The Book-Hunter at Home Part 5

The farther we go, the wider the fields which open to our view, and there is interest for us in all of them. We roam at our pleasure over vast fields of literature, digressing here and there just as our fancy takes us. There is no danger, moreover, in being side-tracked, for such divagations in the realms of bibliography as we may make will serve but to increase our knowledge of books in the right direction. The only risk that we shall incur is that of becoming specialists, which is precisely what we should most desire.

And how delightful are these digressions in the world of books! There is no other occupation in which one may wander so innocuously. In most of the learned professions digressions are fatal to success. Anthony Despeisses was a lawyer who used frequently to digress. Beginning one day in Court to talk of Ethiopia, an attorney who sat behind him remarked 'Heavens! He is got into Ethiopia, he will never come back.' Despeisses, we are told, was so abashed with the ridicule that he chose rather to leave off pleading than to correct himself of this unfortunate habit, and quitted the Bar for ever. Doubtless he found solace among his books, for here at least he could digress to his heart's content.

Although, from a worldly point of view, side-tracks are fatal to success, yet they are as necessary a part of our literary education as is the application to study itself. Without digressing as we applied ourselves to books, narrow indeed would be the views that we acquired. Of what value is a vast acquaintance with the material details of a war, if we are ignorant as to the causes which brought it about, or the reasons why the nations were warring? 'Ah yes,' perhaps you may exclaim, 'but politics and history are all one, for the former creates the latter.'

Precisely: so that in order to obtain a knowledge of the one, we must deviate to the other. Sharon Turner in his 'History of England during the Middle Ages' pa.s.ses abruptly from the death of King Henry the Second to the military spirit of Mohammedanism, from the Troubadours to the early dissipations of King John, and devotes two of his five volumes to the Literature of England with copious examples of early poetry. It is all history, yet how indispensable are the side-tracks.

It is a subtle art, however, this knowledge of how and when to digress, and not easy to be learnt. Gerard de St. Amand died of grief in his middle age because Louis XIV. could not bear his reading of a poem on the Moon, in which he praised the King for his skill in swimming. On the other hand Madame de Stael obtained almost all the material for her literary work by a consummate skill in directing the digressions of conversation. Upon whatever subject her pen was engaged, that was the theme to which she led all talk.

Sir Thomas Browne's famous letter 'To a friend upon occasion of the death of his intimate friend' is a masterpiece of the art of digressing. Surely it is one of the quaintest letters of condolence ever written, if indeed it were ever intended to be such, for it has that stamp of careful literary composition which is usually so apparent in all letters written with a view to publication. The friend in question died of a consumption, and Sir Thomas recapitulates his disease, symptoms and death; contrasting each feature with the celebrated examples of history; moralising and discussing the opinions of the ancients upon these points as he goes along; and showing by his own experience that a man 'after a cough of almost fifty years, in whom all the lobes adhered unto the Pleura,' might yet die of stone in the bladder. Doubtless the friend to whom the letter was indited was highly edified by the aged doctor's learning, yet one cannot conceive that he would be greatly consoled by being informed, when discussing the patient's cough, that 'in cetaceous Fishes, who have large and strong lungs, the same is not observed; nor yet in oviparous Quadrupeds.' Digressing in this manner is a risky business, and if the grief were still fresh, it is more than likely that the bereaved one would exclaim 'A fig for your fishes, Sir.' But Sir Thomas was a wise and worldly man, and would know from experience precisely when to administer his soothing draught.

The attractions of digressing are far more insidious than would appear at first sight. It is so easy, one finds such delightful things, it is all in the daily task of gathering knowledge, it may be useful to us some day, and so on. But, unwisely employed, it is a more terrible thief of time even than Young's 'procrastination.' Worse still, it is a _waster_; for the sc.r.a.ppy knowledge so often acquired by this means becomes invariably the 'little learning' which is so dangerous--and useless--a thing. So that unless we are strongly imbued with the spirit of scholarly research, determined that we will not deviate one iota from the particular side-track which we are exploring, we are in grave danger of becoming lost in the maze of paths. Digressions in conversation and books can be of immense value, but he must be a man of iron will who can utilise to permanent advantage his resources in this direction. Constant and purposeless digressions, in reading no less than in talk, are just as injurious as interruptions. The mind is switched from one subject to another, and an entire sequence of reasoning which we may have been building up by the study of some days is destroyed in a few moments by the opening up of an unexplored tract of thought.

