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READING WITH a
little more deliberation in the
choice of their pursuits, all men would perhaps become essentially
students and
observers, for certainly their nature and destiny are interesting to
all alike.
In accumulating property for ourselves or our posterity, in founding a
family
or a state, or acquiring fame even, we are mortal; but in dealing with
truth we
are immortal, and need fear no change nor accident. The oldest Egyptian
or
Hindoo philosopher raised a corner of the veil from the statue of the
divinity;
and still the trembling robe remains raised, and I gaze upon as fresh a
glory
as he did, since it was I in him that was then so bold, and it is he in
me that
now reviews the vision. No dust has settled on that robe; no time has
elapsed
since that divinity was revealed. That time which we really improve, or
which
is improvable, is neither past, present, nor future. My residence was more
favorable, not only to thought, but to serious reading, than a
university; and
though I was beyond the range of the ordinary circulating library, I
had more
than ever come within the influence of those books which circulate
round the
world, whose sentences were first written on bark, and are now
merely
copied from time to time on to linen paper. Says the poet Mir Camar
Uddin Mast,
"Being seated, to run through the region of the spiritual world; I have
had this advantage in books. To be intoxicated by a single glass of
wine; I
have experienced this pleasure when I have drunk the liquor of the
esoteric
doctrines." I kept Homer's Iliad on my
table through the
summer, though I looked at his page only now
and then. Incessant labor with my hands, at first, for I had my house
to finish
and my beans to hoe at the same time, made more study impossible. Yet I
sustained myself by the prospect of such reading in future. I read one
or two
shallow books of travel in the intervals of my work, till that
employment made
me ashamed of myself, and I asked where it was then that I
lived. The student may read Homer
or Æschylus in the Greek without danger of dissipation or
luxuriousness, for it
implies that he in some measure emulate their heroes, and consecrate
morning
hours to their pages. The heroic books, even if printed in the
character of our
mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times;
and we
must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a
larger
sense than common use permits out of what wisdom and valor and
generosity we
have. The modern cheap and fertile press, with all its translations,
has done little
to bring us nearer to the heroic writers of antiquity. They seem as
solitary,
and the letter in which they are printed as rare and curious, as ever.
It is
worth the expense of youthful days and costly hours, if you learn only
some
words of an ancient language, which are raised out of the trivialness
of the
street, to be perpetual suggestions and provocations. It is not in vain
that
the farmer remembers and repeats the few Latin words which he has
heard. Men
sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make
way for
more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous student will
always
study classics, in whatever language they may be written and however
ancient
they may be. For what are the classics but the noblest recorded
thoughts of
man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and
there are such
answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never
gave. We might as well
omit to study Nature because she is old. To read well, that is, to read
true
books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the
reader
more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires
a
training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of
the
whole life to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and
reservedly as
they were written. It is not enough even to be able to speak the
language of
that nation by which they are written, for there is a memorable
interval
between the spoken and the written language, the language heard and the
language read. The one is commonly transitory, a sound, a tongue, a
dialect
merely, almost brutish, and we learn it unconsciously, like the brutes,
of our
mothers. The other is the maturity and experience of that; if that is
our
mother tongue, this is our father tongue, a reserved and select
expression, too
significant to be heard by the ear, which we must be born again in
order to
speak. The crowds of men who merely spoke
the Greek and Latin tongues in
the Middle Ages were not entitled by the accident of birth to read
the
works of genius written in those languages; for these were not written
in that
Greek or Latin which they knew, but in the select language of
literature. They
had not learned the nobler dialects of Greece and Rome, but the very
materials
on which they were written were waste paper to them, and they prized
instead a
cheap contemporary literature. But when the several nations of Europe
had
acquired distinct though rude written languages of their own,
sufficient for
the purposes of their rising literatures, then first learning revived,
and
scholars were enabled to discern from that remoteness the treasures of
antiquity. What the Roman and Grecian multitude could not hear,
after
the lapse of ages a few scholars read,
and a few scholars only are still
reading it. However much we may admire
the orator's occasional bursts of eloquence, the noblest written words
are
commonly as far behind or above the fleeting spoken language as the
firmament
with its stars is behind the clouds. There
are the stars, and they who
can may read them. The astronomers forever comment on and observe them.
