PART III.
f making many books there is no end,” said the Sage of old. What would he say could he re-visit the world at the present moment? The very multitude of aids to self-culture is, as Frederick Harrison remarks, a serious drawback in the way of those who attempt it. Books may be cheap, free libraries may abound, but where shall the eager student begin? On every hand voices call to her, urgently claiming attention, until at last, distracted by the various appeals, she is fain to cover her ears with her hands and remain deaf to all alike. Or to change the figure, those who wish to tread the path of self-culture are like wanderers in some vast unknown forest. Paths cross and re-cross one another in every direction, and industry in plodding forward is vain without a guiding clue or sign.
It is true that a girl who has free access to a good library, a love of books, and ample leisure, will not in all probability go very far wrong. When a lad, Dr. Johnson imagined that his brother had hidden some apples behind a large folio upon an upper shelf in his father’s shop. He climbed up to search for them; there were no apples, but the large folio proved to be Petrarch. He sat down with avidity and there and then read a great part of the book. During two years which he spent at home he read and read as the fancy prompted him, and when he went to Oxford Dr. Adams, a great authority, told him he was the best qualified student who had ever come there.
Perhaps this experience is what prompted Dr. Johnson’s dictum, “Read anything for five hours a day, and you will soon be learned.”
The great majority, however, of the girls who scan this page have not “five hours a day” to spend in pasturing among books, and need advice how to parcel out the very limited leisure they possess to the best possible advantage.
How shall they read? This is to the full as important a question as the one which follows—What shall they read?
To begin with; they should husband the precious moments for reading. You daughters in leisurely homes who are conscious now and then of a vague desire for more mental resources—your moments are not precious! You pass your days from morning to night in doing “nothing particular.” Are you making the best use of your time in this respect? How many hours a week do you spend in reading—that is, of reading what is not entirely ephemeral? Are you not content to “take as read” the great mass of English literature? And yet, do you know how far you have it in your own power to add to the delight and worth of life?
The days of many girls at home must needs be desultory—a little practising, a little housekeeping, a little bicycling, a little visiting and seeing visitors, a little shopping and attention to dress—and the evening comes, and not a page has been read or a new idea gained. An infinity of trifles makes up the day’s routine—the girl is always busy, and yet at the close of the week she seems to have accomplished nothing.
To such a girl we may commend the advice of Matthew Arnold, quoted in our last paper, to make a space for reading, and keep to it, in spite of all interruptions. But to the larger class who crave for self-culture and have only a little leisure, we would say with deep sympathy—make the most of what you have. On your way to and from your daily work, in odd moments of freedom, you will find it a delightful rest and refreshment to turn to some favourite volume. It is a truism, but is by no means thoroughly understood even yet, that a startling amount can be accomplished in odds and ends of time. One of the best read men we know is a busy lawyer. From morning to night he is at his office; in the evening he is often engaged in philanthropic work; but he always carries a small volume about with him and has learnt to make the most of odd moments. That is the way to become a great reader. The wish to read is the one necessary element in the matter; then the habit grows with exercise.
People generally do manage to obtain that on which they set their heart of hearts. The writer has observed that, however poor her young friends may profess themselves to be, they never seem debarred by straitness of cash from acquiring a bicycle; however poor and abject a man may be, he never seems too poor to become tipsy, if he is so inclined; and few people who wish to read will be too poor in time or cash to indulge the taste.
The biographies of great men are full of what can be accomplished by treasuring spare moments. Dr. Mason Good, a doctor in full practice, translated Lucretius while driving in his carriage through the streets of London. Dr. Erasmus Darwin composed all his works in the same way in the country, writing down his thoughts on little scraps of paper. Kirke White learned Greek while walking to and from a lawyer’s office. Elihu Burritt, who was a well-known character in his day and lived as United States Consul for twenty-two years in Birmingham, was only a blacksmith to begin with. While working at his forge he mastered some eighteen ancient and modern languages and twenty-two European dialects. Afterwards he made translations from the Icelandic, Arabic and Hebrew.
“All that I have accomplished, or expect, or hope to accomplish,” he said, “has been, and will be, by that plodding, patient, persevering process of accretion which builds the ant-heap—particle by particle, thought by thought, fact by fact. And if ever I was actuated by ambition, its highest and warmest aspiration reached no further than the hope to set before the young men of my country an example in employing those invaluable fragments of time called ‘odd moments.’”
Are not these, and many other such examples, written in the pages of “Smiles”? Rather startling and dismaying to the ordinary reader, we may confess them to be! Nor do we suppose that any of our girl readers will emulate them. We simply quote them to show that “lack of time” need not be a valid reason, with the majority of busy people, against self-culture.
