BOOK I

take a paper book of what size I please. I divide the two first pages that face one another by parallel lines into five-and-twenty equal parts, every fifth line black, the other red. I then cut them perpendicularly by other lines that I draw from the top to the bottom of the page. I put about the middle of each five spaces one of the twenty letters I design to make use of, and, a little forward in each space, the five vowels, one below another, in their natural order. This is the index to the whole volume, how big soever it may be.

The index being made after this manner, I leave a margin in all the other pages of the book, of about the largeness of an inch, in a volume in folio, or a little larger; and, in a less volume, smaller in proportion.

If I would put anything in my Commonplace Book, I find out a head to which I may refer it. Each head ought to be some important and essential word to the matter in hand, and in that word regard is to be had to the first letter, and the vowel that follows it; for upon these two letters depends all the use of the index.

I omit three letters of the alphabet as of no use to me, viz. K, Y, W, which are supplied by C, I, U, that are equivalent to them. I put the letter Q that is always followed with an u in the fifth space of Z. By throwing Q last in my index, I preserve the regularity of my index, and diminish not in the least its extent; for it seldom happens that there is any head begins with Zu. I have found none in the five-and-twenty years I have used this method.... When I meet with anything that I think fit to put into my commonplace book, I first find a proper head. Suppose, for example, that the head be EPISTOLA, I look into the index for the first letter and the following vowel, which in this instance are E i; if in the space marked E i there is any number that directs me to the page designed for words that begin with an E, and whose first vowel after the initial letter is I, I must then write under the word Epistola, in that page, what I have to remark. I write the head in large letters and begin a little way out into the margin, and I continue on the line, in writing what I have to say. I observe constantly this rule that only the head appears in the margin, and that it be continued on, without ever doubling the line in the margin, by which means the heads will be obvious at first sight....

If the head is a monosyllable and begins with a vowel, that vowel is at the same time both the first letter of the word and the characteristic vowel. Therefore I write the word Ars in A a and Os in O o....

As to the language in which one ought to express the heads I esteem the Latin tongue most commodious, provided the nominative case be always kept to.... But it is not of much consequence what language is made use of, provided there be no mixture in the heads of different languages.--W. LOCKE (Letter to Mr. Toignard).

A commonplace book contains many notions in garrison, whence the owner may draw out an army into the field on competent warning.--T. FULLER. _The Holy and the Profane State._

Reading without thinking may indeed make a rich commonplace, but 'twill never make a clear head.--J. NORRIS. _On the Advantages of Thinking._

MARGINAL NOTES AND COMMONPLACE BOOKS

It is the practice of many readers to note, in the margin of their books, the most important passages, the strongest arguments, or the brightest sentiments. Thus they load their minds with superfluous attention, repress the vehemence of curiosity by useless deliberation, and by frequent interruption break the current of narration or the chain of reason, and at last close the volume, and forget the passages and marks together.

Others I have found unalterably persuaded that nothing is certainly remembered but what is transcribed; and they have therefore passed weeks and months in transferring large quotations to a commonplace book. Yet, why any part of a book, which can be consulted at pleasure, should be copied, I was never able to discover. The hand has no closer correspondence with the memory than the eye. The act of writing itself distracts the thoughts, and what is read twice is commonly better remembered than what is transcribed. This method therefore consumes time without assisting memory.

The true art of memory is the art of attention. No man will read with much advantage, who is not able, at pleasure, to evacuate his mind, or who brings not to his author an intellect defecated and pure, neither turbid with care, nor agitated by pleasure. If the repositories of thought are already full, what can they receive? If the mind is employed on the past or the future, the book will be held before the eyes in vain. What is read with delight is commonly retained, because pleasure always secures attention: but the books which are consulted by occasional necessity, and perused with impatience, seldom leave any traces on the mind.--S. JOHNSON. _Idler_, 74.

THE BEE AND THE BUTTERFLY

More is got from one book on which the thought settles for a definite end in knowledge, than from libraries skimmed over by a wandering eye. A cottage flower gives honey to the bee, a king's garden none to the butterfly.--E. G. E. L. BULWER-LYTTON, LORD LYTTON. _Caxtoniana._

SKIPPING WIT

I do not search and toss over books, but for an honester recreation to please, and pastime to delight myself: or if I study, I only endeavour to find out the knowledge that teacheth or handleth the knowledge of myself, and which may instruct me how to die well and how to live well.

Has meus ad metas sudet oportet equus (Propertius).

My horse must sweating run, That this goal may be won.

If in reading I fortune to meet with any difficult points, I fret not myself about them, but after I have given them a charge or two, I leave them as I found them. Should I earnestly plod upon them, I should lose both time and myself, for I have a skipping wit. What I see not at the first view, I shall less see it if I opinionate myself upon it. I do nothing without blitheness; and an over-obstinate continuation and plodding contention doth dazzle, dull, and weary the same: my sight is thereby confounded and diminished.... If one book seem tedious unto me I take another, which I follow not with any earnestness, except it be at such hours as I am idle, or that I am weary with doing nothing. I am not greatly affected to new books, because ancient authors are, in my judgement, more full and pithy: nor am I much addicted to Greek books, forasmuch as my understanding cannot well rid his work with a childish and apprentice intelligence. Amongst modern books merely pleasant, I esteem Boccaccio his _Decameron_, Rabelais, and the Kisses of John the Second (if they may be placed under this title), worth the pains-taking to read them. As for _Amadis_ and such like trash of writings, they had never the credit so much as to allure my youth to delight in them. This I will say more, either boldly or rashly, that this old and heavy-paced mind of mine will no more be pleased with Aristotle, or tickled with good Ovid: his facility and quaint inventions which heretofore have so ravished me, they can nowadays scarcely entertain me.... It is neither grammatical subtilties nor logical quiddities, nor the witty contexture of choice words or arguments and syllogisms that will serve my turn.... I would not have a man go about and labour by circumlocutions to induce and win me to attention, and that (as our heralds or criers do) they shall ring out their words: Now hear me, now listen, or ho-yes. The Romans in their religion were wont to say 'Hoc age'; which in ours we say 'Sursum corda'. These are so many lost words for me. I come ready prepared from my house. I need no allurement nor sauce, my stomach is good enough to digest raw meat.--MONTAIGNE.

