 CHAPTER X I have now set down what appear to me to be the necessary considerations, recommendations, exhortations, and de-hortations in aid of this delicate and arduous enterprise of forming the literary taste. I have dealt with the theory of literature, with the psychology of the author, and, quite as important, with the psychology of the reader. I have tried to explain the author to the reader, and the reader to himself. To go into further detail would be to exceed my original intention, with no hope of ever bringing the constantly enlarging scheme to a logical conclusion. My aim is not to provide a map, but a compass, to very different instruments. In the way of general advice, it remains for me only to put before you three councils which apply more broadly than any I have yet offered to the business of reading. You have within yourself a touchstone by which finally you can, and you must, test every book that your brain is capable of comprehending. Does the book seem to you to be sincere and true? If it does, then you need not worry about your immediate feelings or the possible future consequences of the book. You will ultimately like the book, and you will be justified in liking it. Honesty, in literature, as in life, is the quality that counts first and counts last, but beware of your immediate feelings. Truth is not always pleasant. The first glimpse of truth is indeed usually so disconcerting as to be positively unpleasant, and our impulse is to tell it to go away, for we will have no truck with it. If a book arouses you a genuine contempt, you may dismiss it from your mind. Take heed, however, lest you confuse contempt with anger. If a book really moves you to anger, the chances are that it is a good book. Most good books have begun by causing anger which disguised itself as contempt. Demanding honesty from your authors, you must see that you render it yourself, and to be honest with oneself is not so simple as it appears. One's sensations and one's sentiments must be examined with detachment. When you have violently flung down a book, listen whether you can hear a faint voice saying within you. It's true, though. And if you catch the whisper, better yield to it as quickly as you can. For sooner or later the voice will win, similarly when you are hugging a book. Keep your ear cocked for the secret warning. Yes, but it isn't true. For bad books, by flattering you, by caressing, by appealing to the weak or the base in you, will often persuade you what fine and splendid books they are. Of course, I use the word true in a wide and essential significance. I do not necessarily mean true to literal fact. I mean true to the plane of experience in which the book moves. The truthfulness of Ivanhoe, for example, cannot be estimated by the same standards as the truthfulness of Stubb's constitutional history. In reading a book, a sincere questioning of oneself, is it true? And a loyal abiding by the answer will help more surely than any other process of raciocination to form the taste. I will not assert that this question and answer are all sufficient. A true book is not always great, but a great book is never untrue. My second counsel is, in your reading you must have in view some definite aim, some aim other than the wish to derive pleasure. I conceive that to give pleasure is the highest end of any work of art, because the pleasure procured from any art is tonic, and it transforms the life into which it enters. But the maximum of pleasure can only be obtained by regular effort, and regular effort implies the organization of that effort. Open-air walking is a glorious exercise. It is the walking itself which is glorious. Nonetheless, when setting out for walking exercise the sane man generally has a subsidiary aim in view. He says to himself either that he will reach a given point, or that he will progress at a given speed for a given distance, or that he will remain on his feet for a given time. He organizes his effort, partially in order that he may combine some other advantage with the advantage of walking, but principally in order to be sure that the effort shall be an adequate effort. The same with reading. Your paramount aim in pouring over literature is to enjoy, but you will not fully achieve that aim unless you also have a subsidiary aim which necessitates the measurement of your energy. Your subsidiary aim may be aesthetic, moral, political, religious, scientific, erudite. You may devote yourself to a man, a topic, an epoch, a nation, a branch of literature, an idea. You have the widest latitude in the choice of an objective, but a definite objective you must have. In my earlier remarks as to method in reading I advocated without insisting on regular hours for study. But I both advocate and insist on the fixing of a date for the accomplishment of an allotted task. As an instance it is not enough to say, I will inform myself completely as to the lake school. It is necessary to say, I will inform myself completely as to the lake school before I am a year older. Without this precautionary stealing of the resolution, the risk of a humiliating collapse into futility is enormously magnified. My third counsel is by a library. It is obvious that you cannot read unless you have books. I began by urging the constant purchase of books. Any books have approved quality without reference to their immediate bearing upon your particular case. The moment has now come to inform you plainly that a bookman is, among other things, a man who possesses many books. A man who does not possess many books is not a bookman. For years literary authorities have been favouring the literary public with wondrously selected lists of the best books, the best novels, the best histories, the best poems, the best works of philosophy, or the hundred best or the fifty best of all sorts. The fatal disadvantage of such lists is that they leave out large quantities of literature which is admittedly first class. The bookman cannot content himself with a selected library. He wants, at minimum, a library reasonably complete in all departments. With such a basis acquired he can afterwards wander into those special by-ways of book-buying which happen to suit his special predilections. Every Englishman who is interested in any branch of his native literature and who respects himself ought to own a comprehensive and inclusive library of English literature in comely and adequate editions. You may suppose that this council is a council of perfection. It is not. Mark Patterson laid down a rule that he who desired the name of book-lover must spend five percent of his income on books. The proposal does not seem extravagant, but even on a smaller percentage than five the average reader of these pages may become the owner in a comparatively short