SINCE writing is justly denominated an art, reading may surely claim the same distinction. Te adorn ideas with elegance is an act of the mind superior to that of receiving them, and is the province of genius; but to receive them with a happy discrimination is a task not less useful, and can only be the effect of a just taste. Yet it will be found that a just taste only will not obtain the proper end of reading. Two persons of equal taste rise from the perusal of the same book with very different notions; the one will not only have the ideas of the author at command, and strongly imbibe his manner, but will have enriched his own mind by a new accession of matter, and find a new train of thought awakened and in action. The other quits his author in a pleasing distraction, but of the pleasures of reading, nothing remains but a tumultuous sensation. He has only delighted himself with the brilliant colouring, and the mingled shadows of a variety of VOL. V. NO. XXX. objects, while the other receives the impression not only of their colours and shades, but their distinct graces and real forms. To account for this difference we must recur to a distinction, which appears to reveal one of the great mysteries in the art of reading. Logic distinguishes between perceptions and ideas. Perception is that faculty which notices the simple impression of objects: but it is only when these objects exist in the mind, and are there treasured and arranged as materials for reflection, that they become ideas. A percep tion is like a transient sun-beam, which just shows the object, but leaves neither light nor warmth; while an idea is like the fervid beam of noon, which throws a settled and powerful light. Many ingenious readers complain that their memory is defective, and their studies fruitless. This defect, however, arises from their indulging the facile pleasures of perception in preference to the laborious task 1 of forming ideas. We must not deceive ourselves. Perceptions require only the sensibility of taste, and their pleasures are continuous, easy, and exquisite. Ideas not only require the same power of taste, but an art of combination, and an exertion of the reasoning powers, which form no mean operation of the mind. Ideas are therefore labours; and for those who will not undergo the fatigue of labour, it is unjust to complain, if they come from the harvest with scarcely a sheaf in their hands. The numerous class of readers of taste, who only prefer a book to the odd trick at whist, have, therefore, no reason to murmur, if that which is only taken up as an amusement, should terminate, like all amusements, in temporary pleasure. To be wiser and better is rarely the intention of the gay and frivolous; the complaints of the gay and frivolous are nothing but a new manner of displaying gaiety and frivolity; they are lamentations full of mirth. There are secrets in the art of reading, which tend to facilitate its purposes, by assisting the memory, and augmenting intellectual opulence. Some, our own ingenuity must form, and perhaps every student has an artificial manner of recollection, and a peculiar arrangement, as, in short hand, almost every writer has a system of his own. There are, however, some regulations which appear of general utility. The elder Pliny who, having been a voluminous compiler, must have had great experience in the art of reading, tells us, that there is no book, however bad, but which contains something good. Just and obvious as this axiom may seem, it requires some explanation. To read every book would be fatal to the interest of most readers; men of taste who read variously know that the pains exceed the plea sures; to men of curiosity the pleasures exceed the pains. The reader of erudition, who searches for facts and overlooks opinions, may therefore read every book profitably. He must pick his few flowers from rugged rocks, and pass many days bewildered in wild deserts. But he who only desires to gratify a more delicate sensation, the reader of taste, must be contented to range in more contracted limits, and to restrict himself to the paths of cultured pleasure grounds. Without this distinction in reading, study becomes a labour painful and interminable; and hence readers of taste complain that there is no end of reading, and readers of erudition that books contain nothing but words. When the former confine themselves to works of taste, their complaints cease, and when the latter keep to books of facts, they fix on the proper aliment for their insatiable curiosity. Nor is it always necessary, in the pursuits of learning, to read every book entire. Perhaps this task has now become impossible, notwithstanding those ostentatious students, who, by their infinite and exact quotations, appear to have read and digested every thing; readers, artless and honest, conceive from such writers splendid ideas of the power and extent of the human faculties. Of many books we need only seize the plan, and examine some of the portions. The quackery of the learned has been often exposed; and the task of quoting fifty books a day is neither difficult nor tedious. Of the little supplement at the close of a volume, few readers conceive the value; but some of the most eminent writers have been great adepts in the art of index-reading. An index-reader is, indeed, more let into the secrets of an author, than the other who attends him with all the tedious forms of ceremony. I, for my part, venerate the inventor of indices; and I know not to whom to yield the preference, either to Hippocrates, who was the first great anatomiser of the human body, or to that unknown labourer in literature, who first laid open the nerves and arteries of a book. Watts advises