CHANCE READINGS

Interdum speciosa locis morataque recte Fabula nullius veneris, sine pondere et arte, Valdius oblectat populum meliusque moratur Quam versus inopes rerum nugaeque canorae.--HOR.

It is the custom of the Mahometans, if they see any printed or written paper upon the ground, to take it up and lay it aside carefully, as not knowing but it may contain some piece of their Alcoran. I must confess I have so much of the Mussulman in me, that I cannot forbear looking into every printed paper which comes in my way, under whatsoever despicable circumstances it may appear; for as no mortal author, in the ordinary fate and vicissitude of things, knows to what use his works may some time or other be applied, a man may often meet with very celebrated names in a paper of tobacco. I have lighted my pipe more than once with the writings of a prelate; and know a friend of mine, who, for these several years, has converted the essays of a man of quality into a kind of fringe for his candlesticks. I remember in particular, after having read over a poem of an eminent author on a victory, I met with several fragments of it upon the next rejoicing day, which had been employed in squibs and crackers, and by that means celebrated its subject in a double capacity. I once met with a page of Mr. Baxter under a Christmas pie. Whether or no the pastry-cook had made use of it through chance or waggery, for the defence of that superstitious _viande_, I know not; but upon the perusal of it, I conceived so good an idea of the author's piety, that I bought the whole book. I have often profited by these accidental readings, and have sometimes found very curious pieces, that are either out of print, or not to be met with in the shops of our London booksellers. For this reason, when my friends take a survey of my library, they are very much surprised to find, upon the shelf of folios, two long band-boxes standing upright among my books, till I let them see that they are both of them lined with deep erudition and abstruse literature.--J. ADDISON. _Spectator_, 85.

RIDING POST

In opposition to these extremes, I meet with another sort of people, that delight themselves in reading, but it is in such a desultory way, running from one book to another, as birds skip from one bough to another, without design, that it is no marvel if they get nothing but their labour for their pains, when they seek nothing but change and diversion: they that ride post can observe but little.

It is in reading, as it is in making many books; there may be a pleasing distraction in it, but little or no profit. I would therefore do in this as merchants used to do in their trading; who, in a coasting way, put in at several ports and take in what commodities they afford, but settle their factories in those places only which are of special note: I would, by the by, allow myself a traffic with sundry authors, as I happen to light upon them, for my recreation; and I would make the best advantage that I could of them; but I would fix my study upon those only that are of most importance to fit me for action, which is the true end of all learning, and for the service of God, which is the true end of all action. Lord, teach me so to study other men's works as not to neglect mine own; and so to study Thy word, which is Thy work, that it may be 'a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path'--my candle to work by. Take me off from the curiosity of knowing only to know; from the vanity of knowing only to be known; and from the folly of pretending to know more than I do know; and let it be my wisdom to study to know Thee, who art life eternal. Write Thy law in my heart, and I shall be the best book here.--SIR W. WALLER. _Divine Meditations._

APPETITE AND SATIETY

The library at Waverley-Honour, a large Gothic room, with double arches and a gallery, contained such a miscellaneous and extensive collection of volumes as had been assembled together, during the course of two hundred years, by a family which had been always wealthy, and inclined, of course, as a mark of splendour, to furnish their shelves with the current literature of the day, without much scrutiny, or nicety of discrimination. Throughout this ample realm Edward was permitted to roam at large.... With a desire of amusement, therefore, which better discipline might soon have converted into a thirst for knowledge, young Waverley drove through the sea of books, like a vessel without a pilot or a rudder. Nothing perhaps increases by indulgence more than a desultory habit of reading, especially under such opportunities of gratifying it. I believe one reason why such numerous instances of erudition occur among the lower ranks is, that, with the same powers of mind, the poor student is limited to a narrow circle for indulging his passion for books, and must necessarily make himself master of the few he possesses ere he can acquire more. Edward, on the contrary, like the epicure who only deigned to take a single morsel from the sunny side of a peach, read no volume a moment after it ceased to excite his curiosity or interest; and it necessarily happened, that the habit of seeking only this sort of gratification rendered it daily more difficult of attainment, till the passion for reading, like other strong appetites, produced by indulgence a sort of satiety.--SIR W. SCOTT. _Waverley._

THE HABIT OF CASUAL READING

Not to mention the multitudes who read merely for the sake of talking, or to qualify themselves for the world, or some such kind of reasons; there are, even of the few who read for their own entertainment, and have a real curiosity to see what is said, several, which is prodigious, who have no sort of curiosity to see what is true....

For the sake of this whole class of readers, for they are of different capacities, different kinds, and get into this way from different occasions, I have often wished that it had been the custom to lay before people nothing in matters of argument but premises, and leave them to draw conclusions themselves; which, though it could not be done in all cases, might in many.

The great number of books and papers of amusement, which, of one kind or another, daily come in one's way, have in part occasioned, and most perfectly fall in with and humour, this idle way of reading and considering things. By this means, time even in solitude is happily got rid of, without the pain of attention; neither is any part of it more put to the account of idleness, one can scarce forbear saying, is spent with less thought, than great part of that which is spent in reading.--J. BUTLER. Preface to _Sermons_.

