for the paper, 
 and it lies unread. The tendency in the paper 
 itself is to paragraphs ; and if there is a long- 
 report of an address, or detailed account of 
 something just now attracting attention, it is 
 broken into bits with headings, so that it need 
 not look long and dull. Every concession is 
 made to the hurried, impatient and listless 
 reader. It is plain that the newspaper serves a 
 temporary end, even though that end is every 
 day renewed. We are not denying its useful- 
 ness when we plead for as regular a daily read- 
 ing which shall have another kind of value and 
 serve another end. Let us suppose half an hour 
 in a hurried day given to the newspaper. Any 
 one who will make the experiment will see that 
 he can read the same newspaper in one-half the 
 time by a skillful process of elimination. He can 
 omit the accidents, for example — at least such as 
 have not befallen his friends and neighbors. A 
 glance at the fires will assure him whether there 
 is one which concerns him. He is not bound to 
 read the details of even an interesting one which 
 happens to be reported in his paper. If it had 
 been given in four lines instead of forty he 
 would Jiave missed nothing. Any one, by exer- 
 
148 The Choice of Books. 
 
 cising a judicious self-restraint, can easily reduce 
 his reading of what he is immediately going to 
 put out of his mind, one-half." 
 
 As for the reading of magazines and reviews, 
 and of newspapers which are devoted to com- 
 ment and criticism rather than news, it need 
 only be said that the time spent over them need 
 be watched somewhat less strictly, and that the 
 following of the same principle of purpose, of 
 w^hich we have spoken so often, will make easy 
 the selection of articles. 
 
Reading Aloud, and Reading Clubs, 149 
 
 READING ALOUD, AND READING 
 CLUBS. 
 
 " How should we read?" asks Bishop Alonzo 
 Potter in his still useful hand-book for readers ■; 
 and then the good bishop proceeds to answer 
 the question in four replies : " First, thought- 
 fully and critically ; secondly, in company with 
 a friend, or your family ; thirdly, repeatedly ; 
 fourthl}^, with pen in hand." 
 
 Reading aloud, in the company of others — the 
 practice commended by Bishop Potter in the 
 second of these rules — is in every way advan- 
 tageous. Its least important advantage is never- 
 theless highly salutary ; that it affords valuable 
 riieans for elocutionary development ; and, aside 
 from this, it promotes thought, it stimulates one 
 mind by contact with another ; and it almost 
 inevitably calls forth, by discussion, facts and 
 opinions which otherwise would not have been 
 considered, 
 
 In one of his recent jeremiads on the alleged 
 decline and inutility of the public school system, 
 Richard Grant White offers some suggestions 
 
ISO The Choice of Books. 
 
 on the training of classes in the art of reading 
 aloud, which are so sound and sensible that they 
 may well be repeated here for general readers 
 as well as educators. " Of all knowledge and 
 mental training," says Mr. White, " reading is in 
 our day the principal means, and reading aloud 
 inteUigently the unmistakable, if not the only, 
 sign. Yet this, which was so common when the 
 present generation of mature men were boys, is 
 just what our highly and scientifically educa- 
 tional educators seem either most incapable or 
 most neglectful of teaching. And yet the means 
 by which children were made intelligent and 
 intelligible readers, thirty-five or forty years ago, 
 were hot so recondite as to be beyond attain- 
 ment and use by a teacher of moderate abilities 
 and acquirement, who set himself earnestly to 
 his work. As I remember it, this was the way 
 in which we were taught to read with pleasure 
 to ourselves and with at least satisfaction to our 
 hearers. Boys of not more than seven to nine 
 years old were exercised in defining words from 
 an abridged dictionary. The word was spelled 
 and the definition given from memory, and then 
 the teacher asked questions which tested the 
 pupil's comprehension of the definition that he 
 
Reading Aloud, and Readmg Clubs, 1 5 1 
 
 had given, and the members of the class, never 
 more than a dozen or fourteen in number, were 
 encouraged to give in their own language their 
 notion of the word and to distinguish it from 
 so-called synonyms. As to the amount of knowl- 
 edge that was thus gained, it was very little — 
 little, at least, in comparison with the value of 
 this exercise as education, that is, of mental 
 training, which was very great. The same class 
 read aloud every day, and the books that they 
 read were of sufficient interest to tempfoboys to 
 read them of themselves. . . . When the reading 
 began all the class were obliged to follow the 
 reader, each in his own book ; for any pupil was 
 liable to be called upon to take up the recitation, 
 even at an unfinished sentence, and go on with 
 it ; and if he hesitated in such a manner as 
 showed that his eye and mind were not with the 
 reader's, the effect upon his mark account was 
 the same as if he himself had failed in reading. 
 If the reading of any sentence did not show a 
 just apprehension of its meaning, the reader was 
 stopped and the sentence was passed through 
 the class for a better expression of its sense. 
 Whether this was obtained from the pupils or 
 not, the teacher then explained the sense or gave 
 
152 The Choice of Books, 
 
 some information, the want of which had caused 
 the failure, and by repetition of both readings — 
 the bad and the good — showed by contrast and 
 by comment why the one was bad and why the 
 other good. Words were explained ; if they 
 were compound words they were analyzed ; the 
 different shades of meaning which words have 
 in different connections were remarked upon, 
 and the subject of the essay, the narration, or 
 the poem which formed the lesson of the day 
 was exf)lained. The delivery of the voice was 
 attended to ; not in any pretentious, artificial, 
 elecutionary way, but for such regard for good 
 and pleasant speech as was dictated by common 
 sense and good breeding. The young readers 
 were not allowed to hang their heads either over 
 their bosoms or over their shoulders, but were 
 made to stand up straight, throw back their 
 shoulders, lift their heads well up, so that if their 
 eyes were taken from their books, they would 
 look a man straight in the face. Only in this 
 position can the voice be well delivered. The 
 slightest mispronunciation was, of course, ob- 
 served and corrected, and not only so, but bad 
 enunciation was checked, and all slovenly mum- 
 bling was reprehended, and as far as possible 
 
Reading Aloud, arid Reading Clubs, 153 
 
 reformed. Yet with all this there was constant 
 caution against a prim, pedantic and even a con- 
 scious mode of reading. The end sought was 
 an intelligent, natural, and simple delivery of 
 every sentence. Of course, a lesson in reading 
 like this was no trifling' matter. It was, indeed, 
 the longest recitation of the session, and the one 
 at which the instructive powers of the teacher 
 were most severely tested. But it was. the most 
 valuable, the most important lesson of the day. 
 By it the pupil was taught not only to read well 
 and speak well, but to think. His powers of 
 attention and apprehension were put in exercise, 
 and he was obliged to discriminate shades of 
 meaning before he could express them by inflec- 
 tion of voice. Reading aloud well was then 
 regarded as inferior in importance to no other 
 * branch ' of education ; it was practiced until 
 pupils were prepared to enter college, the later 
 reading lessons being taken from Milton or Pope 
 or Burke, or some other writers of the highest 
 class, and being again accompanied by explana- 
 tion and criticism. In the earlier years of a 
 boy's school-time any other recitation would be 
 omitted by the teacher sooner than that in read- 
 ing aloud. How it is, or why it is, that such 
 
154 TJu Choice of Books, 
 
 instruction in reading has fallen into disuse I do 
 not know. Indeed, I know that it is disused only 
 by the chorus of complaint that goes up on all 
 sides, both in England and in the United States, 
 that children cannot read aloud, and that they 
 cannot write from dictation. This, of course, 
 could not be if children were taught in the man- 
 ner which I have endeavored to describe. A 
 school-boy of eight or nine years old, if taught in 
 that way, would know how to read English 
 aloud decently well, if he knew nothing else. 
 And it is really more important that he should 
 know how to do this well, and that he should 
 learn to do it in some such manner as I have 
 described, than that he should begin the study 
 of the arts and sciences." 
 
 In this connection there occurs to the mind a 
 single verse of the Bible, which comprises, in 
 twenty-three words, a whole treatise on the art 
 of reading aloud : " So they read in the book in 
 the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, 
 and caused them to understand the reading." 
 
 This is not the place for any long discussion of 
 the externals, so to speak, of reading aloud. As 
 we have said, reading in the home circle, or 
 literary clubs, binds mere elocutionary practice 
 
Reading Aloud, and Reading Clubs, i55 
 
 closely with a new apprehension of the sense of 
 what is read, and promotes in a high degree the 
 growth of the culture of all the persons who 
 take part in it. Fortunately, the habit is being 
 revived of late years, both at home and in 
 associations of readers. It can be taken up at 
 any time : nothing is easier than to find listeners 
 more than willing to be " read to " ; and the 
 custom will prove to repay cultivation to an 
 unlimited extent. Of course reading aloud is 
 slower work than reading to one's self ; but the 
 advantages of deUberate thought, and of a fellow- 
 ship with the minds of others, more than make 
 up this loss. 
 
