The Dominion SATURDAY, OCTOBER 12, 1907. WHIT PEOPLE READ.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 15, 12 October 1907, Page 4

The Dominion SATURDAY, OCTOBER 12, 1907. WHIT PEOPLE READ.

Until - a lew years ago it was tne business of every sour critic to say that the present age,' in which more people read, and in which people read more, than in any other age, is less cultured, more

ignorant, and in every way more illiterate than the era which immediately- followed the invention of movable types. It ;was not that people did not read, for they did; but their reading was a gross and physical process, and, their minds were not only not benefited, but positively injured, by their meals (if "reading matter." Lately, however, there has been suci an astonishing development in the publication of cheap editions of worthy literature, old and new, and such a huge public appetite: for them, that the angry bookma:! of ten years ago has been driven into silence by the fact that the still-triumphant vogue of drivel is accompanied by a Buskin vogue, a boom in Lamb, an Elizabethan Renaissance, a Homer hunger—in fact, by a feverish 1 public ' eagerness k to, buy up the old gold of the language. Were we ;to print here a list of the "Libraries" and "Classics" and "Series" .which have been issued in the past four years, they would occupy' a column of type at least; and when it-is remembered that each "Series" contains a great many numbers—the "Everyman , Library" already covers 200 separate : works—and that thousands of copies of each work _ are . printed,-and sold, the magnitude of, the,flood of: classic literature may, be guessed at. _ Already 100,000 copies, for instance, of Cassell's very newest "Series," published on September 2, have been sold. - Yet the pessimistic liookman need not have withdrawn his acid utterances. Vast quantities of famous books are being sold, but are they being read ? Upon the face of'it, it would seeim reasonable to urge that a real " revival of learning" is necessary l to account for the industry of the London pub-

lishers, and their testful devising of newer, and larger, and cheaper, - and ever more beautiful editions of - the best literature; but that would be to.take no' account of the methods of the book-buyer.

Everybody has a divine spark within his breast, and even in the dullest brain-there is some rudimentary sense of the value of 1 great literature. In many a hous ; e from which the graces _ of life axe brutally absent there is a Milton or a Hobbes, unread but reverenced, occasionally taken from tho shelf to be read heavily and without comprehension. In, the case of the novel/reader, who is the average man, his reading, however poor it may be, is sufficiently full of hints at the glories that await the student of fine literature to arouse his curiosity, and catch him in a 'little mood of exaltation. He resolves to pur-

chase something off his beat, as it were, and in the bookshop he 'finds himself surrounded by thousands of beautiful little copies of

works which he has heard of, bu'

which it has never occurred to him to read. The novelty of it' pricks him; he is full of an enthusiastic sense of discovery; and with heightened delight lie

finds great name after great name, and feels a stirring of his deeps, a dumb yearning Such as is induced in unmusical people by the harmonies of Beethoven or Chopin. The green la'mbskin, gold lettering, and delicate design of tlie cover deceive him ipto over-rating his capacity for appreciation, as intoxication deludes men into a bloated sensation of superhuman subtlety and streugth. But when the time for reading has come, the mood has passed; and, once past, for that pretty volume it never returns. With zest lie plunges into the last thing by the author of the "Scarlet (Pimpernel."- This mood of temporary exaltation, which comes to people entirely devoid of a literary sense as to lovers of letters, would account for many thousands of volumes of the classics without in any degree implying an elevation of the general standard of the people's reading. Tlie question, therefore, is not merely a

question of figures. Even, were the figures decisive, the fact remains that the rage for reprints is not shown by statistics to have displaced, or even modified, the craze for modern rubbish. .If it could be shown that every pocket volume of a famous writer displaced' a Guy Boothby—but it cannot be shown. Tlie dainty classics rest 011 the people's shelves, but the "popular author" is clasped to the people's heart. The enormous sale of the modern editions of good authors is therefore not a subject for great rejoicing. It has no reflection in an interference with the banality of common conversation about books, as it- ought, already to have had if people were now reading the classics who did not read them before. The talk is still of "the latest out," and of characters and plots which the real booklover has not heard of. The best service done by the.reprint is service to the scholar, in filling up gaps, or meeting a slender purse; and there is therefore an enormous waste in the publishers' energies. Perhaps nine-tenths of the reprinfo become mere house decorations, and the taste for good literature is as urgently in need of, cultivation as ever. Protesting against the public taste is like urging the tide not to flow, but it is impossible to believe that the present position .of publishing is at all consonant with what should be expected .at this" point in human progress from a vast and powerful quarter of human activity. *