JOHNSON'S CURSORY READING

Mr. Elphinston talked of a new book that was much admired, and asked Dr. Johnson if he had read it. Johnson: 'I have looked into it.' 'What (said Elphinston), have you not read it through?' Johnson, offended at being thus pressed, and so obliged to own his cursory mode of reading, answered tartly, 'No, Sir, do _you_ read books _through_?'--J. BOSWELL. _Life of Johnson._

DESULTORY READING

Desultory reading is indeed very mischievous, by fostering habits of loose, discontinuous thought, by turning the memory into a common sewer for rubbish of all sorts to float through, and by relaxing the power of attention, which of all our faculties most needs care, and is most improved by it. But a well-regulated course of study will no more weaken the mind, than hard exercise will weaken the body: nor will a strong understanding be weighed down by its knowledge, any more than an oak is by its leaves, or than Samson was by his locks. He whose sinews are drained by his hair, must already be a weakling.--A. W. and J. C. HARE. _Guesses at Truth._

THE GREATEST CLERKS BE NOT ALWAYS THE WISEST MEN

As in the choice and reading of good books principally consists the enabling and advancement of a man's knowledge and learning; yet if it be not mixed with the conversation of discreet, able, and understanding men, they can make little use of their reading, either for themselves, or the commonwealth where they live. There is not a more common proverb than this, _That the Greatest Clerks be not always the wisest men_, and reason for it, being a very uneven rule to square all actions, and consultations, only by book precedents. Time hath so many changes, and alterations, and such variety of occasions and opportunities, intervening, and mingled, that it is impossible to go new ways in the old paths; so that though reading do furnish and direct a man's judgement, yet it doth not wholly govern it. Therefore the necessity of knowing the present time, and men, wherein we live, is so great, that it is the principal guide of our actions, and reading but supplemental.--GREY BRYDGES, LORD CHANDOS. _Horae Subsecivae._

A BOOKISH AMBITION

Affect not, as some do, that bookish ambition, to be stored with books and have well-furnished libraries, yet keep their heads empty of knowledge: to desire to have many books, and never to use them, is like a child that will have a candle burning by him, all the while he is sleeping.--H. PEACHAM. _The Compleat Gentleman._

FULL LIBRARIES AND EMPTY HEADS

We have a generation of people in the world, that are so far from putting themselves upon the hazard of knowing too much, that they affect a kind of Socratical knowledge (though it be the clear contrary way), a knowledge of knowing nothing; they hate learning, and wisdom, and understanding with that perfect hatred, that if one could fancy such things to be in paradise, one would think (if I may speak it, as I mean it without profaneness) that the Devil could not tempt them to come near the tree of knowledge; I cannot say these are in a state of innocency, but I am sure they are in a state of simplicity. But among those few persons (especially those of quality) that pretend to look after books, how many are there that affect rather to look upon them, than in them? Some covet to have libraries in their houses, as ladies desire to have cupboards of plate in their chambers, only for show; as if they were only to furnish their rooms, and not their minds; if the only having of store of books were sufficient to improve a man, the stationers would have the advantage of all others; but certainly books were made for use, and not for ostentation; in vain do they boast of full libraries that are contented to live with empty heads.--SIR W. WALLER. _Divine Meditations._

TO THE GOOD OR BAD READER

Read well, and then these following lines are mine, But read them like a botcher, they are thine. Such virtue from some readers doth proceed, They make the verse the better which they read: They know their idioms, accents, emphases, Commas, stops, colons, and parentheses, Full points, and periods, brief apostrophes, Good knowing readers understand all these: But such as dares my book to take in hand, Who scarce can read or spell or understand; Yet, like Sir reverence Geese, they will be gagling, And tear my lines to tatters with their hagling; Such I request, if bachelors they be, To leave my book, and learn their A.B.C.: If married men they be, let them take pain To exercise their horn-books once again.

J. TAYLOR. _Epigrams, Written on purpose to be read: with a Proviso, that they may be understood by the Reader._

A PRETENDER TO LEARNING

... is oftener in his study than at his book.... His table is spread wide with some classic folio, which is as constant to it as the carpet, and hath lain open in the same page this half year.... He walks much alone in the posture of meditation, and has a book still before his face in the fields. His pocket is seldom without a Greek Testament, or Hebrew Bible, which he opens only in the church, and this when some stander-by looks over.... He is a great nomenclator of authors, whom he has read in general in the catalogue, and in particular in the title, and goes seldom so far as the dedication.--J. EARLE. _Microcosmographie._

SUPERFICIAL READERS

Man has a natural desire to know, But the one half is for interest, the other show: As scriveners take more pains to learn the slight Of making knots than all the hands they write: So all his study is not to extend The bounds of knowledge, but some vainer end; To appear and pass for learnèd, though his claim Will hardly reach beyond the empty name: For most of those that drudge and labour hard, Furnish their understandings by the yard, As a French library by the whole is, So much an ell for quartos and for folios; To which they are the indexes themselves, And understand no further than the shelves; But smatter with their tables and editions, And place them in their classical partitions; When all a student knows of what he reads Is not in 's own but under general heads Of commonplaces not in his own power, But, like a Dutchman's money, i' th' cantore; Where all he can make of it, at the best, Is hardly three per cent. for interest; And whether he will ever get it out Into his own possession is a doubt: Affects all books of past and modern ages, But reads no further than the title-pages, Only to con the author's names by rote, Or, at the best, those of the books they quote Enough to challenge intimate acquaintance With all the learnèd Moderns and the Ancients. As Roman noblemen were wont to greet, And compliment the rabble in the street, Had nomenclators in their trains, to claim Acquaintance with the meanest by his name, And by so mean contemptible a bribe Trepanned the suffrages of every tribe; So learned men, by authors' names unknown, Have gained no small improvement to their own, And he's esteemed the learnedest of all others That has the largest catalogue of authors.

S. BUTLER. _Satire upon the imperfection and abuse of human learning._

THE READING COXCOMB

Among the numerous fools, by Fate designed Oft to disturb, and oft divert, mankind, The reading coxcomb is of special note, By rule a poet, and a judge by rote: Grave son of idle Industry and Pride, Whom learning but perverts, and books misguide.

In error obstinate, in wrangling loud, For trifles eager, positive, and proud, Forth steps at last the self-applauding wight, Of points and letters, chaff and straws, to write: Sagely resolved to swell each bulky piece With venerable toys from Rome and Greece; How oft, in Homer, Paris curled his hair; If Aristotle's cap were round or square; If in the cave, where Dido first was sped, To Tyre she turned her heels, to Troy her head. Hence Plato quoted or the Stagyrite, To prove that flame ascends and snow is white: Hence much hard study, without sense or breeding, And all the grave impertinence of reading. If Shakespeare says, the noon-day sun is bright, His scholiast will remark, it then was light; Turn Caxton, Wynkyn, each old Goth and Hun, To rectify the reading of a pun. Thus, nicely trifling, accurately dull, How one may toil, and toil--to be a fool!--D. MALLET.

