Boom! twanging gay as the first tap of a marriage-bell, a loud crack in the ice rang musically for leagues up and down the river. “Bravo!” it seemed to say. “Well done, Bill Tarbox! Try again!” Which the happy fellow did, and the happy maiden permitted.
“Now,” said Bill, “let us go and hug Mr. Wade!”
“What! Both of us?” Belle protested. “Mr. Tarbox, I am ashamed of you!”
[LIGHT LITERATURE.]
Though the smallest boulder is heavy, and even the merest pebble has a perceptible weight, yet the entire planet, toward which both gravitate, floats more lightly than any feather. In literature somewhat analogous may be observed. Here also are found the insignificant lightness of the pebble and the mighty lightness of the planet; while between them range the weighty masses, superior to the petty ponderability of the one, and unequal to the firmamental float of the other. Accordingly, setting out from the mote-and-pebble extreme, you find, that, up to a certain point, increasing values of thought are commonly indicated by increasing gravity, by more and more of state-paper weightiness; but beyond this the rule is reversed, and lightness becomes the sign and measure of excellence. Bishop Butler and Richard Hooker—especially the latter, the first book of whose “Ecclesiastical Polity” is a truly noble piece of writing—stand, perhaps, at the head of the weighty class of writers in our language; but going beyond these to the “Areopagitica” of Milton, or even to the powerful prose of Raleigh, you pass the boundary-line, and are touched with the buoyant influences of the Muse. Shakspeare and Plato are lighter than levity; they are lifting forces, and weigh less than nothing. The novelette of the season, or any finest and flimsiest gossamer that is fabricated in our literary looms, compares with “Lear,” with “Prometheus Bound,” with any supreme work, only as cobwebs and thistle-down, that are easily borne by the breeze, may compare with sparrows and thrushes, that can fly and withal sing.
There is a call for “light reading,” and I for one applaud the demand. A lightening influence is the best that books or men can bestow upon us. Information is good, but invigoration is a thousand times better. Cheer, cheer and vigor for the world’s heart! It is because man’s hope is so low, and his imaginations so poor, that he is earthly and evil. Wings for these unfledged hearts! Transformation for these grubs! Give us animation, inspiration, joy, faith! Give us enlivening, lightsome airs, to which our souls shall, on a sudden, begin to dance, keeping step with the angels! What else is worth having? Each one of these sordid sons of men—is he not a new-born Apollo, who waits only for the ambrosia from Olympus, to spring forth in divineness of beauty and strength?
Nevertheless, I know not of any reading so hopelessly heavy as large portions of that which claims the name of light. Light writing it may be; but, considered as reading, one would be unjust to charge upon it any lack of avoirdupois. It is like the bran of wheat, which, though of little weight in the barrel, is heavy enough in the stomach,—Dr. Sylvester Graham to the contrary notwithstanding. It is related of an Italian culprit, that, being required, in punishment of his crime, to make choice between lying in prison for a term of years and reading the history of Guicciardini, he chose the latter, but, after a brief trial, petitioned for leave to reverse his election. I never attempted Guicciardini; but I did once attempt Pope’s “Dunciad.” And was it really the doom of a generation of readers to find delight in this book? One must suppose so. There are those in our day whose hard fate it is to read and to like James’s and Bulwer’s novels. But greatly mistaken is the scholar who, for relief from severe studies, goes to an empty or insincere book. It is like saying money, after large and worthy expenditures, by purchasing at a low price that which is worth nothing,—buying “gold” watches at a mock-auction room.
Indeed, no book, however witty, lively, saltatory, can have the volant effects we covet, if it want substance and seriousness. Substance, however, is to be widely distinguished from ponderability. Oxygen is not so ponderous as lead or granite, but it is far more substantial than either, and, as every one knows, infinitely more serviceable to life. The distinction is equally valid when applied to books and to men. The “airy nothings” of imagination prove to be the most enduring somethings of the world’s literature; and the last lightness of heart may go with the purest truth of soul and the most precious virtue of intelligence. All expressions carry the perpetual savors of their origin; and as brooks that dance and frolic with the sunbeams and murmur to the birds, light-hearted forever, will yet bear sands of gold, if they flow from auriferous hills, so any bubble and purl of laughter, proceeding from a wise and wealthy soul, will bear a noble significance. In point of fact, some of the merriest books in the world are among the most richly freighted. And as airy and mirthful books may be substantial and serious, so it is an effect very similar to that of noble and significant mirth that is produced upon us by the grandest pieces of serious writing. Thus, he who rightly reads the “Phaedon” or “Phaedrus” of Plato smiles through all the depths of his brain, though no pronounced smile show on his face; and he who rightly reads the book of Cervantes, though the laughters plunge, as it were, in cascades from his lips, is earnest at heart, and full of sound and tender meditations.
If now, setting aside all books, whether pretending to gayety or gravity, that are simply empty and ineffectual, we inquire for the prime distinction between books light in a worthy and unworthy sense, it will appear to be the distinction between inspiration and alcohol,—between effects divinely real and effects illusory and momentary. The drunkard dreams of flying, and fancies the stars themselves left below him, while he is really lying in the gutter. There are those, and numbers of those, who in reading seek no more than to be cheated in a similar way. Indeed, to acknowledge a disagreeable fact, there is a very great deal of reading in our day that is simply a substitute for the potations and “heavy-handed revel” of our Saxon ancestors. In both cases it is a spurious exaltation of feeling that is sought; in both cases those who for a moment seem to themselves larks ascending to meet the sun are but worms eating earth.