The Book-Hunter at Home Part 7

'Did you notice?' said Jones.

'Yes,' said Smith; 'he evidently doesn't know much about oriental music.'

'But he will by to-morrow,' replied the astute Jones. 'As soon as ever he gets to his rooms to-night, he'll read up everything he possibly can on Indian music, and he'll continue in the Library to-morrow. By dinner-time he'll be stuffed full of tom-toms and shawms and dulcimers, or whatever they play in India.'

'We must ride him off,' said Smith. 'How about Chinese music? He won't know anything about that.'

This seemed such a promising topic that they got out the encyclopaedia and found to their joy that there was quite a lengthy and learned disquisition on the subject. So they read it again and again, even learning the more abstruse sentences by heart. Next day they were observed to chuckle whenever they caught each other's eye, and at lunch they were unusually cheerful and more than ordinarily attentive to the unsuspecting Brown.

That night at dinner they could hardly restrain their impatience, and Smith introduced the topic, rather clumsily, as soon as the fish appeared. Brown stared at them and said nothing. Jones, plucking up courage, presently asked him a question about the dominant fifth of the scale used by the natives of Quang-Tung. He answered evasively. They could hardly conceal their delight, and their voices rose so that presently the whole table was looking at them. At some of their recondite utterances Brown fairly winced, and it soon became evident to all what was afoot. Upstairs in the common-room they pursued their unhappy victim.

The senior tutor and the dean, secretly enjoying the fun, stood near. At last, flushed with victory, Jones proceeded to administer the _coup de grace_.

'You really ought to read something about Chinese music, Brown, it's a most interesting topic, and I'm sure you'd like to be able to talk about it. There are quite a number of good books on the subject. For a start you couldn't do better than study the article in the "Encyclopaedia Academica." It's clear and concise, evidently written by a man who knows what he's talking about.'

'I _have_ read it,' said Brown patiently; 'in fact I--er--_wrote_ it, _but I'm afraid it's quite out of date now_.'

We are not all the lucky possessors of such a capacity for acquiring knowledge. Wide reading may be good from an educational point of view, but unless we are able to a.s.similate what we read better a thousand times to restrict our reading. Gibbon's advice is bad, for it indicates merely the system he employed in compiling his monumental work. 'We ought not,'

he remarks, 'to attend to the order of our books so much as (to the order) of our thoughts.' So, in the midst of Homer he would skip to Longinus; a pa.s.sage in Longinus would send him to Pliny, and so on.

General reading upon this plan, with no idea of collection in view, would in time reduce most of us to idiocy.

Let our reading be, above all things, well ordered and systematic. Let us imitate Ancillon rather than Gibbon. Ancillon never read a book throughout without reading in his progress many others of an exegetic nature; so that 'his library table was always covered with a number of books for the most part open.'[31] An excellent habit, provided that we can resist the temptation to be side-tracked. The list of books by this industrious student, however, shows by their curious variety that he at least was not sufficiently strong-minded to resist wandering, during the compilation of his historical works, in the byways of literature.

If we read the good solid books at all, let us at least read them with the aim of acquiring the maximum amount of information they afford. To read sketchily and diversely is not only a most painful waste of time, but it abuses our brains. Suppose now that our bookman has decided to 'read up' the French Revolution, a subject to which we all turn at some period of our lives. He has been led thereto, perhaps, by having lighted upon a translation of someone's memoirs, the recollections of some insignificant valet-de-chambre or dissolute cure (for such memoirs abound), more interesting by reason of its piquancy than its historical accuracy. He reads of persons and events that he recollects vaguely to have heard of before, and so he goes on and on.

At the end, he has an ambiguous and temporary knowledge of names and events. He has become acquainted with certain facts that he may possibly remember; such as that the name of the French King was Louis and that his Queen was Marie Antoinette, that they tried to escape and got as far as Varennes (_wherever that may be_), but were brought back and executed; that there were various politicians named Mirabeau, Danton, Robespierre, Desmoulins, and a curious party called the Girondins, et cetera. As to the causes which led up to the Revolution, the condition of the country and people, the ministry of Turgot, the characters of the King and Queen, Necker's policy, the Abbe Sieyes, the Tennis Court, the composition of the a.s.sembly, and the host of essential facts, his knowledge is precisely _nil_. The terms Right Centre, Extreme Left, the Jacobins, the White Terror, a.s.signats, Hebertists and Dantonists, the Montagnards, the Old Cordelier, are so much 'Hebrew-Greek' to him. At the end of six months he will not be at all sure whether it was Louis XIV., XV., or XVI. who was beheaded.