To those who have leisure, the practice of occasionally writing a short synopsis of a book they have read is to be very strongly recommended. This helps to fix the contents on the memory; and if there is anything difficult to understand, the reader will see whether she has clearly grasped it or not when she comes to explain it to herself in black and white.
It is also of the very greatest importance in reading not to pass by words and allusions without understanding them. There are many correspondents of The Girl’s Own Paper, who, for example, in reading Tennyson, cannot rest without knowing who is meant by—
“A daughter of the gods, divinely tall,
And most divinely fair,”
or by—
“Him who sings
To one clear harp in divers tones.”
(And we are always glad to see questions of that nature sent to the correspondence column, because it shows a literary interest is alive.) This sort of allusion is a difficult one to understand without a liberal education; but of course there are many others which can be explained by consulting books of reference, classical or biographical dictionaries, or by asking questions. It is a great blessing not to be too proud to confess ignorance. No one despises the inquirer; but shallow pretence is very apt to be found out.
A book of travels, for instance, should never be read without the map of the country near at hand for reference; or such a work as a translation of the “Odyssey” without a classical dictionary. In short, reading should be intelligent, not merely formal.
People differ very much as to the speed at which they can read. Some will grasp the whole meaning of a page at a glance; others toil through it sentence by sentence. No rule can be laid down. Only it may be said that the modern habit among well-to-do young people with plenty of books, of skimming through a volume in an hour or two and never looking at it again, is not to be commended. How often one is met by the reply, on offering a book to occupy vacant hours, “Oh, I’ve read that!” And, however delightful or charming the book may be, the very fact of having read it is an effectual deterrent from opening its pages any more.
A generation or two ago, when books for young people were very few, they were read and re-read with an avidity that would astonish a modern reader.
“If a book be worth reading once,” says Emerson, “it is worth reading twice; and if it stands a second reading, it may stand a third.”
Ruskin puts it more strongly. “No book is worth anything until it has been read and re-read and loved and loved again; and marked, so that you can refer to the passages you want in it, as a soldier can seize the weapons he needs in an armoury, or a housewife bring the spice she needs from her store.”
There are two ways in which self-culture by the aid of reading may be sought—by taking books and by taking subjects. Some deem it best to read “the best books” or the best authors straight away; and as we write these pages the eager application by the public for the “Hundred Best Books” (so-called) is significant. The other method is, to read by subjects—to take up, for example, some one period of the world’s history, and see what different writers have said or thought about it. The latter method may be very good, but implies a great deal of time, and access to a great many books.
PODOBIZNA.
What of attending lectures as a means of culture? There are few towns at the present day where there are not facilities for the would-be student to avail herself of “a course” on some subject or another, even if there is not “a centre.”
Much scorn has been lavished on the “University Extension” movement, and we are told of the working man who inquires, “Which d’yer like best, ’Omer or Hossian? Hossian’s my man; ’e knows a deal about natur’, does Hossian.”
It requires strong faith to believe in that working man. The whole question of the advantages of the movement, and the appropriateness, or absurdity, of its title, cannot of course be examined here. But if any girl reader has the opportunity of attending a series of lectures on some subject in which she is, or ought to be, interested, we may offer her a few hints.
Go by all means; but do not sit in the lecture hall week by week, and expect the words of the speaker to do everything that is needful. Study the books he recommends to you diligently and conscientiously. Do not be so much occupied in trying to scribble down what he says verbatim in your notebook that you are left far behind in hopeless bewilderment at an early stage of the proceedings; but listen attentively, and above all do the paper work set every week. When you have accomplished this much, do not be deterred by the alarms of wounded vanity from going in for the examination at the close of the course. You need not, and will not if you are sensible, suppose that you have received in any sense a university education; but you will, especially if the lecturer be one of the noted men we could name, have acquired a distinct addition to your mental store of wealth; and this is no slight advantage, for it may urge you to go on and on acquiring more and more.
“’Tis the taught already that profits by teaching,”
as Browning says.
The “University Extension” movement has been touched upon because these lectures seem to appeal specially to girls who wish somehow or other to “take themselves in hand.” But, after all, the main instrument of self-culture must be reading, and, before turning to the question of what books shall be chosen, we may repeat Carlyle’s words—
“Learn to be good readers—which is perhaps a more difficult thing than you imagine. Learn to be discriminative in your reading; to read faithfully, and with your best attention, all kinds of things which you have a real interest in—a real, not an imaginary—and which you find to be really fit for what you are engaged in. The most unhappy of all men is the man who cannot tell what he is going to do, who has got no work cut out for him in the world, and does not go into it. In work is the grand cure of all the maladies and miseries that ever beset mankind—honest work which you intend getting done.”
Lily Watson.
(To be continued.)