READING TO KILL TIME

As to the devotees of the circulating libraries, I dare not compliment their _pass-time_, or rather _kill-time_, with the name of _reading_. Call it rather a sort of beggarly daydreaming, during which the mind of the dreamer furnishes for itself nothing but laziness and a little mawkish sensibility; while the whole _material_ and imagery of the doze is supplied _ab extra_ by a sort of mental _camera obscura_ manufactured at the printing office, which _pro tempore_ fixes, reflects and transmits the moving phantasms of one man's delirium, so as to people the barrenness of an hundred other brains afflicted with the same trance or suspension of all common sense and all definite purpose. We should therefore transfer this species of _amusement_ (if indeed those can be said to retire _a musis_, who were never in their company, or relaxation be attributable to those whose bows are never bent) from the genus _reading_ to the comprehensive class characterized by the power of reconciling the two contrary yet co-existing propensities of human nature, namely, indulgence of sloth and hatred of vacancy. In addition to novels and tales of chivalry in prose or rhyme (by which last I mean neither rhythm nor metre) this genus comprises as its species gaming, swinging, or swaying on a chair or gate; spitting over a bridge; smoking; snuff-taking; _tête à tête_ quarrels after dinner between husband and wife; conning word by word all the advertisements of the daily advertizers in a public-house on a rainy day, &c., &c., &c.--S. T. COLERIDGE. _Biographia Literaria._

TALKING FROM BOOKS

Dr. Johnson this day, when we were by ourselves [on the journey to the Hebrides] observed, how common it was for people to talk from books; to retail the sentiments of others, and not their own; in short, to converse without any originality of thinking. He was pleased to say, 'You and I do not talk from books.'--J. BOSWELL. _Life of Johnson._

There are no race of people who talk about books, or perhaps, who read books, so little as literary men.--W. M. THACKERAY.

A SHORT CUT TO FAME

There is a sort of vanity some men have, of talking of and reading obscure and half-forgotten authors, because it passes as a matter of course, that he who quotes authors which are so little read, must be completely and thoroughly acquainted with those authors which are in every man's mouth. For instance, it is very common to quote Shakespeare; but it makes a sort of stare to quote Massinger. I have very little credit for being well acquainted with Virgil; but if I quote Silius Italicus, I may stand some chance of being reckoned a great scholar. In short, whoever wishes to strike out of the great road, and to make a short cut to fame, let him neglect Homer, and Virgil, and Horace, and Ariosto and Milton, and, instead of these, read and talk of Frascatorius, Sannazarius, Lorenzini, Pastorini, and the thirty-six primary sonneteers of Bettinelli;--let him neglect everything which the suffrage of ages has made venerable and grand, and dig out of their graves a set of decayed scribblers, whom the silent verdict of the public has fairly condemned to everlasting oblivion. If he complain of the injustice with which they have been treated, and call for a new trial with loud and importunate clamour, though I am afraid he will not make much progress in the estimation of men of sense, he will be sure to make some noise in the crowd, and to be dubbed a man of very curious and extraordinary erudition.--S. SMITH. _Moral Philosophy, Lecture IX. On the Conduct of the Understanding._

TITLE-READERS

Some read to think,--these are rare; some to write,--these are common; and some read to talk,--and these form the great majority. The first page of an author not unfrequently suffices for all the purposes of this latter class: of whom it has been said, that they treat books as some do lords; they inform themselves of their _titles_, and then boast of an intimate acquaintance.--C. C. COLTON. _Lacon._

The author who speaks about his own books is almost as bad as a mother who talks about her own children.--B. DISRAELI, LORD BEACONSFIELD.

THE BURNING OF DON QUIXOTE'S BOOKS

The priest and the barber of the place, who were Don Quixote's great friends, happened to be there [at Don Quixote's house]; and the housekeeper was saying to them aloud: What is your opinion, Señor Licentiate Pero Perez (for that was the priest's name) of my master's misfortune? for neither he, nor his horse, nor the target, nor the lance, nor the armour have been seen these six days past. Woe is me! I am verily persuaded, and it is as certainly true as I was born to die, that these cursed books of knight-errantry which he keeps, and is so often reading, have turned his brain; and now I think of it, I have often heard him say, talking to himself, that he would turn knight-errant, and go about the world in quest of adventures. The devil and Barabbas take all such books, that have thus spoiled the finest understanding in all La Mancha. The niece joined with her, and said moreover: Know, master Nicholas (for that was the barber's name), that it has often happened, that my honoured uncle has continued poring on these confounded books of disadventures two whole days and nights.... But I take the blame of all this to myself, that I did not advertise you, gentlemen, of my dear uncle's extravagances, before they were come to the height that they now are, that you might have prevented them by burning all those cursed books, of which he has so great a store, and which as justly deserve to be committed to the flames, as if they were heretical....

Whilst Don Quixote still slept on, the priest asked the niece for the keys of the chamber where the books were, those authors of the mischief; and she delivered them with a very good will. They all went in, and the housekeeper with them. They found above a hundred volumes in folio, very well bound, besides a great many small ones. And no sooner did the housekeeper see them, than she ran out of the room in great haste, and immediately returned with a pot of holy water and a bunch of hyssop, and said: Señor Licentiate, take this and sprinkle the room, lest some enchanter, of the many these books abound with, should enchant us in revenge for what we intend to do, in banishing them out of the world. The priest smiled at the housekeeper's simplicity, and ordered the barber to reach him the books one by one, that they might see what they treated of; for, perhaps, they might find some that might not deserve to be chastised by fire. No, said the niece, there is no reason why any of them should be spared.... The housekeeper said the same; so eagerly did they both thirst for the death of those innocents. But the priest would not agree to that, without first reading the titles at least....

