After all, it is for each one of us to decide how widely our time and opportunities shall permit us to wander on the slopes of Mount Parnassus. 'The best time-savers are the love of soundness in all we learn to do, and a cheerful acceptance of inevitable limitations.'[23] Yet it is better to have wandered on the lowermost slopes of the mountain than never to have entered ancient Greece at all.
Who nowadays, outside the universities, reads these ancient classics? Where will you find a business man of thirty years of age whose delight in his leisure time is the reading of Horace or Homer? Here and there, perhaps, you may come across a man of classical education who still retains the love of ancient Greece and Rome, instilled into him in his youth, sufficiently to influence the course of his reading; but he is a rarity indeed. Among the many thousands of young men employed in business in the great cities, most of whom have learnt something at least of the classics in their youth, scarcely will you find one who will confess to having time for such literature. Yet all these thousands read many books each year, and can always find time to devour the latest popular novel.
It is chiefly a question of recreation versus education. Tired and jaded with the day's business, the young man of to-day has little inclination to devote his leisure time to study. Light frothy literature removes his thoughts from worldly cares, and by a complete change of subject stimulates a mind that has been enervated by concentration for hours on one particular theme. No effort is required, and, more important still, it does not make one think.
For daily reading in the train or over meals, with this purpose always in view, so far so good. But what of the many hours of leisure in every man's life, when no mental recreation is needed? What does the average man read then? It must be confessed that in nine cases out of ten his literature remains precisely the same. Doubtless the reason is simply because, having always been accustomed to reading the same kind of books, he knows no other sort. Mention Shakespeare, Milton, Shelley, and he stares at you aghast. 'Good gracious,' he exclaims, 'I'm not going to read stuff like that; I should get the hump for a week; give me something cheerful.' And he picks up 'The Bauble,' by Mrs. Risquet Trashe.
And he is quite right. To anyone whose literature has consisted for years of nothing but novels of the circulating library type, a sudden application to the great writers would indeed be depressing. Is it necessary, however, or indeed wise, that any man's mental pabulum should consist entirely of novels? Nothing is further from my mind than to decry the taste for novel-reading; for, wisely employed, novels can become one of the joys of life. One can but agree with Miss Austen when she inveighs, in 'Northanger Abbey,' against those who belittle the productions of the novelist. But would she have been so emphatic had she lived to witness the printing-presses spouting forth that frothy flood which effervesces round the more serious writings of to-day? Would that every novel we take up had the delightful 'genius, wit, and taste' of Jane Austen to recommend it. How few and far between are the really good novels that we read!
There can be no finer recreation for a tired mind than a good novel. There is, however, one habit of reading which has become almost a social evil; and that is the habit of reading newspapers which many indulge in, morning, noon, and night. It is difficult to imagine anything more calculated to destroy consecutive and considered thought than the enormous variety of inconsequential topics that assails one every time one opens a newspaper. The mind becomes completely fuddled with the heterogeneous patchwork of entirely useless information. The only method I have discovered by which one can acquire the important news and yet retain the serenity of one's mind is that of having such news only as she knows will be of use read out by one's wife at breakfast. And this does not mean that the mental discomforts of the newspaper are relegated to one's better-half, for women are usually interested in the smaller details of everyday life.
No wonder that a large number of 'city men' live out their lives without ever opening a book that is worth reading meditatively; for newspaper-reading in course of time must completely undermine one's mental stability. After a few years, a book that is not composed of headlines, short chapters, small paragraphs and ejaculatory sentences, is unreadable without mental effort. So that long before he is middle-aged the city man has acquired the habit of 'glancing at' a news-sheet or magazine whenever he has nothing to do for a few minutes: a kind of reading that is about as advantageous to the mind as that which we indulge in when fingering the antique periodicals in the dentist's waiting-room. In later years he may or he may not overcome the repugnance he has acquired to anything deep or 'solid' (by which he generally means 'unparagraphed'): but I venture to think that, having once taken the plunge, there must be moments when he marvels at his foolishness in not having entered, years before, the City of the golden streets.
Perhaps it is unwise to use the word 'education' in speaking of the benefits to be derived from reading the great books, for to many people the term is synonymous with 'school,' where one is obliged frequently to do things against one's will. Good books, that is the books that 'live,' are no mere education, they are steps up the path of civilisation itself. They are just as necessary for the advancement of knowledge as are the letters and numerals which we learnt at school. The greatest books of the world do not teach us; they help us to teach ourselves, a very different matter. 'They are masters who instruct us without rod or ferule,' wrote an early book-lover[24]; 'if you approach them they are not asleep; if you inquire of them they do not withdraw themselves; they never chide when you make mistakes; they never laugh if you are ignorant.' And the books which would be available to him would be chiefly the works of the Early Fathers, professedly books of moral instruction. But the books of our library 'are so many faithful and serviceable friends, gently teaching us everything through their persuasive and wise experience.'[25]
And that is precisely the point. Good books do not instruct us so much as they persuade us; so that we come to be of the same mind as the great man who had deliberated and debated the matter so thoroughly for us. Perchance we disagree and take a different standpoint. Then can one almost see the spirit of the sage chuckling with delight at having found someone with whom to cross swords. 'I have made him think, I have made him think,' he repeats gleefully; and, sure of his point, he delights in having held our attention so intently as to cause us to debate the issue with ourselves.
It were foolish, however, to suppose that all the great books of the world are at once suitable to every reader. Time, above all other considerations, decides what we shall read; and the book which makes its greatest impression upon one man at thirty will fail to appeal to his neighbour till he be fifty or more. 'A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age,' says Benedick, and the converse is equally true. What a mistaken notion it is that puts into the hands of boys such classics as 'The Pilgrim's Progress' and 'Don Quixote'; for they are books which a knowledge of the world and of human nature alone can enable us to appreciate to the full. Their very foundations are built upon the rock of experience, every page exhibits the thoughts and deeds of men. No wonder that nine boys out of ten grow up with a dislike of Bunyan and all his works, and a contempt for the adventures of the immortal Don. Generally, however, all recollection of Quixote, except that he had a rotten old horse and charged some windmills, has (mercifully) disappeared long before the reader has attained his eighteenth year.