 Some helpful hints on social literary work for 
 women — hints which apply, for the most part, 
 equally well to men, or to the literary clubs 
 composed of both sexes — may well be reprinted 
 here, from The Christian Union, in lieu of further 
 words of my own. " In ever}^ community," says 
 the journal, " there are intelligent women, with 
 considerable leisure at their command, who have 
 a desire to be helpful, and in the same commu- 
 nity there is a class of young women who need 
 intellectual stimulus and guidance. How shall 
 the two be brought together, so that the supply 
 
15^ The Choice of Books, 
 
 shall meet the demand ? Newspapers, magazines, 
 and public libraries all serve an admirable pur- 
 pose in the intellectual life of the community, 
 but they are not sufficient. What is needed is 
 personal influence and power, and this is just the 
 element which inteUigent women are able to 
 supply. Almost every village, certainly every 
 larger town, contains a number of recent gradu- 
 ates from high schools and seminaries, who are 
 not able, for one reason or another, to complete 
 their school education by a full college course. 
 Now, to girls of this class, a woman of tact and 
 intelligence can render the greatest possible ser- 
 vice by helping them to preserve the habits of 
 study they have already formed, to keep alive 
 the intellectual interest and curiosity that have 
 been awakened in them, and by giving them just 
 that impulse which shall keep them drinking 
 continually at the running streams of knowledge. 
 The training of the best schools fails unless it 
 emphasizes the importance of continual and sys- 
 tematic study as the habit of a hfetime, but it is 
 just this which large numbers of bright and 
 promising graduates from the higher schools fail 
 to carry away with them. They go home from 
 their last term with a latent desire for fuller 
 
Reading Aloud, and Reading Clubs. i57 
 
 knowledge, but that desire is not strong enough 
 to carry them through the interruptions home 
 life brings to a regular course of study, and what 
 they need is an impulse from without, and the 
 guidance of some mature and trained mind. Any 
 intelligent woman can find a noble work for her- 
 self by opening her doors to girls of this class, 
 and providing in her home a kind of post-gradu- 
 ate course for them. No study and no teaching 
 is so delightful as that which is full of the ele- 
 ment of personality, in which teacher and schol- 
 ars meet on a social basis, and as friends mutually 
 interested in the same work, in which the 
 methods are entirely informal and conversa- 
 tional, and the result the largest and freest dis- 
 cussion of the subject. An experiment of this 
 kind need not be a heavy task on the teacher 
 either in time or effort. A class may be formed 
 which shall meet for an hour once or twice a 
 week, taking any subject for study that has vital 
 connection with life. Nothing could be more 
 stimulating and interesting, for instance, than a 
 study of the age of Pericles in Greek history, 
 taking Curtius as a historical basis, and reading 
 in connection an account of the Greek poets of 
 that period, to which may be profitably 
 
15^ The Choice of Books. 
 
 added discussions on the Grecian art of the day, 
 and chapters from such books as * Mahaffy's 
 Social Life among the Greeks.' Half a dozen 
 other historical epochs are quite as interesting 
 and fruitful : that of Louis the Fourteenth, for 
 instance, in French history ; that of Elizabeth in 
 English history, the richest and most fascinating 
 epoch in the development of the English race. 
 No subject will be more entertaining in itself or 
 open up so many paths of private reading and 
 study as English literature. An excellent plan 
 would be to take Stopford Brooke's ' Primer of 
 English Literature' as a connecting thread of 
 study, and with it as a guide to make the grand 
 tour of English literature, taking each great 
 author in his turn and making such study of his 
 life and work as would be within the power of 
 an ordinarily intelligent person. Different au- 
 thors may be assigned to different members of 
 the class, who shall specially study up and give 
 account of them, so that the principal facts of 
 their lives, the special qualities of their work and 
 the particular impulse which they imparted to 
 their age may be made the possession of the 
 whole class. Then there is the great field of art, 
 which by the aid of the admirable text-books 
 
Reading Aloud, and Readi7ig Clubs, 1 59 
 
 now being published may be intelligently and 
 profitably traversed by those who have no op- 
 portunities for technical knowledge, but who 
 desire to know art in its historical aspects, and 
 to be able by knowledge of its historical develop- 
 ment to understand the school of the present 
 day. These hints will suggest a multiplicity of 
 topics that might with the utmost profit be 
 studied in this way. Every woman who desires 
 to make the experiment can easily settle the 
 question of what subject she shall take, by con- 
 sulting her own culture, her own tastes, and the 
 needs of those whom she wishes to help. The 
 special knowledge to be imparted is not of so 
 much value as the habit of study, which is to be 
 strengthened and made continuous in the life of 
 the student." 
 
 In the formation of classes Hke those indicated 
 above — in which reading aloud must of course 
 play a large part — or of Shakespeare clubs, or 
 social literary organizations in general, two 
 things should never be forgotten ; that almost 
 any kind of a beginning is better than none ; and 
 that the constitution and by-laws of the society, 
 if it is deemed necessary to have any, should be 
 of the simplest character possible. 
 
i6o The Choice of Books, 
 
 Edward Everett Hale says that, in his expe- 
 rience as a parish minister, he looks back on the 
 work which the reading-classes have done with 
 him, with more satisfaction than on any other, 
 organized effort in which he has shared for the! 
 education of the young. His most important 
 hints for the management of such classes are as 
 follows : 
 
 " It seems desirable that a class shall be of 
 such a size that free conversation may be easy. 
 If the number exceeds thirty, the members 
 hardly become intimate with each other, and 
 there is a certain shyness about speaking out in 
 meeting. The size of the room has some effect 
 in this matter. 
 
 " I think that in the choice of the subject the 
 range may easily be too large. It seems desir- 
 able that the members of the class shall know at 
 the beginning what their winter's work is to be 
 so specifically that they can adjust to it their 
 general readings. Even the choice of novels for 
 relaxation, or the selection of what they will 
 read and what they will not, in newspapers, 
 magazines and reviews, depends on this first 
 choice of subject. The leader of the class should 
 give a good deal of time to preparation. The 
 
Reading Alotid, and Reading Chcbs. i6i 
 
 more he knows, the better of course ; but all that 
 is absolutely necessary is that he shall keep a 
 little in advance or the class and shall be willing 
 to work and read. A true man or Avoman will, 
 of course, ' confess ignorance ' frankly. I should 
 rather have in a leader good practical knowledge 
 of books of reference and the way to use public 
 libraries than large specific knowledge of the 
 subject in hand. Of course it would be better to 
 have both. And I think a class is wise in leaving 
 to its leader the selection of the topic. Grant- 
 ing these preliminaries, I should urge, and 
 almost insist, that no one should attend the class 
 who would not promise to attend to the end. 
 Nothing is so ruinous as the presence of the vir- 
 gins who have no oil in their vessels, and are in 
 the outer darkness before the course is half done. 
 I think it is well to agree in the beginning on a 
 small fee — a dollar, or half a dollar — which can 
 be expended in books of reference, or supper, or 
 charity, or anything else desirable. The real 
 object of the fee is weeding out unreliable mem- 
 bers. 
 
 " Every member should have a note book and 
 pencil, and those who do not take notes should 
 be expelled. What is heard at siich classes, 
 
1 62 The Choice of Books, 
 
 with no memorandum to connect it with after- 
 work, goes in at one ear and out at the other. 
 
 " To make sure that each member takes notes, 
 it is well to keep one class journal. At the end 
 of each meeting, assign the making up of this 
 journal to some one of the class, selected by 
 accident. The length of this journal should be 
 limited — say to a single page of a writing-book. 
 Otherwise the ambitious members vie with each 
 other in making them long, which is in no way 
 desirable. All you want is the merest brief of 
 the work done at each meeting. . . . 
 
 " The leader will very soon get a knowledge 
 of what the different members of the class can 
 and will do. Indeed, the consideration of what 
 they want to do will become an important part 
 of his arrangements. He should remember that 
 they are all volunteers, that it is no business of 
 his to drive up a particular laggard to his work, 
 but rather to make the class as profitable as he 
 can for all." 
 
What Books to Own. 163 
 
 WHAT BOOKS TO OWN. 
 
 Everybody ought to own books. A house 
 without books has been well called a literary 
 Sahara ; and how many of them there are ! We 
 are a " reading people ;" but nothing is easier to 
 find than homes in which the furniture, the 
 pictures, the ornaments — everything, is an object 
 of greater care and expense than the library. Is 
 it any wonder that their inmates, whatever their 
 so-called wealth or comfort, are intellectual 
 starvelings ? 
 
