Of voyages and travels, 'I would also have good store, especially the earlier, when the world was fresh and unhackneyed, and men saw things invisible to the modern eye: They are fast-sailing ships to waft away from present troubles to the Fortunate Islands.'[101] Grouped under each quarter of the globe, we should have selections of the works of those travellers, who, from Herodotus to Mr. Stanley, and from Marco Polo or Captain Cook down to Miss Bird, have made us who stay at home familiar with the remotest corners of the earth. Much of the romance of travel has of necessity perished in these matter-of-fact days; but as the writing of history has developed from a mere chronicle of events into a scientific and philosophical method, so the art of travelling is now assuming a political form under pressure of the gigantic problems which are exercising the mind of the civilized world; and a section of political travels, of which Mr. Froude and Baron von Hübner have recently given us examples, should not be omitted.
Without pretending to enumerate all the departments which our catalogue should comprise—and most of them are too obvious to require enumeration—we would suggest a good selection of the best translations and editions of the Greek and Roman Classics. In mentioning translations we, of course, disclaim any recommendation of the common 'crib,' but refer to those scholarly works which have brought the classical masterpieces to the very doors of the general public; such, for example, as Rawlinson's 'Herodotus,' or Prof. Jowett's 'Plato and Thucydides;' as Lord Derby's 'Iliad,' Gifford's 'Juvenal,' or Conington's 'Virgil:' nor is the crib more widely removed from such works as these, than, in the matter of editions, is Anthon's 'Virgil,' for example, from Munro's 'Lucretius.' In the opinion of Mr. Harrison, this 'is the age of accurate translation. The present generation has produced a complete library of versions of the great Classics, chiefly in prose, partly in verse, more faithful, true, and scholarly than anything ever produced before.' Mr. Harrison's own essay on the 'Poets of the Old World,' goes far to supply one at least of the branches of this section. Last, but by no means least, do we plead for a guide to 'Children's Books.' We run some risk in these days of competitive examinations and 'higher education,' of placing instruction too prominently in the front, to the exclusion of pure amusement; forgetting that it is through the imagination that the interest of a child is most readily aroused, and that, unless the interest be aroused, our educational labours will be worthless. A child can live in an atmosphere of genial fiction, and appreciate it, without the danger which lurks in a misrepresentation of what passes around him in his daily experience. It is exaggeration, not fiction, that is liable to injure the mind of a child.
On the vital question, 'how to read,' the student has received matter for careful and deliberate consideration, alike from Lord Iddesleigh and Mr. Goschen, from Mr. Harrison and Mr. Lowell. The burden of their advice is the same, though the forms differ; they all unite in deprecating and deploring the hurry, the want of application, the want of restraint which prevail in the present day. The hurrying reader, on the one hand, and the indolent reader, on the other, are the types to be avoided with the most scrupulous care. We suffer from an excess of opportunities, and require to be constantly reminded that 'it is impossible to give any method to our reading till we get nerve enough to reject.'
If we look through the long list of English literary celebrities, we cannot but be struck with the large proportion of those who have received little or no regular education in their early days, and whose opportunities of study have been of the scantiest. Ben Jonson working as a bricklayer with his book in his pocket: Wm. Cobbett reading his hard-earned 'Tale of a Tub' under the haystack, or mastering his grammar when he was a private soldier on the pay of 6d. a day; when 'the edge of my berth or that of my guard-bed was my seat to study in; my knapsack was my bookcase; a bit of board lying on my lap was my writing table, and the task did not demand anything like a year of my life:' Gifford, as a cobbler's apprentice, working out his problems on scraps of waste leather; or Bunyan, confined for twelve years in Bedford jail with only his Bible and 'Foxe's Book of Martyrs,' are but a few among scores of instances which will immediately suggest themselves.