space of time of a reasonably complete English library, by which I am in a library containing the complete works of the supreme geniuses, representative important works of all of the first class men in all departments, and the specimen works of all the men of the second rank whose reputation is really a living reputation day-to-day. The scheme for a library which I now present begins before Chaucer and ends with George Gissing, and I am fairly sure that the majority of people will be startled at the total inexpensiveness of it. So far as I am aware, no such scheme has ever been printed before. Literary Taste, How to Form It, by Arnold Bennett Chapter 11. An English Library, Period 1 For much counsel and correction in the matter of editions and prices, I am indebted to my old and valued friend Charles Young, head of the firm of Lamely & Co. booksellers, South Kensington. For the purposes of book-buying, I divide English literature not strictly into historical epochs, but into three periods which, while scarcely arbitrary from the historical point of view, have nevertheless been calculated according to the space which they will occupy on the shelves, and to the demands which they will make on the purse. 1. From the beginning to John Dryden, or roughly to the end of the 17th century. 2. From William Congreve to Jane Austen, or roughly the 18th century. 3. From Sir Walter Scott to the last deceased author who is recognized as a classic, or roughly the 19th century. Period 3 will bulk the largest and cost the most, not necessarily because it contains more absolutely great books than other periods, though in my opinion it does, but because it is nearest to us, and therefore fullest of interest for us. I have not confined my choice to books of purely literary interest, that is to say, to works which are primarily works of the literary art. Literature is a vehicle of philosophy, morals, science, religion and history, and a library which aspires to be complete must comprise, in addition to imaginative works, all these branches of intellectual activity. Comprising all these branches, it cannot avoid comprising works of which the purely literary interest is almost nil. On the other hand, I have excluded from consideration, 1. Works whose sole importance is that they form a link in the chain of development. For example, nearly all the productions of authors between Chaucer and the beginning of the Elizabethan period, such as Gower, Hockleave and Skelton, whose works, for sufficient reason, are only read by professors, and students who mean to be professors. 2. Works not originally written in English, such as the works of that very great philosopher Roger Bacon, of whom this isle ought to be prouder than it is. To this rule, however, I have been constrained to make a few exceptions, so Thomas More's Utopia was written in Latin, but one does not easily conceive a library to be complete without it. And could one exclude Sir Isaac Newton's Principia, the masterpiece of the greatest physicist the world has ever seen? The law of gravity ought to have, and does have, a powerful sentimental interest for us. 3. Translations from foreign literature into English. Here then are the lists for the first period. Pro's Writers Bede Ecclesiastical History Temple Classics One-Shilling and Sixpence Sir Thomas Mallory, Morto di Arthur, Everyman's Library, Four Volumes, Four Shillings Sir Thomas More, Utopia, Scott Library, One Shilling George Cavendish, Life of Cardinal Woolsey, New Universal Library, One Shilling Richard Hacklett, Voyages, Everyman's Library, Eight Volumes, Eight Shillings Richard Hooker, Ecclesiastical Policy, Everyman's Library, Two Volumes, Two Shillings Francis Bacon, Works, Noon's Thin Paper Classics, Two Shillings Thomas Decker, Goals Hornbook, King's Classics, One Shilling and Sixpence Lord Herbert of Cherbury, Autobiography, Scott Library, One Shilling John Seldin, Table Talk, New Universal Library, One Shilling Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, New Universal Library, One Shilling James Howell, Familiar Letters, Temple Classics, Three Volumes, Four Shillings and Sixpence Sir Thomas Brown, Religio Medici, etc. Everyman's Library, One Shilling Jeremy Taylor, Holy Living and Holy Dying, Temple Classics, Three Volumes Four Shillings and Sixpence Isaac Walton, Complete Angler, Everyman's Library, One Shilling John Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress, World's Classics, One Shilling Sir William Temple, Essayon Gardens of Epicurus, King's Classics, One Shilling and Sixpence John Evelyn, Diary, Everyman's Library, Two Volumes, Two Shillings Samuel Peeps, Diary, Everyman's Library, Two Volumes, Two Shillings Total, Two Pounds, One Shilling and Sixpence The principal omission from the above list is the Past and Letters, which I should probably have included Had the Enterprise of Publishers been sufficient to put an addition on the market to cheap price Other omissions include the works of Caxton and Wycliffe and such books as Chemnons Britannia, Asham's Schoolmaster and Fuller's Worthies whose lack of first-rate value as literature is not adequately compensated by their historical interest As to the Bible, in the first place it is a translation and in the second I assume that you already possess a copy Poets, Beowulf, Routledge's London Library, Two Shillings and Sixpence Geoffrey Chaucer, Works, Globe Edition, Three Shillings and Sixpence Nicholas Udal, Ralph Royster-Doyster, Temple Dramatists, One Shilling Edmund Spencer, Works, Three Shillings and Sixpence Thomas Lodge, Rosalind, Caxton Series, One Shilling Robert Green, Tragical Rain of Salimas, Temple Dramatists, One Shilling Michael Drayton, Poems, Nune's Pocket Classics, Eight Shillings and Sixpence Christopher Marlowe, Works, New Universal Library, One Shilling William Shakespeare, Works, Globe Edition, Three Shillings and Sixpence Thomas Campion, Poems, Muses Library, One Shilling Ben Johnson, Plays, Canterbury Poets, One Shilling John Donne, Poems, Muses Library, Two Volumes, Two Shillings John Webster, Cyril Taunier, Plays, Mermaid Series, Two Shillings and Sixpence Philip Massinger, Plays, Cunningham Edition, Three Shillings and Sixpence Beaumont and Fletcher, Plays, A Selection, Canterbury Poets, One Shilling John Ford, Plays, Mermaid Series, Two Shillings and Sixpence George Herbert, The Temple, Everyman's Library, One Shilling Robert Herrick, Poems, Muses Library, Two Volumes, Two Shillings Edmund Waller, Poems, Muses Library, Two Volumes, Two Shillings Sir John Suckling, Poems, Muses Library, One Shilling Abram Cowley, English Poems, Cambridge University Press, Four Shillings and Sixpence Richard Cresshaw, Poems, Muses Library, One Shilling Henry Vaughan, Poems, Methwens Little Library, One Shilling and Sixpence