They
are not exhalations like our daily colloquies and vaporous breath. What
is
called eloquence in the forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in the
study. The
orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to
the mob
before him, to those who can hear
him; but the writer, whose more
equable life is his occasion, and who would be distracted by the event
and the
crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and health of
mankind,
to all in any age who can understand
him. No wonder that Alexander
carried the Iliad with him on his expeditions in a precious casket. A
written
word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate
with us
and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art
nearest to
life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be
read but
actually breathed from all human lips; — not be represented
on canvas or in marble
only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself. The symbol of an
ancient
man's thought becomes a modern man's speech. Two thousand summers have
imparted
to the monuments of Grecian literature, as to her marbles, only a
maturer
golden and autumnal tint, for they have carried their own serene and
celestial
atmosphere into all lands to protect them against the corrosion of
time. Books
are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of
generations
and nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and
rightfully on
the shelves of every cottage. They have no cause of their own to plead,
but
while they enlighten and sustain the reader his common sense will not
refuse
them. Their authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every
society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an influence on
mankind. When
the illiterate and perhaps scornful trader has earned by enterprise and
industry his coveted leisure and independence, and is admitted to the
circles
of wealth and fashion, he turns inevitably at last to those still
higher but
yet inaccessible circles of intellect and genius, and is sensible only
of the
imperfection of his culture and the vanity and insufficiency of all his
riches,
and further proves his good sense by the pains which be takes to secure
for his
children that intellectual culture whose want he so keenly feels; and
thus it
is that he becomes the founder of a family. Those who have not learned
to read the ancient classics in the language in which they were written
must
have a very imperfect knowledge of the history of the human race; for
it is
remarkable that no transcript of them has ever been made into any
modern
tongue, unless our civilization itself may be regarded as such a
transcript. Homer has never yet been printed in English, nor
Æschylus, nor
Virgil even — works as refined, as solidly done, and as
beautiful almost as the
morning itself; for later writers, say what we will of their genius,
have
rarely, if ever, equalled the elaborate beauty and finish and the
lifelong and
heroic literary labors of the ancients. They only talk of forgetting
them who
never knew them. It will be soon enough to forget them when we have the
learning and the genius which will enable us to attend to and
appreciate
them. That age will be rich indeed when those relics which we
call
Classics, and the still older and more than classic but even less known
Scriptures of the nations, shall have still further accumulated, when
the
Vaticans shall be filled with Vedas and Zendavestas and
Bibles, with Homers and
Dantes and Shakespeares, and all
the centuries to come shall have successively deposited their trophies
in the
forum of the world. By such a pile we may hope to scale heaven at last.
The works of the great poets
have never yet been read by mankind, for only great poets can read
them. They
have only been read as the multitude read the stars, at most
astrologically,
not astronomically. Most men have learned to read to serve a paltry
convenience, as they have learned to cipher in order to keep accounts
and not
be cheated in trade; but of reading as a noble intellectual exercise
they know
little or nothing; yet this only is reading, in a high sense, not that
which
lulls us as a luxury and suffers the nobler faculties to sleep the
while, but
what we have to stand on tip-toe to read and devote our most alert and
wakeful
hours to. I think that having learned
our letters we should read the best that is in literature, and not be
forever
repeating our a-b-abs, and words of one syllable, in the fourth or
fifth
classes, sitting on the lowest and foremost form all our lives. Most
men are
satisfied if they read or hear read, and perchance have been convicted
by the
wisdom of one good book, the Bible, and for the rest of their lives
vegetate
and dissipate their faculties in what is called easy reading. There is
a work
in several volumes in our Circulating Library entitled "Little
Reading," which I thought referred to a town of that name which I had
not
been to. There are those who, like cormorants and ostriches, can digest
all
sorts of this, even after the fullest dinner of meats and vegetables,
for they
suffer nothing to be wasted. If others are the machines to provide this
provender, they are the machines to read it. They read the nine
thousandth tale
about Zebulon and Sophronia, and how they loved as none had ever loved
before,
and neither did the course of their true love run smooth — at
any rate, how it
did run and stumble, and get up again and go on! how some poor
unfortunate got
up on to a steeple, who had better never have gone up as far as the
belfry; and
then, having needlessly got him up there, the happy novelist rings the
bell for
all the world to come together and hear, O dear! how he did get down
again! For
my part, I think that they had better metamorphose all such aspiring
heroes of
universal noveldom into man weather-cocks, as they used to put heroes
among the
constellations, and let them swing round there till they are rusty, and
not
come down at all to bother honest men with their pranks. The next time
the
novelist rings the bell I will not stir though the meeting-house burn
down.
