To read, and yet so to read that we see nothing but a corner of literature, the loose fringe, or flats and wastes of letters, and by reading only deepen our natural belief that this island is the hub of the universe, and the nineteenth century the only age worth notice, all this is really to call in the aid of books to thicken and harden our untaught prejudices. Be it imagination, memory, or reflection that we address-that is, in poetry, history, science, or philosophy-our first duty is to aim at knowing something at least of the best, at getting some definite idea of the mighty realm whose outer rim we are permitted to approach.

But how are we to know the best; how are we to gain this definite idea of the vast world of letters? There are some who appear to suppose that the "best" are known only to experts in an esoteric way, who may reveal to inquirers what schoolboys and betting-men describe as "tips." There are no "tips" in literature; the "best" authors are never dark horses; we need no crammers" and "coaches" to thrust us into the presence of the great writers of all time. "Crammers" will only lead us wrong. It is a thing far easier and more common than many imagine, to discover the best. It needs no research, no learning, and is only misguided by recondite information. The world has long ago closed the great assize of letters, and judged the first places everywhere. In such a matter the judgment of the world, guided and informed by a long succession of accomplished critics, is almost unerring. When some Zoilus finds blemishes in Homer, and prefers, it may be, the work of some Apollonius of his own discovering, we only laugh. There may be doubts. about the third and the fourth rank; but the first and the second are hardly open to discussion.

The gates which lead to the Elysian fields may slowly wheel back on their adamantine hinges to admit now and then some new and chosen modern. But the company of the masters of those who know, and in especial degree of the great poets, is a roll long closed and complete, and they who are of it hold ever peaceful converse together. Hence we may find it a useful maxim that, if our reading be utterly closed to the great poems

of the world, there is something amiss with our reading. If you find Milton, Dante, Calderon, Goethe, so much "HebrewGreek" to you; if your Homer and Virgil, your Molière and Scott, rest year after year undisturbed on their shelves beside your school trigonometry and your old college text-books; if you have never opened the "Cid," the "Nibelungen," "Crusoe,” and "Don Quixote," since you were a boy, and are wont to leave the Bible and the Imitation1 for some wet Sunday afternoon-know, friend, that your reading can do you little real good. Your mental digestion is ruined or sadly out of order.

No doubt, to thousands of intelligent educated men who call themselves readers, the reading through a Canto of "The Purgatorio," or a Book of the "Paradise Lost," is a task as irksome as it would be to decipher an ill-written manuscript in a language that is almost forgotten. But, although we are not to be always reading epics, and are chiefly in the mood for slighter things, to be absolutely unable to read Milton or Dante with enjoyment, is to be in a very bad way. Aristophanes, Theocritus, Boccaccio, Cervantes, Molière are often as light as the driven foam; but they are not light enough for the general reader. Their humor is too bright and lovely for the groundlings. They are, alas! "classics," somewhat apart from our everyday ways; they are not banal enough for us; and so for us they slumber "unknown in a long night," just because they are immortal poets, and are not scribblers of to-day.

When will men understand that the reading of great books is a faculty to be acquired, not a natural gift, at least not to those who are spoiled by our current education and habits of life? Ceci tuera cela,2 the last great poet might have said of the first circulating library. An insatiable appetite for new novels makes it as hard to read a masterpiece as it seems to a Parisian boulevardier to live in a quiet country. Until a man can truly enjoy a draught of clear water bubbling from a mountain side, his taste is in an unwholesome state.

And so he who finds the Heliconian spring insipid should

1 The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis.

2 This will kill that.

look to the state of his nerves. Putting aside the iced air of the difficult mountain tops of epic, tragedy, or psalm, there are some simple pieces which may serve as an unerring test of a healthy or a vicious taste for imaginative work. If the "Cid," the "Vita Nuova," the "Canterbury Tales," Shakespeare's "Sonnets," and "Lycidas" pall on a man; if he care not for Malory's "Morte d'Arthur" and the "Red Cross Knight"; if he thinks "Crusoe" and the "Vicar" books for the young; if he thrill not with "The Ode to the West Wind," and "The Ode to a Grecian Urn"; if he have no stomach for "Christabel" or the lines written on "The Wye above Tintern Abbey," he should fall on his knees and pray for a cleanlier and quieter spirit.