That night the housekeeper set fire to, and burnt all the books that were in the yard [whither they had been cast], and in the house too; and some must have perished, that deserved to be treasured up in perpetual archives.--CERVANTES. _Don Quixote._

BRAINS SQUASHED BY BOOKS

There have indeed been minds overlaid by much reading, men who have piled such a load of books on their heads, their brains have seemed to be squashed by them.--A. W. and J. C. HARE. _Guesses at Truth._

FOLLY GENERATED BY BOOKS

Books are chiefly useful as they help us to interpret what we see and experience. When they absorb men, as they sometimes do, and turn them from observation of nature and life, they generate a learned folly, for which the plain sense of the labourer could not be exchanged but at great loss. It deserves attention that the greatest men have been formed without the studies which at present are thought by many most needful to improvement. Homer, Plato, Demosthenes, never heard the name of chemistry, and knew less of the solar system than a boy in our common schools. Not that these sciences are unimportant; but the lesson is, that human improvement never wants the means, where the purpose of it is deep and earnest in the soul.--W. E. CHANNING. _Self-Culture._

SURCLOYING THE STOMACH

Who readeth much, and never meditates, Is like a greedy eater of much food, Who so surcloys his stomach with his cates, That commonly they do him little good.

J. SYLVESTER. _Tetrasticha._

OVER-READING

As for the disgraces which learning receiveth from politics, they be of this nature; that learning doth soften men's minds, and makes them more unapt for the honour and exercise of arms; that it doth mar and pervert men's dispositions for matter of government and policy, in making them too curious and irresolute by variety of reading, or too peremptory or positive by strictness of rules and axioms, or too immoderate and overweening by reason of the greatness of examples, or too incompatible and differing from the times by reason of the dissimilitude of examples; or at least, that it doth divert men's travails from action and business, and bringeth them to a love of leisure and privateness; and that it doth bring into states a relaxation of discipline, whilst every man is more ready to argue than to obey and execute....

If any man be laborious in reading and study and yet idle in business and action, it groweth from some weakness of body or softness of spirit; such as Seneca speaketh of: _Quidam tam sunt umbratiles, ut putent in turbido esse quicquid in luce est_; and not of learning: well may it be that such a point of a man's nature may make him give himself to learning, but it is not learning that breedeth any such point in his nature.--F. BACON, LORD VERULAM. _Of the Advancement of Learning._

DEEP-VERSED IN BOOKS AND SHALLOW IN HIMSELF

Many books, Wise men have said, are wearisome; who reads Incessantly, and to his reading brings not A spirit and judgement, equal or superior, (And what he brings, what needs he elsewhere seek?) Uncertain and unsettled still remains, Deep-versed in books, and shallow in himself; Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys And trifles for choice matters, worth a sponge; As children gathering pebbles on the shore.

J. MILTON. _Paradise Regained._

SWALLOWING THE HUSKS

The heart May give an useful lesson to the head, And learning wiser grow without his books. Knowledge and wisdom, far from being one, Have oft-times no connexion. Knowledge dwells In heads replete with thoughts of other men; Wisdom in minds attentive to their own. Knowledge, a rude unprofitable mass, The mere materials with which Wisdom builds, Till smoothed and squared and fitted to its place, Does but encumber whom it seems to enrich. Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much; Wisdom is humble that he knows no more. Books are not seldom talismans and spells, By which the magic art of shrewder wits Holds an unthinking multitude enthralled. Some to the fascination of a name Surrender judgement, hood-winked. Some the style Infatuates, and through labyrinths and wilds Of error leads them by a tune entranced. While sloth seduces more, too weak to bear The insupportable fatigue of thought, And swallowing, therefore, without pause or choice, The total grist unsifted, husks and all. But trees, and rivulets whose rapid course Defies the check of winter, haunts of deer, And sheep-walks populous with bleating lambs, And lanes in which the primrose ere her time Peeps through the moss that clothes the hawthorn root, Deceive no student. Wisdom there, and truth, Not shy, as in the world, and to be won By slow solicitation, seize at once The roving thought, and fix it on themselves.

W. COWPER. _The Winter Walk at Noon._

Much reading is like much eating, wholly useless without digestion.--R. SOUTH.

If I had read as much as other men, I should have been as ignorant as they.--T. HOBBES.

READING AND ILLITERACY

You might read all the books in the British Museum (if you could live long enough) and remain an utterly 'illiterate', uneducated person; but ... if you read ten pages of a good book, letter by letter,--that is to say, with real accuracy,--you are for evermore in some measure an educated person.--J. RUSKIN. _Sesame and Lilies._

READING AS INTELLECTUAL INDOLENCE

Do I boast of my omnivorousness of reading, even apart from romances? Certainly no!--never, except in joke. It's against my theories and ratiocinations, which take upon themselves to assert that we all generally err by _reading too much_, or out of proportion to what we _think_. I should be wiser, I am persuaded, if I had not read half as much--should have had stronger and better exercised faculties. The fact is, that the _ne plus ultra_ of intellectual indolence is this reading of books. It comes next to what the Americans call 'whittling'.--E. B. BROWNING (Letter to R. H. Horne).

BOOKS AND MEN

He that sets out on the journey of life, with a profound knowledge of books, but a shallow knowledge of men, with much sense of others, but little of his own, will find himself as completely at a loss on occasions of common and of constant recurrence, as a Dutchman without his pipe, a Frenchman without his mistress, an Italian without his fiddle, or an Englishman without his umbrella.--C. C. COLTON. _Lacon._

Study is like the heaven's glorious sun, That will not be deep-searched with saucy looks; Small have continual plodders ever won, Save base authority from others' books.