For many years there was a learned man at work in one of our ancient abbey libraries, cataloguing the ma.n.u.scripts and monastic charters of the ancient foundation. Their number runs into many thousands, and at the outset the Keeper[17] realised that if this task of providing an index and precis of the entire collection (which would be of incalculable value to the historical students who came after him) were to be accomplished in his lifetime, it would be necessary to adhere rigidly to his plan. Any deviation, however slight, would mean the loss of valuable time. To the historian and antiquary such a determination must have cost more than we can imagine; for every now and again he came across some charter of great historical interest. 'Ah,' he would sigh, reading it through, 'and now I suppose you must go back again into the obscurity in which you have lain for eight hundred years.' He quietly made his precis, indexed the doc.u.ment, and replaced it in the oaken press. There, thanks to his labours, it will be turned to at some future date to add laurels to the 'researches' of another man.

Perhaps the most innocuous way in which we may digress is by compiling one of those delectable literary hotch-potches known as 'commonplace books.' Here, with careful selection, we may garner those delightful thoughts, those gay conceits or pithy stories, that strike our fancy as we read. And though perhaps it may be urged that such collections resemble a casket of loose jewels plucked from their settings, yet they are jewels none the less. We may store all our collections within one cover, or we may preserve separately our extracts from the poets, our biographies, our meditations, or our anecdotes.

The first 'commonplacer' of whom I have seen mention was one Photius, a colonel in the Life Guards at Constantinople during the ninth century, or--as he was then called--Protospatharius. Later he became amba.s.sador to the court of Baghdad, and amused himself by compiling a volume which he called _Myriobiblon_, a collection of extracts of the authors which he had read. He was a man, we are told, of extraordinary vigour of mind, and of encyclopaedical knowledge, and he was so devoted to reading that he pa.s.sed whole nights without sleep. Accordingly we are not surprised to find that the Myriobiblon, with its Latin translation, forms a folio volume of some 1500 pages. When on an emba.s.sy to a.s.syria, he carried his library--some 300 rolls--with him, presumably on camels. Thus, we suppose, he could bestride his dramatic camel, his poetic camel, or his theological camel as the mood took him. The Myriobiblon was compiled merely as a handbook for his brother Tarasius, that the latter might enjoy a brief synopsis of what the amba.s.sador read on his travels.

Several authors are now known only by the extracts in this book; and among them may be mentioned a writer named Conon, who is said to have written fifty novels, which Photius condensed to his liking. All this, of course, was merely _pour pa.s.ser le temps_; the really important works of this bookworm being a lexicon and a number of books on theology. Needless to say in due course he became Patriarch of Constantinople.

Who nowadays keeps a commonplace book? Doubtless a good many readers of to-day have neither time nor inclination to indulge this pleasing fas.h.i.+on, at one time so popular; but to anyone whose delight is the reading of good books as opposed to modern novels, there can be no more interesting amus.e.m.e.nt.

It can be a risky thing, however, this commonplacing, and he would be a bold man who dared to a.s.sign unto any one writer a popular phrase for no other reason than that this one has first expressed it in writing. There is no new thing under the sun, and by continued expression a familiar maxim becomes at last a proverb. Ask at a dinner-table who first wrote 'G.o.d tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.' The knowing ones will puzzle their brains in silence; some lady with religious tendencies will claim it for the Holy Writ, inclining towards Isaiah; but the quiet bookish man at the end of the table will smile in a superior way, and offer to wager that he can name the author. You may safely accept his bet, for it is a hundred pounds to a penny that he will proclaim Laurence Sterne to have written it--he may even quote the context. Granted that Sterne did write it, but Sterne was a widely-read man and a plagiarist of no mean ability.

So you may ask the bookish man how he doth account for this saying occurring in that quaint collection of 'Outlandish Proverbs' ent.i.tled 'Jacula Prudentum,' by Master George Herbert, compiled _from ancient sources_ full a hundred years before the birth of the 'Sentimental Journey.'[18]

Sometimes in ancient literature one comes across an expression which is in the vocabulary of everybody to-day, and one realises how very ancient some of these popular aphorisms must be. 'It is not alle golde that glareth,' wrote Chaucer, and the same theme was sung in Provencal by Amanieu des Escas near a hundred years before. But, like 'A bird in the hand,' it is so applicable to the failings to which mankind is p.r.o.ne, that its origin must surely have been far beyond even the cla.s.sics of the old world, back in the dim ages of man's history. Common also to all nations must some at least of these primitive sayings be, for there is a primaeval simplicity about them that knows nothing of race or civilisation. 'A soft answer turns away wrath,' 'Pride goes before a fall,' 'Spare the rod and spoil the child,' are not all these and many others, collected by King Solomon from the wisdom of the East, as applicable to our everyday life in this age as they have ever been in the whole history of mankind?[19] Enough of moralising, however; or else, convinced of the futility of attempting to a.s.sign originality to any man, you will come to agree with the young lady of fifteen who, priding herself on the possession of a literary _flair_, once remarked to the writer: 'In fact there is little doubt that Junius never wrote the letters attributed to him at all!'

