THE VARIOUS USES OF BOOKS.
SIR JOHN LUBBOCK'S wonder, as expressed in his lecture of last Saturday at the Working-men's College, that so little care is given to the selection of books to read, is certainly quite well justified, if one is to regard them only as subjects of genuine study, and not also as equivalents for experience,—a sort of imperfect reflection of the world as it was or is. But in the latter light it is by no means essential that a book should be exactly good, so long as it reflects pretty accurately the ignorance, and prejudices, and errors of the world which it delineates. We want to know something not only of the best men and women living, but of a fair assortment of common- place men, narrow-minded men, bad men, and even wicked men, so far as we can know what they are like without contagion to ourselves. And so, too, with the same limitations, we want to know not only a good deal of the best books, but something substantial of very second-class or third-class books, if without knowing these we should be in danger of living in an unreal world, and not amongst the often blundering, prejudiced, angry, superstitions, and feeble creatures who people the actual earth. It will be said, of course, that it takes a good book to give a true conception of very inferior people ; that without Dickens's genius we should never have known what Fagin and his young thieves were like, and that without Cobbett we should never have known adequately the prepossessions of a shrewd, thorough-going John Bull of the early part of this century, with little reverence, and no power of entering into characters higher than his own ; in other words, that it takes a good book to give a faithful picture even of vice, ignorance, and prejudice. To a certain extent that may be granted. We should certainly never know as we do the commonplace people in the country-houses of the English gentry of our Southern counties, as they existed at the opening of this century, without Miss Austen. We should not know the meeting-ground of middle-class and aristocratic society during the later years of the last century as we do, without Miss Burney. But it is a mistake to suppose that people who cannot travel far for themselves,—and however far we may travel for ourselves, there are none of us who can for ourselves travel back into the past,—gain no experience from reading inferior books which they could not gain in a better form from reading books of the highest genius. If you have the gift for it, and do not spend too much time on it, you gain from a hasty perusal of many inferior books a far better impression of what the average man feels and thinks, than you can gain from the study of the most brilliant pictures of inferior persons. It is delightful to know the Dodger and Charley Bates. It is not delightful to know the ordinary young thief. You gain from Dickens a good deal of misleading impression as to the life of the actual young thief, which experience would not confirm. And so, too, a large knowledge of the second-rate books of any period, the books which are forgotten as soon as they are read, probably furnishes a better equivalent for a wide experience of the world than a thorough knowledge of the first.rate books. No book- knowledge will give an adequate equivalent for experience ; but certainly you learn more of the dusty levels of life from a wide superficial knowledge of the books which are destined to be forgotten, than from a thorough mastery of the books destined to be immortal. Of course, the real advantage of these latter
books is, that beside experience, and experience of a valuable kind, they give you what is above your own experience,—flashes of imagination, of insight, of vision, which no experience of your own would give you, which you could get only by real access to the minds of great men, to very few of which any one man can possibly have the chance of access half as easy as the access he has to the best books. That is matter of course.
All we want to insist on is that one gains less as well as more, by knowing a few great books, than one gains by knowing a great many inferior ones. One does gain a very great deal more by great books than one could ever gain by knowing all the inferior books that were ever written ; but one gains less, too. By the commonplace books we gain real experience of common humanity as it was and is ; by the great books we gain a very much more taking and brilliant experience of common humanity, than ordinary life would verify. Doubtless, to the man who can roam far and wide, actual experience of men is much better than the wearisome experience gained through second and third-rate books. But in the absence of direct experience, a large superficial knowledge of second-rate literature is a much better substitute for experience, than could be obtained with- out it. If you gaze at the world only through works of genius, even if they be such works as Tbackeray's, the world will seem much more interesting, much more clearly outlined, much more intelligible, in short, than it really is. To know the opaque mass of humanity, you must see it not only through works of genius, but also through either a wide experience of men and manners, or a wide survey of works of no genius. For example, people who do not read the daily papers are often greatly to be envied. They may read what is much more calculated to impress their minds with ennobling hopes and enduring trusts ; but they hardly know the common round of English life, with its dingy uniformity of colour, only broken here and there by an influx of grander forces, as it really is.