Samuel Butler, Hugh DeBress, Cambridge University Press, Four Shillings and Sixpence John Milton, Poetical Works, Oxford Cheap Edition, Two Shillings John Milton, Select Prose Works, Scott Library, One Shilling Andrew Marvel, Poems, Methwens Little Library, One Shilling and Sixpence John Dryden, Poetical Works, Globe Edition, Three Shillings and Sixpence Thomas Percy, Relics of Ancient English Poetry, Everyman's Library, Two Volumes, Two Shillings Arbor's Spencer Anthology, Oxford University Press, Two Shillings Arbor's Johnson Anthology, Oxford University Press, Two Shillings Arbor's Shakespeare Anthology, Oxford University Press, Two Shillings Total, Three Pounds, Seven Shillings and Sixpence There were a number of brilliant minor writers in the 17th century whose best work, often trifling in bulk, either scarcely merits the acquisition of a separate volume for each author or cannot be obtained at all in a modern edition. Such authors, however, may not be utterly neglected in the formation of a library. It is to meet this difficulty that I have included the last three volumes on the above list. Professor Arbor's anthologies are full of rare pieces and comprise admirable specimens of the verse of Samuel Daniel, Giles Fletcher, Countess of Pembroke, James I, George Peel, Sir Walter Raleigh, Thomas Sackville, Sir Philip Sidney, Drummond of Hawthorndon, Thomas Haywood, George Wither, Sir Henry Wooten, Sir William Davenett, Thomas Randolph, Francis Quiles, James Shirley, and other greater and lesser poets. I have included all of the important Elizabethan dramatists except John Marston, all editions of whose works, according to my researchers, are out of print. In the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, talent was so extraordinarily plentiful that the standard of excellence is quite properly raised, and certain authors are thus relegated to the third or excluded class, who, in a less fertile period, would have counted as at least second class. Summary of the first period. 19 prose authors in 36 volumes, costing two pounds, one shilling, and six bits. 29 poets in 36 volumes, costing three pounds, seven shillings, and six bits. Total, 48 authors in 72 volumes, costing five pounds, nine shillings. In addition, scores of authors of genuine interest are represented in the anthologies. The prices are gross, and in many instances there is a 25% discount to come off. All the volumes can be procured immediately at any booksellers. End of Chapter 11. Recording by Timothy Ferguson, Gold Coast, Australia. Chapter 12 of Literary Taste, How to Form It, by Arnold Bennett. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Timothy Ferguson. Literary Taste, How to Form It, by Arnold Bennett. Chapter 12. An English Library, period two. After dealing with the formation of a library of authors up to John Dryden, I must logically arrange next a scheme for the period covered roughly by the 18th century. There is, however, no reason why the student in quest of a library should follow the chronological order. Indeed, I should advise him to attack the 19th century before the 18th. For the reason that, unless his taste happens to be peculiarly Augustan, he will obtain a more immediate satisfaction and profit from his acquisitions in the 19th century than in the 18th. There is, in 18th century literature, a considerable proportion of what I may term an attractive excellence, which one must have for the purposes of completeness, but which may await actual perusal until more pressing and more human books have been read. I have, particularly in mind, the philosophical authors of the century. Pros writers. John Locke, Philosophical Works, Bonds Edition, Two Volumes, Seven Shillings. Sir Isaac Newton, Principia, Sections I, II and III, McMillan's, Twelve Shillings. Gilbert Burnett, History of His Own Time, Everyman's Library, One Shilling. William Weicheli, Best Plays, Mermaid Series, Two Shillings and Sixpence. William Congrive, Best Plays, Mermaid Series, Two Shillings and Sixpence. Jonathan Swift, Tale of a Tub, Scott Library, One Shilling. Jonathan Swift, Gull of His Travels, Temple Classics, One Shilling and Sixpence. Daniel Defoe, Journal of the Player Gear, Everyman's Library, One Shilling. Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele, Essays, Scott Library, One Shilling. William Law, Series Call, Everyman's Library, One Shilling. Lady Mary W. Montague, Letters, Everyman's Library, One Shilling. George Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, New Universal Library, One Shilling. Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, Abridged, Routledge's Edition, Two Shillings. John Wesley, Journal, Everyman's Library, Four Volumes, Four Shillings. Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, Routledge's Edition, Two Shillings. Henry Fielding, Amelia, Routledge's Edition, Two Shillings. Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews, Routledge's Edition, Two Shillings. David Hume, Essays, World's Classics, One Shilling. Lawrence Stern, Tristram Shandy, World's Classics, One Shilling. Lawrence Stern, Sentimental Journey, New Universal Library, One Shilling. Horace Walpole, Castle of Otranto, King's Classics, One Shilling in Sixpence. Tobias Smollett, Humphrey Clinker, Routledge's Edition, Two Shillings. Thomas Smollett, Travels Through France and Italy. World's Classics, One Shilling. Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, World's Classics, Two Volumes, Two Shillings. Samuel Johnson, Lives of the Poets, World's Classics, Two Volumes, Two Shillings. Samuel Johnson, Rassilis, New Universal Library, One Shilling. James Boswell, Life of Johnson, Every Man's Library, Two Volumes, Two Shillings. Oliver Goldsmith, Works, Globe Edition, Three Shillings in Sixpence. Henry McKenzie, The Man of Feeling. Giselle's National Library, Sixpence. Sir Joshua Reynolds, Discourses on Art, Scott Library, One Shilling. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the French Revolution, Scott Library, One Shilling. Edmund Burke, Thoughts on the Present Discontents, New Universal Library, One Shilling. Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, World's Classics, Seven Volumes, Seven Shillings. Thomas Paine, Writes of Man, Watson Coase Edition, One Shilling. Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Plays, World's Classics, One Shilling. Fanny Bernie, Evelina. Everyman's Library, One Shilling. Gilbert White, Natural History of Selbin. Everyman's Library, One Shilling. Arthur Young, Travels in France, York Library, Two Shillings. Mungo Park, Travels, Everyman's Library, One Shilling. Jeremy Bentham, Introduction to the Principles of Morals. Clareden Press, Six Shillings and Sixpence. Thomas Robert Malthus, Essay on the Principle of Population. Ward Locke's Edition, Three Shillings. William Godwin, Caleb Williams, Noon's Edition, One Shilling. Maria Edgeworth, Helen McMillan's Illustrated Edition, Two Shillings and Sixpence. Jane Austen, Novels, Nelson's New Century Library, Two Volumes, Four Shillings. James Moria, Hadji Baba, McMillan's Illustrated Novels, Two Shillings and Sixpence. Total, Five Pounds, One Shilling. The Principle omissions here are Jeremy Collier, whose outcry against the immorality of the stage is his slender title to Remembrance. Richard Bentley, whose scholarship principally died with him and whose chief works are no longer current. And Junius, who would have been deservedly forgotten long ago, had there been a contemporaneous Sherlock Holmes to ferret out his identity. Poets. Thomas Ottway, Venice Preserved, Temple Dramatists, One Shilling. Matthew Pryor, Poems on several occasions. Cambridge English Classics, Four Shillings and Sixpence. John Gay, Poems, Muses Library, Two Volumes, Two Shillings. Alexander Pope, Works, Globe Edition, Three Shillings. Isaac Watts, Hymns, Any Hymn Book, One Shilling. James Thompson, The Seasons, Muses Library, One Shilling. Charles Wesley, Hymns, Any Hymn Book, One Shilling. Thomas Gray, Samuel Johnson, William Collins. Poems, Muses Library, One Shilling. James McPherson, Ocean. Poems, Cambridge Poets, One Shilling. Thomas Chatterton, Poems, Muses Library, Two Volumes, Two Shillings. William Cowper, Poems, Canterbury Poets, One Shilling. William Cowper, Letters, World's Classics, One Shilling. George Crab, Poems, Methuens Little Library, One Shilling and Sixpence. William Blake, Poems, Muses Library, One Shilling. William Lies, Bowls, Hardly Colleridge, Poems, Canterbury Poets, One Shilling. Robert Burns, Works, Globe Edition, Three Shillings and Sixpence. Total, One Pound, Seven Shillings. Summary of the period. 39 prose writers in 60 volumes costing five pounds, one shilling. 18 poets in 18 volumes costing one pound, seven shillings. Total, 57 writers in 78 volumes costing six pounds, eight shillings. End of Chapter 12. Recording by Timothy Ferguson. Gold Coast, Australia. Chapter 13 of Literary Taste, How to Form It by Arnold Bennett. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Timothy Ferguson. Literary Taste, How to Form It by Arnold Bennett. Chapter 13. An English Library, Period 3. The catalogue of necessary authors in this third and last period being so long, it is convenient to divide the prose writers into imaginative and non-imaginative. In the latter half of the period the question of copyright affects our scheme to a certain extent because it affects prices. Fortunately it is the fact that no single book of recognised first rate general importance is conspicuously dear. Nevertheless I have encountered difficulties in the second rank. I have dealt with them in a spirit of compromise. I think I may say that, though I should have included a few more authors, had their books been obtainable at a reasonable price, I have admitted none that I consider indispensable to a thoroughly representative collection. No living author is included. Where I do not specify the edition of a book, the original copyright edition is meant. Prose Writers, Imaginative. Sir Walter Scott, Waverly, Heart of Midlothian, Quentin Derwood, Red Gauntlet, Ivanhoe, Everyman's Library, Five Volumes, Five Shillings. Sir Walter Scott, Marmian, etc. Canterbury poets, One Shilling. Charles Lamb, Works in Prose and Verse, Clarendon Press, Two Volumes, Four Shillings. Charles Lamb, Letters, Noon's Thin Paper Classics, Two Shillings, Walter Savage Landor, Imaginary Conversations, Scott Library, One Shilling, Walter Savage Landor, Poems, Canterbury Poets, One Shilling, Lee Hunt, Essays and Sketches, World's Classics, One Shilling, Thomas Love Peacock, Principal Novels, New Universal Library, Two Volumes, Two Shillings, Mary Russell Mitford, Our Village, Scott Library, One Shilling, Michael Scott, Tom Kringle's Log, McMillan's Illustrated Novels, Two Shillings and Sixpence, Frederick Marriott, Mr. Midshipman Easy, Everyman's Library, One Shilling, John Gault, Analyst of the Parish, Everyman's Library, One Shilling, Susan Ferrier, Marriage, Rowlidge's Edition, Two Shillings, Douglas Gerald, Mrs. Cordell's Curtain Lectures, World Classics, One Shilling, Lord Lytton, Last Days of Pompeii, Everyman's Library, One Shilling, William Colton, Stories, Scott Library, One Shilling, Charles James Lever, Harry Lorrequair, Everyman's Library, One Shilling, Harrison Ainsworth, The Tower of London, New Universal Library, One Shilling, George Henry Borough, Bible in Spain, Lavengro, New Universal Library, Two Volumes, Two Shillings, Lord Beaconsfield, Sybil, Conningsby, Lane's New Pocket Library, Two Volumes, Two Shillings, W. M. Thackery, Vanity Fair, Esmond, Everyman's Library, Two Volumes, Two Shillings, W. M. Thackery, Barry Linden and Roundabout Papers, Etc., Nelson's New Century Library, Two Shillings, Charles Dickens, Works, Everyman's Library, Eighteen Volumes, Eighteen Shillings, Charles Reed, The Cloister in the Hearth, Everyman's Library, One Shilling, Anthony Trollop, Barchester Towers, Framely Parsonage, Lane's New Pocket Library, Two Volumes, Two Shillings, Charles Kingsley, Westwood Ho, Everyman's Library, One Shilling, Henry Kingsley, Raiden's Ho, Everyman's Library, One Shilling, Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre, Shirley, Villette, Professor and Poems, World's Classics, Four Volumes, Four Shillings, Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, World's Classics, One Shilling, Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford, World's Classics, One Shilling, Elizabeth Gaskell, Life of Charlotte Bronte, Two Shillings and Sixpence, George Elliott, Adam Bede, Silas Mariner, The Mill on the Floss, Everyman's Library, Three Volumes, Three Shillings, G. J. White Melville, The Gladiators, New Universal Library, One Shilling, Adam Smith, Dreamthorpe, New Universal Library, One Shilling, George McDonald, Malcolm, One Shilling and Sixpence, Walter Pater, Imaginary Portraits, Six Shillings, Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White, One Shilling, R. D. Blackmore, Lorna Doon, Everyman's Library, One Shilling, Samuel Butler, Arrow Warn, Five Fields Edition, Two Shillings and Sixpence, Lawrence Olyphant, Alteora Petto, Three Shillings and Sixpence, Margaret Olyphant, Salem Chapel, Everyman's Library, One Shilling, Richard Jeffries, Story of My Heart, Two Shillings, Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland, McMillan's Cheap Edition, One Shilling, John Henry Shorthouse, John Ingleson, McMillan's Pocket Classics, Two Shillings, R. L. Stevenson, Master of Ballantree, Virginibus Piresque, Pocket Edition, Two Volumes, Four Shillings, George Gissing, The Old Women, Popular