Reading
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With a little more deliberation in the choice of their pursuits,all men would perhaps bee essentially students and observers, for
certainly their nature ainy are iing 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 ge nor
act. The oldest Egyptian or Hindoo philosopher raised a er
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,
si was I in him that was then so bold, and it is he ihat
now reviews the vision. No dust has settled on that robe; no time
has elapsed sihat divinity was revealed. That time which we
really improve, or which is improvable, is her past, present,
nor future.
My residence was more favorable, not only to thought, but to
serious reading, than a uy; and though I was beyond the
range of the ordinary circulating library, I had more than ever e
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 Mr
Udd, "Beied, 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 experiehis
藏书网pleasure when I have drunk the liquor of the esoteric does." I
kept Homers 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 iervals 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 AEschylus in the Greek without
danger of dissipation or luxuriousness, for it implies that he in
some measure emulate their heroes, and secrate m 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 degee
times; and we must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and
line, jecturing a larger sehan on use permits out of
what wisdom and valor and generosity we have. The modern cheap and
fertile press, with all its translations, has dotle t
us o 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 a 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 as 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 ahey may be. For what are the classics
but the recorded thoughts of man? They are the only oracles
which are not decayed, and there are suswers 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 ohat
will task the reader more than any exercise which the s of the
day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent,
the steady iion 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 only transitory, a sound, a
tongue, a dialect merely, almost brutish, and we learn it
unsciously, like the brutes, of our mothers. The other is the
maturity and experience of that; if that is our mother tohis
is our father tongue, a reserved a expression, too
signifit to be heard by the ear, which we must be bain in
order to speak. The crowds of men who merely spoke the Greek and
Latin tongues in the Middle Ages were led by the act
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 learhe
nobler dialects of Greed Rome, but the very materials on which
they were written were waste paper to them, and they prized instead
a cheap porary literature. But when the several nations of
Europe had acquired distinct though rude written languages of their
own, suffit for the purposes of their rising literatures, then
first learning revived, and scholars were eo dis from
that remotehe treasures of antiquity. What the Roman and
Gre 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 orators occasional bursts of
eloquehe written words are only 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 may
read them. The astronomers forever ent on and observe them.
They are not exhalations like our daily colloquies and vaporous
breath. What is called eloquen the forum is only found to
be rhetori the study. The orator yields to the inspiration of a
tra occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who
hear him; but the writer, whose more equable life is his
occasion, and who would be distracted by the event and the crowd
whispire the orator, speaks to the intelled health of
mankind, to all in any age who uand him.
No wohat 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
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 vas or in marble only, but be carved out of the
breath of life itself. The symbol of an a mans thought
bees a modern mans speech. Two thousand summers have imparted
to the mos of Gre literature, as to her marbles, only a
maturer golden and autumnal tint, <s></s>for they have carried their own
serene aial atmosphere into all lands to protect them
against the corrosion of time. Books are the treasured wealth of
the world and the fit iance of geions 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 on
sense will not refuse them. Their authors are a natural and
irresistible aristocra every society, and, more than kings or
emperors, exert an influenankind. When the illiterate and
perhaps sful trader has earned by enterprise and industry his
coveted leisure and independence, and is admitted to the circles of
wealth and fashiourns iably at last to those still
higher but yet inaccessible circles of intelled genius, and is
sensible only of the imperfe of his culture and the vanity and
insufficy 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 bees the founder of a family.
