men in the world. This bibliomania seizes hold of rational beings and so perverts them, that in the sufferer's mind the human race exists for the sake of the books, and not the books for the sake of the human race. There is one book they might read to good purpose the doings of a great book collector who once lived in La Mancha. To the collector, and sometimes to the scholar, the book becomes a fetich or idol, and is worthy of the worship of mankind, even if it cannot be the slightest use to anybody. As the book exists, it must have the compliment paid it of being invited to the shelves. The "library is imperfect without it," although the library will, so to speak, stink when it has got it. The great books are of course the common books, and these are treated by collectors and librarians with sovereign contempt. The more dreadful an abortion of a book the rare volume may be, the more desperate is the struggle of libraries to possess it. Civilization in fact has evolved a complete apparatus, an order of men and a code of ideas for the express purpose, one may say, of degrading the great books. It suffocates them under mountains of little books, and give the place of honor to that which is plainly literary carrion.

Now I suppose, at the bottom of all this lies that rattle and restlessness of life which belongs to the industrial maelstrom wherein we ever revolve. And connected therewith comes also that literary dandyism which results from the pursuit of letters without any social purpose or any systematic faith. To read from the pricking of some cerebral itch rather than from a desire of forming judgments; to get, like an Alpine club stripling, to the top of some unscaled pinnacle of culture; to use books as a sedative, as a means of exciting a mild intellectual titillation, instead of as a means of elevating the nature; to dribble on in a perpetual literary gossip in order to avoid the effort of bracing the mind to think - such is our habit in an age of utterly chaotic education. We read, as the bereaved poet made rhymes

"For the unquiet heart and brain,

A use in measured language lies;
The sad mechanic exercise,

Like dull narcotics, numbing pain."

We, for whom steam and electricity have done almost everything except give us bigger brains and hearts, who have a new inven

tion ready for every meeting of the Royal Institution, who want new things to talk about faster than children want new toys to break, we cannot take up the books we have seen about us since our childhood: Milton, or Molière, or Scott. It feels like donning knee breeches and buckles, to read what everybody has read, that everybody can read, and which our very fathers thought good entertainment scores of years ago. Hard-worked men and overwrought women crave an occupation which shall free them from their thoughts and yet not take them from their world. And thus it comes that we need at least a thousand new books every season, whilst we have rarely a spare hour left for the greatest of all. But I am getting into a vein too serious for our purpose: education is a long and thorny topic. I will cite but the words, on this head, of the great Bishop Butler: "The great number of books and papers of amusement which, of one kind or another, daily come in one's way, have in part occasioned, and most perfectly fall in with and humor, this idle way of reading and considering things. By this means time, even in solitude, is happily got rid of, without the pain of attention; neither is any part of it more put to the account of idleness, one can scarce forbear saying, is spent with less thought than great part of that which is spent in reading." But this was written exactly a century and a half ago, in 1729; since which date, let us trust, the multiplicity of print and the habits of desultory reading have considerably abated.

A philosopher with whom I hold (but with whose opinion I have no present intention of troubling you) has proposed a method of dealing with this indiscriminate use of books, which I think is worthy of attention. He has framed a short collection of books for constant and general reading. He put it forward "with the view of guiding the more thoughtful minds among the people in their choice for constant use." He declares that, "both the intellect and the moral character suffer grievously at the present time from irregular reading." It was not intended to put a bar upon other reading, or to supersede special study. It is designed as a type of a healthy and rational syllabus of essential books, fit for common teaching and daily use. It presents a working epitome of what is best and most enduring in the literature of the world. The entire collection would form, in the shape in which books now exist in modern libraries, something like five hundred volumes. They embrace books both of ancient and modern times, in all the

five principal languages of modern Europe. It is divided into four sections: poetry, science, history, religion.

The principles on what it is framed are these: First it collects the best in all the great departments of human thought, so that no part of education shall be wholly wanting. Next it puts together the greatest books, of universal and permanent value, and the greatest and the most enduring only. Next it measures the greatness of books not by their brilliancy, or even their learning, but by their power of presenting some typical chapter in thought, some dominant phase of history; or else it measures them by their power of idealizing man and nature, or of giving harmony to our moral and intellectual activity. Lastly, the test of the general value of books is the permanent relation they bear to the common civilization of Europe.