Edition, Bound, Seven Pence, Total, Five Pounds and a Penny. Names such as Charlotte Young and Dinah Craig are omitted intentionally. Pro's Writers, Non-Imaginative, William Haslet, Spirit of the Age, World's Classics, One Shilling, William Haslet, English Poets and Comic Writers, Bond's Library, Three Shillings and Sixpence, Francis Jeffrey, Essays from Edinburgh Review, New Universal Library, One Shilling, Thomas DeQuincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater, etc., Scott Library, One Shilling, Sidney Smith, Selected Papers, Scott Library, One Shilling, George Finlay, Byzantine Empire, Everyman's Library, One Shilling, John G. Lockhart, Life of Scott, Everyman's Library, One Shilling, Agnes Strickland, Life of Queen Elizabeth, Everyman's Library, One Shilling, Hugh Miller, Old Red Sandstone, Everyman's Library, One Shilling, J. H. Newman, Apologia Provita Sua, New Universal Library, One Shilling, Lord Macaulay, History of England, Three Volumes, Essays, Two Volumes, Everyman's Library, Five Volumes, Five Shillings, AP Stanley, Memorials of Canterbury, Everyman's Library, One Shilling, Thomas Carlisle, French Revolution, Two Volumes, Cromwell, Three Volumes, Sartoris Sartos and Heroes and Hero Worship, One Volume, Everyman's Library, Six Volumes, Six Shillings, Thomas Carlisle, Latter-day Pamphlets, Chapman and Hall Edition, One Shilling, Charles Darwin, Origin of the Species, Murray's Edition, One Shilling, Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle, Everyman's Library, One Shilling, A. W. Kinglake, E. Orton, New Universal Library, One Shilling, John Stuart Mill, Auguste Comte and Positivism, New Universal Library, One Shilling, John Brown, Horace Subsecovet, World's Classics, One Shilling, John Brown, Rabb and His Friends, Everyman's Library, One Shilling, Arthur Helps, Friends in Council, New Universal Library, One Shilling, Mark Patterson, Life of Milton, Englishman of Letter Series, One Shilling, F. W. Robertson, On Religion and Life, Everyman's Library, One Shilling, Benjamin Jowlett, Interpretation of Scripture, Routledge's London Library, Two Shillings and Sixpence, George Henry Luz, Principles of Success in Literature, Scott Library, One Shilling, Alexander Bain, Mind and Body, Four Shillings, James Anthony Froud, Dissolution of the Monasteries, etc., New Universal Library, One Shilling, Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Women, Scott Library, One Shilling, John Tyndall, Glaciers of the Alps, Everyman's Library, One Shilling, Sir Henry Main, Ancient Law, New University Library, One Shilling, John Ruskin, Seven Lamps, One Volume, Sesame and Lily's, One Volume, Stones of Venice, Three Volumes, George Allen's Cheap Edition, Five Volumes, Five Shillings, Herbert Spencer, First Principles, Two Volumes, Two Shillings, Herbert Spencer, Education, One Shilling, Sir Richard Burton, Narrative of the Pilgrimage to Mecca, Bond's Edition, Two Volumes, Seven Shillings, J. S. Speak, Sources of the Nile, Everyman's Library, One Shilling, Thomas Henry Huxley, Essays, Everyman's Library, One Shilling, E. A. Freeman, Europe, Macmillan's Primers, One Shilling, William Stubbs, Early Plantagenance, Two Shillings, Walter Baghot, Lombard Street, Three Shillings and Sixpence, Richard Holt Hutton, Cardinal Newman, Three Shillings and Sixpence, Sir John Sealy, Echie Homo, New Universal Library, One Shilling, David Mason, Thomas DeQuincy, Englishman of Letter Series, One Shilling, John Richard Green, Short History of the English People, Eight Shillings and Sixpence, Sir Leslie Stephen, Pope, Englishman of Letter Series, One Shilling, Lord Acton, On the Study of History, Two Shillings and Sixpence, Mandel Creighton, The Age of Elizabeth, Two Shillings and Sixpence, F. W. H. Myers, Wordsworth, Englishman of Letter Series, One Shilling, Total, Four Pounds, Ten Shillings and Sixpence. The following authors are omitted, I think, justifiably. Hallam, Wewill, Grote, Faraday, Herschel, Hamilton, John Wilson, Richard Owen, Sterling Maxwell, Buckle, Oscar Wilde, P. G. Hamilton, F. D. Morris, Henry Siegwick and Richard Jeb. Lastly, here is the list of poets. In the matter of price per volume, it is the most expensive of all of the lists. This is due to the fact that it contains a larger proportion of copyright works. Where I do not specify the edition of a book, the original copyright edition is meant. Poets. William Wordsworth, Poetical Works, Oxford Edition, Three Shillings and Sixpence. William Wordsworth, Literary Criticism, Navel Smith's Edition, Two Shillings and Sixpence. Robert Southey, Poems, Canterbury Poets, One Shilling. Robert Southey, Life of Nelson, Everyman's Library, One Shilling. S. T. Colleridge, Poetical Works, Noon's Thin Paper Classics, Two Shillings. S. T. Colleridge, Biographia Literaria, Everyman's Library, One Shilling. S. T. Colleridge, Lectures on Shakespeare, Everyman's Library, One Shilling. John Keats, Poetical Works, Oxford Edition, Three Shillings and Sixpence. Percy Bishy Shelley, Poetical Works, Oxford Edition, Three Shillings and Sixpence. Lord Byron, Poems, E. Hartley Colleridge's Edition, Six Shillings. Lord Byron, Letters, Scott Library, One Shilling. Thomas Hood, Poems, World's Classics, One Shilling. James and Horace Smith, Rejected Addresses, New Universal Library, One Shilling. John Keeble, The Christian Year, Canterbury Poets, One Shilling. George Darley, Poems, Muses Library, One Shilling. T. L. Beddowes, Poems, Muses Library, One Shilling. Thomas Moore, Selected Poems, Canterbury Poets. James Clarence Mangan, Poems, D. J. Donahue's Edition, Three Shillings and Sixpence. W. Mackworth Prayad, Poems, Canterbury Poets, One Shilling. R. S. Hawker, Cornish Ballads, C. Biles Edition, Five Shillings. Edward Fitzgerald, Omar Kaim, Golden Treasury Series, Two Shillings and Sixpence. P. J. Bailey, Festus, Routledge's Edition, Three Shillings and Sixpence. Arthur Hugh Clow, Poems, Muses Library, One Shilling. L. Tennyson, Poetical Works, Globe Edition, Three Shillings and Sixpence. Robert Browning, Poetical Works, Worlds Classics, Two Volumes, Two Shillings. Elizabeth Browning, Aurora Lee, Temple Classics, One Shilling and Sixpence. Elizabeth Browning, Shorter Poems, Canterbury Poets, One Shilling. P. B. Marston, Song Tide, Canterbury Poets, One Shilling. Aubrey DeVoe, Legends of St. Patrick, Castles National Library, Sixpence. Matthew Arnold, Poems, Golden Treasury Series, Two Shillings and Sixpence. Matthew Arnold, Essays, Everyman's Library, One Shilling. Coventry Patmore, Poems, Muses Library, One Shilling. Sidney Doe Bell, Poems, Canterbury Poets, One Shilling. Eric Bacchai, Love Letters of a Violinist, Canterbury Poets, One Shilling. T. E. Brown, Poems, Seven Shillings and Sixpence. C. S. Calvally, Verses and Translations, One Shilling and