"The Skip of the Tip-Toe-Hop, a Romance of the Middle Ages, by the
celebrated author of 'Tittle-Tol-Tan,' to appear in monthly parts; a
great
rush; don't all come together." All this they read with saucer eyes,
and
erect and primitive curiosity, and with unwearied gizzard, whose
corrugations
even yet need no sharpening, just as some little four-year-old bencher
his
two-cent gilt-covered edition of Cinderella — without any
improvement, that I
can see, in the pronunciation, or accent, or emphasis, or any more
skill in
extracting or inserting the moral. The result is dulness of sight, a
stagnation
of the vital circulations, and a general deliquium and sloughing off of
all the
intellectual faculties. This sort of gingerbread is baked daily and
more
sedulously than pure wheat or rye-and-Indian in almost every oven, and
finds a
surer market. The best books are not read
even by those who are called good readers. What does our Concord
culture amount
to? There is in this town, with a very few exceptions, no taste for the
best or
for very good books even in English literature, whose words all can
read and
spell. Even the college-bred and so-called liberally educated men here
and
elsewhere have really little or no acquaintance with the English
classics; and
as for the recorded wisdom of mankind, the ancient classics and Bibles,
which
are accessible to all who will know of them, there are the feeblest
efforts
anywhere made to become acquainted with them. I know a woodchopper, of
middle
age, who takes a French paper, not for news as he says, for he is above
that,
but to "keep himself in practice," he being a Canadian by birth; and
when I ask him what he considers the best thing he can do in this
world, he
says, beside this, to keep up and add to his English. This is about as
much as
the college-bred generally do or aspire to do, and they take an English
paper
for the purpose. One who has just come from reading perhaps one of the
best
English books will find how many with whom he can converse about it? Or
suppose
he comes from reading a Greek or Latin classic in the original, whose
praises
are familiar even to the so-called illiterate; he will find nobody at
all to
speak to, but must keep silence about it. Indeed, there is hardly the
professor
in our colleges, who, if he has mastered the difficulties of the
language, has
proportionally mastered the difficulties of the wit and poetry of a
Greek poet,
and has any sympathy to impart to the alert and heroic reader; and as
for the
sacred Scriptures, or Bibles of mankind, who in this town can tell me
even
their titles? Most men do not know that any nation but the Hebrews have
had a
scripture. A man, any man, will go considerably out of his way to pick
up a
silver dollar; but here are golden words, which the wisest men of
antiquity
have uttered, and whose worth the wise of every succeeding age have
assured us
of; — and yet we learn to read only as far as Easy Reading,
the primers and
class-books, and when we leave school, the "Little Reading," and
story-books, which are for boys and beginners; and our reading, our
conversation and thinking, are all on a very low level, worthy only of
pygmies
and manikins. I aspire to be acquainted
with wiser men than this our Concord soil has produced, whose names are
hardly
known here. Or shall I hear the name of Plato and
never read his
book? As if Plato were my
townsman and I never saw him — my next neighbor and I never
heard him speak or
attended to the wisdom of his words. But how actually is it? His
Dialogues,
which contain what was immortal in him, lie on the next shelf, and yet
I never
read them. We are underbred and low-lived and illiterate; and in this
respect I
confess I do not make any very broad distinction between the
illiterateness of
my townsman who cannot read at all and the illiterateness of him who
has
learned to read only what is for children and feeble intellects. We
should be
as good as the worthies of antiquity, but partly by first knowing how
good they
were. We are a race of tit-men, and soar but little higher in our
intellectual
flights than the columns of the daily paper. It is not all books that are
as dull as their readers. There are probably words addressed to our
condition
exactly, which, if we could really hear and understand, would be more
salutary
than the morning or the spring to our lives, and possibly put a new
aspect on
the face of things for us. How many a man has dated a new era in his
life from
the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, which will
explain
our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we
may find
somewhere uttered. These same questions that disturb and puzzle and
confound us
have in their turn occurred to all the wise men; not one has been
omitted; and
each has answered them, according to his ability, by his words and his
life.
