DECAY OF READING.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 14 August 1924, Page 7

DECAY OF READING.

PICTURE PAPERS A DISADVANTAGE

Viscount Grey, a vice-president spoke on “The Pleasure of Reading” to mem. bers of the Royal Society of Literature in London recently Lord Grey said he thought Englishmen were putting the pleasure of reading more and more in jeopardy. It is becoming more difficult to acquire the habit of reading. Picture papers were a disadvantage; they lessened not only reading but also thought. He suggested planning reading beforehand, and having always in mind the three or four books that should be r«ad.

Of the pleasures of reading poetry, of course, came first and highest. Besides the joy in rhythm, the music of words, and imagery, there was great thought, which not only stirred the intellect but roused the emotions. At one time, after eleven years in office, he had retired for quietness into the country, and had reread Shakespeare’s plays. He would put Wordsworth first among his favourite poets, because of the poet’s strength, and more, perhaps, because of the feeling of intimacy which Wordsworth brought to people, as though he revealed to them soine of their own experiences.

Novels he put next to poetry. It might be thought that love, as a passion, was essential to the great novels, but Jane Austen and Thackeray hail proved that not true. When reading Jane Austen he felt she was the greatest wonder among novel writers. She worked under the closest limitations, yet the greatest critics and literary men placed her in the first rank. Of biographies he would quote an opinion he had read and agreed with, that those of literary men were the most interesting, those of soldiers second, and those of politicians the dullest.