Sixpence. D. G. Rosetti, Poetical Works, Three Shillings and Sixpence. Christina Rosetti, Selected Poems, Golden Treasury Series, Two Shillings and Sixpence. James Thompson, City of Dreadful Night, Three Shillings and Sixpence. Gene Ingello, Poems, Red Letter Library, One Shilling and Sixpence. William Morris, The Earthly Paradise, Six Shillings. William Morris, Early Romances, Everyman's Library, One Shilling. Augusta Webster, Selected Poems, Four Shillings and Sixpence. W. E. Henley, Poetical Works, Six Shillings. Francis Thompson, Selected Poems, Five Shillings. Total, Five Pounds, Seven Shillings. Poets who I have admitted after hesitation are Ebenezer Elliott, Thomas Woollner, William Barnes, Gerald Massey and Charles Jeremiah Wells. On the other hand I have no hesitation about emitting David Moore, Felicia Himmons, Aten, Sir Edward Arnold and Sir Louis Morris. I have included John Keeble in deference to much-enlightened opinion but against my own inclination. There are two names in the list which may be somewhat unfamiliar to many readers. James Clarence Mangan is the author of My Dark Rosaline, an acknowledged masterpiece which every library must contain. T. E. Brown is a great poet, recognized as such by a few hundred people and is assuredly destined to a far wider fame. I have included Fitzgerald because Omar Kaim is much less a translation than an original work. Summary of the nineteenth century. Eighty-three prose writers in one hundred and forty-one volumes costing nine pounds, ten shillings and seven pence. Thirty-eight poets in forty-six volumes costing five pounds, seven shillings. Total, one hundred and twenty-one writers in one hundred and eighty-seven volumes costing fourteen pounds, seventeen shillings and seven pence. Grand summary of complete library. One to Dryden. Forty-eight authors, seventy-two volumes, five pounds, nine shillings. Two, eighteenth century. Fifty-seven authors, seventy-eight volumes. Six pounds, eight shillings. Three, nineteenth century, one hundred and twenty-one authors, one hundred and eighty-seven volumes. Fourteen pounds, seventeen shillings and seven pence. Total, two hundred and twenty-six authors. Three hundred and thirty-seven volumes. Twenty-six pounds, fourteen shillings and seven pence. I think it will be agreed that the total cost of this library is surprisingly small Laying out the sum of six pence a day for three years you may become the possessor of a collection of books which, for range and completeness in all branches of literature, will bear comparison with libraries far more imposing, more numerous and more expensive. I have mentioned the question of discount. The discount which you will obtain even from a bookseller in a small town will be sufficient to pay for Chambers' Cyclopedia of English Literature. Three volumes, price, thirty shillings, net. This work is indispensable to a bookman, personally I owe it much. When you have read wholly or in part a majority of these three hundred and thirty-five volumes with enjoyment, you may begin to whisper to yourself that your literary taste is formed and you may pronounce judgment on modern works which come before the buyer of your opinion in the calm assurance that, though to err as human, you do, at any rate, know what you are talking about. End of Chapter 13 Recording by Timothy Ferguson Gold Coast, Australia Chapter 14 of Literary Taste How to Form It by Arnold Bennett This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Timothy Ferguson Literary Taste How to Form It by Arnold Bennett Chapter 14 Mental Stocktaking Great books do not spring from something accidental in the great men who wrote them. They are the effluence of their very core, the expression of the life itself of the authors. And literature cannot be said to have served its true purpose until it has been translated into the actual life of him who reads. It does not succeed until it becomes the vehicle of the vital. Progress is the gradual result of the unending battle between human reason and human instinct in which the former, slowly but surely, wins. The most powerful engine in this battle is literature. It is the vast reservoir of true ideas and high emotions, and life is constituted of ideas and emotions. In a world deprived of literature the intellectual and emotional activity of all but a few exceptionally gifted men would quickly sink and retract to a narrow circle. The broad, the noble, the generous would tend to disappear for want of accessible storage. And life would be correspondingly degraded because the fallacious idea and the petty emotion would never feel the upward pull of the ideas and emotions of genius. Only by conceiving a society without literature can it be clearly realized that the function of literature is to raise the plane toward the top level of the peaks. Literature exists so that where one man has lived finely ten thousand may afterwards live finely. It is a means of life. It concerns the living essence. Of course literature has a minor function that of passing the time in an agreeable and harmless fashion by giving momentary faint pleasure, vast multitudes of people among whom may be numbered not a few habitual readers utilise only this minor function of literature by implication they classed with golf, bridge, or soperforics. Literary genius, however, had no intention of competing with these devices for fleeting the empty hours and all such use of literature may be left out of account. You, oh serious student of many volumes, believe that you have a sincere passion for reading. You hold literature in honour and your last wish would be to debase it to a paltry end. You are not one of those who read because the clock has just struck nine and one can't go to bed till eleven. You are animated by a real desire to get out of literature all that literature will give and in that aim you keep on reading year after year and the grey hairs come. But amid all this steady tapping of the reservoir do you ever take stock of what you have acquired? Do you ever pause to make evaluation in terms of your own life of that which you are daily absorbing or imagine that you are absorbing? Do you ever satisfy yourself by proof that you are absorbing anything at all that the living waters instead of vitalising you are not running off you as though you were a duck in a storm? Because if you admit this mere business precaution it may well be that you too, without knowing it, are little by little joining the triflers who have read only because eternity is so long. It may well be that even your alleged sacred passion is, after all, merely a sort of drug habit. The suggestion disturbs and worries you. You dismiss it impatiently, but it returns. How, you ask unwillingly, can a man perform a mental stock taking? How can he