MARGINAL COMMENTS
BY MONICA REDLICH
0, Sir, sit down upon a set—they are better thou nothing," said Sterne after finishing the first five volumes of Tristram Shandy. Few phrases could so generously suggest that a book might have other merits, other uses, than the purely academie. We are all judges of literature, in these educated days : and it is a characteristic charm of our critical standards that a book's merits vary with every person who gets hold of it. To some people Tristram Shandy might be so much furniture : a stool, or a door-stopper, or a certificate of wide reading to put up in a prominent place. To one man a book may be poetry, to another a mat for hot plates—books have many uses in the home which their_ publishers ignore, in spite of Samuel Butler's immortal, memoranda. For some readers, a novel is a social obligation (" Everyone's reading it, madam"). For others it is a drug, or a happy release, or a task (" I must try and finish it,") or a present for Auntie (" Yes, but stockings would be cheaper,") or simply More Rubbish (" Why must you clutter up the house so, Walter ? "). For many it is mere routine—part of the morning's shopping, like the butcher's book, or the grocer's ; when they take a new novel from the library ' shelf, they ask the assistant if they have read it before. For nine people out of ten, in fact, judging a book on its merits comes suspiciously near to providing unconscious' judgement upon themselves: There is no need for speech, in this kind of. criticism we can give ourselves away without saying a word. To watch anyone handle a book is to learn in a moment.
things which you might not discover- in a whole day's conversation. " A fool," said Blake, " sees • not the same tree that a Wise man secs." A fool hardly sees a' book at all, as a tangible object : which I think maybe the reason for turned-down pages, slipped wrappers, thumb-marks, and other such indignities. But even the wise men see books differently, each according to his own preoccupations. The typographer turns from margins to title-page, from wrapper to spine, with entirely different interests from those of the no less meticulous scholar. The scholar, with his gentle fingers and fond, speculative eyes, is a whole world away from the pedant, whose fingers itch for the index, the appendix, and the chance misprint. Each of these gives the book his own merits. The only person who gives books no merit at all is the student ; every book is either one which lie supposes lie ought to read or one he will never have leisure for, and he hates them accordingly.
But the most finished performers of all are the people. who handle a book before, it is published. Each with delicate grace plays the part assigned to him, and you could never, for the fraction of a second, mistake one of them for another. The author, reverently touching his first-born child, has nothing in common with the publisher who thumps it thoughtfully on his table and wonders how much money he is going to lose—nothing in common, that is, except the book. The literary editor, giving it out for review, can contrive to suggest by the merest droop of his wrist that the book he is holding is utterly unimportant and only his kindness allows it a notice at all. The reviewer, receiving it, will instantly tear up a lot of small pieces of paper, open the book, and insert them here and there in its pages on some formula of his own. Much has been written in the last few weeks about the functions of criticism, of reviewing, of the new reading public, and so forth. Well, here is some more ; and if anybody can derive any cogen4 arguments from it, he is heartily welcome.
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