MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
ISUPPOSE that, if one wishes to make a success of life, it is necessary to string the bow of ambition with the single gut of concentration. People who have two or three strings to their bow are apt to become absent-minded, and may forget from time to time that it is their business for every hour of the day to push and pull. Yet I have observed that the single-string individuals, although often most successful, although frequently becoming knights or baronets, may, by their very concentration, be exposed to sudden defeat. Their will-power hardens into obstinacy, and great calamities may assail them, as happened to Pentheus as well as to Woodrow Wilson. On the other hand, if it be the full and coloured life that one desires, and not the apparatus of power and fame, then the larger number of strings one can have in reserve the better will one be enabled to cope with the vicissitudes of fortune. It might be averred that, in this most competitive world, it is necessary to be taut-minded, even narrow-minded, if material success is to be won ; and that conversely, if happiness be the aim of one's philosophy, then the butterfly rather than the weevil should be taken as an example. I remember being told by a wise and happy old man that one of his secrets had been to read for at least half-an-hour in every day some book that had no connection with his political career, no connection with the studies on which he was also engaged, no connection with the purely literary pursuits of his spare hours. When I feel myself to be seriously overworked, when a slight giddiness of time-pressure assails me, I rush to detective novels. But in the ordinary conditions of my tread- mill life I am always accompanied, in bus or underground, by a little green or red book from the valuable library of Dr. Loeb. There are, I suppose, some five hundred of these handy little translations, and when I read them as the bus lumbers on towards Westminster or Fleet Street I forget all about the Politburo, Dr. Malik, His Excellency Salah-ed-Din, Mr. Malan, the Inland Revenue, and the desecration of Berkeley Square. I am away in the dust and chatter of Athens or of Rome.
* * * * The food and drink with which we are wont to celebrate the birthday of Our Lord induce, about December 28th, when this tonic article will appear, a sense of lassitude, even of remorse. It is on that Friday that we begin to formulate the rules of abstinence that will render the year 1952 a turning-point in our lives. I suggest to those who consider that each new year should be marked by the surrender of something pleasurable the bright idea that virtue would be equally served if on January 1st, 1952, we all decided to add to our 1951 habits a new nice habit, such as taking a little book around with us and reading bits of it at odd moments. The book selected must have nothing whatsoever to do with our own profession or occupations ; it must be as incidental, as haphazard, as the moments at which we are able to read it ; above all, it must be so detached from current worries as to transport us in space and time. It must be easily pocketable and not demand too much attention. We should use as a book- mark, since this will constantly be required, an agreeable picture postcard, one that either illustrates the better works of God, such as a group of iris stylosa, or the better works of man, such as Palladio's Teatro Olimpico at Vicenza. We should have a pencil ready in order to mark the passages that strike us, and to compose on the fly-leaf a personal index for future reference. Thus equipped it matters not to us whether the moments we find for such reading are intermittent. Back the little book slips into the pocket as we climb the escalator out into the mist and rattle of the Tottenham Court Road.
* * * * You will be asking what type of book I recommend for such intermittent reading. Clearly, it must not be one that demands too great intensity of attention or one that, in reviewers' parlance, we are "unable to put down." It should not be a continuous narrative or story, since, if constantly interrupted in our reading. we are apt to forget what happened before and to confuse the characters. Poetry, especially modern poetry, is excellent for the purpose, since it is immaterial to remember the preceding passages, and the book can be opened at any page and enjoyment result. Diaries and journals should offer the ideal material for such snatched moments, since they are themselves intermittent ; the trouble is, however, that they are so seldom published in pocketable form. Boswell's books are almost perfect for the purpose, and can or could be obtained in the Everyman Library ; Oliver Wendell Holmes and Emerson are not to be recom- mended, since they invite slumber ; Amiel and Novalis are not to be recommended since they invite gloom ; travel books are too long and heavy ; biographies can only seldom be obtained in the small shape desired. If my suggestion for a New Year's resolution for 1952 be adopted by any reader, I advise him to visit some well-stocked bookshop armed with the book-tolieris presented to him by his family, and to ask for the shelf con- taining the "World's Classics" series. These books, legible though they be, could almost slip into a waistcoat pocket. They are the ideal size and weight for books to be read during bus journeys or in the Underground. And they cover a wide range.
During the last few months I have been accompanied in all my ways by Plutarch, who, as Shakespeare kncw, is the cheeriest of all companions. There are eleven little volumes of the Lives in the Loeb edition and six volumes of the Moralia which are almost equal fun. What I enjoy so much about Plutarch is that he indulges in no nonsense about dialectical materialism or deter- minism; events are decided by the intelligence or valour of individuals. It is easy to skip his tiresome comparisons between the characters of his heroes ; easy to forgive the evident fact that events are over-simplified and virtues and vices pictured as over life-size. But what a relief it is to get away from scientific history, with all its fuss about strains and responses, with all its depressing insistence upon hidden economic tides, and to return to a world in which live men and women hold the centre of the stage, dis- playing their stylised virtues, as it were, in pantomime or masque. One of the many charming things about Plutarch is his amazing zest. "I began the writing of my ' Lives,' " he confesses in the introduction to his Timoleon, "for the sake of others, but I find that I am continuing the work and delighting in it now for my own sake also, using history as a mirror and endeavouring in a manner to fashion and adorn my life in conformity with the virtues therein depicted." I am aware that this didactic attitude and purpose is reprehensible in a biographer, who should not seek to teach or preach. But how Plutarch revelled in the moral maxims with which he celebrates virtue rewarded, or vice bring- ing retribution in its train. "Oh! Oh! " he exclaims with Sophocles, " Pheu! Pheu! What greater joy than this can be obtained! " Then back he swings into some dramatic story, whether it be Alcibiades chasing his quail in the Assembly, or Lucullus routing Tigranes as the dust rose 'between the river and the plain.
The exacting standards set by Plutarch in the matter of austerity and courage might depress us when travelling in the Underground, were it not that his ridiculous gullibility restores our self-est eem. He really did believe that Numa held frequent personal interviews with Jupiter ; that Crassus ought to have retired into private life when his small son stumbled on the steps of the Temple of Juno ; that Cassius ought to have aban- doned all idea of murdering Caesar from the moment when his lictor handed him his wreath the wrong way up ; that it was a fatal sign if bees settled on the standard, or if the arm of any officer suddenly broke out in a perspiration of oil of roses. Yes. Plutarch is the best of all incidental companions.
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