The Project Gutenberg EBook of On The Art of Reading, by Arthur Quiller-Couch

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Title: On The Art of Reading

Author: Arthur Quiller-Couch

Release Date: August 22, 2005 [EBook #16579]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ON THE ART OF READING ***

Produced by James Tenison

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON:

BENTLEY HOUSE NEW YORK.
TORONTO, BOMBAY
CALCUTTA. MADRAS:

MACMILLAN TOKYO:
MARUZEN COMPANY LTD

All rights reserved

Copyrighted in the United States of
America by G. P. Putnam's Sons

All rights reserved

On The Art of Reading

By

Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch

CAMBRIDGE

AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1939

TO
H. F. S. and H. M. C.

First edition 1920
reprinted 1920,1921
Pocket edition 1924
reprinted 1925, 1928, 1933, 1939

PREFACE

The following twelve lectures have this much in common with a
previous twelve published in 1916 under the title "On the Art of
Writing"--they form no compact treatise but present their central
idea as I was compelled at the time to enforce it, amid the dust
of skirmishing with opponents and with practical difficulties.

They cover--and to some extent, by reflection, chronicle--a
period during which a few friends, who had an idea and believed
in it, were fighting to establish the present English Tripos at
Cambridge. In the end we carried our proposals without a vote:
but the opposition was stiff for a while; and I feared, on
starting to read over these pages for press, that they might be
too occasional and disputatious. I am happy to think that, on the
whole, they are not; and that the reader, though he may wonder at
its discursiveness, will find the argument pretty free from
polemic. Any one who has inherited a library of 17th century
theology will agree with me that, of all dust, the ashes of dead
controversies afford the driest.

And after all, and though it be well worth while to strive that
the study of English (of our own literature, and of the art of
using our own language, in speech or in writing, to the best
purpose) shall take an honourable place among the Schools of a
great University, that the other fair siste