Surely his reading of these dubious memoirs has been a most mistaken course and a lamentable waste of time? He has gained nothing that has benefited him intellectually, and he has loaded his mind with an indigestible hotch-potch of uncla.s.sified information. How then should he have approached the subject? Obviously he should have begun at the threshold, or rather at the outer gate. To plunge straight away into Louis Blanc's twelve volumes or Lamartine's 'History of the Girondins'

would be as great a mistake as the reading of the unprofitable memoirs. A good beginning is half done. So, having prepared the way by a short study of the economic condition of France immediately prior to the Revolution, that he may readily understand the causes of that event, let our reader begin with some elementary school text-book which will give him a short and concise view of the Revolution as a whole. Having laid the foundations he will confine himself at the outset to works in his own tongue; choosing his literature for each succeeding phase of the Revolution in turn. But until he has obtained a thorough groundwork and has acquired sufficient knowledge to enable him to explore the more famous works in French, it were profitless to devour the sc.r.a.ps afforded by dubious memoir writers.

If we read three books consecutively on any one subject, we know not merely three times as much as if we had read one only, but thirty times.

And our knowledge of the subject will not be vague, inaccurate and fleeting, but it will be concise, accurate and permanent. To acquire a correct and lasting knowledge of any subject, whether it be an event or an epoch of history, a science or an art or craft, it is essential that we read consecutively and comparatively as many books upon that subject as our opportunities and time allow. It should also be borne in mind that if we are content to read one volume only, it is quite possible that we may chance upon an author who is inaccurate or biased, or whose work does not represent the latest stage of our knowledge upon that subject.

FOOTNOTES:

[20] J. H. Burton.

[21] Mr. Frederic Harrison.

[22] Mr. Frederic Harrison.

[23] P. G. Hamerton.

[24] Richard of Bury (lived 1281-1345).

[25] M. Octave Uzanne.

[26] Mr. A. L. Humphreys.

[27] Mr. Frederic Harrison.

[28] Mr. A. L. Humphreys.

[29] There is no doubt that Burton was largely indebted to Payne for his 'translation'; indeed he is said merely to have paraphrased and rearranged the version which Payne had just previously prepared for the Villon Society, adding explanatory notes of a character which renders it essential that his edition be kept under lock and key. It was issued to subscribers by Burton himself in London (though ostensibly 'by the Kamashastra Society at Benares'), being printed, and probably bound, by Brill at Leyden. The Kamashastra Society was a myth. The ten volumes (1885-6) were sold to the subscribers at ten guineas the set, and the entire edition (1000) was subscribed for before publication. (_Ex inform_: E. H.-A., one of the original subscribers and a friend of Burton.) Six volumes of _Supplemental Nights_ were issued by Burton between 1886 and 1888. A set of the sixteen volumes now costs about forty pounds. It was reprinted (by H. S. Nichols) in 1894, in twelve volumes, only slightly expurgated, the present price being about twelve pounds. A supplementary volume of ill.u.s.trations was issued with this last edition.

[30] Mr. Frederic Harrison.

[31] Isaac Disraeli.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER IV

CHIVALRY AND ROMANCE

'Mekely, lordynges gentyll and fre, Lysten awhile and herken to me.'

HUE DE ROTELANDE.

ONCE upon a time, long long before the Venerable Bede had completed that famous last chapter in his cell at Jarrow, there lived in the ancient capital of Sampsiceramus, a holy man named Heliodorus. Now in his youth Heliodorus (as is not uncommon with the young) had turned his thoughts to worldly things; and being of a romantic nature, wearied by the eternal sameness of the books available to him, had conceived the extraordinary notion of writing an untrue book, a book that should never instruct or point a moral or show you where you are wrong, but should be all joyousness and enchantment. Possessed with this great idea, timidly yet sure of himself, he set to work.

The very first thing he did was sufficiently startling for those days.

Instead of selecting some great man for his central figure and putting his dialogue into the mouths of learned men, fathers of the church, philosophers, orators, or famous poets, he chose deliberately a young and handsome man of no particular learning, and--a woman! It was unheard of!

A book, a voluminous roll closely written, containing nothing but the adventures of a pair of lovers! Monstrous! Yet it was done at last, and the roll, finding favour in the eyes of a bosom friend, was quickly pa.s.sed from hand to hand. All were entranced by it. Here was a book that had characters one could understand, for whom one could even feel affection. The loves of das.h.i.+ng young Theagenes and his dear Chariclea found an echo in many a youthful breast.

Meanwhile Heliodorus disappears from view, and for many years we hear nothing of him until suddenly he reappears as a bishop in Thessaly! Now comes the sequel to his audacious design, but for which it is doubtful if we should ever have heard of him. A synod was convened, and Heliodorus was condemned _because in his youth he had written a novel_. He was given his choice between bishopric and book, to retain the one he must destroy the other by word as well as by deed.