FOOTNOTES:

[14] Usually the precentor was also archivist and librarian.

[15] In one monastery, however, they were allowed to speak 'pa.s.sing soft.' We know that 'pa.s.sing soft!'

[16] 'Nunquam minus solus quam c.u.m solus.' Alfonso d'Este (born 1476) had it carved on the mantelpiece of his study at Belvedere.

[17] Dr. E. J. L. Scott of Westminster Abbey, sometime Egerton Librarian of the British Museum. He calendared no less than 57,000 doc.u.ments at the Abbey, but alas! a long life was insufficient to enable him to complete his task. The whole working portion of his latter years was spent in the muniment room, and it was there that he was seized with the illness which ended his life the same day (1918). The work which he accomplished (now being ably continued, on the lines which he laid down, by his successor, the present Custodian of the Abbey) has been utilized by scholars from universities all over the world. However busily employed, he was always ready instantly to lay aside his work in order to a.s.sist a student over some difficult point, whether of history or palaeography.

[18] Edition of 1651, 12mo, page 52. 'To a close shorne sheep, G.o.d gives wind by measure.' First printed in _Witts Recreations_, 1640. Sterne might have reflected that it is not usually the custom to shear _lambs_.

Since the above was written, a correspondent has brought to the writer's notice a sixteenth century French version:--_Au brebis tondue, dieu donne le vent par mesure._

[19] It is curious to note how some of these famous sayings have been wrongly a.s.signed. A recently published _Dictionary of Quotations_, a.s.signs Scipio's famous dictum, 'A man is never less alone than when he is alone,' to Swift--a slight error of some nineteen centuries. W. C.

Hazlitt in his _Book-Collector_ makes an even more delightful howler, tracing the well-known verse in Ecclesiastes (xii. 12): 'Of making many books there is no end ...' etc., 'back at least to the reign of Elizabeth' (_sic_), a.s.signing it to a preacher at Paul's Cross in 1594.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER III

BOOKS WHICH FORM THE LIBRARY.

'He that walketh with wise men shall be wise.'-- PROVERBS xiii. 20.

IT is one of the tragedies of the book-collector's life that he is made aware continually of the deficiencies of his collection. Every bookseller's catalogue that he takes up reveals these lacunae; and even after many years of diligent book-hunting, when he can look upon his library with no small pride and has come to regard it as being more or less complete (for his own purposes, that is), some intimate friend to whom he is displaying his treasures will ask to see some well-known book, and he will be obliged to confess that he does not possess a copy. The reason probably is either that he has collected books upon no definite system, or that he has lost sight of the many works which his library should contain, through having confined himself too rigidly to specialism.

Both practices are bad, though the former is infinitely the worse. To collect books indiscriminately tends to develop the dread bibliomania. To specialise in a particular cla.s.s of books should be the object of every collector; but to adhere so rigidly to that one cla.s.s of literature as to exclude from our library the great books of the world, is to deprive ourselves of all the advantages which a library can offer. 'There are some books, as Homer, Virgil, Horace, Milton, Shakespeare, and Scott, which every man should read who has the opportunity; should read, mark, learn and inwardly digest. To neglect the opportunity of becoming familiar with them, is deliberately to sacrifice the position in the social scale which an ordinary education enables its possessor to reach.'[20] What a number of famous names one can add, without which no library worthy the name can be complete! We are not all such sages as that great man Philip Melanchthon, whose library is said to have consisted of four authors only, namely, Plato, Pliny, Plutarch, and Ptolemy the geographer. But then, these are whole libraries in themselves.

Who, beside ourselves, shall decide what we shall read? 'A man's reading, to be of any value,' wrote Professor Blackie, 'must depend upon his power of a.s.sociation; and that again depends upon his tendencies, his capacities, his surroundings, and his opportunities.' But there are some authors whom the world has decided are great, whom we cannot possibly afford to neglect in the course of our literary education. There can be no doubt as to our decision here; and although it has been said truly that 'a lifetime will hardly suffice to know, as they ought to be known, these great masterpieces of man's genius,'[21] yet these great cla.s.sics should form the nucleus of our library, and to them we may add the other famous and approved books of the world as opportunities occur.

