men whom their fancy has created. Coleridge and Southey, Wordsworth and Tennyson, usually sing their own songs, and from a loving, or, it may be, a saddened heart. We may truly utter the seeming paradox, that while it is the proof and triumph of genius to be able to overcome and overrule the individual man, yet where the genius is not rooted in, and does not grow out of the intense affections and the earnest character of the writer's own individuality, he shows the art of a dexterous histrionist rather than the earnestness of a great nature.

As for those authors who write to amuse the public, the perpetrators of humor of all sorts, and the producers of every variety of bagatelle to suit the reading-market, it is not easy for the man to hide his individuality behind the mask which he assumes, however grotesque and comical that mask may be. The features of the man will always shine through the mask-if indeed there be a man beneath it. For very great is the difference whether it be a clown or a man which is behind-whether we see, through the disguise, the look half-vacant and half-villainous of which the venal and frivolous Bohemian can never rid himself, with all his tact and art, or the broad swimming eyes of love, with which Hood always looked out through his fun, or the sad earnestness into which Lamb relaxed so soon as he had stammered out his joke or his pun.

It is scarcely needful to add that essayists and critics, the authors of moral, political and religious tracts and books, are supposed of course to write their own opinions, which, though they be also the opinions of large masses of men, will be shaded by the color and hue of the minds from which they come, and be warmed with the feelings which glow in the hearts of all thoughtful and eloquent souls.

Let it not be thought for a moment, that the assertions that a book is written by a man, and is just

what its author makes it to be, and that to read a book is to converse with a living man-are barren truisms. We believe them to be fertile in important suggestions, and that if held fast in the mind they will serve as a clue to guide us safely and wisely through the labyrinth of books -which mislead and bewilder as well as amuse and may ennoble. We invite the reader's attention to the suggestions which may be derived from them.

These thoughts may suggest the principles which we need to guide us as we judge of books and read them— and may help us distinguish the books which are books, from those which are only "things in books' clothing," as well as teach us how to make the best use of those which are books indeed.

CHAPTER III.

HOW TO READ-ATTENTION IN READING.

LET us then take our clue in hand and follow it out, feeling our way along, in the suggestions and applications to which it will naturally conduct us.

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It is thought a great feat for a child to learn to read. The process is not a trivial one which is accomplished every day, and is going on in our nurseries and schoolhouses, by which the infant learns to distinguish letters, to spell them into words, to look through written characters, to interpret words into thoughts and feelings, and do all these so readily that the skill seems literally to have come by nature." It is indeed a great feat, as we see plainly when a full-grown man or woman attempts it for the first time, and as we mark the slow and painful steps by which such persons must halt and stumble for years, in order to master the mechanical part of the process. It is very rightly thought to be a most important step that is gained when either the child or the man has finished this apprenticeship, and to make a great difference with him to have overcome these obstacles. But why is it so important? What makes the difference so great? Who asks: what is all this for, and how may a man best use the power which is thus gained? It is not enough to say that it enables a person to transact business, to read his own accounts and letters from other people, to know what is going on at New York or Washington, to pore over newspapers, to gape over a few tales of blood and murder, or now and then to extract, a thought from a good book on Sunday. If this were all, it were indeed worth all the cost, as the

experience and the common sense of the world shows. The transactions and intercourse of civilized life depend on this acquisition; and the unconscious discipline of civilized man that comes from the process, even in the limited and careless uses to which it is applied, reward the pains-taking a thousand-fold.

But suppose the question were asked more distinctly and more frequently: How may the power thus attained be used to the best advantage, and what are the uses to which it may be applied? Shall we say or think that the instrument is too common to admit of improvement? Then would one method of plowing be as good as another, and one plow would be as good as another; when all the world knows that from good plows and good plowing-to say nothing of the best looms and best weaving-come the wealth and luxury and civilization of millions of men. If the applications to which a common instrument may be turned are of no consequence whatever, then are potatoes as good as wheat because both are products of the plow, and the coarsest serge is as desirable as broadcloth from Leeds or silk from Lyons.

But all this is too obvious to need an argument or illustration; yet it is well to bestow a thought on truths so simple, for sometimes we are surprised by their extensive reach and even their tremendous import. Surely if a man should form and use principles in regard to any subject, he should form and use them in respect to what and how he reads, and for what ends. If life is not all a holiday or a day dream, then reading should be pursued in an earnest and reflecting spirit. For he that opens a book does by this very act begin to converse with a man-good, bad or indifferent as the case may be-with a man perhaps in his very best or worst phase or condition. If then you would scorn to take lessons or receive influences from an ignoramus, a knave, or a known deceiver and seducer of the

good; why not scorn to come nearer to any such man by reading what is the image, the expression, nay perhaps the essence or embodiment of himself? If, when you are admitted to the society of a wise or amusing man who gives instruction or entertainment in a winning and graceful manner, you think it important to be wakeful in his society and to catch and weigh every word; why should you not feel the same necessity when he speaks to you through the written page? And yet how many neglect the whole matter of what books they or their children read, or suffer it to take its chance, for evil or for good! Very good persons who would be slow to provide unwholesome or poisonous food, or to associate with mean or dangerous men, do both these things by the books with which they and their families come into close and frequent contact. They and their children read such books as come in their way, or are talked about, or are cheap, or attractive. Or, if they are careful in choosing books, they have little care as to the way in which they read them. This is not as it should be. It may involve a fearful and lasting wrong. If a man has but little time to read, he has no right to allow these golden hours of his life to be wasted and worse than wasted. If he reads a great deal, he has no right to allow influences which are silently but most powerfully affecting his whole character, to be what the chance or the mood of the hour decides them-to bring disease or health, life or death, to that which makes him a man. These influences might be most healthful and exhilarating; they might do much to make him a better, a more cheerful and self-relying man: and yet his time, it may be, is dawdled away in reading he knows not what, or in reading a good book in such a way that he knows not what he has read, any more than one can tell what he has said after being jaded by an evening party or wasted by a round of morningcalls.