Moreover, with wisdom we shall learn liberality. The solitary
hired man on
a farm in the outskirts of Concord, who has had his second birth and
peculiar
religious experience, and is driven as he believes into the silent
gravity and
exclusiveness by his faith, may think it is not true; but Zoroaster,
thousands
of years ago, travelled the same road and had the same experience; but
he,
being wise, knew it to be universal, and treated his neighbors
accordingly, and
is even said to have invented and established worship among men. Let
him humbly
commune with Zoroaster then, and through the liberalizing influence of
all the
worthies, with Jesus Christ himself, and let "our church" go by the
board. We boast that we belong to the Nineteenth Century and are making the most rapid strides of any nation. But consider how little this village does for its own culture. I do not wish to flatter my townsmen, nor to be flattered by them, for that will not advance either of us. We need to be provoked — goaded like oxen, as we are, into a trot. We have a comparatively decent system of common schools, schools for infants only; but excepting the half-starved Lyceum in the winter, and latterly the puny beginning of a library suggested by the State, no school for ourselves. We spend more on almost any article of bodily aliment or ailment than on our mental aliment. It is time that we had uncommon schools, that we did not leave off our education when we begin to be men and women. It is time that villages were universities, and their elder inhabitants the fellows of universities, with leisure — if they are, indeed, so well off — to pursue liberal studies the rest of their lives. Shall the world be confined to one Paris or one Oxford forever? Cannot students be boarded here and get a liberal education under the skies of Concord? Can we not hire some Abelard to lecture to us? Alas! what with foddering the cattle and tending the store, we are kept from school too long, and our education is sadly neglected. In this country, the village should in some respects take the place of the nobleman of Europe. It should be the patron of the fine arts. It is rich enough. It wants only the magnanimity and refinement. It can spend money enough on such things as farmers and traders value, but it is thought Utopian to propose spending money for things which more intelligent men know to be of far more worth. This town has spent seventeen thousand dollars on a town-house, thank fortune or politics, but probably it will not spend so much on living wit, the true meat to put into that shell, in a hundred years. The one hundred and twenty-five dollars annually subscribed for a Lyceum in the winter is better spent than any other equal sum raised in the town. If we live in the Nineteenth Century, why should we not enjoy the advantages which the Nineteenth Century offers? Why should our life be in any respect provincial? If we will read newspapers, why not skip the gossip of Boston and take the best newspaper in the world at once? — not be sucking the pap of "neutral family" papers, or browsing "Olive Branches" here in New England. Let the reports of all the learned societies come to us, and we will see if they know anything. Why should we leave it to Harper & Brothers and Redding & Co. to select our reading? As the nobleman of cultivated taste surrounds himself with whatever conduces to his culture — genius — learning — wit — books — paintings — statuary — music — philosophical instruments, and the like; so let the village do — not stop short at a pedagogue, a parson, a sexton, a parish library, and three selectmen, because our Pilgrim forefathers got through a cold winter once on a bleak rock with these. To act collectively is according to the spirit of our institutions; and I am confident that, as our circumstances are more flourishing, our means are greater than the nobleman's. New England can hire all the wise men in the world to come and teach her, and board them round the while, and not be provincial at all. That is the uncommon school we want. Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men. If it is necessary, omit one bridge over the river, go round a little there, and throw one arch at least over the darker gulf of ignorance which surrounds us. |
