PARKS OR LIBRARIES!

New Zealand Herald, Volume XL, Issue 12362, 29 August 1903, Page 1 (Supplement)

PARKS OR LIBRARIES!

:■:. '•■'•'"■ V -, . [BY TOHtJXGA.] '.-.- '~ . "Hot " parks "or books," you will notice, but parks'or libraries !" Or to go further into detail, not merely decorative parklcts or libraries stored with the knowledge and thought of the ages, but great pleasure parks by which town-dwellers are restored to the bosom of Mother Nature, or popular, libraries to which the multitude flocks for its opiate of "■ popular fiction! ;.;''; Between the twain, which is the best for a people The Carnegies with their American conceptions, or the Campbells with their Greek ideals"/ \ Libraries are not "books,,", never forget that. >' The more one loves Letters, the more one begins tc understand.. that the letter killeth, while the spirit keepeth alive, the more .intensely one ieeis that the great books of the world are few and far apart. It is true that you can make out an endless list of great British writers, with whom it is exceedingly pleasant to kill an idle hour, but how many of their books would a Robinson Crusoe care to find in his Wreck, knowing that his. every waking moment could be failed with necessary;ana,profitable work '! Few indeed. "The centuries pass, and the civilisations fade, more, frequently than a book, that appeals to all mankind sees the light of day. ;,' • , -, ■ , ~»; In toe. fictionsand when we speak of popular books we must always speak of the fictions, since in that garb alone ■■ ran the common. man appreciate thought—there are not half-a-dozen books which could not very well be done without. We should miss old Homer, greatest arid most living of the romances, broadest and most subtle of the thinkers who draped with glowing Fancy the body and brain of Aryan man. ' Not Pope's Homer, of course, that bombastic, pretentious imitation, but Homer, us, for instance, simple-minded Cowper saw him and humbly offered to others the great Master unalloyed. Is there a modern romance equal to that wonderful romance of Ulysses? - Mas any ■;, romancer ever brought to us a move thrilling, : more stupendous episode of fighting, than., when the great bow-twanged and twanged, and twanged before the cornered suitors and the strong wanderer avenged insulted wife and plundered home and shamestained household ? Has the 1 faithful dog ever been; sung of as old Homer sang of the dog that remembered when even the true wife hesitated for proof 't Has Ouida painted ■ a red-lipped sorceress like Circe?' Has Walter ' Scott drawn a nobler than Penelope '( '" Has even; Fielding, unrivalled master of all English novelists, .whose, every character moves living "upon a stage that is the actual world, given us in " Tom Jones" a more graphic picture of polygamic man and monoamine woman? While as for. the Iliad, has any .man ever read it to realise it, who has not reread it and reread it, to whom its enchant-' ment does not make the story of Troy, the romance of Achilles, part* and parcel of the eternally Jiving world ? Jj And who read Homer? For all our boasted love of literature, who read Homer ? Even of those who creep stupidly along the, to them, meaningless lines 'of a dead tongue, how: many have had its worth, made known to them by a loving and reverential translator ? Not; more and more, ad " libraries " are reared in" every town, but fewer and fewer.. We mumble over the husks of literature while turning our .backs upon' the winnowed grain. >; Ah !' There was! some sense, after all, in the Moslem iconoclast who swore that all that was true of the Alexandrine books was in the Koran, - and all that was '• not;-. true was.better destroyed. llf wo * could j but'; save . our > ericyelopedio; knowledge and f half-a-dozen; books* apiece, and destroy all others, in short year we should; a higher: average literary, education.- At least, every; man who/cared> to read fiction . would have read Homer. ' « w ... . - ;-". ..,. ;;"-Jli'itr'of course,' Homer was a" foreigner, which settles him. Only we treat Milton in the, same contemptuous style, appreciating him so little that even those who should know better try to persuade us that " Paradise Regained" is tha peer of .'■'• Paradise Lost." . Of all English productions, " Paradise Lost" is the only book worthy ;of Homeric place. It is worthy. Whether we consider its language, which is the language of the gods, stolen for us by our English Prometheus; or its plot, which is the plot of the ages, the stupendous struggle between Good and Evil, Order and Chaos, dramatised into - the Christian .* thought, with characters that . daunt our egotisms and haunt our dreams; or its. .sustained interest,,, beside which the popular serial halts crippled to foregone conclusion; "Paradise Lost" is the greatest piece of fiction that ever came from the English brain. And 'how many read it! We are . becoming literary, thanks to the popular library, yet a book which once was the wonder story of childhood, the romance of youth, ;■■ the companion of age, isv hardly known. -* 5 So; we might go on, for columns.: Not only does the much-talked-of public library lead the public taste from the Masters to > the mummers, but in the inevitable deterioration of i public taste even the great disciples have little ? acknowledgment. -.-." Tom Jones" is not even ■ read for its heterodoxy. "Jane Eyre" is but barely recognised as the first outcry of the modern woman. And as for " Lorna Boone,"; strongest, purest, and best of the great' Wessex school, we pass it by in favour of the putrescent pessimism of Hardy...; ' ■ • ■'-; " ?; : Libraries! Only where there are libraries would one" hear questioned the genius of Dickens, that matchless storyteller, of Burns, the king of singers. Only where J are libraries, feeding and pamper-, ing -the ''Unwholesome tastes '; of streetcaged millions,; would the masterpieces that two generations ago were the treasured possessions, of all''who aspired to the most modest culture he thrown out on tire dust-heap • with the Bible itself. We have hot mentioned the Bible, but it is very certainreligion totally apart and literature alone .taken into account— a people versed in the Bible would know more ,of English, have a truer conception of human character, a greater store of the most moving and-instructive plots, and an infinitely finer literary sense, than a people which, without the , Bible, had the run of every Carnegie library rolled into one. 'At the end of a West Coast track there is a farmhouse, simple and small, a sample of the homes by which New Zealand has been pioneered. Around the long' table of, the one living-room 13 boys, and girls gather, night and morning while the father reads a chapter of the old book. It is five miles to school,, and those of school age travel it daily. Apparently, saving for 'school-books and Bible,, there is no "culture " in the place. Yet, from such homes will come in good time the Homers, the Burnses, the Dickenses, of our Israel. What to many may seem moTe to the point, from such homes will come men who will rule the towns with rod of iron, women who will mother children and possess the earth. Not for them dc the- Corellis vamp up their erotic fancies. Not for them are the . libraries that poison, but the'strong thoughts and living stories that elevate, instruct, and inspire. Homer • could talk to those lads as the blind beggar once did to the gaping crowds of Attica.' Milton and Bunyan may have* spoken already and be speaking now. "■ Libraries Well, they are necessary in towns as gin-palaces, and are probably a lesser evil. But to do a man or a woman or a child any real good you , must get them out of town, you must recall to their ■ stifled lungs the love of fresh air. to I their dulled eyes the* love of green trees : and blue sky and wind-whipped water, Ho their whole being the divine craving for : Health not wealth, for Beauty not excitement. Unless this is done, the towns r_ will kill us all, library or gin-palace notwithstanding, and will kill us all the i quicker if \we seat ourselves in ■; vain-glori-ous' satisfaction and distempered content. j Flush the drains all you like ! Scour the streets as you will ! Inoculate ■ and vac- .! einat© and educate till you are pink! ; Still, only where the wind sweeps free can v mortal man get life and health and vigour. -In Cornwall Park, and in the love of the healthy and the beautiful it '. will cultivate, there is more good, than in ; all the libraries that all the Carnegies . can ' [.ever build and endow*