 Among the many wise things that Mr. Beecher 
 has said, there is none wiser than his words 
 about books in the house. " We form judg- 
 ments of men," says he, ^' from little things about 
 their houses, of which the owner, perhaps, never 
 thinks. In earlier years when traveling in the 
 West, where taverns were scarce, and in some 
 places unknown, and every settler's house was a 
 house of entertainment, it was a matter of some 
 importance and some experience to select wisely 
 where you should put up. And we always 
 looked for flowers. If there were no trees for 
 
164 The Choice of Books, 
 
 shade, no patch of flowers in the yard, we were 
 suspicious of the place. But no matter how 
 rude the cabin or rough the surroundings, if we 
 saw that the window held a little trough for 
 flowers, and that some vines twined about strings 
 let down from the eaves, we were confident that 
 there was some taste and carefulness in the log- 
 cabin. In a new country, where people have to 
 tug for a living, no one will take the trouble to 
 rear flowers unless the love of them is pretty 
 strong ; and this taste, blossoming out of plain 
 and uncultivated people, is itself a clump of 
 harebells growing out of the seams of a rock. 
 We were seldom misled. A patch of flowers 
 came to signify kind people, clean beds, and 
 good bread. But in other states of society other 
 signs are more significant. Flowers about a 
 rich man's house may signify only that he has a 
 good gardener, or that he has refined neighbors, 
 and does what he sees them do. But men are 
 not accustomed to buy books, unless they want 
 them. If on visiting the dwelling of a man in 
 slender means we find that, he contents himself 
 with cheap carpets and very plain furniture in 
 order that he may purchase books, he rises at 
 once in our esteem. Books are not made for 
 
What Books to Chun. 165 
 
 furniture, but there is nothing else that so beau- 
 tifully furnishes a house. The plainest row of 
 books that cloth or paper ever covered is more 
 significant of refinement than the most elabO' 
 rately carved etagere or sideboard. Give us a 
 house furnished with books rather than furniture. 
 Both, if you can, but books at any rate! To 
 spend several days in "a friend's house, and 
 hunger for something to read, while you are 
 treading on costly carpets and sitting on luxuri- 
 ous chairs, and sleeping upon down, is as if one 
 were bribing your body for the sake of cheating 
 your mind. Is it not pitiable to see a man grow- 
 ing rich, augumenting the comforts of home, 
 and lavishing money on ostentatious upholstery, 
 upon the table, upon everything but what the 
 soul needs ? We know of many and many a rich 
 man's house where it would not be safe to ask 
 for the commonest English classics. A few 
 garish annuals on the table, a few pictorial 
 monstrosities, together with the stock religious 
 books of his * persuasion,' and that is all! No 
 poets, no essayists, no historians, no travels or 
 biographies, no select fiction, no curious legend- 
 ary lore. But the wall paper cost three dollars 
 a roll, and the carpet cost four dollars a yard ! 
 
1 66 The Choice of Books, 
 
 Books are the windows through which the soul 
 looks out. A home without books is Hke a room 
 without windows. No man has a right to bring 
 up his children without surrounding them with 
 books, if he has the means to buy them. It is a 
 wrong to his family. He cheats them ! Children 
 learn to read by being in the presence of books. 
 The love of knowledge comes with reading and 
 grows upon it. And the love of knowledge in a 
 young mind is almost a warrant against the 
 inferior excitement of passions and vices. Let 
 us pity these poor rich men who live barrenly in 
 great bookless houses ! Let us congrr,tulate the 
 poor that, in our day, books are so cheap that a 
 man may every year add a hundred volumes to 
 his library for the price which his tobacco and 
 his beer cost him. Among the earhest ambitions 
 to be excited in clerks, workmen, journeymen, 
 and, indeed, among all that are struggling up in 
 life from nothing to something, is that of owning 
 and constantly adding to a library of good 
 books. A little library growing larger every 
 year is an honorable part of a young man's 
 history. It is a man's duty to have books. A 
 library is not a luxury, but one of the necessaries 
 of life." 
 
What Books to Own, 167 
 
 In this connection, do jou remember Chaucer's 
 *' Clerk of Oxenford," who stinted himself in 
 every other way in order that he might have 
 money to buy books ? 
 
 A Clerk ther was of Oxenford also. 
 
 That unto logik hadde longe i-go, 
 
 AI-so lene was his hors as is a rake, 
 
 And he was not right fat, I undertake . 
 
 But lokede holwe, and therto soburly, 
 
 Ful thredbare wos his overest courtepy. 
 
 For he hadde nought geten him yet a benefice, 
 
 Ne was not worth)^ to haven an office. 
 
 For him was lever have at his beddes heed 
 
 Twenty bookes, clothed in blak and reed, 
 
 Of Aristotil, and of his philosophic 
 
 Than robus riche, or fithil, or sawtrie. 
 
 But al-though he were a philosophrc. 
 Yet hadde he but litul gold in cofre ; 
 But al that he might gete, and his frends sende, 
 On bookes and his lernyng he it spende, 
 And busily gan for the soules praye. 
 Of hem that yaf him wherwith to scolaye. 
 Of studie took he moste cure and heede. 
 Not 00 word spak he more than was neede ; 
 All that he spak it was of heye prudence, 
 And short and quyk, and ful of gret sentence. 
 Sownynge in moral manere was his speche, 
 And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche. 
 
 "To be without books of your own is the 
 abyss of penury ; don't endure it ! " exclaims 
 Ruskin. Lyman Abbott declares that "the 
 home ought no more to be without a library 
 than without a dining-room and kitchen. If you 
 have but one room, and it is lighted by the great 
 
1 68 The Choice of Books. 
 
 wood fire in the flaming fireplace, as Abraham 
 Lincohi's was, do as Abraham Lincohi did : pick 
 out one corner of jour fireplace for a library, 
 and use it." Still another truth is well stated by 
 Sir Arthur Helps in a few words : '' A man 
 never gets so much good out of a book as when 
 he possesses it." ■ 
 
 The influence of the home hbrary upon all the 
 members of the famil}^, and especially the 
 younger ones, can hardly be overstated. The 
 biographies of literary men, and of great men 
 not hterary, are full of testimonies to the value 
 of the neighborhood and society of books in 
 early youth. " Ilike books," says Dr. Holmes; 
 '' I was born and bred among them." He has 
 lately told us, in an amusing way, Avhat sort of a 
 library he was '' brought up " in ; and, great 
 reader though he has been, has lamented that he 
 has not read even more : "It was very largely 
 theological, so that I was walled in by solemn 
 folios, making the shelves bend under the loads 
 of sacred learning. Walton's Polygot Bible was 
 one of them. ' Poli-synopsis ' was another ; a 
 black letter copy of Fox's 'Acts and Monuments ' 
 another, and so on. Higher up on the shelves 
 stood Fleury's ' Ecclesiastical History,' in 
 
What Books to Own. 169 
 
 twenty-five volumes octavo. In one of these 
 volumes a book-worm had eaten his way straight 
 through from beginning to end, leaving a round 
 hole through every leaf, as if a small shot had 
 gone through it. My father wrote some verses 
 about it, I recollect, beginning : ' See here, my 
 son, what industry can do.' I wish I had profit- 
 ed better by them. I have not been the most 
 indolent of mortals, but the industry of some of 
 my acquaintances . . . makes me feel as if I had 
 been lazy in comparison. I do not remember 
 whether I have told this in any of my books or 
 not ; at any rate, the lesson taught by the book- 
 worm and turned into verse by my father is one 
 by which any young person may profit." An- 
 other contemporary writer, Edmond About, has 
 similarly ascribed his formation of the reading 
 habit to his father's care in collecting a library : 
 " Reading is assuredly an excellent thing, and 
 my father never would forego it, after he had 
 attained some leisure and affluence. By degrees 
 he had obtained five or six hundred well-chosen 
 volumes. He constantly turned over the leaves 
 of the * Encyclopasdia of Useful Knowledge' and 
 Boret's manuals ; he had even subscribed with 
 three or four neighbors to a liberal Paris paper ; 
 
I/O The Choice of Books, 
 
 but he prized far above all the knowledge that he 
 had gained quite alone. Gently and patiently he 
 also accustomed me to look and think for myself, 
 instead of imposing upon me his ideas, which my 
 docile, submissive spirit, would have blindly ac- 
 cepted." In lieu of a thousand similar utter- 
 ances, perhaps it will be enough to quote what a 
 veteran journalist, Charles T. Congdon, has 
 written on the encouragement of a love and a 
 care for books on the part of children : " I would 
 early encourage in children a reverence for 
 books. The need of it is the greater, because 
 school business so tends to raggedness and 
 destruction. And this naturally brings me to a 
 topic which is well-worth considering — I mean 
 the care and preservation of books. I have 
 known young people who were highly particular 
 in the conservation of their small libraries ; and 
 I think that this is a tendency which it would be 
 well for parents and guardians to encourage. I 
 argue well of a child who carefully conserves its 
 books, covers them, and ranges them on a little 
 shelf in a little row. When I encounter this 
 particularity, I see before me future collectors 
 and bibliographers in embryo. And what I say to 
 the children, I would say to adults. It is so hard 
 
What Books to Own, 171 
 
 to get books, and so easy to lend and to lose 
 them. Nobody can have a library unless he 
 takes good care of what comes into it. All the 
 great gatherings have a small start. There is a 
 curious story of the beginning of Richard Heber's 
 magnificent library, which is told in Burton's 
 ' Book-Hunter ' and which is worth repeating here 
 because Burton's ' Book-Hunter ' has become 
 so scarce. Heber accidentally met with a little 
 volume called ' The Vallie of Varietie/ by Henry 
 Peacham. He took it to Mr. Bindley, the cele- 
 brated collector, and asked him if it was not a 
 curious book. *Yes,' answered Mr. Bindley, 
 ' not very — but rather a curious book.' What 
 came of this, those who know anything of the 
 enormous Heber collection will understand. 
 From that day forth Richard Heber was a bib- 
 liomaniac. He would travel hundreds of miles 
 to buy a book which he did not possess. ... In 
 advising young people respecting the formation 
 of a library, my advice would be not to lend but 
 to keep. Nobody can have a decent collection 
 unless he takes good care of it ; but it is easier to 
 lose than to acquire. I know nothing like the 
 immorality which pervades the ranks of borrow- 
 ers. They forget to bring back, and sometimes, 
 
1/2 The Choice of Books. 
 
