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It is the key which admits us to the whole world of thought and fancy and imagination,--to the company of saint and sage, of the wisest and wittiest at their wisest and wittiest moments. It enables us to see with the keenest eyes, hear with the finest ears, and listen to the sweetest voices of all time. More than that, it annihilates time and space for us,--reviving without a miracle the Age of Wonder, and endowing us with the shoes of swiftness and the cap of darkness. Yes, but it opens our minds to the thoughts of the vile as well as to those of the virtuous; it unlocks the prisons and haunts of vice as well as the school and the church; it drags us through the sewer as well as gives us admission to the palace; it feeds us on filth as well as the finest food; it pours upon our souls the deepest degradation as well as the spirit of divinity. Parents will do well to keep from their children such books as Richardson's
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Pamela and
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Clarissa Harlowe; Fielding's
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Joseph Andrews,
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Jonathan Wild, and
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Tom Jones; Smollett's
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Humphrey Clinker,
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Peregrine Pickle, and
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Adventures of an Atom; Sterne's
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Tristram Shandy; Swift's
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Gulliver, and their modern relatives. Many of these coarse pictures of depravity and microscopic analyses of filth I cannot read without feeling insulted by their vulgarity, as I do when some one tells an indecent story in my presence. Whatever the power or wit of a book, if its motive is not high and its expression lofty, it should not come into contact with any life, at least until its character is fixed and hardened in the mould of virtue beyond the period of plasticity that might receive the imprint of the badness in the book. There are plenty of splendid books that are pure and ennobling as well as strong and humorous,--more of them than any one person can ever read,--so that there is no necessity of contact with imperfect literature. If a boy comes into possession of a book that he would not like to read aloud to his mother or sister, he has something that is not good for him to read,--something that is not altogether the very best for anybody to read. Some liberty of choice, however, ought to be allowed the children. It will add much to the vigor and enthusiasm of a boy's reading if, instead of prescribing the precise volume he is to have at each step, he is permitted to make his own selection from a list of three or four chosen by the person who is guiding him. What these three or four should be, is the problem. I cannot agree with Lowell, when he says that young people ought to
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It is possible to know something of people in general about me without neglecting my best friends. It is possible to enjoy the society of Shakspeare, Goethe, Æschylus, Dante, Homer, Plato, Spencer, Scott, Eliot, Marcus Aurelius, and Irving, without remaining in ignorance of the power and beauty to be found in Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Byron, Burns, Goldsmith, Keats, Shelley, Tennyson, Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, and Lowell, Ingersoll, Omar, Arnold, Brooks, and Robertson, Curtis, Aldrich, Warner, Jewett, Burroughs, Bulwer, Tourgée, Hearn, Kingsley, MacDonald, Hawthorne, Dickens, Thackeray, Carlyle, Ruskin, Hugo, Bronté, Sienkiewicz, and a host of others. Scarcely a day passes that I do not spend a little time with Shakspeare, Goethe, Æschylus, Spencer, and Irving; but I should be sorry to have any one of those I have named beyond call at any time. There are parts of Holmes, Lowell, Brooks, Emerson, Omar, Arnold, Tourgée, and Hearn that are as dear to me as any passages of equal size in Goethe or Irving. So it does not seem best to me to _confine_ the attention to the supreme books; a just _proportion_ is the true rule. Let the supreme books have the supreme attention, absorb them, print them on the brain, carry them about in the heart, but give a due share of time to other books. I like the suggestion of Marietta Holley:
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I would feed children with little sweet crumbs of the best of books, and teach them that a whole rich feast awaited them in the full pages, only taking care in each instance that the crumb is well rounded, the picture not torn or distorted. There are paragraphs and pages in many works of the second rank that are equal to almost anything in the supreme books, and superior to much the latter contain. These passages should be sought and cherished; and the work of condensing the thought and beauty of literature--making a sort of literary prayer-book--is an undertaking that ought not to be much longer delayed. Until it is done, however, there is no way but to read widely, adapting the speed and care to the value of the volume. Some things may be best read by deputy, as Mark Twain climbed the Alps by agent; newspapers, for example, and many of the novels that flame up like a haystack on fire, and fade like a meteor in its fall, striking the earth never to rise again. The time that many a young man spends upon newspapers would be sufficient to make him familiar with a dozen undying books every year. Newspapers are not to be despised, but they should not be allowed to crowd out more important things. I keep track of the progress of events by reading the
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Outlook in the
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Christian Union every week, and glancing at the head-lines of the
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Herald or
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Journal,