THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY, JUNE 20, 1908. THE READING HABIT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13781, 20 June 1908, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY, JUNE 20, 1908. THE READING HABIT.

j In to-day's Supplement Sir Robert J Stout favours us with an article to which we would direct pointed at- ! tention, on the subject of reading. j Students of life and manners in this j twentieth century lament almost i unanimously that' so very little sysj tematic, regular reading, worthy the i name, is clone by the young men and I women . of to-day. Their mental ] pabulum is sadly lacking in nutritive elements. They scan the newspapers, and. occasionally a magazine, and that is about all. Even where the reading habit is formed, attention is devoted almost exclusively to novels and works of fiction, regardless of literary merit, artistic structure, moral tone, and everything ! else except novelty. The latest is j what appeals to the multitude, and i this mainly on the one ground of its newness. Time is wasted over worthless trash, that fortunately quickly finds its way into the limbo of forgotten things. The influence of desultory and altogether ill-regu-lated reading cannot but be an in- ; jurious element in character forma- ! tion. In our reading, as in everyi thing else, wo should be systematic ; and we certainly ought to be no less discriminative in our literary company than in our personal associates. But people say they have no time for real reading. The -most they can snatch for it out of a day crammed with work and engagements is just a few minutes at odd times : and they plead that a shortstory magazine or a newspaper which they can pick up and lay down at pleasure, without any sense of break of continuity is just what meets their need. Far be it from us to underrate the merits or usefulness of newspapers. It would be strange, indeed were we to do so. And there arc magazines we eagerly look out for month by month or quarter by quarter, morally certain of finding in them something not merely interesting and calculated to pass the time pleasantly, but informative and educative. We contend, however, that if people laid themselves out to utilise the odd minutes of life . systematically, if they devoted them, snatchy as they are, to a , definite line of literary study, they \ would be surprised at the end of a few weeks or months to find how j much real rending they had done, j The lines of study might be, should be, indeed, varied. We could well have two or three books on hand at once, devoting a. regular portion of ; our usual leisure to them in turn. Many of us could" secure a few minutes before breakfast. Very busy people have been known to utilise even the moments of dressing to excellent purpose One man, who knew <; Paradise Lost" almost by heart, acquired that intimate acquaintance with it almost insensibly by always having "Milton" lying open on his dressing-table and committing just a few lines to memory every day, and, as he said, letting them soak in ! In the same way, by utilising the few minutes before dinner, or between engagements, many a man has steadily ploughed his way through books that seemed at first sight almost\oo big to tackle with any hope of mental profit. " Many a miekle makes a niuckle''" in reading just as surely as in money-hoarding But there are people, too many by half, with a leisure that actually hangs heavily on their hands. "Why do they waste it over ephemeral literature which has no pretension to truth or artistic merit, and is in general tendency too often simply demoralising; It is a thousand pities to see lives so wasted, character formation and mental discipline so neglected. The records of our public libraries almost everywhere attest the craving for fiction and the. indiscrimination exercised in its choice. 'Nothing really seems to count but novelty. People overlook the best, and only consider the newest. The latest " society" novel, no matter how trashy or how mischievous, is the one in demand. We are inclined to think very few of our young people read Scott, or Dickens, or Thackeray., or George Eliot much nowadays. Their knowledge of Scott or Dickens is mostly limited to selections from '' Ivanhoe" and " Pickwick," met with in their school reading-books not enough to give them a healthy appetite for mote. How many have ever read "The Cloister and the Hearth," voted by leading authors of our time easily first among English novels? We are not of those who praise unduly bygone days. We recognise heartily the merits of living writers who have given us not merely absorbingly interesting work, but who have distinctly increased our knowledge of other times, other lands, other manners, who have made the past Jive again before our very eyes, and have invested it with all the charm

and glamour of the present. By so doing they confer a real boon upon us, for the roots of the present only too often strike deep down into the soil of the past, and a knowledge of it is most helpful to the right understanding and solution of the problems of to-day. Do not let us be misunderstood. We are not advocating a narrow mental regimen. .But if people will read nothing bus novels, we should like to sec them resolute to devote to good fiction the time now worse than wasted on '■yellow'' literatureon the demoralising' fashionable society novels of the day, gutter novels, whose only attraction seems to lie in the debasement of virtue and the glorification of vice, writer emulating writer to see who can break the greatest number of moral laws in the fewest possible pages. J But, however good the novel may | be, it should not be the sole class iof reading indulged in. In mental ! as in bodily diet variety is necesi sary for strong upbuilding purposes. I The courses can easily be varied. Prose- and poetry, history, biography, travel, art, and science are all available to relieve the monotony of the world of fiction ; and it should i easily be possible to combine two I or three such courses in each day's I mental dietary. Unfortunately, peo- | pie have no idea of the varied I charms of the garden of English ! literature. The fact is, they had no \ sufficient literary grounding in their ! school and college days to incite them to seek a fuller acquaintance with books worth calling books. It- is \ only such as these for which we ap- ! peal. We share dear, whimsical Charles Lamb's sentiment: " I can read anything which 1 call a book. ; There are things in that shape which ! I cannot allow for such. ... I confess that it moves my spleen to see these things in books" clothing. perched upon shelves like false. saints, usurpers of true shrines, intruders into the sanctuary, thrusting out the legitimate occupants." Probably there are too many such even in our public libraries. In some cases the name '• library"' is indeed misapplied, for the institution is a mere. " omnium*gatherum*' of rubbish, unworthy the name of books—a dumping-ground for publishers' trash. The books that fascinate us most are generally, perhaps, those which reflect clearly, as in a mirror, the pleasant individuality of their authors, (he men themselves, with all the passions, little foibles and weaknesses and strength, that make them truly human, and induce on, our part a, wish that we, had known them in the flesh, a wish to personally thank them for help given, for pleasure and innocent amusement afforded. Those books which Charles KingsJey said he wrote with his very heart's blood come into this category, and well deserve, apart from that, to be read now. "The Essays of Elia," i Bacon's essays and Macaulay'*-, ".Pepy's Diary." Carlyle.'s "Cromwell,'" "In Memoriam"— different as they are— all make similar personal appeals to us. But space limits forbid our expansion of the theme. In every department of literature there are such books, even where we should least expect- to find them. But people need to be taught both what to read and how to read. In connection with every public library there should be periodic lectures on books, their authors, their literary charm, and uilue as mental discipline. If the men who know, and can invest what they know with personal power and attractiveness, could oe sought out and utilised for the benefit of those that do not know, and if effective steps were taken to "boom" the lectures, as the phrase goes, gradually a deeper interest would be taken in reading, ' and weekly evenings spent with the masters of prose and poetry would come to be regarded as pressing social engagements. Shakspere and other like societies arc doing much good in this direction. Although much, very much, remains to be done, we are encouraged to think things are on the mend, that the reproaches levelled at the head of the present generation for neglecting reading and wasting time over unworthy literature will be less applicable to the next one. On all grounds let us hope so