 I fear, they do not forget. I would not say a 
 word about it, for fear of hurting the feehngs of 
 somebody who will find my book-plate in some 
 volume upon his shelf if he will look for it, unless 
 indeed, he has eradicated it — I would not, I say, 
 speak a word of the matter if I were not writing 
 for children, and begging them to keep their 
 books together. It will be such a promising be- 
 ginning. It will teach such habits of care. It will 
 give them so much pleasure hereafter to look at 
 what so delighted them when the world was new 
 and small things charming. One cannot expect 
 these young people to be learned in Lowndes, or 
 really to know how a book can cumulate in value ; 
 but they may take my word for it that what was 
 worth reading, it would be wise to preserve." 
 
 I have happened to find some sensible words 
 of the same sort in a country weekly, the very 
 place where such expressions are hkely to do 
 most good to the local pubhc : " Nothing is more 
 important to young people than an early love for 
 good books. In no way can this love be better 
 fostered than by the formation of home libraries. 
 No matter how few or small the books are, to 
 commence with, they will make a beginning, and 
 you will wonder at its growth. Don't have the 
 
What Books to Own. 173 
 
 books scattered about, but collect them. Any 
 boy can make shelves which are good enough, 
 and the very act of getting your books together 
 will form a desire for more. When you have 
 thus made a beginning, make it a rule never to 
 add a poor or ' trashy ' book. A good book is 
 worth a hundred of the other kind. In this day 
 of cheap books there is no reason w^iy every boy. 
 . . ^. need not have something of a library." And 
 boys may wxll remember that from such a be- 
 ginning great results may grow. From no 
 greater a collection than any young reader can 
 easily make, the historian Gibbon tells us that he 
 gradually formed a numerous and select library, 
 " the foundation of my works, and the best com- 
 fort of my life, both at home and abroad." 
 
 Aside from the reading of books, their mere 
 society and companionship is of high advantage. 
 Boswell tells us that Dr. Johnson thought it wxll 
 even to look at the backs of books : '' No sooner 
 had we made our bow to Mr. Cambridge, in his 
 library, than Johnson ran eagerly to one side of 
 the room, intent on poring over the backs of the 
 books. Sir Joshua (Reynolds) observed, aside, 
 • He runs to the books as I do the pictures ; but 
 1 have the advantage, I can see much more of 
 
1/4 The Choice of Books, 
 
 the pictures than he can of the books.' Mr. 
 Cambridge, upon this, pohtely said, ' Dr. John- 
 son, I am going, with your pardon, to accuse 
 myself, for I have the same custom which I per- 
 ceive you have. But it seems odd that we 
 should have such a desire to look at the backs 
 of books.' Johnson, ever ready for contest, in- 
 stantly started from his reverie, wheeled about, 
 and answered, ' Sir, the reason is very plain. 
 Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject 
 ourselves, or we know where we can find infor- 
 mation upon it. When we inquire into any sub- 
 ject, the first thing we have to do is to know 
 what books have treated of it. This leads us to 
 look at catalogues, and the backs of books in 
 libraries.' Sir Joshua observed to me the extra- 
 ordinary promptitude with which Johnson flew 
 upon an argument. ' Yes,' said I, ' he has no 
 formal preparations, no flourishing with his 
 sword ; he is through your body in an instant.' '* 
 People who are accustomed to know where par- 
 ticular books are, can fiy to them in an emer- 
 gency ; and sometimes a little library at home, 
 well understood, is a more effective armory than 
 a great collection, unknown. 
 
 Dr. J. A. Langford, an English writer who 
 
W?tat Books to Own, i75 
 
 has lately made a serviceable collection of quota- 
 tions from English authors on books and read- 
 ing, cites Charles Lamb's expression : ** What a 
 place to be in is an old library ! " and then pro- 
 ceeds to speak of the society of books, in affec- 
 tionate words with which any book-lover can 
 sympathize : " It is a delight to merely look at 
 books — in a state of quiet reverie to dream of 
 the rich fruit which you will not pluck, of the 
 sweet grapes which you will not taste. There, 
 spread before you, is a banquet fit for gods, and 
 the consciousness that you could eat and be 
 satisfied fills up your cup of pleasure to the 
 brim. It is a feast at which the imagination 
 supplies ambrosia and nectar, and, for the time, 
 coarser food is neither required nor desired. You 
 walk in meadows of asphodel, and in the gardens 
 of the Hesperides, and have no wish to pluck a 
 flower, or to gather the fruit. It is enough that 
 they are there, and that the spirits who guard 
 them are ready to supply you with both." Nor 
 is such a sentiment any less likely to come, in a 
 true sense, to the owner of a few books, than to 
 the visitor of the largest library. The true 
 owner of books loves his books, and the}^ come 
 to have real personalities. When poor Southey, 
 
17^ The Choice of Books, 
 
 after a life of hard work among books, lost his 
 mind, and even the power to read a word, he 
 spent hours and hours in wandering through his 
 library, feeling his books, and petting them, and 
 laying his head against them. 
 
 It is not necessary to advise buyers to possess 
 this or that particular book, nor to present to 
 them a definite list of ten, fifty, a hundred, or a 
 thousand volumes, and say, " Buy these, and 
 you will have a library." The preceding chap- 
 ters in this series have sufficiently indicated, I 
 trust, what sort of books one ought to read, and 
 how his selection of books to own may best be 
 guided and limited. Any intelligent person can 
 tell, when he reads a catalogue of publications, 
 or visits a book store, what are the standard 
 books for all time, and what are those which are 
 good books to read. Every one's conscience, 
 too, will tell him Avhat books to shun. Some 
 volumes are to be read for a temporary purpose, 
 and the choice of books to own should, of course, 
 be borne in mind. Buy nothing that you are, or 
 will be, ashamed of, and remember that " art is 
 long, and time is fleeting." In a word, choose 
 your books as you would choose your friends 
 and helpers. 
 
IVhat Books to Own, 177 
 
 The collector of a home hbrary should not be 
 discouraged because there are so many books in 
 the world, and he can buy so few. Says Em- 
 erson : " I visit occasionally the Cambridge 
 Hbrary, and I can seldom go there without 
 renewing the conviction that the best of it all is 
 already within the four walls of my study at 
 home. The inspection of the catalogue brings 
 me continually back to the few standard writers 
 who are on every private shelf ; and to these it 
 can afford only the most slight and casual addi- 
 tions. The crowds and centuries of books are 
 only commentary and elucidation, echoes and 
 weakeners of these few great voices of Time." 
 In precisely the same strain are these words 
 from an editorial in The Pall Mall Gazette, of 
 London : " It is some comfort to reflect that 
 without possessing a library equal to that of the 
 British Museum, and indeed one which can be 
 coaxed into a single room of moderate dimen- 
 sions, one may have everything in the Avay of 
 literature which has been so far produced by the 
 human race which is still worth reading — not to 
 say a good deal more. A large collection of 
 English poets, from Chaucer to Cowper, will go 
 upon a small shelf ; and all that has since been 
 
lyS The Choice of Books. 
 
 written of any importance will fail to fill another. 
 Three-fourths even of that collection is of interest 
 only in a historical sense. And truly it suggests 
 melancholy as well as comfort to look round any 
 decent hbrary, to mark the collected works even 
 of the greatest, and to remember how small is 
 the proportion of grain to chaff." 
 
 As for the choice of editions of books to own, 
 a remark of Dr. Johnson's is worth remember- 
 ing, though, of course, not of universal apph ca- 
 tion : " Books that you may carry to the fire, and 
 hold readily in your hand, are the most useful 
 after all." 
 
