sue the catalogue to the
bitter end? Need I mention Gibbon, or Froude, or Lingard, or Freeman,
or the novelists? To my mind the terrific task shadowed forth by the
genial orator was enough to scare the last remnant of resolution from
the souls of his toil-worn audience. A man of leisure might skim the
series of books recommended; but what about the striving citizens
whose scanty leisure leaves hardly enough time for the bare recreation
of the body? Is it not a little cruel to tell them that such and such
books are necessary to perfect culture, when we know all the while
that, even if they went without sleep, they could hardly cover such an
immense range of study? Many men and women yearn after the higher
mental life and are eager for guidance; but their yearnings are apt to
be frozen into the stupor of despair if we raise before them a
standard which is hopelessly unattainable by them. I should not dream
of approving the saying of Lord Beaconsfield: "Books are fatal; they
are the curse of the human race. Nine-tenths of existing books are
nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense."
Lord Beaconsfield did not believe in the slap-dash words which he put
into the mouth of Mr. Phoebus, nor did he believe that the greatness
of the English aristocracy arises from the facts that "they don't read
books, and they live in the open air." The great scoffer once read for
twelve hours every day during an entire year, and his general
knowledge of useful literature was quite remarkable. But, while
rejecting epigrammatic fireworks, I am bound to say that the habit of
reading has become harmful in many cases; it is a sort of intellectual
dram-drinking, and it enervates the mind as alcohol enervates the
body. If a man's function in life is to learn, then by all means let
him be learned. When Macaulay took the trouble to master thousands of
rubbishy pamphlets, poems, plays, and fictions, in order that he might
steep his mind in the atmosphere of a particular period in history, he
was quite justified. The results of his research were boiled down into
a few vivid emphatic pages, and we had the benefit of his labour. When
Carlyle spent thirteen mortal years in grubbing among musty German
histories that nearly drove him mad with their dulness, the world
reaped the fruit of his dreary toil, and we rejoiced in the witty,
incomparable life of Frederick II. When poor Emanuel Deutsch gave up
his brilliant life to the study of