SIR T. MARTIN ON NOVELS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9202, 3 November 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

SIR T. MARTIN ON NOVELS.

Lady Martin (Helen Faucit) read portions of " The Merchant of Venice," including the trial scene, before a brilliant audience, in the Town Hall, Llangollen, on August, '23,

in aid of the Public Library. Lady Martin, who has not appeared in public for nine years, met with a most enthusiastic reception.

Sir Theodore Martin, President, of the

Institution, before the reading, said:—As might be expected, the run upon our works of fiction, «id and new, has been great; Miss Braddon, Mrs. Oliphant, Mr. Wilkin Collins, or Mr. Besant offer more congenial reading to people out for their holidays than Bacon, or .Jeremy Taylor, Mr. Stuart Mill, or Mr. Herbert Spencer. (Hear, hear, and laughter.) Away from the toils and worries of home, they are fairly entitled to go in tor a feast of nectared sweets, other than

those of philosophy, anil novels, as Thackeray has said, "are sweet.-." All people with healthy literary appetites love them. Almost all women, a vast number of clever, hard-headed men, judges, bishops, chancellor.?, mathematicians, are notorious novel readers, as well as young boys and sweetsirls, and their kind, tender-hearted mothers. The Bishop of Ripon has recently been preaching the same doctrine, and so that the novels be good, wholesome, cleanlyminded books, untainted by impurity, and which neither defile the imagination with what is loathsome, nor shock the heart, with what is monstrous, there is not a word to be said against them. (Hear, hear. I believe that such are all the novels in our library, and that care will be taken never to admit

into it. any of those works of extravagant and debasing fiction, of which a very torrout lias of late been poured out to gratify the perverted appetites of those who revel in the portrayal of all that makes human nature unlovely and ignoble, or, what is ,vorse, to corrupt the youth of both sexes, mil divest them of the bloom of innocent gnorance of what is vile, and of ennobling Delief in what is good. For it should never jo forgotten that, as Fielding, the novelist, las said, " We are liable to be corruptee

by books as by companions." Potent for good, they are no less potent for evil, and bad books once abroad there may chance to spring up(thc phrase is Milton's), "like those fabulous dragon's teeth, armed men." Yes, armed with mischief of the deadliest kind. (Hear, hear.) See what havoc literature of this sort, the literature of the Boulevards, lias wrought upon the life and habits of the young men and women of France : and then ask yourself what toleration should be shown to Englishmen who make a trade of translating and propagating this poisonous trash among their countrymen. (Cheers.) How to keep works of fiction of this class out of the hands of their sons anil daughters must now cause many an anxious hour to English parents. But what better antidote can be devised than to have trained them to intimacy with the best books of the best authors? To have brought them up to understand and love Shaksperc's women—for example, his Imogen, his Desdemona, his Hermione, his Portia—will have been to make them turn away with loathing from the imbecile Frou-Frous and spasmodic Toscas of the modern French stage. Nor will those who have been nursed in chivalrous self-control and selfsacrilice, who have been inspired to noble emulation by familiarity with the heroes and heroines of our bust romances, such as Sir Walter Scott's, find attraction in the bebasing animalism, thinly veneered with specious sentiraentulism, and what, in the cant of a false philosophy, is called " morality unclouded by superstition," which forms the groundwork of the romances of Daudet, De Goncourt, Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant, Zola, and others. It is pleasant to know that our library has been greatly resorted to by the gentler sex. I wish ] could say ii.,4 :L •. i .... i «i • , . , , J

I that, it is used so largely as it might be by the young men of the town. Would they I could be persuaded how much they lose by not cultivating the habit of reading while they are yet young and the mind is open to I imbibe and strong to retain impressions', j All of us, even the busiest, have bytimes : for reading. Not for a moment would I l ask them to forego their sports, their ; cricket or their football, their rifle practice j or their rambles along the breezy hills, or 1 any exercise that brings health to the body I and cheer to the spirits. But there is a time , for all these things, and for a little reading 1 too. Not many books, but few and good, is the sound prescription ; for much reading, j like much eating, it was well said by an okl ; writer, is wholly useless without digestion. : Bub a few good books, nay, even one, will I make a man strong among his fellows. j They will breed a power and a comfort within him that will never be exhausted, j Strength may fail, the delights of the | cricket field or the mountain ramble may ' cease to be within his reach; bub the | thoughts that have quickened and nourished his understanding, and the poetry in which , his heart has found a voice, will remain with ! him always, and like the voice of a tried ' and constant friend, obey will grow dearer j and dearer to him as the years roll onwards. t (Cheerc }