 The care of the home library should chiefly 
 consist of keeping its contents accessible and 
 neat. Books that are imprisoned, or are kept in 
 unfrequented rooms, are deprived of half their 
 usefulness. It is better to have a book worn out 
 with use, or faded by sunlight, or kept where it 
 needs a daily dusting, than to have it preserved 
 like a stuffed bird in a glass case. Open shelves 
 are better than glass-doored book-cases, and the 
 original binding of a book is better than a brown- 
 paper cover. Who would like a friend always 
 dressed in a " duster " ? or who would enjoy 
 living in one of those melancholy rooms where 
 
M^hat Books to Own, i79 
 
 all the furniture is shrouded in linen ? Brown- 
 paper book-covers may be excusable in public 
 libraries, but never in private ones. 
 
 A few hints, selected from a recent paper by 
 S. L. Boardman, will be found serviceable: 
 " Whatever the room chosen for the library, let 
 it be warm and sunny, on the south side of the 
 house if possible, and plainly furnished, for what 
 furnishing so gorgeous and attractive as good 
 books? An open fire is the only means of 
 warming that should ever be thought of in a 
 library room. . . . And remember: no glazed 
 doors ! I was gratified a few weeks ago, in 
 visiting a friend, to find that he had taken the 
 glazed doors from his library cases ; and I wish 
 everybody who has these useless things would 
 do the same. They are not a protection against 
 dust ; they are always in the way ; no one is 
 going to carry away your books without leave 
 when you invite him to your library ; and when 
 you want a book you do not care to be bothered 
 by a bunch of keys. Besides, books have a far 
 more cheerful and social look when you can 
 readily see them, and handle them, and become 
 acquainted with them, than when they are 
 locked up as though you were afraid somebody 
 
i8o The Choice of Books, 
 
 would read them, or that they would make 
 somebody happy if he could only turn over their 
 magic pages. Open cases, then, for all books in 
 private libraries, especially in what we call 
 * working libraries.' . . . Do not put too much 
 money in expensive and luxuriant bindings. I 
 am not talking to the wealthy bibUophile, who 
 is able to employ Bedford, or Pawson, or Charles 
 White to bind his books regardless of cost, but 
 to the average book lover or collector. Put the 
 extra money your fine bindings would cost into 
 more and more serviceable books, and be happy. 
 Choose editions in plain substantial dress, and 
 leave elaborate gilding, and bhnd tooling, and 
 
 silk linings, to your exquisite fancier 
 
 Books should never be crowded tightly on the 
 shelves. They should be so kindly disposed as 
 to gently support each other. Great injury 
 comes from placing them too closely together. 
 Books are generally taken down from their 
 positions by the top of the back, and in many, 
 many instances I have seen books, some of which 
 were in their day strongly bound, completely 
 broken away at the back from being pulled 
 carelessly out of position. In removing a book 
 from its place the proper way is first to loosen 
 
What Books to Own. i8i 
 
 the books standing each side of the one wanted, 
 by giving them a gentle sideward pressure ; 
 then, tipping the book from you at the top and 
 taking hold of the bottom, gently draw it out. 
 Do not pile books flat-ways upon the top of 
 those standing upright in the case. It injures 
 those upon which they rest very much. Re- 
 member the advice of old Richard De Bury 
 centuries ago, ' never to approach a volume with 
 uncleanly hands.' Books are easily soiled, paper 
 and binding retaining the imperfection of the 
 least pressure of unwashed hands. Dust off the 
 books every day, and remember that, like house 
 plants, they need a constant supply of fresh air. 
 They are dear friends. We become attached 
 to them from constant intercourse, and when we 
 remember how much enjoyment we receive from 
 their silent, tender companionship, we should m 
 return treat them well, give them the best room 
 in the house, and teach our children and visitors 
 to pay to them due respect." 
 
1 82 The Choice of Books. 
 
 THE USE OF PUBLIC LIBRARIES. 
 
 Every town ought to have a Hbrary contain- 
 ing as many volumes as the town has inhabitants. 
 Such a Hbrary becomes at once the center of the 
 intellectual life of the town, and affects the 
 morals and manners of the entire community. 
 And more, its influence stretches out into the 
 whole country, wherever its readers may chance 
 to go ; and its importance is not for a moment to 
 be compared with the entire sum of the mercan- 
 tile and manufacturing interests by which it is 
 surrounded. A town with a library can be dis- 
 tinguished easily from one which lacks any such 
 collection of books ; and those parts of the coun- 
 try in which town libraries abound are the parts 
 which are most influential in every department 
 of intellectual and even material labor. " Let 
 those," says a recent writer, " who pride them- 
 selves upon their devotion to the so-called prac- 
 tical, reflect that the advantages of a library are 
 no longer of a purely literary character, and are 
 becoming less and less so ; that the ' arts and 
 mysteries ' of manufacture are no longer taught 
 
The Use of Public Libraries, 183 
 
 by word of mouth alone to indentured appren- 
 tices, but that the ' master workmen ' of the nine- 
 teenth century speak through books to all ; and 
 that in proportion as our workmen become in- 
 telligent and skillful does their labor increase in 
 value to themselves and to the state." 
 
 " The usefulness of a public library to all classes 
 of the community, and some of the methods by 
 which that usefulness miay be extended, have 
 been well stated in an address to the people of 
 Springfield, Mass., on behalf of the city library 
 of that place. ** Here," says this address, " are 
 more than 40,000 volumes of books, old and new, 
 from which your selections can be made. Cata- 
 logues Lying upon the tables will aid you in your 
 choice ; if you do not readily find what you want, 
 the librarian and his assistants are always ready 
 to help you. Those who frequent the library 
 will testify that the intelligent and painstaking 
 service of these librarians in aiding those who 
 are selecting books and studying subjects is of 
 great advantage to them. Here are many books 
 of reference of which all our reading people 
 ought to avail themselves. Here are the great 
 encyclopgedias, the dictionaries, the gazetteers, 
 the concordances, that will throw light on the 
 
x84 The Choice of Books, 
 
 puzzling questions you meet in your reading^ 
 You have only to step into the library as you 
 pass and obtain the information you desire. 
 Many of you might turn the library to good ac- 
 count in 3'our several callings. Mechanics who 
 seek to perfect themselves in the industrial arts 
 may obtain here books, some of them finely illus- 
 trated, on physics, on mechanical engineering 
 and drawing, and on various topics in which 
 they are interested. Architects, builders, and 
 landscape gardeners may gain from the treatises 
 on these shelves, hints that will be of use to 
 them in practical work as well as in design. 
 Those who are engaged, whether on a large or 
 a small scale, in agricultural or horticultural 
 pursuits, may derive considerable assistance 
 from the treatises and reports filling a large 
 department of this library. Students of art will 
 find here not only a variety of critical and prac- 
 tical treatises, but a good collection of prints 
 and engravings. To professional men, whether 
 clerg3'men, physicians, law3^ers, or journalists, 
 the library affords many advantages. It con- 
 tains a fair selection of books representing the 
 literature of each of these professions, and valu- 
 able books, that individuals are not always able 
 
The Use of Public Libraries, 185 
 
 to procure for themselves, are added from time 
 to time. Those who are interested in the study 
 of the Bible may consult in the library a large 
 and admirable selection of Bible dictionaries, 
 commentaries, introductions, histories, etc., 
 covering and illustrating the whole subject. 
 Those who are studying any question of im- 
 mediate popular interest — temperance, labor, 
 finance, tariff, woman suffrage, education — may 
 easily, with a little help from the librarians, sup- 
 ply themselves here with ample information. 
 The teachers in our public and private schools 
 may make the library very serviceable to them- 
 selves and to their pupils by consulting it fre- 
 quently, and by directing the reading of students. 
 Upon many of the topics taught in the grammar 
 schools, and upon most of those taught in the 
 high school, intelligent boys and girls could gain 
 here much additional information that would 
 freshen and confirm their acquisitions in the 
 school-room. The librarj^ is used in this manner 
 to some extent by teachers and pupils, but the 
 benefits thus arising might be indefinitely in- 
 creased. Some of the teachers, by arrangement 
 with the librarian, make themselves responsible 
 for books which they loan to pupils who make 
 
1 86 The Choice of Books, 
 
 good use of them, as supplementing their text- 
 books. To the general reader as well as to the 
 special student, the library offers an ample pro- 
 vision. History, biography, social science, 
 political science, travel and discovery, poetry, 
 fiction, essays, sketches — all are here in great 
 variety. And all this is free to all. This great 
 array of books, this pleasant hall lighted and 
 v/armed and kept neat and orderly, the service 
 of these polite librarians, is without charge to 
 
 the reader, young or old Our citizens are 
 
 justly proud of their noble library. They have 
 received, already, great benefit and pleasure from 
 the use "A it. But it might be used much more 
 freely and with greatly increased profit. It ought 
 to afford not only diversion to our idle people, 
 but instruction and stimulus to our working 
 people and our thinking people. Rightly used, 
 it will be a means of great good to the whole 
 communitv- To the young, especially, it should 
 be of incalculable advantage. To those who 
 work in our shops and factories, and whose priv- 
 ileges of education have been limited, it offers a 
 great opportunity. None of them ought to feel 
 lonesome or homeless so long as its hospitable 
 doors are open. To bring the library before 
 
The Use of Public Libraries. 187 
 
 their notice and encourage them in freely using 
 it, is one of the obvious duties of those who have 
 any responsibihty for those young men and 
 women." 
 