put a value on what he gets from books? How can he effectively test in cold blood whether he is receiving from literature all that literature has to give him? The test is not so vague, nor so difficult, as it might appear. If a man is not thrilled by intimate contact with nature, with the sun, with the earth which is his origin and the arouser of his acutest emotions, if he is not troubled by the sight of beauty in many forms, if he is devoid of curiosity concerning his fellow men and his fellow animals, if he does not have glimpses of the newity of all things in an orderly progress, if he is chronically quarrelous, dejected and envious, if he is pessimistic, if he is one of those who talks about this age of shams, this age without ideals, this hysterical age at this heaven knows what age, then that man, though he reads undisputed classics for twenty hours a day, though he has a memory of steel, though he rivals porcelain in scholarship and St. Bowen judgment, is not receiving from literature what literature has to give. Indeed, he is chiefly wasting his time. Unless he can read differently, it were better for him if he sold all his books, gave to the poor and played croquet. He fails because he has not assimilated into his existence the vital essences which genius put into the books that have merely passed before his eyes, because genius has offered him faith, courage, vision, noble passion, curiosity, love, a thirst for beauty, and he has not taken the gift. Because genius has offered him the chance of living fully and he is only half alive, for it is only in the stress of fine ideas and emotions that a man may be truly said to live. This is not a moral invention, but a simple fact, which will be attested by all who know what that stress is. What? You talk learnedly about Shakespeare's sonnets? Have you heard Shakespeare's terrific shout? Full many a glorious morning I have seen flattered the mountain tops with sovereign eye, kissing with golden face the meadows green, gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy. And yet, can you see the sun over the viaduct in lobra junction of a morning and catch its rays in the Thames of Jewer's Whiskey Monument and not shake with the joy of life? If so, you and Shakespeare are not yet in communication. What, you pride yourself on your beautiful edition of Casabon's translation of Marcus Aurelius and you savour the cadences of the famous? This day I shall have to do with an idle, curious man, with an unthankful man, a railer, a crafty, false or envious man. All these ill qualities have happened unto him through ignorance of which is truly good and truly bad. But I that understand the nature of that which is good, that it only is to be desired, and of that which is bad, that it only is truly odious and shameful, who knows moreover that this transgressor, whosoever he be, is my kinsman, not by the same blood and seed, but by participation of the same reason and of the same divine particle. How can I be hurt? You would be ashamed of your literary self to be caught in ignorance of Whitman, who wrote, Now understand me well. It is provided in the essence of things that from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth something to make a greater struggle necessary. And yet having achieved a motor-car, you lose your temper when it breaks down halfway up a hill. You know your wordsworth, who has been trying to teach you about the upholder of the tranquil soul that tolerates the indignities of time and, from the centre of eternity, all finite motions overruling lives in glory immutable. But you are capable of being seriously unhappy when your suburban train selects a tunnel for its repose. And the AV of the Bible, which you now read, not as your forefathers read it, but with an aesthetic delight, especially in the Apocrypha, you remember, whosoever is bought unto thee, take cheerfully, and be patient when thou art changed to a lower state, for gold is tried in the fire and acceptable men in the furnace of adversity. And yet you are ready to lie down and die because a woman has scorned you. Go to. You think some of my instances approach the ludicrous? They do. They are meant to do so. But they are no more ludicrous than life itself, and they illustrate in the most workaday fashion how you can test whether your literature fulfills its function of informing and transforming your existence. I say that if daily events and scenes do not constantly recall and utilise the ideas and emotions contained in the books which you have read or are reading, if the memory of these books does not quicken the perception of beauty wherever you happen to be does not help you to correlate the particular trifle with the universal, does not smooth out irritation and give dignity to sorrow, then you are consciously or not unworthy of your high vocation as a bookman. You may say that I am preaching a sermon. The fact is, I am. My mood is a severely moral mood. For when I reflect upon the difference between what books have to offer and what even relatively earnest readers take the trouble to accept from them, and appalled, or should be appalled, did I not know that the world is moving, by the sheer inefficiency, the bland complacent failure of the earnest reader. I am like yourself. The spectacle of inefficiency rouses my holy eye. Before you begin upon another masterpiece, set out in a row the masterpieces which you are proud of having read during the past year. Take the first on the list that book which you perused in all the zeal of your New Year's resolutions for systematic study. Examine the compartments of your mind. Search for the ideas and emotions which you have garnered from that book. Think and recollect when last something from that book recurred to your memory a proposs of your own daily commerce with humanity. Is it history? When did it throw a light for you on modern politics? Is it science? When did it show you order in apparent disorder and help you put two and two together into an inseparable four? Is it ethics? When did it influence your conduct in a two-penny, half-penny affair between man and man? Is it a novel? When did it help you to understand all and forgive all? Is it poetry? When was it a magnifying glass to disclose beauty to you or a fire to warm your cooling faith? If you can answer these questions satisfactorily your stock-taking as regards to the fruit of your traffic with that book may be reckoned satisfactory. If you cannot answer them satisfactorily then either you chose the book badly or your impression that you read it is a mistaken one. When the result of this stock-taking forces you to the conclusions your riches are not so vast as you thought them to be. It is necessary to look about for the causes of the misfortune. The causes may be