W. SHAKESPEARE. _Love's Labour's Lost._

BOOKS AND LIFE

Who, loving leisure and his studious ease, And books, and what of noblest lore they bring, Will not confess that sometimes, called aside To humbler work and less delightful tasks, He has been tempted to exclaim in heart-- 'How pleasant were it might we only dwell, And ever hold sweet converse undisturbed Thus with the choicest spirits of the world In council, and in letters, and in arms. Easy to live with, always at command, They come at bidding, at our word depart, Friends whose society not ever cloys. Glorious it were by intercourse with these To learn whatever men have thought or done, And travel the great orb of knowledge round. But oh! how most unwelcome the constraint, How harsh the summons bidding us to pause, And for a season turn from our high toils, From that serener atmosphere come down, And grow perforce acquainted with the woe, The strife, the discord of the actual world, And all the ignoble work beneath the sun.'

* * * * *

But other feelings occupied my heart, And other words found utterance from my lips, When that day's work was finished, and my feet Again turned homeward--alteration strange Of feeling, with a better, humbler mind. For I was thankful now ... ... that thus I was Compelled, as by a gentle violence Not in the pages of dead books alone, Nor merely in the fair page nature shows, But in the living page of human life To look and learn--not merely left to spin Fine webs and woofs around me like the worm, Till in mine own coil I had hid myself And quite shut out the light of common day, And common air by which men breathe and live.

* * * * *

It was brought home unto my heart of hearts There was no doom more pitiable than his, Who at safe distance hears life's stormy waves, Which break for ever on a rugged shore, In which are shipwrecked mariners, for their lives Contending some, some momently sucked up, But as a gentle murmur afar off To soothe his sleep, and lull him in his dreams: Who, while he boasts he has been building up A palace for himself, in sooth has reared What shall be first his prison, then his tomb.

R. C. TRENCH. _Anti-Gnosticus._

THE MIGHTY DEAD

Studious let me sit, And hold high converse with the mighty dead-- Sages of ancient time, as gods revered, As gods beneficent, who blessed mankind With arts and arms, and humanized a world. Roused at the inspiring thought, I throw aside The long-lived volume.

J. THOMSON. _The Seasons._

THE MESSAGE OF BOOKS

If books are only dead things, if they do not speak to one, or answer one when one speaks to them, if they have nothing to do with the common things that we are busy with--with the sky over our head, and the ground under our feet--I think that they had better stay on the shelves.... What I regret is that many of us spend much of our time in reading books, and in talking of books--that we like nothing worse than the reputation of being indifferent to them, and nothing better than the reputation of knowing a great deal about them; and yet that, after all, we do not know them in the same way as we know our fellow-creatures, not even in the way we know any dumb animal that we walk with or play with. This is a great misfortune, in my opinion, and one which I am afraid is increasing as what we call 'the taste for literature' increases. It is very pleasant to think in what distant parts of the earth it [the English language] is spoken, and that in all those parts these books which are friends of ours are acknowledged as friends. And there is a living and productive power in them. They have produced an American literature, which is coming back to instruct us. They will produce by and by an Australian literature, which will be worth all the gold that is sent to us from the diggings.--F. D. MAURICE. _The Friendship of Books._

OVERRATING THE VIRTUE OF BOOKS

In modern times instruction is communicated chiefly by means of Books. Books are no doubt very useful helps to knowledge, and in some measure also, to the practice of useful arts and accomplishments, but they are not, in any case, the primary and natural sources of culture, and, in my opinion, their virtue is not a little apt to be overrated, even in those branches of acquirement where they seem most indispensable. They are not creative powers in any sense; they are merely helps, instruments, tools; and even as tools they are only artificial tools, superadded to those with which the wise prevision of Nature has equipped us, like telescopes and microscopes, whose assistance in many researches reveals unimagined wonders, but the use of which should never tempt us to undervalue or to neglect the exercise of our own eyes. The original and proper sources of knowledge are not books, but life, experience, personal thinking, feeling, and acting. When a man starts with these, books can fill up many gaps, correct much that is inaccurate, and extend much that is inadequate; but, without living experience to work on, books are like rain and sunshine fallen on unbroken soil.--J. S. BLACKIE. _On Self-culture._

How well he's read, to reason against reading!

W. SHAKESPEARE. _Love's Labour's Lost._

BOOKS AN ENEMY TO HEALTH

This plodding occupation of books is as painful as any other, and as great an enemy unto health, which ought principally to be considered. And a man should not suffer himself to be inveigled by the pleasure he takes in them.... Books are delightful; but if by continual frequenting them, we in the end lose both health and cheerfulness (our best parts) let us leave them. I am one of those who think their fruit can no way countervail this loss.... As for me, I love no books but such as are pleasant and easy, and which tickle me, or such as comfort or counsel me, to direct my life and death....

If any say to me, It is a kind of vilifying the Muses to use them only for sport and recreation, he wots not as I do, what worth, pleasure, sport, and pastime is of: I had well nigh termed all other ends ridiculous. I live from hand to mouth, and, with reverence be it spoken, I live but to myself: there end all my designs. Being young I studied for ostentation; then a little to enable myself and become wiser; now for delight and recreation, never for gain.... Books have and contain divers pleasing qualities to those that can duly choose them. But no good without pains; no roses without prickles. It is a pleasure not absolutely pure and neat; no more than all others; it hath his inconveniences attending on it, and sometimes weighty ones: the mind is therein exercised, but the body (the care whereof I have not yet forgotten) remaineth there--whilst without action, and is wasted, and ensorrowed. I know no excess more hurtful for me, nor more to be avoided by me, in this declining age.--MONTAIGNE.

WHAT PROFITS IT

And yet, alas! when all our lamps are burned, Our bodies wasted, and our spirits spent, When we have all the learnèd volumes turned, Which yield men's wits both help and ornament, What can we know or what can we discern?

SIR J. DAVIES. _On the Immortality of the Soul._

BOOKS AND EYESIGHT

Why, all delights are vain; but that most vain Which, with pain purchased doth inherit pain: As, painfully to pore upon a book, To seek the light of truth; while truth the while Doth falsely blind the eyesight of his look: Light seeking light doth light of light beguile: So, ere you find where light in darkness lies, Your light grows dark by losing of your eyes.