 The connection between pubhc hbraries and 
 pubUc educational systems has attracted new 
 attention, of recent years. The superintendent 
 of the Boston schools says that the pubhc library 
 stands of right at the head of the .educational 
 system of the city, of which it forms a true part. 
 And on the other hand, he urges that the schools 
 should give instruction in the best methods of 
 reading good books : " Reading is an art which 
 with a little of almost everything, has been taught 
 in the public schools immemorially ; but how to 
 read a book — an entire book — is an acquisition 
 made by few, and never, so far as I am aware, 
 systematically taught in the public schools." 
 
 The public librarian, indeed, should be a pub- 
 lic instructor. Much of what may be said of 
 the value of the teacher's influence upon indi- 
 vidual scholars — says Charles A. Cutter, libra- 
 rian of the Boston Athenasum — and of the satis- 
 faction and encouragement which comes from it, 
 " is true, with very shght changes of the libra- 
 rian. The latter must continue what the teacher 
 
1 88 The Choice of Books, 
 
 has begun ; he must make a beginning, if he can, 
 where the teacher has failed, and for those with 
 whom the teacher has not come in contact ; Hke 
 the teacher, he must add this to duties already 
 engrossing ; like him, he must make a constant 
 series of experiments ; and again, like him, he 
 must be — and no doubt he will be — content if in 
 one case in a hundred he produces any visible 
 result. He needs some interest and effort like 
 this, or else his work, however well done, is only 
 the work of a clerk or of a book-worm." 
 
 " I want very much indeed," says Charles Fran- 
 cis Adams, Jr., " to see our really admirable town 
 library become a more living element than it now 
 is in our school system — its complement, in fact. 
 Neither trustee nor librarian, no matter how 
 faithful or zealous they may be, can make it so ; 
 for we cannot know enough of the individual 
 scholars to give them that which they personally 
 need, and which only they will take ; you cannot 
 feed them until you know what they like, and 
 that we, in dealing with the mass, cannot get at. 
 You teachers, however, can get at it, if you only 
 choose to. To enable you to do this, the trus- 
 tees of the library have adopted a new rule, 
 under which each of your schools may be made 
 
The Use of Public Libraries. 189 
 
 practically a branch library. The master can 
 himself select and take from the library a num- 
 ber of volumes, and keep them on his desk for 
 circulation among the scholars under his charge. 
 He can study their tastes and ransack the library 
 to gratify them. Nay, more, if you will but find 
 out what your scholars want — what healthy 
 books are in demand among them — the trustees 
 of the hbrary will see to it that you do not want 
 material. You shall have all the books you will 
 call for. When, indeed, you begin to call, we 
 shall know exactly what to buy ; and then, at last, 
 we could arrange in printed bulletins the courses 
 of reading which your experience would point 
 out as best, and every book would be accessible. 
 From that time, both schools and library would 
 begin to do their full work together, and the last 
 would become what it ought to be, the natural 
 complement of the first — the People's College." 
 
 The choice of books for public libraries should 
 be made with care, but with a full remembrance 
 of the fact that there are many tastes in the 
 community, and that, while those tastes can and 
 must be raised, they must first be reached. 
 " What books shall be bought ? " asks the Library 
 Journal, "what kinds of books? and what books 
 
190 The Choice of Books, 
 
 of their kinds ? — is almost the vital question in 
 all libraries ; most pressing in the smallest, which 
 have least to spend for books and most need to 
 foster public appreciation. Shall we have fiction 
 or no fiction, or shall we have George Eliot only 
 and not Mrs. Holmes ? ' The public library is 
 not to be the private workshop for the few 
 scholars ;' * the public library is not to pander to 
 depraved popular tastes ; ' — these are growl and 
 
 counter-growl We suppose all would 
 
 agree upon these simple principles — (i) a library 
 must not circulate bad books ; (2) it must, within 
 this limit, give the public the books it wants ; 
 (3) it must teach it to want better books. These 
 afford, in general, plain sailing, bad books mean- 
 ing immoral books, books absolutely hurtful. 
 But there are those who would exclude under 
 that term respectively unliterary books, bad in 
 style ; ' sensational ' books ; all fiction ; books 
 religiously unorthodox. It is sufficient to reply 
 that books for reading are of no use unless read, 
 and that if you can get a man to reading he is 
 sure, as Mr. Hale would say, to read ' up and 
 not down.' " But we must remember that young 
 readers should not be given too great influence 
 in the selection of the books, and under no cir- 
 
The Use of Public Libraries, 195 
 
 cumstances whatever should they be furnished 
 with positively bad books. H. A. Homes urges 
 a preliminary reading of books by competent 
 committees, as has been done with reference to 
 Sunday-school books, by some ladies of Boston 
 and Cambridge : ** A large part of the reading 
 in public town libraries is done by persons under 
 twenty-one years of age. For many Sunday- 
 school libraries it has been found necessary to 
 adopt a rule that no book should be received 
 which had not previously been read and ap- 
 proved by a committee of the school, notwith- 
 standing it had been written, approved, and 
 published expressly for Sunday-schools. Is it 
 not even more important and urgent to secure, 
 by some similar measure, that the books to be 
 loaned from institutions so influential as free 
 town libraries should have some such guarantee 
 that they will be works elevating and ennobling 
 to the minds of their readers ? " 
 
 An important matter is the location of the 
 library building or room. A. M. Pendleton has 
 some serviceable hints on this subject in The 
 Library Journal: "First, let the room be cen- 
 trally located, not geographically, but in the 
 most populous part of the town. Plant it among 
 
192 The Choice of Books, 
 
 the people, where its presence will be seen and 
 felt. Next, other things being equal, it is better 
 to have it upon the first floor, so that passers-by 
 will see its goodly array of books, and be 
 tempted to inspect them. Care should be taken) 
 to have it well lighted, and if possible have a 
 second room, in which visitors can linger over 
 periodicals and other entertaining works. The 
 wise library manager, like the children of this 
 world, will hold out as many seductions as pos- 
 sible. Encourage dalliance by scattering about 
 temptations. If the sight of evil tempts to evil, 
 so the presence of good things quickens the 
 desire to possess them. A cheery room, taste- 
 fully arranged and kept, a generous display of 
 books, and numerous persons coming and going, 
 will determine the popular tide to your quarters. 
 These are elements of a successful library, often 
 as important as the character of the books them- 
 selves. A library pushed into a dark corner or 
 an unsightly closet, or lodged in the rear part of 
 a store, will never have a strong hold upon a 
 people. If it be possible, have it by itself. Do 
 not locate it in a store because a clerk who is 
 busy with other things most of the time will 
 attend to it now and then. Cheap labor is often 
 
The Use of Public Libraries, 193 
 
 the most expensive. Things that will do, make- 
 shifts of one kind or another, we are all com- 
 pelled to accept ; but accept them as the last 
 resort, and not as the ready confession of our 
 good-for-nothingness. Covet the best things, 
 and when attainable, be satisfied with nothing 
 less." 
 
 Let it not be thought that a town library is 
 only a luxury for great cities or rich communi- 
 ties. " In the work of popular education through 
 libraries, it is, after all, not the few great libra- 
 ries, but the thousand small that may do most 
 for the people." The present writer can sin- 
 cerely say that he owes more to the library of 
 his native town (then containing perhaps four 
 thousand volumes) than he does to the much 
 larger college library of which he afterwards 
 had the use. And others feel a similar debt of 
 gratitude to town libraries far smaller than this 
 — libraries of no more than a few hundred books, 
 or even less, kept in a few poor shelves in some 
 town-house or country store. The thing to do is 
 to make a beginning of a local library. If your 
 community has none, it ought to be thoroughly 
 ashamed of itself. There must be ten good 
 books in it, or the money to buy them. Gather 
 
194 The Choice of Books, 
 
 these together and start a Hbrary at once ; the 
 hfe of the whole neighborhood will immediately 
 be made that much the nobler and stronger. 
 
The True Service of Reading, i95 
 
 THE TRUE SERVICE OF READING. 
 
