Charming away the monotony and the weariness.
Great authors are by no means invariably good readers, even of their own productions. Lord Tennyson read some of his own glorious poems beautifully; but others he read either droningly or with too much singsong. Dickens read his own works with wonderful power and realisation. Wordsworth read his own verse admirably; but we are told that neither Coleridge nor Southey could read verse well: "They read as if crying or wailing lugubriously."
Reading, therefore, is an art which doubtless requires, for the attainment of excellence, some degree of histrionic gifts—imagination, imitation, fervour, and passion.
Similarly with oratory and authorship. Both these arts are distinct from that of reading; as each of these again is distinct from the other.
It is curious, indeed, how few among great authors are great orators; or, among great orators, great authors. The gifts which tell in writing—condensation, terseness, finish—are not the gifts which tell most in speaking. In speaking, the essentials are clearness of enunciation, sympathy with the audience, copiousness of illustration, directness of statement, uninvolved reasoning. The merits which impart value to a book—wealth of fact, niceness in balancing opposing considerations, delicacy of assertion, depth and sweep of argument—may easily become ineffective in the delivery of a speech. Hence, therefore, whereas a good speaker is occasionally a good writer, owing to his rare combination of different orders of talent, it more frequently happens that the one set of talents is given to one man to enrich them in seclusion, and the other to another man to use them with publicity.
In like manner with reading; it is an art by itself. It is natural to suppose that no one could possibly read an author's works so well as the author's self, because no one can understand them so intimately as their own creator. Yet experience proves this to be not the case; and for a reason which at first sight is not wholly apparent. It is just because they are his own that, as a rule, he cannot read them well. He may have a richly cultivated voice, clear enunciation, a varied power of modulation; he may even be able to read the works of others well, yet be a failure in reading what he himself has written. Why is this? Partly, perhaps, it is due to an unavoidable self-consciousness in reading his own works; and self-consciousness is the ruin of good reading. "Forget thyself" is a necessary condition of good reading. Partly, perhaps, it is due to over-absorption in the memory of sensations and sentiments which overpowered him when he wrote in the solitude of his chamber, but which are somewhat unnatural and overstrained for exhibition before a concourse of auditors. But probably the principal reason is that one of the greatest charms of good reading arises from the co-operation of two spirits toward one end—the spirit of the author and the spirit of the reader. The reader of another's works seeks actively to express the spirit of his author, yet unintentionally he is expressing his own spirit also. The author enters into him and he throws himself into the author; his reading, therefore, is the union, the marriage, the interpenetration and expression of two spirits—the author's and his own. However interesting, therefore, and delightful it may be to hear an author read his own works, yet is there always lacking the dash and force and suggestiveness produced when a great author is interpreted by a great reader. The author merely reproduces his original meaning in what he wrote; the reader, through the agency of his own independent personality, idealises and diversifies that meaning.
Idealisation is one of the most beautiful effects of the fine art of reading. The most ordinary poem or piece of prose, when idealised by an accomplished artist in reading, grows lovely and sweet. And one way of learning to read well ourselves is to sit at the feet of some of these great masters of reading. Until we have heard a great reader read it is next to impossible to conceive what a fine and noble art true reading is. On the other hand, we can never become good readers by merely listening to others, any more than we can become good musicians by hearing others play.
In the art of reading, others may be our models; none but ourselves can be our makers. Listening to others may show us how the thing can best be done, but without doing the thing ourselves the thing can never be truly learned by us. Sometimes, indeed, listening to others has an effect quite the opposite of a model for imitation. "Pausanias tells us of an ancient player on the harp who was wont to make his scholars go to hear one who played badly that they might learn to hate his discords and false measures." In like manner, one way of learning to read well is to hear others read badly.
The art of reading aloud culminates in the expression of the spiritual through the medium of the physical. As sculpture aspires to express its ideals in stone, and painting in colour, and music in sound, so reading embodies its ideals in uttered words. A well-trained voice, clearness of enunciation, rhythm and flexibility of articulation—these are the physical framework of the art of reading aloud. Without first acquiring these the reader is as impotent as the painter without colour or the sculptor without stone. But the physics of reading are nothing more than its material framework. Unless the reader is inspired with ideals, reading will never rise to the dignity and glory of an art with him. He may be as a house-painter with his brush, or a mason with his stone—an industrious and useful artificer, but not an artist in his work.