We are, of course, dealing rather with those who are aspiring to be book lovers than with those who, having already attained to that distinction, can trust to the guidance of their own inclinations. These aspirants must seek first an able and judicious guide for each department of study. One guide may be fully competent to make a list of works in history or biography, but may lack experience in philosophy or in art; while, on the other hand, the regimen prescribed for the country curate would hardly be appropriate for the mechanic or the soldier.
But, first, we must endeavour to define, by a rough process of elimination, the book lover, whether mature or in embryo. He is not the mere 'glutton of the lending library,' who bolts the contents of the monthly box without discrimination and without reflection, his main object being to while away an idle day or to gain a superficial reputation at the next dinner party at which he may be present; nor is he the collector of gaudy bindings; nor one who has never possessed nor desired to possess a library of his own, who has never read a book more than once, and has never committed to memory a single passage. He is not the man, in short, who fails to realize that 'the utility of reading depends not on the swallow but on the digestion.'
From the American Westerner who buys an Encyclopædia in parts, and finds in it all that he requires of instruction and amusement, to the princely founders of libraries—the Spencers and Parkers, the De Thous, the Sunderlands, and the Beckfords—is a wide interval, and includes all sorts and conditions of men, diverse from one another in everything but their love of books.
Sir John Lubbock, by his eminence in the world of science and the world of commerce, is admirably qualified to draw up a list of works on science and trade. But these he has unfortunately excluded from his consideration. Such lists would be invaluable to the thousands who from intellectual, or more purely mercenary motives, are now seeking for light. Had Sir John classified his list on some simple and discriminating plan, such as we have suggested, we might, as a result of the discussion, have obtained a summary of works on art by Mr. Ruskin, or a soldier's library by Lord Wolseley. Others, whose replies have been published, would have furnished special lists; and a still wider circle would, no doubt, have seen their way to rendering much help and service. We should, moreover, have been spared some rather irrelevant and wayward criticisms to which the discussion has given rise.
Two or three of the 'guides' have, with more or less success, adopted for themselves a definite system. Mr. William Morris has given us a list, the perusal of which may perchance arouse serious misgivings in the heart of the general reader, who cannot 'even with great difficulty read Old German,' and who has not yet been educated up to the point of regarding Virgil and Juvenal as 'sham classics.' The 'Admiral's' list is good, if somewhat too technical; and we would plead for the admission of Southey's 'Life of Nelson,' even, if need be, to the exclusion of the 'Annual Register' in 110 volumes. The Head Master of Harrow 'tried to think how he should answer a boy's question if he were to ask, at any point of his school life, what books it were best worth while to read before the end (let me say) of his thirtieth year;' and we venture to regard Mr. Welldon's list as the best of all in point of conciseness and practical value.
The last to enter the lists, though not under the auspices of the 'Pall Mall Gazette,' is Mr. Frederic Harrison, who comes armed with a volume entitled 'The Choice of Books,' though four-fifths of the contents have strayed far away into such remote pastures as 'The Opening of the Courts of Justice,' 'A Plea for the Tower of London,' and 'The Æsthete.' With the small residue of the book, which has remained faithful to the titlepage, we have little fault to find. Mr. Harrison, as might be expected, regards everything through the spectacles of Auguste Comte—'hinc omne principium, huc refer exitum.' Comte's 'Syllabus,' to which we have already referred, was the basis of at least one of his essays, and is the subject of his closing remarks.
For our present purpose, the first article, 'How to Read,' is undoubtedly the most valuable and practicable. It deals in a straightforward and vigorous manner with many of the snares and difficulties by which the reader is beset, and sweeps away much of the sentimental, sickly, criticism which is unfortunately prevalent at the present time. We think, however, that Mr. Harrison is inclined to raise the standard of taste too high for the mass of general readers.
'Putting aside the iced air of the difficult mountain tops of epic, tragedy, or psalm, there are some simple pieces which may serve as an unerring test of a healthy or vicious taste for imaginative work. If the "Cid," the "Vita Nuova," the "Canterbury Tales," Shakspeare's "Sonnets," and "Lycidas" pall on a man; if he care not for Malory's "Morte d'Arthur" and the "Red Cross Knight"; if he thinks "Crusoe" and the "Vicar" books for the young; if he thrill not with the "Ode to the West Wind" and the "Ode to a Grecian Urn"; if he have no stomach for "Christabelle," or the lines written on "The Wye above Tintern," he should fall on his knees and pray for a cleanlier and quieter spirit.'
Now we believe that there is many a humble aspirant to literary taste on whom the above paragraph will produce an effect similar to that of 'iced air and mountain tops' by taking his breath away. Literary palates are mercifully endowed with tastes and appreciations as varied as mere bodily palates, and we must protest against any such Procrustean method of ascertaining whether a man's 'spirit be cleanly and quiet,' or, which is terrible to contemplate, the reverse. On another page Mr. Harrison himself loudly deprecates and disclaims any narrow or sectarian view; he is nothing if not Catholic in his tastes. 'I protest that I am devoted to no school in particular; I condemn no school; I reject none. I am for the school of all the great men; and I am against the school of the smaller men.'
All taste must be founded on knowledge, and between the hard, dry teaching of the Board School or the Examination Room on the one hand, and the ætherial atmosphere of Desultory Reading and the purest literary discernment on the other, there lies an intermediate region, a 'penumbral zone,' which differs from the first in that it is entered voluntarily, and from the second in that it is attainable by all who care to enter it. The way through this region, though pleasant is laborious; system, accuracy, and discipline are essential to him who would traverse it. To be a desultory reader, in the sense defined by Lord Iddesleigh, a man must first have been a student; and not to every student is given the temperament, capacity, and opportunity, to become a desultory reader—still less can every student aspire to that refined literary taste, which Mr. Harrison possesses in so large a measure, and which, in its characteristics, he describes so well.