READING IN BED

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25448, 20 March 1948, Page 3

READING IN BED

(Specially Written for “The Press”) ‘ tßy F. SINCLAIRE ] w®!h di are i on J 01 those habits „?™. er! 4J y dls aPProved and s-nerauy practised. The Question r rSd2 iA S not whether we oughT’to voices; or we"JTdJ °F b® read 6 in b « ber‘bked r toh Clerk ;u?° u may "memIdirarv of Ar ? Y e ?V hlsbedside a smali mentarief A g stote han texts and comuJS? .J? es ; N° wonder the poor felow looked hollow”! Not that I Master of* th disr “ pec ‘ fuily “ the iviaster of those who know: but the I whleh I h ake u it ’ “ tO aVO ‘ d any bject which has been occupying us stadvfn h the ? ay '- You have y been studying quaternions, say, or poring over Marx s “Capital.” Then don’t „“ aKe them your bedside tovs. The mmhfle r 1 sboa * d extend, with some qualification, to lighter reading There was a time when I should have rebelled against this latter clause of my rule, robbing me of the genial com-PaYJonshi-D of Deadwood Dick and the Artful Dodger and Peter Simple. That Wlt h its aching joys, is past. I wntd now as an adult for adults, and u ** tlla t what we ask of our bedside companions is neither excitement. nor instruction but rather change, refreshment, rest. “Escapism”! I seem to hear some sophistical snufflebuster interject. I. almost thank him for lending me that barbarous word. The world being, as Hamlet tells us, a prison, escape is one of the major preoccupations of all who care for freedom. The ultimate purPos e of all our reading and thinking, whether we know it or not, is precisely to escape from the stuffy atmosphere of trivial and superficial actuality into the larger air and open spaces of reality. Every book, grave or gay, if it is worth reading at all, helps us to make that escape. The motto inscribed over our bedside collection should be, “Study to be quiet.’’ Palgrave and Boswell But since example is better than precept, I can perhaps best set forth what I hold to be the sound principles and practice of my subject by means ,of illustrations drawn from my own long experience-. I like to have within easy reach Palgrave’s Golden Treasury, to open at random and take what comes, hoping that what comes will not be one of Gray’s Pindaric Odes. As an alternative to Palgrave, I have a little volume of judiciously selected paragraphs from Boswell’s Johnson. And then a comedy of Shakespeare. The mention of Shakespeare reminds me of a suggestion I had lately from a valued friend--Ib-sen. Not for me, thank you! I don’t want to turn over to sleep with memories of “Brand” “Ghosts” running in my head. But my friend’s reason for her choice, if not convincing, was at least ingenious. Ibsen, said she, is not the sort of person to read by daylight: he does not tone in! Returning to my own little bedside collection, I take up a volume of Coventry Patmore. Yes, I know Patmore wrote “The Angel in the House,” but I know also that in later life he tried to suppress that work, having meanwhile developed a rare and distinguished vein of metaphysical poetry. My bedside book is not poetry, but the collection of aphorisms and reflections called “The Rod, The Root, and The Flower.” This book is too little known, and I should like to introduce it to some new readers. At different times I have almost lived on it for weeks together. Here is a taste of its quality:

The worthiest occupation of the wise, in these days, is to dig again the wells which the Philistines have filled. Great is his faith who dares believe his own eyes. * Profligacy and science . . . bring about the same destruction of the higher faculties ... by dwelling on surfaces and ignoring substance. ' Rationalists take zero for their datum, and, do what they may. they can make nothing of it. Perception is hindered by nothing so much as by impatience and anxiety to attain it.

William Law Patmore is in places almost too pungent and ■provocative. I turn to William Law: not the “Serious Call.” That great book has stood in its author’s light. What I want of Law is to be found in Kis later, and less known writings such as “The Spirit of Love,” and “The Way to Divine Knowledge.” These books belong to the middle -years of the eighteenth century. In those days many people were busy “proving” and “disproving” Christianity. This occupation, says Law, is as profitable as smelling with the eyes and seeing -with the ntse: it is quibbling in words and dead images. Leaving all that behind. Law returns to the great central tradition of mysticism. . Two or three more bedside companions of long standing I have barely space to do more than name. Among them that “noble little book,” as Kingsley called it, which is known as the “Theologia Germanica,” is a prime favourite. I have read it at least a hundred times with increasing deligqt in the wisdom and power which underlie the deceptive simplicity of its language. And I like to have by me the little book of from the medieval German mystics which Dean Inge collected under the title of “Light, Life, Love.” Here we have something of Eckhart and Suso and their contemporaries, among others or Jacob Behmen, whom Law gratefully acknowledged as his master. Without disputing the authority of Law, I should rather name Tauler as my own favourite teacher among this group. But, some reader may here ask, why not the Bible? A pertinent question, which I answer very briefly. In choosing bedside books, such matters as size and type are sometimes of decisive importance, I have a fnend who tells me he would like now and again tO read in bed one of the Greek plays. Eut his Greek is rusty and, as he very justly observes, Liddell and Scott’s Lexicon is not quite a bedside volume.

Notes for aspiring short-story writers, from a lecture by Somerset Maugham before the Royal Society of Literature:

Rudyard Kipling is the only English writer of the short story who can be compared with the French and Russian ra Any rS competent writer can tell a storyin 2000 words just as, easily as he can story *is merely ai ma£ ter of what you can get your reader to swallow.

minute

ORACLE—-V For I was reared . In the great city, pent ’mid cloisters And d saw nought lovely but the sky But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze , .. By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the Of ancient mountains, and beneath the Which “image in their bulk both lakes And a mountain crags: so shalt thou see The a "ovely ar shapes and sounds intelOf tluit eternal language, which thy TTtte?s° d who from eternity doth teach Himself in all, and all things in HimTeacher! He , shall Thy Spirit, and by giving make it ask. Therefore all seasons shall be sweet Whether th the summer clothe the With ge^nn£ h or the redbreast sit Betw&rt t'he tufts of snow on the bare Of S h apple-tree, while the nigh Smok h e the sun-thaw; whether the Hea^d V O!dy O m S the’trances of the blast, Or if the secret ministry of frost Shall hang them up in silent icicles. Quietly shining to the quiet J-S T COLERIDGE: “Frost at Midnight”