W. SHAKESPEARE. _Love's Labour's Lost._

WHEN TO READ

'Tis an honest injury to nature to steal from her some hours of repose; unsufferable to the soul to let the golden hours of the morning pass without advantage, seeing she is then more capable of culture, and seems to be renewed as well as the day. It were an excellent posture to paint Caesar in, as he swum with a book in the one hand, and a sword in the other; since he made his tent an academy, and was at leisure to read the physiognomy of the heavens in military tumults. This shows he knew how to prize time, and hated idleness as much as a superior; and indeed, to speak to Christians, we ought to look how we spend our hours here, knowing they are but the preludium of that which shall be no time but Eternity.

Judgement is long ere it be settled, experience being the best nurse of it, and we see seldom learning and wisdom concur, because the former is got _sub umbra_, but business doth winnow observations, and the better acquaintance with breathing volumes of men; it teacheth us both better to read them and to apply what we have read....

Health ought to be nicely respected by a student. For the labours of the mind are as far beyond them of the body, as the diseases of the one are above the other; and how can a spirit actuate when she is caged in a lump of fainting flesh? Unseasonable times of study are very obnoxious, as after meals, when Nature is wholly retired to concoction; or at night times, when she begins to droop for want of rest, hence so many rheums, defluxions, catarrhs, &c., that I have heard it spoken of one of the greatest ambulatory pieces of learning at this day, that he would redeem (if possible) his health with the loss of half his learning.--JOHN HALL. _Horae Vacivae._

BOOKS INSTEAD OF STIMULANTS

I know what it is to have had to toil when the brain was throbbing, the mind incapable of originating a thought, and the body worn and sore with exhaustion; and I know what it is in such an hour, instead of having recourse to those gross stimulants to which all worn men, both of the higher and lower classes, are tempted, to take down my Sophocles or my Plato (for Plato was a poet), my Goethe, or my Dante, Shakespeare, Shelley, Wordsworth, or Tennyson; and I know what it is to feel the jar of nerve gradually cease, and the darkness in which all life had robed itself to the imagination become light, discord pass into harmony, and physical exhaustion rise by degrees into a consciousness of power.--F. W. ROBERTSON. _Lectures and Addresses._

THE PHARMACY OF BOOKS

Books, taken indiscriminately, are no cure to the diseases and afflictions of the mind. There is a world of science necessary in the taking them. I have known some people in great sorrow fly to a novel or the last light book in fashion. One might as well take a rose-draught for the plague! Light reading does not do when the heart is really heavy. I am told that Goethe, when he lost his son, took to study a science that was new to him. Ah! Goethe was a physician who knew what he was about. In a great grief like this you cannot tickle and divert the mind; you must wrench it away, abstract, absorb--bury it in an abyss, hurry it into a labyrinth. Therefore, for the irremediable sorrows of middle life and old age, I recommended a strict chronic course of science and hard reasoning--counter-irritation. Bring the brain to act upon the heart! If science is too much against the grain (for we have not all got mathematical heads), something in the reach of the humblest understanding, but sufficiently searching to the highest--new language--Greek, Arabic, Scandinavian, Chinese, or Welsh! For the loss of fortune the dose should be applied less directly to the understanding--I would administer something elegant and cordial. For as the heart is crushed and lacerated by a loss in the affections, so it is rather the head that aches and suffers by the loss of money. Here we find the higher class of poets a very valuable remedy. For observe that poets of the grander and more comprehensive kind of genius have in them two separate men quite distinct from each other--the imaginative man, and the practical, circumstantial man; and it is the happy mixture of these that suits diseases of the mind, half imaginative and half practical.... For hypochondria and satiety what is better than a brisk alterative course of travels--especially early, out-of-the-way, marvellous, legendary travels! How they freshen up the spirits! How they take you out of the humdrum yawning state you are in.... Then, for that vice of the mind which I call sectarianism--not in the religious sense of the word, but little, narrow prejudices, that make you hate your next-door neighbour, because he has his eggs roasted when you have yours boiled; and gossiping and prying into people's affairs, and backbiting, and thinking heaven and earth are coming together, if some broom touch a cobweb that you have let grow over the window-sill of your brains--what like a large and generous, mildly aperient course of history! How it clears away all the fumes of the head!--better than the hellebore with which the old leeches of the Middle Ages purged the cerebellum. There, amidst all that great whirl and _sturmbad_ (storm-bath), as the Germans say, of kingdoms and empires, and races and ages, how your mind enlarges beyond that little feverish animosity to John Styles: or that unfortunate prepossession of yours, that all the world is interested in your grievances against Tom Stokes and his wife!

I can only touch, you see, on a few ingredients in this magnificent pharmacy--its resources are boundless, but require the nicest discretion. I remember to have cured a disconsolate widower, who obstinately refused every other medicament, by a strict course of geology.... I made no less notable a cure of a young scholar at Cambridge, who was meant for the Church, when he suddenly caught a cold fit of freethinking, with great shiverings, from wading out of his depth in Spinoza.... His theological constitution, since then, has become so robust that he has eaten up two livings and a deanery! In fact, I have a plan for a library that, instead of heading its compartments, 'Philology, Natural Science, Poetry,' &c., one shall head them according to the diseases for which they are severally good, bodily and mental--up from a dire calamity, or the pangs of the gout, down to a fit of the spleen or a slight catarrh; for which last your light reading comes in with a whey-posset and barley-water. But when some one sorrow, that is yet reparable, gets hold of your mind like a monomania--when you think, because heaven has denied you this or that, on which you had set your heart, that all your life must be a blank--oh! then diet yourself well on biography--the biography of good and great men.... I have said nothing of the Book of Books, for that is the _lignum vitae_, the cardinal medicine for all. These are but the subsidiaries.--E. G. E. L. BULWER-LYTTON, LORD LYTTON. _The Caxtons._