So much by way of protest against Sir John Lubbock's rather one-sided view of the mischief of miscellaneous reading. Still, what he says in his interesting lecture is absolutely true, so far as the aim of reading is not merely to gain experience, but to open intercourse with minds of the largest and most piercing vision ; so far as we seek books to inspire us, and not merely tools to help us to a better knowledge of the world. But on Sir John Lubbock's list of books approved by the consent of a considerable number of readers' experience, we are inclined to put this question,—How can an average experience be of much use as a guide to individual experience ? Average experience only gives us, what Mr. Galton's photographic camera gave, when made to receive in succession a considerable number of individual faces,—a sort of average of humanity. Now, no one man can be properly educated by conformity to a standard gathered from the average taste of others. We wish Sir John Lubbock had told us exactly, so far as he really could, what his own favourite books to the number of a hundred, or even fifty, are. That would have been really instructive. We hold that for every separate man, the select books which he reads most fondly, should be quite separate. We always regard such remarks as Isaac Barrow's on books, as not a little unreal :— " He that loveth a book will never want a faithful friend, a whole- some counsellor, a cheerful companion, an effectual comforter." Now, a favourite book is not a friend. You are fond of it, but it is not fond of you. It is much less than a friend, but also not a little more. It does not spring proposals upon you as friends do. It is warranted not to startle. You know perfectly the kind of thing you will find there, though you often find more, and some- times, perhaps, a little less, than you had expected to find. It does not feel hurt, if you weary of it and close it. It does not insist upon its own view, and controvert yours. Whether it is a wholesome counsellor or not, depends altogether on whether you like works which show you your weaknesses, or only those which help you to feel your strength. Whether it is an effectual com- forter or not, depends on whether or not its drift is comfort or irony,—an answer to doubt or a stimulus to doubt. All this sort of language about books seems to us conventional. Books are favourites when they refresh and inspire, not when they counsel and comfort. If the present writer, for instance, made a list of his favourite books, how surprised some of his friends would be! Very high on his list would stand Grimm's " Volksmiihrchen," —not Grimm's "Popular Tales," because some prime favour- ites, the old monkish legends, are seldom rendered in the English versions. Now, what is the charm of a book like that? If it is to be called a faithful friend, certainly it is not so even in the sense in which a dog or a bird is a faithful friend. It gives no sign of attachment. It obtrudes no remonstrance. It tenders no sympathy. It simply gives a delightful picture of the naiveté and childlikeness of the medireval world. The simplicity of the tales of wonder, the shrewdness and weirdness, with the singularly simple wisdom, of the stories of Death, Satan, and the Saints, are of a kind which fascinate the mind in this sceptical century, and refresh it with the picture of a very primitive humour and a very primitive con- science. As Arnold says of Wordsworth, not very truly, but as we can say of Grimm's " Volksmithrchen " with perfect trnth,--
" The cloud of mortal destiny, Others will front it fearlessly, But who like him will put it by ? "
That is what we very often want of a book, to put by "the cloud of mortal destiny." And that is what Homer, and Hero- dotus, and Grimm's " Volksmithrehen " alike give us,—a com- plete refreshment of spirit. In such writers we find once more the old, childlike attitude of man, without missing his noble aspirations, his inextinguishable curiosity, and his awestruck recognition of the heavens above and the hell beneath him. Again, take a very different book, which probably a great number of our readers have never read, Cardinal Newman's " Callista." That which makes " Callista " so refreshing to the present writer is its wonderful restoration of the age in which Christianity was struggling with the Roman paganism, and giving men at once new life and a new indifference to death. To the mind of any one who has fully enjoyed that book, it is a book not to read once, but year after year, with an ever-growing sense of obligation. It does not, indeed, restore to us the de- light with which a renewed vision of the childlike stage in man's growth always fills us, as do the great imaginative works of the ages of legend, and the stories of marvel in the Middle Ages. But it makes us see as no other work of fiction has ever made us see, what Christianity had to do in the age of the martyrs, and -what it really did. In fact, it brings before our eyes the inward 'significance of the greatest of the historical tragedies in the whole Story of our race. In a lesser degree, such stories as Sir Walter Scott's " Abbot " or "Old Mortality" do us just the same kind of service. They give us some impression of the inner life of the great dynastic and religious conflicts of past times, and suggest something of what they meant to the hearts of those vAio were the chief actors. We cannot regard even the greatest of Shakespeare's plays as offering the same kind of refreshment. No greater work than Hamlet was ever produced by the human intellect ; and Hamlet, no doubt,—with many others of Shake- speare's plays,—is a great resource whenever the mind is at its highest point of energy. But then its imaginative flight is too independent of real conditions to render it possible that we ihould follow it with the ease with which we follow the creations that fill up known historical conditions—that vivify the well-marked testimony of history. And even these great books are not counsellors, not comforters, not friends. They -are stimulants and tonics to the feeble imagination of man, and enable us to connect in some way the present with the past,—or, what is still more difficult, and requires a higher energy for which we are only now and then adequate, they enable us to connect the present with the future. But the best of books are resources, not friends,—resources which, if properly used, open our eyes, nerve our imaginations, stir our sympathies, and some- times, though comparatively rarely, shame our supineness and our miserable ambitions. But in any case, the books to love and cherish are not those which give us the largest measure of -knowledge, but those which awaken the activity of our truest self.
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