So, if it be possible, see to it that your library, study, sanctum, or whatever you may call that one room in the house which is sacred to the daughters of Mnemosyne, is really your own: that it be a close closet to which you (and you alone) may retire at all seasons, certain in the knowledge that by closing the door you may shut out effectually all earthly cares and interruptions. Whether you are engaged in research merely for the gratification of your desire to possess knowledge, or whether literary production be your aim, unless you may study undisturbed your labours will never bear their full fruit. Interrupted, your knowledge will be scanty, diverse, and generally inapplicable, your literary output sketchy, incoherent, and disconnected.
Perhaps it is this incubus of interruption that drives so many men to working late at night. Doubtless those whose habit it is to work at that season produce just as good work in those hours as at any other time; possibly better, for habit may have accustomed them to put forth their finest intellectual efforts at that time of day. But the mind that has been brought up to rise at seven and go to bed at ten, is undoubtedly at its best before noon. Night working is not a natural tendency, it is an acquired habit; and though the expression 'burning the midnight oil' is taken to be synonymous with the acquisition of learning, yet in the long run it is but a poor economy of time, for the wisdom so acquired is often obtained at the cost of health and eyesight.
And what is freedom from interruption but another name for solitude? It may be temporary, it may be prolonged, it may be permanent, but for the intellectual man it is absolutely essential. No one would be so foolish as to deny that literary work of the highest rank can be, and has been frequently, accomplished amid the bustle and noise of cities; witness the works of those literary giants who have passed their lives as town-dwellers. Doubtless they obtained the necessary solitude by spiritual detachment. But on the other hand, for intense and prolonged meditation, for the communing with one's innermost soul on the immense principles of life and nature, for the production of such deep soul-searching work as we see in the compositions of à Kempis, Dante, Milton, and Wordsworth, absolute solitude for some seasons is essential. There must be complete freedom from the daily distractions caused by one's fellow-beings.
'Believe me, upon my own experience,' wrote St. Bernard, 'you will find more in the woods than in books; the forests and rocks will teach you what you cannot learn of the greatest masters.' It is not necessary, however, for us to take up our abode in a cave that we may meditate undisturbed. Let us rather follow Wordsworth's example when he pours forth gratitude
'For my own peaceful lot and happy choice;
A choice that from the passions of the world
Withdrew, and fixed me in a still retreat;
Sheltered, but not to social duties lost,
Secluded, but not buried; and with song
Cheering my days, and with industrious thought;
With the ever-welcome company of books;
With virtuous friendship's soul-sustaining aid,
And with the blessings of domestic love.'
It is sufficient if we can withdraw at will into the solitudes. The younger Pliny, moralising to his friend Minutius (I should like to think him the progenitor of Aldo Manuccio), describes the delights of seclusion at his villa on the shore of the Adriatic. 'At such a season,' says he, in a retrospect of the day's work, 'one is apt to reflect how much of my life has been lost in trifles! At least it is a reflection that frequently comes across me at Laurentum, after I have been employing myself in my studies, or even in the necessary care of the animal machine; for the body must be repaired and supported if we would preserve the mind in all its vigour. In that peaceful retreat I neither hear nor speak anything of which I have occasion to repent. I suffer none to repeat to me the whispers of malice; nor do I censure any man, unless myself, when I am dissatisfied with my compositions. There I live undisturbed by rumour, and free from the anxious solicitudes of hope or fear, conversing only with myself and my books. True and genuine life! Pleasing and honourable repose! More, perhaps, to be desired than the noblest employments! Thou solemn lea and solitary shore, best and most retired scene for contemplation, with how many noble thoughts have you inspired me! Snatch then, my friend, as I have, the first occasion of leaving the noisy town with all its very empty pursuits, and devote your days to study, or even resign them to ease. For, as my ingenious friend Attilius pleasantly said, 'It is better to do nothing than to be doing nothings!''
The great Cardinal Ximenes, in the zenith of his power, built with his own hands a hut in a thick unfrequented wood, where he could retire occasionally from the busy world. Here he used to pass a few days, every now and then, in meditation and study. These he was wont to describe as the happiest days of his life, and declared that he would willingly exchange all his dignities for his hut in the chestnut wood. Thomas Aquinas, coming to visit the learned Bonaventura, asked him to point out the books which he used in his studies. The monk led him into his cell and showed him a few common volumes upon his table. Thomas explained that the books he wished to see were those from which the learned master drew so many wonders. Thereupon Bonaventura showed him a small oratory. 'There,' he said, 'are my books; that is the principal book from which I draw all that I teach and write.'
To the thoughtless and those of shallow intellect solitude is inseparable from loneliness. There is, for them, something terrible in the thought of being debarred, even temporarily, from the society of their fellow-beings. 'Retirement,' says Disraeli, 'to the frivolous is a vast desert; to the man of genius it is the enchanted garden of Armida.' And for 'man of genius' I would substitute 'man of literary pursuits.'
There is a pleasant story told of a monk who lived in the monastery of St. Honorat, which is situated on one of the Lerine Islands, off the coast of Provence. Possessed of a mind which, in the larger world, would indubitably have become an influence in the artistic progress of mankind, he found the sole outlet for its expression in the painting of those exquisite miniatures which are at once the delight and the despair of a more modern age. But it was not in the scriptorium nor was it in the bestiaries or the examples of his predecessors that he acquired his art. Every year, in the spring and autumn, he would go alone to one of the delicious islands of Hyères, where there was a small hermitage. Here he would spend the weeks, not altogether in prayer and fasting, but in making friends with the birds and small animals that resorted there; studying their gestures, plumage, and colours, that he might reproduce them faithfully on the vellum of his missals and devotional books. Surely he learnt more on this deserted island than was possible at that time in the richest library in France.
There is another kind of solitude, however, which can afford consolation to the soul as deep and as lasting as that afforded by the woods, the hills, the moors, the islands, those