several. You may have been reading worthless books. This, however, I should say at once is extremely unlikely. Habitual and confirmed readers, unless they happen to be reviewers, seldom read worthless books. In the first place it is likely with books of proved value that they have only a small margin of leisure time left for very modern works and generally before they can catch up with the age, time or the critic has definitively threshed for them the wheat from the chaff. No, mediocrity has not much chance of hoodwinking the serious student. It is less improbable that the serious student has been choosing his books badly. He has read them in two ways, absolutely and relatively. Every reader of long standing has been through the singular experience of suddenly seeing a book with which his eyes have been familiar for years. He reads a book with a reputation and thinks yes, this is a good book. This book gives me pleasure and then after an interval perhaps half a lifetime something mysterious happens to his mental side. He picks up the book again and sees a new and profound significance in every sentence and he says I was perfectly blind to this book before yet he is no cleverer than he used to be. Only something has happened to him. Let a gold watch be discovered by a suppositious man who has never heard of watches. He has a sense of beauty. He admires the watch and takes pleasure in it. He says this is a beautiful piece of bric-a-brac he appreciates this delightful trinket. Then imagine his feelings when someone comes along with the key. Imagine the light flooding his brain. Similar incidents occur in the eventful life of the constant reader. He has no key and never suspects that there exists such a thing as a key. This is what I call a choice absolutely bad. The choice is relatively bad when spreading over a number of books it pursues no order and thus results in a muddle of faint impressions each blurring the rest. Books must be allowed to help one another. They must be skillfully called in to each other's aid and that this may be accomplished some guiding principle is necessary and what you demand should that guiding principle be. How do I know? Nobody fortunately can make your principles for you. You have to make them for yourself. But I will venture upon this general observation that in the mental world what counts is not numbers but coordination. As regards facts and ideas the great mistake made by the average well-intentioned reader is that he is content with the names of things instead of occupying himself with the causes of things. He seeks answers to the question what instead of to the question why. He studies history and never guesses that all of history is caused by facts of geography. He is a botanical expert and can take you to where Sipthopa Europa grows and never troubles to wonder what the earth would be like without its cloak of plants. He wanders forth on starlit evenings and will name you with unction all the constellations from Andromeda to the Scorpion. But if you ask him why Venus can never be seen at midnight he will tell you he has not bothered with the scientific details. He has not learned that names are nothing and the satisfaction of the lust of the eye is a trifle compared to the imaginative vision of which scientific details are the indispensable basis. Most reading I am convinced is unphilosophical. That is to say it lacks the element which more than anything else quickens the poetry of life. Unless and until a man has formed a scheme of knowledge be it a Miss Skeleton his reading must necessarily be unphilosophical. He must have attained to some notion of the interrelations of the various branches of knowledge before he can properly comprehend the branch in which he specialises. If he has not drawn an outline map upon which he can fill in whatever knowledge comes to him as it comes and on which he can trace the affinity of every part with every other part he is assuredly frittering away a large percentage of his efforts. There are certain philosophical works which once they are mastered seem to have performed an operation for cataract so that he who was blind having read them hence forward sees cause and effect working in and out everywhere. To use another figure they leave stamped on the brain a chart of the entire province of knowledge. Such a work is Spencer's First Principles. I know that it is nearly useless to advise people to read First Principles. They are intimidated by the sound of it and it costs as much as a dress circle seat at the theatre but if they would what brilliant stocktakings there might be in a few years why if they would only read such detached essays as that on manners and fashion or the genesis of science in a six-penny volume of Spencer's essays published by Watson Co. The magic illumination, the necessary power of synthesizing things might be vouchsafe to them. In any case the lack of some such disciplinary coordinating measure will amply explain many disastrous stocktakings the manner in which one single ray of light one single precious hint will clarify and energize the whole mental life of him who receives it is among the most wonderful and heavenly of intellectual phenomena. Some men search for that light and never find it but most men never search for it. The superlative cause of disastrous stocktakings remains and it is much more simple than the one with which I have just dealt it consists in the absence of meditation people read and read and read blandly unconscious of their effrontery and assuming that they can assimilate without any further effort the vital essence which the author has breathed into them they cannot and the proof that they do not is shown all the time in their lives I say that if a man does not spend at least as much time inactively and definitely thinking about what he has read as he has spent in the reading he is simply insulting his author if he does not submit himself to intellectual and emotional fatigue in classifying the communicated ideas and in emphasizing on his spirit the imprint of the communicated emotions and reading with him is a pleasant pastime and nothing else this is a distressing fact but it is a fact it is distressing for the reason that meditation is not a popular exercise if a friend asks you what you did last night you may answer I was reading and he will be impressed and you will be proud but if you enter I was meditating then he will have a tendency to smile and you will have a tendency to blush I know this I feel it myself I cannot offer any explanation but it does not shake my conviction that the absence of meditation is the main origin of disappointing stock-taking End of Chapter 14 Recording by Timothy Ferguson Gold Coast, Australia End of Literary Taste How to Form It by Arnold Bennett