Those who have not learo read the a classi 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
AEschylus, nor Virgil even -- works as refined, as solidly done, and
as beautiful almost as the m 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 as. They only talk of fetting them who never
khem. It will be soon enough tet them when we have the
learning and the genius which will enable us to attend to and
appreciate them. That age will be rideed 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, wheis shall be filled with Vedas
and Zeas and Bibles, with Homers and Dantes and Shakespeares,
and all the turies to e 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 read them. They have only been
read as the multitude read the stars, at most astrologically, not
astronomically. Most men have learo read to serve a paltry
venience, as they have learo cipher in order to keep
ats 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 ae 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 meisfied
if they read or hear read, and perce have been victed 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 orants and ostriches, digest all sorts of this, even
after the fullest dinner of meats aables, for they suffer
nothing to be wasted. If others are the maes to provide this
provehey are the maes to read it. They read the nine
thousandth tale about Zebulon and Sophronia, and how they loved as
none had ever loved before, aher did the course of their true
love run smooth -- at any rate, how it did run and stumble, a
up again and go on! how some poor unfortu 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 rings
the bell for all the world to e 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 stellations,
ahem swing round there till they are rusty, and not e
down at all to bother ho men with their pranks. The ime
the 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; dont all e together." All this
they read with saucer eyes, a and primitive curiosity, and
with unwearied gizzard, whose cations eve need no
sharpening, just as some little four-year-old bencher his two-t
gilt-covered edition of derella -- without any improvement, that
I see, in the pronunciation, or at<mark></mark>, or emphasis, or any more
skill irag or iing 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 cord 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 read and
spell. Even the college-bred and so-called liberally educated men
here and elsewhere have really little or no acquaintah the
English classics; and as for the recorded wisdom of mankind, the
a classid Bibles, which are accessible to all who will
know of them, there are the feeblest efforts anywhere made to bee
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 adian by birth; and
when I ask him what he siders the best thing he 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 e from reading perhaps one of the best English books will
find how many with whom he verse about it? Or suppose he
es from reading a Greek or Latin classi the inal, 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 oetry 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
tell me eveitles? Most men do not know that any nation
but the Hebrews have had a scripture. A man, any man, will go
siderably 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; --
a 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
versation 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 cord
soil has produced, wh<bdi></bdi>ose 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 neighbor and I never heard
him speak or atteo the wisdom of his words. But how actually
is it? His Dialogues, which tain what was immortal in him, lie
on the shelf, a I never read them. We are underbred and
low-lived and illiterate; and in this respect I fess I do not
make any very broad distin between the illiterateness of my
townsman who ot read at all and the illiterateness of him who
has learo 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 ns
of the daily paper.
It is not all books that are as dull as their readers. There
are probably words addressed to our ditioly, which, if we
could really hear and uand, would be more salutary than the
m or the spring to our lives, and possibly put a nee
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,
perce, 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 found us have in their
turn occurred to all the <mark>99lｉｂ?</mark>wise men; not one has been omitted; and
each has answered them, acc to his ability, by his words and
his life. Moreover, with wisdom we shall learn liberality. The
solitary hired man on a farm iskirts of cord, who has
had his sed 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, k to be universal, and treated his neighbors
accly, and is even said to have ied aablished
worship among men. Let him humbly uh Zoroaster then, and
through the liberalizing influence of all the worthies, with Jesus
Christ himself, a "our church" go by the board.
We boast that we belong to the eenth tury and are making
the most rapid strides of any nation. But sider 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 o be provoked -- goaded like oxen, as we
are, into a trot. We have a paratively det system of on
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 unon schools, that we did not
leave off our education when we begin to be men and women. It is
time that villages were uies, and their elder inhabitants
the fellows of uies, with leisure -- if they are, indeed, so
well off -- to pursue liberal studies the rest of their lives.
Shall the world be fio one Paris or one Oxford forever?
ot students be boarded here a a liberal education under
the skies of cord? we not hire some Abelard to lecture to
us? Alas! what with f the cattle and tending the store, we
are kept from school too long, and our education is sadly ed.
In this try, 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 riough. It wants only the magnanimity and
refi. It 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 toeeen thousand dollars on a town-house,
thank fortune or politics, but probably it will not spend so mu
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 iown. If we live in the eenth tury, why
should we not enjoy the advantages which the eenth tury
offers? Why should our life be in any respect provincial? If we
will read neers, why not skip the gossip of Boston and take the
best neer in the world at once? -- not be sug the pap of
"ral family" papers, or browsing "Olive Branches" here in New
England. Let the reports of all the learned societies e 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
duces 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 sele, because our
Pilgrim forefathers got through a cold winter on a bleak rock
with these. To act collectively is acc to the spirit of our
institutions; and I am fident that, as our circumstances are more
flourishing, our means are greater than the noblemans. New England
hire all the wise men in the world to e and teach her, and
board them round the while, and not be provincial at all. That is
the unon school we want. Instead of nobleme 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.
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