Some such firm foothold in the vast and increasing torrent of literature it is certainly urgent to find, unless all that is great in literature is to be borne away in the flood of books. With this we may avoid an interminable wandering over a pathless waste of waters. Without it, we may read everything and know nothing; we may be curious about anything that chances, and indifferent to everything that profits. Having such a catalogue before our eyes, with its perpetual warning,— non multa sed multum,- we shall see how with our insatiable consumption of print we wander, like unclassed spirits, round the outskirts only of these Elysian fields where the great dead dwell and hold high converse. As it is we hear but in a faint echo that voice which cries:

"Onorate l'altissimo Poeta:

L'ombra sua torna, ch'era dipartita."

We need to be reminded every day how many are the books of inimitable glory, which, with all our eagerness after reading, we have never taken in our hands. It will astonish most of us to find how much of our very industry is given to the books which leave no mark, how often we rake in the litter of the printing press, whilst a crown of gold and rubies is offered us in vain. Complete. From the original text as it was read before the London Institution and published in the Fortnightly Review, April 1st, 1879.

JOHN HAWKESWORTH

(c. 1715-1773)

HE Adventurer, which gave Hawkesworth his place among classical English essayists, was founded by him in 1752. He had Johnson, Bathurst, and Warton for coadjutors, but of the one hundred and forty numbers which appeared, seventy-six are attributed to Hawkesworth himself. He is highly praised by the author of the "Readers' Handbook," and in his own generation the Archbishop of Canterbury made him a LL.D. for his essays. A single one of them, however, will be sufficient to illustrate both the Johnsonian style and the moral ideas of the others. Hawkesworth was born in London about 1715. He began life as apprentice to a clockmaker, but getting a similar place in an attorney's office, he found opportunity to develop his taste for books. When in 1744 Dr. Johnson ceased compiling (or composing) his remarkable parliamentary reports for the Gentleman's Magazine, Hawkesworth succeeded him. In 1761 he edited Swift's works and published a volume of "Fairy Tales.» In 1773 he published three volumes of the papers of Captain Cook, for editing which the English government paid him £6,000. His work was severely criticized, however, and it is said that his death (November 17th, 1773) was hastened by his abnormal sensitive

ness.

IT

ON GOSSIP AND TATTLING

Μισω μνημονα Συμπότην.

-Greek Proverb.

"Far from my table be the telltale guest."

T HAS been remarked that men are generally kind in proportion as they are happy; and it is said even of the devil, that he is good-humored when he is pleased. Every act, therefore, by which another is injured, from whatever motive, contracts more guilt and expresses great malignity, if it is committed in those seasons which are set apart to pleasantry and good-humor, and brightened with enjoyments peculiar to rational and social beings.

Detraction is among those vices, which the most languid virtue has sufficient force to prevent; because, by detraction, that is not gained which is taken away: "He who filches from me my good name," says Shakespeare, "enriches not himself, but makes me poor indeed": as nothing, therefore, degrades human nature more than detraction, nothing more disgraces conversation. The detractor, as he is the lowest moral character, reflects greater dishonor upon his company than the hangman; and he whose disposition is a scandal to his species should be more diligently avoided than he who is scandalous only by his office.

But for this practice, however vile, some have dared to apologize, by contending that the report by which they injured an absent character was true: this, however, amounts to no more than that they have not complicated malice with falsehood, and that there is some difference between detraction and slander. To relate all the ill that is true of the best man in the world would probably render him the object of suspicion and distrust; and if this practice were universal, mutual confidence and esteem, the comforts of society, and the endearments of friendship would be at an end.

There is something unspeakably more hateful in those species of villainy by which the law is evaded than in those by which it is violated and defied. Courage has sometimes preserved rapacity from abhorrence, as beauty has been thought to apologize for prostitution; but the injustice of cowardice is universally abhorred, and, like the lewdness of deformity, has no advocate. Thus hateful are the wretches who detract with caution; and while they perpetrate the wrong, are solicitous to avoid the reproach: they do not say that Chloe forfeited her honor to Lysander, but they say that such a report has been spread, they know not how true. Those who propagate these reports frequently invent them, and it is no breach of charity to suppose this to be always the case, because no man who spreads detraction would have scrupled to produce it, and he who should diffuse poison in a brook would scarce be acquitted of a malicious design, though he should allege that he received it of another who is doing the same elsewhere.

Whatever is incompatible with the highest dignity of our nature should indeed be excluded from our conversation. As companions, not only that which we owe to ourselves, but to others, is required of us; and they who can indulge any vice in the