It is not without diffidence that I venture to approach this important question as to what we should read. Perhaps there is nothing more irritating to the real book-lover than to be told, usually by some well-meaning person, that he or she should read this or that. In nine cases out of ten the book or author recommended is one that we can safely afford to neglect. It is one of the commonest of human failings to imagine that a book which pleases us must necessarily please all others too, and we recommend it blindly to the first friend we come across, regardless of age, disposition, intellectual capacity, opportunity, surroundings, or even s.e.x. It never even occurs to us to consider these matters, these vital qualities upon which the whole question of like or dislike depends.

'To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven'; and again, 'A wise man's heart discerneth both time and judgment,' wrote the Preacher of Judah. Yet mindful though we be of these ancient words of wisdom, how rarely do we apply them to our everyday reading! If we be in the mood for reading we pick up any book at random; if it please us at the moment, we continue to read it. If it be distasteful to us, we put it aside immediately. Possibly we recollect, next time that our eyes light upon a volume so discarded, that it was once displeasing, and we never take it up again. So, it may be urged, our mind exercises the power of selection for us: we can only absorb at any given time the cla.s.s of literary food for which our mind then happens to be hungry.

But the truth is far otherwise. If we take up and read a book at random, in nine cases out of ten we continue to read it simply because it entails no mental effort. We do not have to think of what we are reading; our eyes gallop over sentence after sentence, and so long as the language is colloquial and the facts are bald, all is well, and we can go on and on.

It is not only the body that, unchecked, is inclined to be slothful.

Unless we have as complete a control over our minds as we have over our limbs, it is quite impossible that our reading shall benefit us to its full extent.

There is another point of view also. 'Every book that we take up without a purpose is an opportunity lost of taking up a book with a purpose.'[22]

And this does not mean that we should always be reading 'improving'

books, that we must never read for recreation alone; for, I repeat, 'there is a time to every purpose under heaven.' But it does insist most emphatically that there should be a rhyme and a reason for reading any book at any time. There is a time for work and a time for play in reading no less than in the daily cycle of our lives. As to what shall const.i.tute recreative reading, that is a matter which every man must decide for himself. I will venture to prophesy, however, that, by judicious selection and thoughtful reading, there will come a time when he will consider the reading of the great books to const.i.tute the finest mental recreation in the world.

To return, however, to the great writers, those giants of whom we have said that it behoves us all to know something at least. Must we read them all? Let us leave 'must' out of the question; for our lifetime, however long it may be, will be scarcely sufficient to know and appreciate to the full these great masters of human thought. Yet at least it can be our aim ever to feed our minds only upon food of the finest quality and of a permanent nutritive value. But alas! How terribly limited are our capacities both as regards time and opportunity! How narrow the bounds which confine our reading abilities! Though a list of the great writers contain all the const.i.tuents of an Epicurean feast, yet to most of us it resembles the menu of a Gargantuan banquet.

As to the cla.s.sics of the old world, surely, it may be urged, in such an essentially practical age we can afford to neglect books so hopelessly out of date? Yet there can be no greater mistake than to imagine that the wisdom of the old world can ever be out of date, for it is the wisdom that has created the civilisation of the newer world. Countless generations of men may pa.s.s away and be utterly forgotten, but the principles of morality inherent in man's nature will endure for ever. And it is these great principles of all that is good and n.o.ble in our nature that is brought out and developed insensibly by the study of the cla.s.sics in our youth. Moreover they are books that have been accepted by all the nations of Europe as containing the bases of human thought. Something at least we should all know of these great writers common to all civilised nations.

To most of us, however, there is an insurmountable barrier surrounding them, the matter of language. The knowledge of Greek and Latin that we acquired at school has become painfully rusty. Is it worth while slogging away laboriously with grammar and dictionary at the expense of valuable time which might otherwise be devoted to the more modern cla.s.sics in our own tongue? Candidly, it is not. If we have retained sufficient of our Greek and Latin to read it at sight with but an occasional reference to the dictionary well and good; but otherwise it is a painful waste of time. Hamerton recommends that we read the ancients with the help of literal translations beside the original, in which way, he says, we 'may attain a closer acquaintance with ancient literature than would be possible by translation alone.' But to many, an English version must be the only door by which they may enter Attica and Rome.

After all, it is for each one of us to decide how widely our time and opportunities shall permit us to wander on the slopes of Mount Parna.s.sus.

'The best time-savers are the love of soundness in all we learn to do, and a cheerful acceptance of inevitable limitations.'[23] Yet it is better to have wandered on the lowermost slopes of the mountain than never to have entered ancient Greece at all.

