em by their words and deeds, as in
books; but actually see them revealed, homogeneous, consecutive, in
their gestures and tones, the whole, the _very being_, of which words
and acts are but the partial manifestation. Methinks that in this way
the play might add enormously to the suggestiveness, the delight and
dignity of life; play-acting might become a substantive art, not a mere
spoiling of the work of poetry. Methinks that if this happened, or
happened often, my friend and I, who also hates the play.... But it
seems probable, on careful consideration, that my friend and I are
conspicuously devoid of the dramatic faculty; which being the case we
had better not discuss plays and play-going at all.

READING BOOKS

The chief point to be made in this matter is: that books, to fulfil
their purpose, do not always require to be read. A book, for instance,
which is a present, or an "hommage de l'auteur," has already served its
purpose, like a visiting-card or a luggage label, at best like a
ceremonial bouquet; and it is absurd to try and make it serve twice
over, by reading it. The same applies, of course, to books lent without
being asked for, and, in a still higher degree, to a book which has been
discussed in society, and thus furnished out a due amount of
conversation; to read such a book is an act of pedantry, showing
slavishness to the names of things, and lack of insight into their real
nature, which is revealed by the function they have been able to
perform. Fancy, if public characters had to learn to snuff--a practice
happily abandoned--because they occasionally received gifts of enamelled
snuffboxes from foreign potentates!

But there are subtler sides to this subject, and it is of these I fain
would speak. We are apt to blunt our literary sense by reading far too
much, and to lessen our capacity for getting the great delights from
books by making reading into a routine and a drudgery. Of course I know
that reading books has its utilitarian side, and that we have to
consider printed matter (let me never call it literature!) as the raw
material whence we extract some of the information necessary to life.
But long familiarity with an illiterate peasantry like the Italian one,
inclines me to think that we grossly exaggerate the need of such
book-grown knowledge. Except as regards scientific facts and the various
practices--as medicine, engineering, and the like, founded on them--such
knowledge is really very