Confessions of a Book-Lover

by Maurice Francis Egan

without a knowledge of the Bible. What would "Ruth among the alien corn" mean to a reader who had never known the beauty of the story of Ruth? And the lilies of the field, permeating all poetical literature, would have lost all their perfume if one knew nothing about the Song of Solomon.

Putting aside the question as to whether young readers should be let loose in the Old Testament or not, or whether modern ideas of purity are justified in including ignorance as the supremest virtue, he who does not make himself familiar with Biblical ideas and phraseology finds himself in after-life with an incomplete medium of expression. It used to be said of the typical English gentleman that all he needed to know was to ride after the hounds and to construe Horace. This is not so absurd, after all, as it appears to be to most moderns. To construe Horace, of course, meant that he should have at least a speaking acquaintance with one of the masterpieces of Roman literature, and this knowledge gave him a grip on the universal speech of all cultivated people. However useless his allusions to Chloë and to Mæcenas were in the business of practical life,

he was at least able to understand what they meant, and even a slight acquaintance with the Latins stamped him as speaking the speech of a gentleman.

Similarly, a man who knows the Scriptures is fitted with allusions that clarify and illuminate the ordinary speech. He may not have any technical knowledge, or his technical knowledge may be so great as to debar him from meeting other men in conversation on equal grounds; but his reading of the Bible gives his speech or writing a background, a colour, a metaphorical strength, which illuminate even the commonplace. Strike the Bible from the sphere of any man's experience and he is in a measure left out of much of that conversation which helps to make life endurable.

Pagan mythology is rather out of fashion. Even the poets often now assume that Clytie is a name that requires an explanation and that Daphne and her flight through the laurel do not bring up immediate memories of Syrinx and the reeds. The Dictionary of Lamprière is covered with dust; and one may quote an episode from Ovid without an answering glance of comprehension from the hearer. This does not imply ignorance;

it is only that, in the modern system, the old mythology is not taken very seriously.

Since Latin and Greek have almost ceased to be a necessary part of a gentleman's education, there is no class of allusions from which we can draw to lighten or strengthen ordinary speech unless we turn to the Bible. This deprives conversation of much of its colour and renders it rather commonplace and meagre. Unfortunately, among many of our young people, the Bible seems to be a book to be avoided or to be treated in a rather "jocose" manner. To raise a laugh on the vaudeville stage, a Biblical quotation has only to be produced, and the weary comedian, when he is at a loss to get a witty speech across the footlights, is almost sure to speak of Jonah and the whale!

It is disappointing to notice this gradual change that has taken place in the attitude of the younger generation toward the Sacred Book. The Sunday Schools, in their attempt to make the genealogies of importance and to overload the memories of their little disciples with a multitude of texts, or to over-explain every allusion in the terms of physical geography, etc., may in a measure be responsible for this, but they cannot be entirely

responsible. One must admit that diversities of interpretations of the Sacred Scriptures from a religious point of view will always be an obstacle to their use in schools where the children of Jews, of Mohammedans, and of the various Christian denominations assemble. But there is always the home, where the first impetus to a satisfactory knowledge of the Sacred Book ought to be given. The decay of the practice of reading aloud in our homes is very evident in the lack of real culture—or, rather, rudiments of real culture—in our children. But there is no use in declaiming against this. Other times, other manners; accusatory declamation is simply a luxury of Old Age!

Personally, my desultory reading of the Old and the New Testaments gave me a background against which I could see the trend of the books I devoured more clearly; it added immensely to my enjoyment of them; besides, it was a moral and ethical safeguard. It was easy even for a boy to discover that the morality of the New Testament was the standard by which not only life, but literature, which is the finest expression of life, should be judged. If there are great declamations, declamations full of dramatic fire, which nearly every