At first sight the choice appears not difficult to make, for although so laical and original a work had proved to be popular, yet such popularity was hardly of a nature to appeal to so devout a Christian as one who had already attained episcopal rank. But to Heliodorus his work (which may well have been the employment of some years) stood for all that he held most dear. It was his conception of the ideal in worldly--as opposed to spiritual--life. Less austere, perhaps, than many of the fathers of the early Church whose works had seemed so tedious to him in his youth, his devoutness was tempered largely with a charity and forgiveness that were not unworthy of his creed. It was impossible to deny those principles of chivalric virtue and chast.i.ty which his novel preached, so he chose to stand by his book rather than by his benefice, and quitted Thessaly.

So runs the pleasing tale of Nicephorus. But alas! the relentless voice of modern research will have it that the real author was not the bishop at all, but a Sophist who lived in the third century of our era. Be it as it may, I for my part shall go on believing the old romantic tale until a better one is invented for the Sophist.

The work itself is called 'Ten Books of Aethiopian History,' for the first and last scenes are laid in Egypt, but it is better known by the name of its hero and heroine. Its popularity was immense, and it was soon translated into 'almost all languages.' Later Pere Amyot published a version in French for Francis I., who was so delighted with the result that he made the translator abbe of Belozane. Racine tells us it was this ancient romance that first fired his imagination with the desire to write. His tutor discovered him absorbed in its contents, and s.n.a.t.c.hing it from his hand angrily consigned it to the fire. Racine bought another copy, which suffered a like fate. But so strong a hold upon him had the story, that he purchased a third, and devoured it in secret, offering it to his master with a smile when he had thoroughly mastered its contents.

It seems that this ancient Greek romance was lost for many centuries. At the sack of Buda in 1526, however, a ma.n.u.script of it was discovered in the royal library, where it had once formed part of the vast library ama.s.sed by Matthias Corvinus, the great King of Hungary. Matthias is said to have 'spoken almost all the European languages,' so doubtless he had pa.s.sed many a pleasant hour with the tale. This ma.n.u.script (others have since been discovered) was printed at Basel 'in officina Ioan Hervagii'

in 1534, a small quarto printed with Greek types.[32]

That the early romances of chivalry possess a charm for the book-collector it is impossible to deny. They are 'a series of books,'

writes Mr. John Ormsby, 'which, complete, would be a glory to any library in the world; which, in first editions, would now probably fetch a sum almost large enough to endow a college; and which ... . is perhaps ... . as worthless a set of books as could be made up out of the refuse novels of a circulating library.' Times without number they have been derided and decried, even in the days when they were popular. The curate of La Mancha was not the only one who disapproved of them. 'In our fathers tyme,' wrote old Roger Ascham, judging the flock by a few black sheep, 'nothing was red, but bookes of fayned cheualrie, wherein a man by redinge, shuld be led to none other ende, but onely to manslaughter and baudrye.' Possevino, a learned Jesuit and famous preacher of the sixteenth century, used to complain that for the last five hundred years the princes of Europe had read nothing but romances. Rene d'Anjou listened to his chaplain inveighing against Launcelot, Amadis, and the romances of which he was particularly fond; but, says Villeneuve, while respecting the preacher for his boldness, the king continued to read them, and even composed new volumes in imitation of them.[33]

Full of monstrous fictions some of these ancient stories undoubtedly are.

It were foolish to expect that all of them should attain the high level of those great legends which centre about the Holy Grail. Good things have ever been imitated indifferently; and it was only the later series of tales which had to do chiefly with enchantments and fairies and 'giaunts, hard to be beleeved.' But alas! all alike have come under the ban of those who decry reading for recreation's sake. Good and bad have been d.a.m.n'd indifferently. One cannot help wondering however that so much has been written against them, and that so many have been at pains to point out their unreasonableness. One would have thought that the very fact of them _all_ abounding with incidents that are not only impossible but preposterous, would have given these critics pause, and have urged them to ask themselves why and wherefore such things were repeated.

To anyone possessed of imagination the answer, of course, is obvious. The better tales all had the exaltation of the chivalric spirit in view, and sought to achieve this end by allegory as well as by parable. He must be a dullard indeed who fails to understand their symbolism. Malory, describing the entry of Tristram into the field, wishes to impress upon us the fact that he was indeed a 'preux chevalier, sans peur et sans reproche,' the model of a Christian knight; so he mounts him on a white horse and arrays him in white harness, and he rides out at a postern, 'and soo he came in to the feld as it had ben a bryght angel.' Doubtless those to whom understanding has been denied would argue hotly as to whether there is any authority for a knight painting his armour white.

What sane man, reading 'The Faerie Queene,' could think that it purported to depict actual scenes or incidents? Yet time and again the 'sheer impossibility' of these stories has been urged in condemnation of them.