the perusal of the prefaces and the index of a book, as they both give light on its contents. Gibbon says, we ought not to attend to the order of our books, so much as of our thoughts. The perusal of a particular work gives birth perhaps to ideas unconnected with the subject it treats; I pursue these ideas and quit my proposed plan of reading. Thus, in the midst of Homer, he read Longinus; a chapter of Longinus led to an epistle of Pliny; and having finished Longinus, he followed the train of his ideas of the sublime and beautiful in the Inquiry of Burke, and concluded by comparing the ancient with the modern Longinus. It may not be necessary to read all the works of any one author, but only those which have received the approbation of posterity. By this scheme we become acquainted ✨ith the finest compositions in half the time those employ, who, attempt ing to read every thing, are often little acquainted with, and even ignorant of the best. Thus of Machiavel, it may be sufficient to read his Prince and his history of Florence; of Milton nearly all his poetry, little of his prose, and nothing of his history; of Fielding's twelve volumes, six may suffice; and of Voltaire's ninety, perhaps nine is more than enough. One half of the plays of Shakespeare, and one half of each play, is quite enough for one who reads poetry merely for its own sake. All Dryden's fables, two of his satires, one of his odes, with a few of his prefaces, should satisfy a reasonable student, while all his dramas, translations, prologues, and songs, may be left to repose quietly on the shelf. Of the forty volumes of Swift, two or three volumes-full might be culled out, while the dirty or malignant refuse should be doomed to the jakes. The periodical works of Steele and Ad dison, once so popular, certainly contain a great deal unworthy of no tice; and Mrs. Barbauld has lately done a real service to the world, by compressing eighteen or twenty of these into three or four. The best parts of Pope are his translations of Hom er and Horace; these, with his moral essays, and his Art of Criticism, should be read, while his pastorals and his odes are forgotten, and his Wife of Bath, his Sappho, and his Eloisa should be reserved for the use of brothels. A reader is too often a prisoner chained to the triumphal car of an author of great celebrity, and when he ventures not to judge for himself, conceives, while he is reading the bad works of great authors, that the languor which he experiences arises from his own defective taste. But the best writers, when they are voluminous, have a great deal of mediocrity; for whenever an author attains facility in composition, the success of his preceding labours not only stimulates him to new perfor mances, but prejudices the public in their favour; and such being mostly writers by profession, most of their works are the products, not of inclination, but necessity. On the other side, readers must not imagine that all the pleasures of composition depend on the author; for there is something which a reader himself must bring to the book, that the book may please. There is a literary appetite which the author can no more impart, than the most skilful cook can give appetite to the guests. When Richelieu said to Godeau, that he did not understand his verses, the honest poet replied, it was not his fault. It would indeed be very unreasonable, when a painter exhibits his pictures in public, to expect that he should provide spectacles for the use of the short-sighted. Every man must come prepared as well as he can. Simonides confessed himself incapable of deceiving stupid persons; and Balzac remarked of the girls of his village, that they were too silly to be duped by a man of wit. Dulness is impenetrable; and there are hours when the liveliest taste loses its sensibility. The temporary tone of the mind may be unfavoura ble to taste a work properly, and we have had many erroneous criti cisms from great men, which may be attributed to this circumstance The mind communicates its infirm dispositions to the book, and an author has not only his own defects to account for, but also those of his reader. There is something in composition like the game of shuttlecock, where, if the reader does not quickly rebound the feathered cork to the author, the game is destroyed, and the whole spirit of the work becomes extinct. A frequent impediment in reading is a disinclination in the mind to settle on the subject; agitated by incongruous and dissimilar ideas, it is with pain that we admit those of the author. But on applying ourselves, with gentle violence, to the persual of an interesting work, the mind soon congenealizes with the subject; the disinclination is no more, and like Homer's chariot wheels, we kindle as we roll. The ancient rabbins advised their students to apply themselves to reading, whether they felt an inclination or not, because, as they proceeded, they would find their inclination and their curiosity awakened. We can easily account for this; it is so certain, and acts with such power, that even indifferent works are frequently finished, merely to gratify that curiosity which their early pages have communicated. The ravenous appetite of Johnson for reading is expressed in a strong metaphor, by Mrs, Knowles, who said," he knows how to read better than any one; he gets at the substance of a book directly; he tears out the heart of it." We should hesitate to pronounce on a work of some merit, on the first persual, for that is rarely attended by a proper relish. It is with reading as with wine; for connoisseurs have observed, that the first glass is insufficient to decide on its quality; it is necessary to imbue the palate, to give it that raciness