What a pity it is that Lord Iddesleigh should waste
his abilities on politics. Whenever he talks about anything else, he is a charming speaker, full of dry wit and anecdote, of pleasant discursiveness, and of apt quotation, all marked with a certain wise tolerance of mind, which recalls, at whatever dis- tance, old Montaigne. His speech on Tuesday as Lord Rector of Edinburgh University on desultory reading was a model in its way. The central thought was, perhaps, a little thin, being this, that it is not desultory reading which injures so much as careless or purposeless reading ; but he took his hearers for a pleasant excursion all through English literature, lighted up his subject with scraps from the finest writers, and decorated periods which were only too literary and smooth, with gentle witticisms like this :—" A man may not be able to make himself a poet, and (aside) I am sure we would all join in praying that he may never try." It is, of course, impossible to condense a speech, the essence of which is desultoriness ; but to its conclusion that the one corrective for desultory reading is to give it a centre, to have one subject amidst it all that you really study and care about, we can give the heartiest support. The subject may even be a small one ; but it will tie all mental efforts together as the bits of straw tie the mud in a good brick.
Previous page