The intellectual system of most of us in these days needs "to purge and to live cleanly." Only by a course of treatment shall we bring our minds to feel at peace with the grand pure works of the world. Something we ought all to know of the masterpieces of antiquity, and of the other nations of Europe. To understand a great national poet, such as Dante, Calderon, Corneille, or Goethe, is to know other types of human civilization in ways which a library of histories does not sufficiently teach. The great masterpieces of the world are thus, quite apart from the charm and solace they give us, the master instruments of a solid education.

TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION AND PRACTICE IN WRITING

1. What is the character of the general reading done by the students of your college? 2. Discuss the possibility of finding time in a busy college life to read some of the great books. 3. What plea can be made for reading the current books? For a discussion of this phase of reading, which is a reply to Harrison's views, look up Balfour, A. J., The Pleasures of Reading. 4. What is to be said about general reading as a substitute for the curriculum?

SOME HINTS ON READING1

JAMES BRYCE

[For note on author see page 219. This selection was originally an address to the students of Rutgers College, in October, 1911.]

It has been often said that books do for us to-day what universities did in earlier ages. The knowledge that could five centuries ago have been obtained only from the lips of a teacher, can now be gathered from the printed page. Nevertheless, since it is only the most active and most diligent and most discerning minds that can dispense with the help and guidance of teachers to show them what to read and how to read, universities and colleges are scarcely less useful if not quite as indispensable to-day as they were before the invention of printing. It is, therefore, not unfitting that in your college I should be asked to talk to you about books, the way to choose them, and the way to draw most profit from them. The very abundance of books in our days-a stupefying and terrifying abundance has made it more important to know how to choose properly and judiciously among them if one is not to spend as much time in the mere choice as in the use. Here you have the help of your professors. But here you are only beginning the process of education which will go on during the rest of your life. By far the largest part of that process will, after you have left college, consist in your independent reading, so the sooner you form habits of choice and methods of use, the better.

The first piece of advice I will venture to give you is this: Read only the best books. There are plenty of them, far more than you will ever find time to read, and when they are to be had it is a pity to waste time on any others.

You may ask what I mean by the best books. Passing by for the moment those which in each of the great world-languages we call its classics, for to these we shall return presently, I mean 1 Reprinted by permission from University Addresses, The Macmillan Co.

by the best those from which you receive most, and can carry most away, in the form either of knowledge or of stimulation. When you want to learn something about a subject, do not fall upon the first book which you have heard named or which professes by its title to deal with that subject. Consult your teacher, or any well-read friend, or the librarian of the nearest public library. (One of the greatest services public libraries render is that they provide librarians usually competent, and I believe always willing, to advise those who apply to them.) Be content with nothing less than the very best you can get. Time will be saved in the end.

There is no waste more pitiable than that so often seen when some zealous student has, for want of guidance, spent weeks or months of toil trying to obtain from a second- or third-rate book what he might have found sooner and better in a firstrate one. So try to read only what is good. And by "good" you will not suppose me to mean what used to be called "improving books," books written in a sort of Sunday School spirit for the moral benefit of the reader. A book may be excellent in its ethical tone, and full of solid information, and yet be unprofitable, that is to say, dull, heavy, uninspiring, wearisome. Contrariwise, a book is good when it is bright and fresh, when it rouses and enlivens the mind, when it provides materials on which the mind can pleasurably work, when it leaves the reader not only knowing more but better able to use the knowledge he has received from it.

Seventy years ago people, or at least those who used then to be called the preceptors of youth, talked as if there lay a certain virtue in dry books, or at any rate a moral merit in the process of plodding through them. It was a dismal mistake, which inflicted upon youth many a dreary hour. The dull book is not better than the lively book. Other things being equal, it is worse, because it requires more expenditure of effort to master such of its contents as are worth remembering. If the edge of the tool is blunt, one must put forth more strength, and as there is never too much strength, none of it should be wasted. It may be asked, "But is not the mental discipline