Mr. J. R. Byrne, writing to Friday's Times from Upper
Norwood, maintains that the true test of reading-power,- reading-power, that is, in the sense of being able to read to yourself for enjoyment,— is the power to read well aloud; and asserts that the recognised test of proficiency in reads ing in Germany is the excellence of the reading aloud. Nevertheless, we have known a great many well-read men,— men to whom reading was the meat and drink of life,—who could not read aloud even respectably, who read aloud so that you hardly understood their meaning, and this though some of them could speak admirably. And we quite agree with those persons whom Mr. Byrne treats with such contempt, that good elocutional reading aloud, though an excellent faculty (when it is not abused, as it too often is, by insisting on reading aloud to people who, perhaps very justly, hate to be read aloud to), is only a luxury of education, and by no means an essential to anybody. To read fluently and easily to yourself, that is everything. To read aloud is the gift of the few, and not un- frequently entails suffering on the many.
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