 The true service of reading is something more 
 than to afford amusement for an idle hour. 
 Most readers will admit this, although their 
 practice is too often opposed to the principle 
 whose theoretical correctness they readily ac- 
 cept. And it is also to be remembered that the 
 proper end to be sought in reading is something 
 far more than mere acquirement of knowledge, 
 or attainment of individual culture. A wise or 
 a highly cultured person may be one who has 
 missed the genuine good of reading, quite as 
 effectually as though he were ignorant and un- 
 cultured. The end and aim of all reading should 
 be the proper development of a true and highly 
 personal character, and the utilizing of one's own 
 acquirements in the work of making other men 
 nobler and better than they now are. 
 
 In this end and aim unwise writers and readers 
 manifestly have no share. " Literature," says 
 President Porter, " must respect ethical truth, if 
 it is to reach its highest achievements, or attain 
 that place in the admiration and love of the 
 
19^ The Choice of Books, 
 
 human race which we call fame. The literature 
 which does not respect ethical truth, ordinarily 
 survives as literature but a single generation." 
 But literature which does respect ethical truth 
 is that which survives through the centuries, 
 and which plays its part in the betterment of the 
 world long after the whole face of civilization 
 has changed. He who recognizes hterature of 
 this class, and takes it to his heart, with the 
 resolve to use it as a trust rather than aselfishl}-- 
 hoarded possession, gets the greatest benefit for 
 himself, and brings the greatest advantage to 
 others. The sense of the preciousness and the 
 perpetuity of good books, in their influence on 
 the world through the ages, is one which very 
 many writers have expressed in words of rever- 
 ence. Keats exclaims, in one of his glowing 
 Ivrics: 
 
 Bardn of passion and of mirth, 
 Ye have left your souls on earth ! 
 Have ye souls in heaven too, 
 Double-lived in regions new? .... 
 Thus ye live on high, and then 
 On the earth ye live again ; 
 And the souls )^e left behind you 
 Teach us, here, the way to find you, 
 Where your other souls are joying. 
 Never slumber'd, never cloying. 
 Here, your earth-born souls will speak 
 To mortals, of their little week ; 
 
The True Service of Reading. 197 
 
 Of their sorrows and delights ; 
 Of their passions and their spites ; 
 Of their glor}- and their shame ; 
 What doth strengthen and what maim. 
 Thus ye teach us, every daj', 
 Wisdom, though fled far away. 
 Bards of passion and of mirth ; 
 Ye have left your souls on earth ! 
 Ye have souls. in heaven too, 
 Double-lived in reglous new ! 
 
 " Of all the things which man can do or make 
 here below, by far the most momentous, wonder- 
 ful and worthy, are the things we call books/* 
 says Carlyle. And again Carlyle declares : 
 " Certainly the art of .writing is the most miracu- 
 lous of all things man has devised. Odm's runes 
 were the first form of the Avork of a hero ; books, 
 written words, are still miraculous runes, the 
 latest form ! In books lies the soul of the whole 
 past time ; the articulate, audible voice of the 
 past, when the body and material substance of 
 it has altogether vanished like a dream. Mighty 
 fleets and armies, harbors and arsenals, vast 
 cities, high-domed, many-engined — they are 
 precious, great : but what do they become ? 
 Agamemnon, the many Agamemnons, Pericleses, 
 and their Greece ; all is gone now to some ruined 
 fragments, dumb, mournful wrecks and blocks ; 
 but the books of Greece ! There Greece, to every 
 
198 The Choice of Books, 
 
 thinker, still very literally lives ; can be called up 
 again into life. No magic rune is stranger than 
 a book. All that mankind has done, thought, 
 gained, or been : it is lying in magic preservation 
 in the pages of books. They are the chosen pos- 
 session of men." In The Spectator is this elo- 
 quent passage by Addison : " As the Supreme 
 Being has expressed, and as it were printed his 
 ideas in the creation, men express their ideas 
 in books, which by this great invention of these 
 latter ages may last as long as the sun and moon, 
 and perish only in the general wreck of nature. 
 . . . There is. no other method of fixing those 
 thoughts which arise and disappear in the mind 
 of man, and transmitting them to the last periods 
 of time ; no other method of giving a permanency 
 to our ideas, and preserving the knowledge of 
 any particular person, when his body is mixed 
 with the common mass of matter, and his soul 
 retired into the world of spirits. Books are the 
 legacies that a great, genius leaves to mankind, 
 which are delivered down from generation to 
 generation, as presents to the posterity of those 
 who are yet unborn." Herrick wrote to a friend 
 whom he had commemorated in verse ; 
 
The True Service of Reading, 199 
 
 Looke in my booke, and herein see, 
 Life endless sign'd to thee and me ; 
 We o're the tombes and fates shall flje, 
 While other generations die. 
 
 And Spenser sung in stately lines : 
 
 For deeds doe die, however noblie donna, 
 
 And thoughts do as themselves decay ; 
 
 But wise words, taught in numbers for to runne, 
 
 Recorded by the Muses, live for ay ; 
 
 Ne may with storming showers be washt away, 
 
 Ne bitter breathing windes with harmful! blast, 
 
 Nor age, nor envie, shall them ever wast. 
 
 Milton said in his noble Areopagitica (or plea for 
 the freedom of the press) : " Books are not abso- 
 lutely dead things, but do contain a potency of 
 life in them to be as actiye as that soul was 
 whose progeny they are : nay, they do preserve 
 as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of 
 that living intellect that bred them. I know 
 they are as lively, and as vigorously productive 
 as those fabulous dragons' teeth ; and being sown 
 up and down, may chance to spring up armed 
 men. And yet on the other hand, unless wariness 
 be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good 
 book ; who kills a man kills a reasonable'crea- 
 ture, God's image ; but he who destroys a good 
 book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God 
 as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a bur- 
 den to the earth ; but a good book is the precious 
 
200 Tlie Choice of Books, 
 
 life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treas- 
 ured up on purpose to a life beyond life 
 
 We should be wary, therefore, what persecution 
 we raise against the living labors of public men, 
 how we spill that seasoned life of man preserved 
 and stc red up in books ; since we see a kind of 
 homicide may be thus committed, sometimes a 
 martyrdom ; and if it extend to the whole im- 
 pression, a kind of massacre, whereof the execu- 
 tion ends not in the sla3dng of an elemental life, 
 but strikes at that ethereal and fifth essence, the 
 breath of reason itself, slays an immortality 
 rather than a life." Richard Baxter thought the 
 written word more powerful than the spoken one: 
 " Because God hath made the excellent, holy 
 Avritings of his servants the singular blessing of 
 this land and age ; and many an one may have a 
 good book, even any day or hour of the week, 
 that cannot at all have a good preacher ; I advise 
 all God's servants to be thankful for so great a 
 mercy, and to make use of it, and be much in 
 reading; for reading* with most doth more con- 
 duce to knowledge than hearing doth, because 
 you may choose what subjects and the most 
 excellent treatises you please ; and may be often 
 at it, and may peruse again and again what you 
 forget, and may take time as you go to fix it on 
 
Tfie True Service of Reading, 201 
 
 your mind ; and with very many it doth more 
 than hearing also to move the heart." Coleridge 
 compares books to fruit-trees : -'Itis saying less 
 than the truth to affirm that an excellent book 
 (and the remark holds almost equally good of a 
 Raphael as of a Milton), is like a well-chosen and 
 well tended fruit-tree. Its fruits are not only of 
 one season only. With the due and natural in- 
 tervals, we may recur to it year after year, and it 
 will supply the same nourishment and the same 
 gratification, if only we ourselves return to it 
 with the same healthful appetite." James I^ree- 
 man Clarke closes an excellent chapter on read- 
 ing with these grave words : ** Let us thank God 
 for books. When I consider what some books 
 have done for the world, and what they are 
 doing, how they keep up our hope, awaken new 
 courage and faith, soothe pain, give an ideal life 
 to those whose homes are hard and cold, bind 
 together distant ages and foreign lands, create 
 new worlds of beauty, bring down truths from 
 heaven — I give eternal bles^mgs for this gift, and 
 pray that, we may use it aright, and abuse it 
 never." 
 
