Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 03

by Unknown

lthough the prominence of Arthur James Balfour in English contemporary life is in the main that of a statesman, he has a high place as a critic of philosophy, especially in its relation to religion. During the early part of his life his interests were entirely those of a student. He was born in 1848, a member of the Cecil family, and a nephew of the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury. His tastes were those of a retired thinker. He cared for literature, music, and philosophy, but very little for the political world; so little that he never read the newspapers. This tendency was increased by his delicate health. When, therefore, as a young man in the neighborhood of thirty, he was made Secretary for Scotland, people laughed. His uncle's choice proved to be a wise one, however; and he later, in 1886, gave his nephew the very important position of Irish Secretary, at a time when some of the ablest and most experienced statesmen had failed. Mr. Balfour won an unexpected success and a wide reputation, and from that time on he developed rapidly into one of the most skillful statesmen of the Conservative party. By tradition and by temperament he is an extreme Tory; and it is in the opposition, as a skillful fencer in debate and a sharp critic of pretentious schemes, that he has been most admired and most feared. However, he is kept from being narrowly confined to the traditional point of view by the philosophic interests and training of his mind, which he has turned into practical fairness. Some of his speeches are most original in suggestion, and all show a literary quality of a high order. His writings on other subjects are also broad, scholarly, and practical. 'A Defense of Philosophic Doubt' is thought by some philosophers to be the ablest work of destructive criticism since Hume. 'The Foundations of Belief' covers somewhat the same ground and in more popular fashion. 'Essays and Addresses' is a collection of papers on literature and sociology.

ARTHUR J. BALFOUR

THE PLEASURES OF READING

From his Rectorial Address before the University of Glasgow

I confess to have been much perplexed in my search for a topic on which I could say something to which you would have patience to listen, or on which I might find it profitable to speak. One theme however there is, not inappropriate to the place in which I stand, nor I hope unwelcome to the audience which I address. The youngest of you have left behind that period of youth during which it seems inconceivable that any book should afford recreation except a story-book. Many of you are just reaching the period when, at the end of your prescribed curriculum, the whole field and compass of literature lies outspread before you; when, with faculties trained and disciplined, and the edge of curiosity not dulled or worn with use, you may enter at your leisure into the intellectual heritage of the centuries.

Now the question of how to read and what to read has of late filled much space in the daily papers, if it cannot strictly speaking be said to have profoundly occupied the public mind. But you need be under no alarm. I am not going to supply you with a new list of the hundred books most worth reading, nor am I about to take the world into my confidence in respect of my "favorite passages from the best authors." Nor again do I address myself to the professed student, to the fortunate individual with whom literature or science is the business as well as the pleasure of life. I have not the qualifications which would enable me to undertake such a task with the smallest hope of success. My theme is humble, though the audience to whom I desire to speak is large: for I speak to the ordinary reader with ordinary capacities and ordinary leisure, to whom reading is, or ought to be, not a business but a pleasure; and my theme is the enjoyment--not, mark you, the improvement, nor the glory, nor the profit, but the enjoyment--which may be derived by such an one from books.

It is perhaps due to the controversial habits engendered by my unfortunate profession, that I find no easier method of making my own view clear than that of contrasting with it what I regard as an erroneous view held by somebody else; and in the present case the doctrine which I shall choose as a foil to my own, is one which has been stated with the utmost force and directness by that brilliant and distinguished writer, Mr. Frederic Harrison. He has, as many of you know, recently given us, in a series of excellent essays, his opinion on the principles which should guide us in the choice of books. Against that part of his treatise which is occupied with specific recommendations of certain authors I have not a word to say. He has resisted all the temptations to eccentricity which so easily beset the modern critic. Every book which he praises deserves his praise, and has long been praised by the world at large. I do not, indeed, hold that the verdict of the world is necessarily binding on the individual conscience. I admit to the full that there is an enormous quantity of hollow devotion, of withered orthodoxy divorced from living faith, in the eternal chorus of praise which goes up from every literary altar to the memory of the immortal dead. Nevertheless every critic is bound to recognize, as Mr. Harrison recognizes, that he must put down to individual peculiarity any difference he may have with the general verdict of the ages; he must feel that mankind are not likely to be in a conspiracy of error as to the kind of literary work which conveys to them the highest literary enjoyment, and that in such cases at least securus judicat orbis terrarum.

But it is quite possible to hold that any work recommended by Mr. Harrison is worth repeated reading, and yet to reject utterly the theory of study by which these recommendations are prefaced. For Mr. Harrison is a ruthless censor. His index expurgatorius includes, so far as I can discover, the whole catalogue of the British Museum, with the exception of a small remnant which might easily be contained in about thirty or forty volumes. The vast remainder he contemplates with feelings apparently not merely of indifference, but of active aversion. He surveys the boundless and ever-increasing waste of books with emotions compounded of disgust and dismay. He is almost tempted to say in his haste that the invention of printing has been an evil one for humanity. In the habits of miscellaneous reading, born of a too easy access to libraries, circulating and other, he sees many soul-destroying tendencies; and his ideal reader would appear to be a gentleman who rejects with a lofty scorn all in history that does not pass for being first-rate in importance, and all in literature that is not admitted to be first-rate in quality.