A LITERATURA HILARIS

Cast your eyes down any list of English writers ... and almost the only names that strike you as belonging to personally cheerful men are Beaumont and Fletcher, Suckling, Fielding, Farquhar, Steele, O'Keefe, Andrew Marvell, and Sterne.... I am only speaking of the rarity of a certain kind of sunshine in our literature, and expressing a little rainy-day wish that we had a little more of it. It ought to be collected. There should be a joyous set of elegant extracts--a _Literatura Hilaris_ or _Gaudens_,--in a score of volumes, that we could have at hand, like a cellaret of good wine, against April or November weather. Fielding should be the port, and Farquhar the champagne, and Sterne the malmsey; and whenever the possessor cast an eye on his stock he should know that he had a choice draught for himself after a disappointment, or for a friend after dinner,--some cordial extract of Parson Adams, or Plume, or Uncle Toby, generous as heart could desire, and as wholesome for it as laughter for the lungs.--J. H. LEIGH HUNT. _Cheerful Poets._

THE BLESSED CHLOROFORM OF THE MIND

A congenial book can be taken up by any lover of books, with the certainty of its transporting the reader within a few minutes to a region immeasurably removed from that which he desires to quit. The shape or pattern of the magic carpet whereon he flies through space and time, is of no consequence. The son of science is rapt by a problem; the philosopher by an abstruse speculation; the antiquary is carried centuries back into the chivalric past; the lover of poetry is borne upon glittering wings into the future. The charm works well for all. Books are the blessed chloroform of the mind.... It is not a very high claim that is here set forth on behalf of Literature--that of Pass-time, and yet what a blessed boon even that is! Conceive the hours of _inertia_ (a thing different from idleness) that it has mercifully consumed for us! hours wherein nothing could be done, nothing, perhaps, be _thought_, of our own selves, by reason of some impending calamity. Wisely does the dentist furnish his hateful antechamber with books of all sorts. Who could abide for an hour in such an apartment with nothing to occupy his thoughts save the expectation of that wrench to come!... Indeed, it must be confessed that where Books fail as an anodyne, is rather in cases of physical than of mental pain. Through the long watches of the night, and by the bedside of some slowly dying dear one, it is easier to obtain forgetfulness--the only kind of rest that it may be safe or possible to take--by means of reading, than to do so when one is troubled with mere toothache. Nor does this arise from selfishness--since we would endure twenty toothaches, if they might give ease to the sufferer--but because the sharpness of the pang prevents our applying our mind to anything else; while the deep dull sorrow of the soul permits an intervening thought, and over it slides another, and then another, until a layer of such is formed, and the mind of the reader gets wholly free, for a brief but blessed time, partitioned off, as it were, from his real trouble.--J. PAYN. _Chambers's Journal_, 1864.

LOUNGING BOOKS

I sometimes wish for a catalogue of lounging books--books that one takes up in the gout, low spirits, _ennui_, or when in waiting for company. Some novels, gay poetry, odd whimsical authors, as Rabelais, &c. A catalogue raisonné of such might be itself a good lounging book.--H. WALPOLE, EARL OF ORFORD. _Letters._

TO DRIVE THE NIGHT AWAY

So whan I saw I might not slepe, Til now late, this other night, Upon my bedde I sat upright, And bad oon reche me a book, A romaunce, and he hit me took To rede and dryve the night away; For me thoghte it better play Than playen either at chesse or tables.

G. CHAUCER. _The Book of the Duchesse._

READING IN BED

Since I cannot in the way of gratefulness express unto your lordship, as I would, those hearty sentiments I have of your goodness to me; I will at the last endeavour, in the way of duty and observance, to let you see how the little needle of my soul is throughly touched at the great loadstone of yours, and followeth suddenly and strongly, which way soever you beckon it. In this occasion, the magnetic motion was impatient to have the book in my hands that your lordship gave so advantageous a character of; whereupon I sent presently (as late as it was) to Paul's church-yard for this favourite of yours, _Religio Medici_: which after awhile found me in a condition fit to receive a blessing by a visit from any of such masterpieces, as you look upon with gracious eyes; for I was newly gotten into my bed. This good-natured creature I could easily persuade to be my bedfellow, and to wake with me as long as I had any edge to entertain myself with the delights I sucked from so noble a conversation. And truly, my lord, I closed not my eyes till I had enriched myself with, or at least exactly surveyed all the treasures that are lapped up in the folds of those few sheets. To return only a general commendation of this curious piece, or at large to admire the author's spirit and smartness, were too perfunctory an account, and too slight a one, to so discerning and steady an eye as yours, after so particular and encharged a summons to read heedfully this discourse. I will therefore presume to blot a sheet or two of paper with my reflections upon sundry passages.--SIR K. DIGBY (Letter to Edward, Earl of Dorset).

READING AND MEAL TIMES

Before my meals,... and after, I let myself loose from all my thoughts; and now would forget that I ever studied. A full mind takes away the body's appetite, no less than a full body makes a dull and unwieldy mind.--JOSEPH HALL (Letter to Lord Denny).

THE DOG AND THE BONE

At Mr. Dilly's to-day [April 15, 1778] ... before dinner Dr. Johnson seized upon Mr. Charles Sheridan's _Account of the late Revolution in Sweden_, and seemed to read it ravenously, as if he devoured it, which was to all appearance his method of studying. 'He knows how to read better than any one (said Mrs. Knowles); he gets at the substance of a book directly; he tears out the heart of it.' He kept it wrapt up in the tablecloth in his lap during the time of dinner, from an avidity to have one entertainment in readiness when he should have finished another; resembling (if I may use so coarse a simile) a dog who holds a bone in his paws in reserve, while he eats something else which has been thrown to him.--J. BOSWELL. _Life of Johnson._

PROOF OF GOOD MATTER

If you find the Miltons in certain parts dirtied and soiled with a crumb of right Gloucester, blacked in the candle (my usual supper), or peradventure a stray ash of tobacco wafted into the crevices, look to that passage more especially: depend upon it, it contains good matter.--C. LAMB (Letter to S. T. Coleridge).

WRITING AT MEAL TIMES

... Albeit, when I did dictate [these Chronicles], I thought thereof no more than you, who possibly were drinking the whilst, as I was. For in the composing of this lordly