On The Art of Reading

it), a little further on the line of common-sense; then to cast back and chase on a line somewhat more philosophical. If these lines run wide and refuse

ample, go back quite beyond the invention of printing and try to imagine a man who had read all the rolls destroyed in the Library of Alexandria by successive burnings. (Some reckon the number of these MSS at 700,000.) Suppose, further, this man to

t library stood but 400 yards from the quayside, with warehouses full of books yet closer. The last great burning was perpetrated in A.D. 642. Gibbon quotes the famous sentence of Omar, the great Mohammeda

ude that six months were barely sufficient for the consumption of this precious fuel.... The tale has been repeatedly transcribed; and every scholar, with pious indignation, h

nsequence

e the lapse of ages, the waste of ignorance, and the calamities of war, our treasures, rather than our losses, are the object of my surprise. Many curious and interesting facts are buried in oblivion: the three great historians of Rome have been transmitted to our hands in a mutilated state, and we are deprived of many pleasing compositions of the lyric, iambic, and dramatic poetry of the Greeks. Yet we should gratefully reme

,' I submit with all respect that he talks nonsense. Like the stranger in the temple of the sea-god, invited to admire the many votive garments of those preserved out of shipwreck, I ask 'at ubi sunt vestimenta eorum qui post vota nuncupata perierunt?'- or in

ad, mark, learn and inwardly digest.' And that was in A.D. 642, whereas we have arrived at 1916. Where would our voracious Alexandrian be to-day, with all the

Some of these manuals are written by men of knowledge so encyclopaedic that (if it go with critical judgment) for these purposes they may be trusted. But to require you, at your stage of reading, to have even the minor names by heart is a perversity of folly. For later studies it seems to me a more pardonable mistake, but yet a mistake, to hope that by the employ of separate specialists you can get even in 15 or 20 volumes a perspective, a proportionate description, of what

ear B

serve fo

he puts de

f Businesse.... To spend too much Time in Studies is Sloth; to use them too much for Ornament is Affectation; to make judgement wholly by their Rules is the Humour of a Scholler. They perfect Nature, and are p

, he

but not Curiously; and some Few are to be read wholly, and with Diligence and Attention. Some Bookes also may be read by Deputy, and Extracts made of them by Othe

such-and-such a man-that 'tis a folly to bite off more than you can assimilate-and that with it, as with every other art, the difficulty and the discip

t Hamerton, whom I quoted to you three weeks ago, instances in his book "The Intellectual Life" an accomplished French cook who, in discussing his

he parsley was a good illustration of his theory about his art. If the parsley were omitted, the flavour he aimed at was not produced at all; but, on the other hand, if the quantity of the parsley was in the least excessive, then the gateau instead of being a delicacy for gourmets became an uneatable mess. Perceiving that I was really

of this last simile; and, for myself, I should have taken the chef's w

try and a thousand times more difficult to observe. One general truth may, however, be re

e, and how that which we are is dependent as much upon our ignorance as our science. W

nt begins to be

have always instinctively felt this, and have decided that a gentleman ought not to know too much of certain arts and sciences. The character which they had

y and charm was dependent upon the limitations of their culture, and which would have been entirely a

been written--in short to keep pace with those that are being written-is starkly impossible, and (as Aristotle would say) about what is impossible one does not argue. We must sel