 Is it any wonder, then, that John Lyly gave 
 his son this advice: " My good son, thou art to 
 receive by my death, wealth, and by my counsel* 
 
202 The Choice of Books, 
 
 wisdom, and I would thou wert as willing- to 
 imprint the one in thy heart, as thou wilt be 
 ready to bear the other in thy purse : to be rich is 
 the gift of fortune, to be wise the grace of God. 
 Have more mind on thy books, than thy -bags, 
 more desire of godliness than gold, greater affec- 
 tion to die well, than to live wantonly." " The 
 only true equalizers in the world are books," 
 says Dr. Langford ; " the only treasure-house 
 open to all comers is a librar}'- ; the only wealth 
 w^hich will not decay is knowledge ; the only 
 jewel which you can carry beyond the grave is 
 w^isdom." " Books are the best of things, well 
 used," says Emerson ; " abused, among the worst. 
 What is the right use ? What is the one end 
 which all means go to effect? They are for 
 nothing but to inspire." '' In any choice of books," 
 urges James Russell Lowell, " always remember 
 what Milton said, that ' a good book is the life- 
 blood of a master-spirit ;' and also recall the 
 advice of Cato, always to 'keep company with 
 the good.' " 
 
 In a word, every reader may well bear upon 
 his heart, as his guide toward right reading, that 
 motto which one sometimes sees deeply cut in 
 the walls of old churches : " Ad majorem Dei 
 gloriam," — " For the greater glory of God," 
 
INDEX. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Abbott, L)Tnan, cited 167 
 
 About, Edmond, cited i6g 
 
 Adams, Jr., Charles Francis, cited 188 
 
 Addison, Joseph, cited 198 
 
 Alcott, A. Bronson, cited 124 
 
 Allibone, S. Austin, cited 23 
 
 Aristotle, cited 112 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, cited 34, 113 
 
 Art of not reading 64 
 
 of skipping .' 121 
 
 Atkinson, W. P., cited 58, 90, 99, 112, 140 
 
 Authors, Greatness of 102 
 
 Bacon, Francis, cited 60, 99, 112, 122, 125 
 
 Baxter, Richard, cited 200 
 
 Beecher, Henry Ward, cited 57, 88, 163 
 
 Best time to read 45 
 
 Bible, The, cited 7, 99, 154 
 
 Bibliotheque Nationale 10 
 
 Bindings, Economical 180 
 
 Blackwood's Magazine, cited 79 
 
 Boardman, S. L., cited 179 
 
 Bohn's Librarj' translations 130 
 
 Books and diet compared 100 
 
 better without paper covers 178 
 
 Extent of their production 10 
 
 for children — Congdon 170 
 
204 Index, 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Books, Friendliness of 22 
 
 measured by serviceableness 32 
 
 Nutrition in 59 
 
 of reference 89 
 
 Selected list of 33 
 
 Selection of, for libraries 190 
 
 Treatment of, and respect for 180, 181 
 
 Two classes of — Ruskin and Carlyle 29 
 
 • What books to own 163 
 
 What books to read 27 
 
 Boswell, James, cited 173 
 
 Braithwaite, J. B., cited 49, 60 
 
 British Museum 10 
 
 Bui wer, E. Ly tton, cited 95 
 
 Burns, Robert, cited. .". , 10 
 
 Butler, Joseph, cited 35 
 
 Candor of opinion commended 10 
 
 Card-indexes for note-books 93 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, cited 29, 197 
 
 Cato, cited 202 
 
 Channing, William Ellery, cited 25 
 
 Chaucer, Geoffrey, cited 167 
 
 Children and books — Congdon 170 
 
 Training of 13 
 
 Choice of time for reading 56 
 
 Christian Union, cited 155 
 
 Clarke, James Freeman, cited 201 
 
 Classes for reading aloud 159 
 
 Classics and universities 136 
 
 Clubs and reading aloud 150 
 
 Coleridge, S. T., cited 60, 201 
 
 Collyer, Robert, cited 19 
 
 Commonplace-books, Use of 83 
 
 Congdon, Charles T., cited 170 
 
Index. 205 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Cowper, William, cited 11 
 
 Cramming condemned 17 
 
 Intellectual — Spencer 70 
 
 Cultivation of taste 95 
 
 Cutter, Charles A. , cited 187 
 
 De Quinc)% Thomas, cited 32 
 
 Disraeli, Isaac, cited .- 8 
 
 Durfee, Charles A., cited 92 
 
 Economy in reading 47 
 
 Education and libraries 187 
 
 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, cited 37, 102, 127, 130, 177, 202 
 
 on translations ; 130 
 
 Fashion a foe to reading 55 
 
 Feneion, Archbishop, cited 26 
 
 Friendliness of books 22 
 
 Fuller, Thomas, cited 90 
 
 Germans as readers , 51 
 
 Gibbon, Edward, cited 26, 173 
 
 Goschen, G. J., cited 114 
 
 Hale, Edward Everett, cited 18, 66, 160, 190 
 
 Hamerton, Philip G., cited.. .47, 51, 52, 54, 79, 126, 131, 138, 144 
 
 Harrison, Frederick, cited 35. 37, 39, 6i 
 
 Helps, Sir Arthur, cited 168 
 
 Herrick, Robert, cited 198 
 
 Herschel, Sir John, cited 24 
 
 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, cited 168 
 
 Home libraries 173,178 
 
 Homer, Estimate of 41, 44 
 
 Homes, H. A., cited 191 
 
 Homes with and without books 165 
 
 Hovey, W. A., cited 87 
 
 How much to read 57 
 
 to read periodicals 139 
 
 Hugo, Victor, cited 103 
 
2o6 Index, 
 
 PAGR 
 
 Hypocrisy in literature io8 
 
 Idle habits of reading 49, 50 
 
 Imagination, Cultivation of no 
 
 Indexing of note-books 93 
 
 Intellectual compensation — Hamerton 54 
 
 cramming — Spencer 70 
 
 Interruptions in reading 53 
 
 Jacquemont, Victor, cited 51 
 
 Johnson, Samuel, cited 46, 173, 178 
 
 and "backs of books " 173 
 
 Journalism, Literary side of 146 
 
 Keats, John, cited ig6 
 
 Lamb, Charles, cited 175 
 
 Langford, Dr. J. A., cited 174, 202 
 
 Libraries in homes 176 
 
 Location of 191 
 
 mentioned 10 
 
 public. Use of 182 
 
 Library Journal, cited 189, 191 
 
 Literary World, cited 67, 100 
 
 Locke, John, cited ., 58 
 
 Lowell, James Russell, cited 202 
 
 Luther, Martin, cited 69 
 
 Lyly, John, cited 201 
 
 McCosh, Dr., cited 8 
 
 Magazines, Reading of 141 
 
 Memories, Diversities of— Newman 82 
 
 Memor}% Defective— Hamerton 79 
 
 in reading — Porter 77 
 
 Milton, John, cited 9, 63, 199, 202 
 
 Motive of reading 7 
 
 Newman, Cardinal, cited 82 
 
 Newspapers as transient literature 74 
 
 Note-books, Indexing of — Durfee ,0- 93 
 
Index. 207 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Note-books of Alcott"and Emerson 87, 88 
 
 U se of 83 
 
 Nutrition in books 59 
 
 Obscurity in poetry 115 
 
 Pattison, Mark, cited 75 
 
 Payn, James, cited 106 
 
 Pendleton, A. M., cited 191 
 
 Periodicals, How to read 138 
 
 recommended by F. B. Perkins 140 
 
 Perkins, F. B. , cited 10, 140 
 
 Petrarch, cited ". 23, 61 
 
 Poetr)^, Chapter on no 
 
 Obscurity in 115 
 
 Reading of — Atkinson 112 
 
 Porter, Noah, cited 77, 78, 98, no, 113, 142, 195 
 
 Potter, Bishop, cited . . .9, 68, 98, 149 
 
 Quick, R. H., cited 73 
 
 Read not too much at a time 67 
 
 Reading aloud and reading clubs 149 
 
 Art of not 64 
 
 Best time for 45 
 
 Economy in 47 
 
 Habit, The I2 
 
 How much to read 57 
 
 made attractive 17 
 
 Motive of 7 
 
 of poetry — Atkinson Ii2 
 
 Rules of — R. W. Emerson 28 
 
 Taste for 24 
 
 True service of ... 195 
 
 Reed, William B., cited 88 
 
 Remembering what one reads 76 
 
 Re-reading 69 
 
 Ruskin, John, cited ,.. ....17, 29, 167 
 
2o8 Index. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Saturday Review, cited i ig 
 
 Schopenhauer, Arthur, cited 63 
 
 Scudder, Horace E., cited 145 
 
 Self-training 18 
 
 Shairp, Principal, cited 116 
 
 Shakespeare, cited 28 
 
 Sham admiration in literature — Payn 106 
 
 Shelley, Percy B., cited 113 
 
 Simcox, Edith, cited 16 
 
 Skipping, Art of 121 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, cited 13, 70 
 
 Spenser, Edmund, cited igg 
 
 Stedman, E. C, cited. 12 
 
 Stewart, Dugald, cited 58 
 
 Taste, Cultivation of 95 
 
 for reading 26 
 
 Thoreau, Henry David, cited 29 
 
 Time, The best, for reading 45 
 
 Town libraries "^^ 192, 194 
 
 Translations, Use of 129 
 
 True service of reading 195 
 
 Use of note-books 83 
 
 of public libraries 182 
 
 of translations F29 
 
 Waller, William, cited 24 
 
 Ware, Mary C, cited 47 
 
 What books to own 163 
 
 to read 27 
 
 Whately, Bishop, cited 125 
 
 White, Richard Grant, cited .149 
 
 Women, Literary work for 155 
 
 Wordsworth's purity of style 117 
 
 Wittenbach, Daniel, cited 46 
 
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