Who nowadays, outside the universities, reads these ancient cla.s.sics?

Where will you find a business man of thirty years of age whose delight in his leisure time is the reading of Horace or Homer? Here and there, perhaps, you may come across a man of cla.s.sical education who still retains the love of ancient Greece and Rome, instilled into him in his youth, sufficiently to influence the course of his reading; but he is a rarity indeed. Among the many thousands of young men employed in business in the great cities, most of whom have learnt something at least of the cla.s.sics in their youth, scarcely will you find one who will confess to having time for such literature. Yet all these thousands read many books each year, and can always find time to devour the latest popular novel.

It is chiefly a question of recreation _versus_ education. Tired and jaded with the day's business, the young man of to-day has little inclination to devote his leisure time to study. Light frothy literature removes his thoughts from worldly cares, and by a complete change of subject stimulates a mind that has been enervated by concentration for hours on one particular theme. No effort is required, and, more important still, _it does not make one think_.

For daily reading in the train or over meals, with this purpose always in view, so far so good. But what of the many hours of leisure in every man's life, when no mental recreation is needed? What does the average man read then? It must be confessed that in nine cases out of ten his literature remains precisely the same. Doubtless the reason is simply because, having always been accustomed to reading the same kind of books, he knows no other sort. Mention Shakespeare, Milton, Sh.e.l.ley, and he stares at you aghast. 'Good gracious,' he exclaims, 'I'm not going to read stuff like that; I should get the hump for a week; give me something cheerful.' And he picks up 'The Bauble,' by Mrs. Risquet Trashe.

And he is quite right. To anyone whose literature has consisted for years of nothing but novels of the circulating library type, a sudden application to the great writers would indeed be depressing. Is it necessary, however, or indeed wise, that any man's mental pabulum should consist entirely of novels? Nothing is further from my mind than to decry the taste for novel-reading; for, wisely employed, novels can become one of the joys of life. One can but agree with Miss Austen when she inveighs, in 'Northanger Abbey,' against those who belittle the productions of the novelist. But would she have been so emphatic had she lived to witness the printing-presses spouting forth that frothy flood which effervesces round the more serious writings of to-day? Would that every novel we take up had the delightful 'genius, wit, and taste' of Jane Austen to recommend it. How few and far between are the really good novels that we read!

There can be no finer recreation for a tired mind than a good novel.

There is, however, one habit of reading which has become almost a social evil; and that is the habit of reading newspapers which many indulge in, morning, noon, and night. It is difficult to imagine anything more calculated to destroy consecutive and considered thought than the enormous variety of inconsequential topics that a.s.sails one every time one opens a newspaper. The mind becomes completely fuddled with the heterogeneous patchwork of entirely useless information. The only method I have discovered by which one can acquire the important news and yet retain the serenity of one's mind is that of having such news only as she knows will be of use read out by one's wife at breakfast. And this does not mean that the mental discomforts of the newspaper are relegated to one's better-half, for women are usually interested in the smaller details of everyday life.

No wonder that a large number of 'city men' live out their lives without ever opening a book that is worth reading meditatively; for newspaper-reading in course of time must completely undermine one's mental stability. After a few years, a book that is not composed of headlines, short chapters, small paragraphs and ejaculatory sentences, is unreadable without mental effort. So that long before he is middle-aged the city man has acquired the habit of 'glancing at' a news-sheet or magazine whenever he has nothing to do for a few minutes: a kind of reading that is about as advantageous to the mind as that which we indulge in when fingering the antique periodicals in the dentist's waiting-room. In later years he may or he may not overcome the repugnance he has acquired to anything deep or 'solid' (by which he generally means 'unparagraphed'): but I venture to think that, having once taken the plunge, there must be moments when he marvels at his foolishness in not having entered, years before, the City of the golden streets.

Perhaps it is unwise to use the word 'education' in speaking of the benefits to be derived from reading the great books, for to many people the term is synonymous with 'school,' where one is obliged frequently to do things against one's will. Good books, that is the books that 'live,'

are no mere education, they are steps up the path of civilisation itself.

They are just as necessary for the advancement of knowledge as are the letters and numerals which we learnt at school. The greatest books of the world do _not_ teach us; _they help us to teach ourselves_, a very different matter. 'They are masters who instruct us without rod or ferule,' wrote an early book-lover[24]; 'if you approach them they are not asleep; if you inquire of them they do not withdraw themselves; they never chide when you make mistakes; they never laugh if you are ignorant.' And the books which would be available to him would be chiefly the works of the Early Fathers, professedly books of moral instruction.