Hawke's Bay Herald. SATURDAY, JANUARY 25, 1902. THE READING PUBLIC.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 12062, 25 January 1902, Page 2

Hawke's Bay Herald. SATURDAY, JANUARY 25, 1902. THE READING PUBLIC.

It is one of the most difficult things in the world to settle the right relation of popularity to merit in literature, ibis is, as has often been remarked, a democratic age We believe in the decision of numbers, and put everything to an arithmetical test. The statesman, the parson, the dramatist, the author who draws the biggest audience must to the average mind be the greatest man in bis particular line And yet we continually find that the persons who have given most study and thought to politics or religion or literature, the persons of largest experience and highest ability, are disposed to differ from the judgment of the mass of men The general public undoubtedly finds the publications of Miss Marie Corelli and of Mr Hall Caine productive of the greatest excitement and refreshment. The literary critic, on the other hand, will be apt to make a wry face when either of these names is mentioned. Which is in the right, however, is not so easy to determine. Why the judgment of the majority should not prevail in books as in government t might prove excessively difficult to explain. This opposition of the public and the specialist is a phenomenon of our own day. In other times the author wrote for the cultivated classes. The reading public was a comparatively small circle of well educated eon of the world The advent of national education has altered all that Everyone reads now-a-days, tho man whose education stops at tho three E's as well as tho University graduate, and on democrativo principles the vote of the one is worth as much as tho vote of the other. If it is so in

political matters of high importance, must it not be bo in matters of taste.

bor is the highly-educated man always on the side of the majority. Kveryone knows the story of nerwin’s life—how as he grew older ho ceased to take interest in Shakesporeand Milton, and the books over which he had waxed enthusiastic as a youth, and devoted a very considerable amount of time to tho perusal of lighter lictiou. Tho sad feature of hie case was that ho made is an essential that no novel which ho was t > read should have n sad ending. Consider for a moment how many of the books which rank highest in this sort of -writing would bo excluded from his library at one stroko. Wo fear that Darwin's case sadly complicates tho general problem. The late Mr Gladstone

was another instance of high ability combined with the most democratic taste in literature The average reader might claim his support for the worst of his sins against good taste.

Perhaps the truth is that the object of the reader has ch nged. In the eighteenth century the reading i class was the leisured class, and so it was through the earlier years of the nineteenth century 3 he man of cultivation did not read for pure relaxation or to wile away the time but to give himself a peculiarly re fined hind of pleasure. He had probably plied the pen himself in his youth, had turned off his copy of verses or published a political squib. He read as a connoisseur and found an exquisite delight iu the happy turns and polished phrase of his favorite author. The modern reader undoubtedly reads for the most part for no other reason than to kill time The man of business or the brainworker, fagged after the daily grind, wants something light and amusing He has fio taste for the subtleties of art. He wants a plain story, and ho prefers it to be told in a somewhat crude high-colored way. He does i not buy the book which he believes i to be the finest literature, but the i book which will give the most amuse- s ment in return for the least effort of c intelligence. In other times this e man would not have read at all; he r wpuld have found his relaxation in £

society ci’ at his chi'). Modern « fialinn lorn ocorod him r, new mid t lots troublesome means of idling i. away tiio hours. t It would ho a mistake to suppose e that there in any good reason for i reading but one's own private i pleasure. ft is true that some men i am c’inpelled lo do a good deal ol i reading Dint in not pit iu!11ro Hut. that kind of reading docs no). count in the hill, Mr Aminov 1 ang. who has been discoursing on this subject in a recent essay, declares that " the only reading worthy (if the name is done for human pleasure, and pleasure) in not a duly. To that pleasure only a minority are semdtivo, and i do not think they should give themselves airs. They have a taste which some are horn with and ot era without .ludges usually read a groit deal. Mr Darwin and I’rine > Bismarck were devoted to novels ; i\r.poleon was an omnivorous and rapid reader, conquering whole libraries. Most novelists do not read Many r/ramtes J/nnon ilo pur hi Momfe road abundantly; many statesmen do so, and some boys, girls, undergraduates and spinsters. 1. doubt whether the clergy are studious as many men of the sword decidedly arc.” Mr Lang has printed a very curious letter which ho received from a working man on the habits ol his class ft is astonishing how much intellectual activity is to bo f< uud in quarters 'where it is most unexpected. Professor Huxley’s life tells the story of a dock laborer, a man engaged in casual employment who, with the very slenderest means, endeavored to acquire a knowledge of natural history He was a for-

tunate individual, for Huxley firet presented him with a valuable microscope and then found a place for him in connection with the British Museum It is the same in literature. Mr Lamp’s informant reads ''hakespere and Milton, Uarlyle and Bacon lie speaks of a friend, a common laborer, whose most treasured possession was a paper-covered second-hand volume of iShakespero’a plays, hie says of this worthy: i believe be knew almost all the plays by heart, and he would argue foi hours on the subject of Hamlet’s

madness and whether I'alataff really deserved suck a bad character as many good people credit him with.” It is plain that this man wss butter off than he would have been had bis studies been corifi .od to periodicals of the -crappy Bits kind But not all working-men have so fine a taste. ■he wriier admits that in most cases were ho to take an average working man and leave him a'oue in a room containing his books and a year old newspaper ho would find him on his return reading—it ho were reading at all—the ancient newspaper lie gives his experience in connection with c, >unday-scnooi library used largely by adults Poetry was not read, except B.ct llnrto; science ami history not at all. Fiction was of coura,) well patronised here was a rim on i yttou’a novels, while Artemus Ward and ‘ Three Men in a Boat ” se'dom returned to tho library xcoptto ha taken out by a fresh

borrower But the wi;ika of Mrs Oenry Woi-d were by far the moat popul»r books in the library, ami lia.T been read so much that they were falling to pieces. nd much the name description applies : o every class of society, j> sMr Lang says, “ To know Shakeapere by heart is as rare in the Universities as in factories.” Mrs Henry Wood and her more modern rivals Miss < orelli and Mr Caine are more read in every circle than George Kliot and Miss a usten. And if they appeal more to the tastes of the great body of readers have they not some reason to consider themselves tho greater authors? It is appalling to consider tbeiniluo ; ce which tho rubbish of some of these writers which sells by the hundetd thousand may have over the minds of tho unthinking. 'he very greatest minds of the day have no such audience, and no such opportunity of leaving an impress on the spirit of the age. What matters it to them if their works do not outlive the present generation ?