There are many persons who are possessed with a strange and unaccountable conviction, that to read a book and to write a book are processes which require little, if any, previous training or preparation. The one error is sufficiently obvious to all who pay any attention to the great mass of cheap literature which is pouring from our printing-presses; the other is less easy of detection. 'The first lesson in reading is that which teaches us to distinguish between literature and merely printed matter,' is the admirable maxim laid down by Mr. Lowell, and this is one of the essential points in which the personal influence of an experienced friend is of inestimable value. As the latent beauties of some great masterpiece of art unfold themselves to our eye under the guidance of a Kugler or a Ruskin, and we are thus enabled to detect their presence or their absence in the works of other hands and other schools, so in the masterpieces of literature the realization of the points, wherein the chief merits of each lie, places us in a position to form a standard—to possess a talisman, which shall enable us unerringly to detect the true from the false. Mrs. Knowles said of Dr. Johnson, 'He knows how to read better than any one; he gets at the substance of a book directly; he tears the heart out of it.' This faculty, which was exhibited in a marvellous degree also in Southey and Macaulay, is as rare as it is enviable; but there are not a few who erroneously suppose themselves to be possessed of it. The hurried, careless, method of reading is one of the chief dangers a student should guard against. In studying a work of biography, for example—but above all in studying the classics—the first requisite, and one which is, as we have said, sadly overlooked in public school teaching, is the acquisition of a simple, general outline of the period to which the work relates. In the fashionable phrase of the day, the books so read are frequently not in correspondence with their environment. To him whose views of Roman history are but a shapeless mist, if not an absolute void, Virgil and Horace are sealed books; nor can any one who is ignorant of Scotland and her traditions penetrate beyond the husk of 'Waverley' or 'Old Mortality.' To the young beginner a few judicious words of explanation at the commencement of a book may serve to awaken that interest without which reading is useless, and to make darkness light; and, similarly, a few words of discussion, when the book is completed, will have the effect of consolidating the floating ideas to which the perusal has given rise. The habit of casting aside a book as soon as the last page is read, without pondering over its contents and recalling the argument and refreshing the memory where it has failed, or allowing the 'frenzied current of the eye to be stopped for many moments of calm reflection or thought,' is apt to render worthless all the previous effort. Lord Erskine, we are told, was in the habit of making long extracts from Burke, and Lord Eldon is said to have copied out 'Coke upon Littleton' twice with his own hand. 'Writing an analysis,' says Archibishop Whately,[102] 'or table of contents, or index, or notes, is very important for the study, properly so called, of any subject. And so also is the practice of previously conversing or writing on the subject you are about to study.' Reading can produce a beneficial result only in proportion to the extent and accuracy of information previously stored in the mind of the reader. Such information is like the roots of some flourishing oak; every fresh fact is, as it were, a new fibre confirming and strengthening the growth of the tree, and attracting nourishment from new soil.
'The moment you have a definite aim, attention is quickened, the mother of memory; and all that you acquire groups and arranges itself in an order that is lucid, because everywhere and always it is in intelligent relation to a central object of constant and growing interest.'[103] Bearing this in mind, we would urge the student to investigate every unfamiliar allusion which may occur in the course of his reading or conversation. A fact or subject thus sought out fixes itself more firmly in the memory than most of those which are merely passed in the ordinary course of reading.
The use of odd moments should not be overlooked. 'Blockheads,' wrote Sir Walter Scott, 'can never find out how folks cleverer than themselves came by their information. They never know what is done at dressing-time, meal-time even, or in how few minutes they can get at the sense of many pages.' It is not possible always to have a book at hand, but any one who will take the trouble to copy out, from time to time, passages which have attracted his attention, and carry them about with him to learn by heart at odd moments, may perhaps be astonished to find how much may be acquired in this manner.
There are some books which by their nature lend themselves to a snatchy method of perusal, and a few minutes may often be well employed in reading an ode of Horace, or the disjointed conversations of Dr. Johnson, but such moments should as a rule be devoted to books which are already more or less familiar. The habit of frivolously taking up, and as frivolously casting aside, a book is, however, one which should be guarded against with the utmost care. It was a strict rule in the family of Goethe the elder, that any book once commenced should be read through to the end. Dr. Johnson, on the other hand, considered a rule of this kind 'strange advice; you may as well resolve that whatever men you happen to get acquainted with, you are to keep them for life.'
A snare, which did not exist in the time of Goethe or of Dr. Johnson, presents itself in these days to the reader, in the ever-increasing mass of periodical literature. But the busy man, who has not time to turn aside from his own work to the thorough investigation of the topic of the hour, may sometimes, in the pages of a magazine, find the case stated tersely by distinguished advocates on both sides; and he may thus at least discern the main positions of assailant and assailed. An exhaustive and genuine review of a book is occasionally afforded by periodical literature, more rarely perhaps than is generally believed; but such essays to have any value, should be read only after the work to which they relate, a condition that is, we fear, seldom fulfilled.