of relish, which communicates every latent quality, and enables us to judge as keenly as the two uncles of Sancho. There are some mechanical aids in reading, which may prove of great a utility, and form a kind of rejuvenescence of our early studies. Montaigne placed at the end of a book which he intended not to re-peruse, the time he had read it, with a concise decision on its merits; that, says he, it may thus represent to me, the air and general idea I had conceived of the author, in reading the work. He has obliged us with giving several of these annotations. Of Young the poet it is told, that whenever he came to a striking passage, he folded the leaf; and that at his death, books have been found in his library, which had long resisted the power of closing: mode more easy than useful; for, after a length of time, they must be again read to know why they were folded. This difficulty is avoided by those who note in a blank leaf the pages to be referred to, with a word of criticism. Nor let us consider these minute directions as unworthy the most enlarged minds; by these petty exertions at the most distant periods, may learning obtain its authorities, and fancy combine its ideas. Seneca, in sending some volumes to his friend Lucilius, accompanies them with notes of particular passages, that, he observes, you who only aim at the useful, may be spared the trouble of examining the whole. Books are still preserved noted by Voltaire with a word of censure or approbation on the page itself, which was his usual practice. Formey complained that the books he lent Voltaire were returned always disfigured by his remarks; but he was a true German writer of the old class, A professional student should divide his readings into a uniform reading which is useful, and into a diversified reading which is plea sant. Guy Patin, an eminent physician and a man of letters, had a just notion of this manner. He says, "I daily read Hippocrates, Galen, Fernel, and other illustri ous masters of my profession; this I call my profitable readings. I frequently read Ovid, Juvenal, Horace, Seneca, Tacitus, and others, REMARKS ON READING. and these are my recreations." We must observe these distinctions, for it frequently happens that a lawyer or a physician, with great industry and love of study, by giving too much to diversified reading, may utterly neglect what should be his uniform studies. An author is often cruelly mortified to find his work reposing on a harpsichord or a table, with its virgin pages. It was among the mortifications of Mickle, that the lord to whom he had dedicated his version of the Lusiad, had it long in his possession, in the state he had received it! How often also are au thors mortified to perceive, that generally the first volume of their work is fouler than its brother! It is, therefore, an advantage to compose in single volumes; for then they flatter themselves, a second would be acceptable; but most books are more read for curiosity than for pleasure; and are often looked into, but rarely resumed. Authors are vain, but readers are caprici ous. Readers may be classed into an infinite number of divisions; but an author is a solitary being, who, for the same reason he pleases one, must consequently displease another. To have too exalted a genius is more prejudicial for his celebrity, than to have a moderate one; for we shall find that the most popular works are not of the highest value, but of the greatest usefulness. I could mention some esteemed writers, whose works have attained a great number of editions, but whose minds were never yet inflamed by an accidental fervour of original genius. They instruct those who require instruction, and they please those, who are yet sufficiently ignorant to discover novelty in their strictures; in a word they form taste, rather than impart genius. A Carlo Marat is a Raphael to those who have not studied a Raphael. They may apply to themselves the same observation Lucilius, the satirist, has made, that he did not write for Persius, for Scipio, and for Rutilius, persons eminent for Congreve says, there is in true beauty something which vulgar souls cannot admire. Balzac complains bitterly of readers; a period, he cries, shall have cost us the la bour of a day; we shall have distilled into an essay the essence of our minds; it may be a finished piece of art; and they think they are indulgent when they pronounce it to contain some pretty things, and that the style is not bad! There is something in exquisite composition which ordinary readers can never understand. Some will only read old books, as if there were no valuable truths to be discovered in modern ones, while others will only read new books, as if some valuable truths are not among the old. Some will not read a book, because they are acquainted with the author; by which the reader may be more injured than the author; others not only read the book, but would also read the man; by which the most ingenious author may be injured by the most impertinent reader. An author would write with refinement and delicacy; the reader has neither; if the author does not succeed he may be an intelligible, but still an indifferent writer; if he succeeds that reader will reject him as an obscure writer; yet the author will then be a highly finished writer. Some readers complain of the obscurity of an author, and often they are right; but there are some eyes to which almost every thing appears misty; for a picture may be hung in its proper light, though for some it may be raised too high. One ought not to see every thing distinctly, but only certain parts of it; the imagination properly supplies the intermediate links. Hence are derived what some consider the ob |