IS NOVEL READING A WASTE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18759, 12 January 1923, Page 6

IS NOVEL READING A WASTE

OF TIME? By Lord Ernle, in John o’ London’s Weekly. In 1886 prose fiction wrested from theology the first place in the annual issue of new publications from the press. It has never lost the lead which it then assumed. For many years it rapidly increased its numerical superiority, till in 1906 it more than trebled the output of its rival. Novels have not won their predominance without a struggle. To the rich literature of protest such men of genius as Rabelais and Cervantes have contributed. There have always been those who regard novel-reading as not only profitless but mischievous. The prejudice persists. If the present President of the Board of Education allows “Ivanhoe" and “The Last of the Barons” in the schoolroom, educational reformers have recently banished “Cinderella” and “Puss in Boots” from the nursery. “Vile Books.” — It may be interesting to note some ancient phases of the discussion whether the influence of novels is for good or evil. It is a venerable controversy, and the arguments are time-honoured. It would not have been fought so long and so bitterly if the subject-matter were unimportant, or if prose fiction _ had not played so large a part in national life. Fifty years before the Christian era the dispute had begun. At Carrhaa (53 8.c.), the Parthian Surena vanquished the Romans and slew Crassus. On the battlefield was found, in the “fardle or truss” of a Roman soldier, a copy of the “Milesian Tales” of Aristides. “This gave Suvona,” so Sir Thomas North translates Plutarch, “great cause to scorne and despise the behaviour of the Romanes which was so far out of order that even in the warres they could not refrain from . . . . the reading of such vile bookes.” Two centuries later the Emperor Sevenis could find nothing worse to say of his defeated rival, Albinus, than that he had grown grey in the study of such old-wives trifles as the “Milesian Tales.” —Dr Johnson’s Enthusiasm.—

No one to-day condemns a soldier for carrying a novel in his knapsack, or attempts to create political capital out of a statesman’s pleasure in the perusal of prose fiction. But the encouragement of mental and moral effeminacy is still one of the charges levelled against novels. As general propositions, neither accusation can be established. Mental vigour lias often been combined with the love of prose fiction. Samuel Johnson, the incarnation of sturdy common sense, was, as Bishop Percy told Boswell, devoted to romances of chivalry, and retained his love for them through his life. Bishop Berkeley was a close reasoner. He was also an ardent student of the “airy visions of romance,” and perhaps in those unsubstantial regions learned to disbelieve

in matter. Paley was a hard-headed Yorbshireman, whose “Evidences” bear no trace of idealism; yet he began his literary career with a poem. Moral Enervation.— Equally difficult would it be to establish a general charge of moral enervation. England is justly proud of the stimulus to heroic self-sacrifice and endeavour which is afforded by her national records of golden deeds. Yet it must be remembered that, for at least half the world, the great actors and scenes of prose and fiction are more real and familiar than those of history. English novels, as well as English history, teach by examples. They

are not necessarily “schools of vice.’’ Compounded, as Caxton says, of “chivalrye, cnrtosye, hunianvte, hardynesse, love, cowardyce, murdre, vertue, and aynne,” they may equally entice to virtue. In the Elizabethan age, for instance, romances might turn the brain of Don Quixote or drive a chambermaid to resolve “to runne out of herselfe and become a lady-errant.” Yet the same books stirred more balanced minds to heroic action. They made points of honour a religion, sometimes a superstition.

Sir Philip Sidney had a poor opinion of “Amadis of Gaul;” yet he had known men who, even from reading that book, had “found the harts mooued to the exercise of courtesie, liberalitie, and especially courage.” Men of action are generally silent as to their mental processes. But it was on romances of chivalry that the imagination of the generations, young as well as old, who hailed the accession of Elizabeth had been nourished. The old mediceval favourites glow in the lines ;of Spencer’s “Faerie Queene;” they colour Sidney’s prose poem of “The Arcadia;” they irradiate the plays of

Shakespeare. It would be strange indeed if they were noti also translated into action. The Utilitarian Argument. — Historically, it is on religious grounds that the severest censure has been made. At the back of it have lain the sense of lost opportunity and the expansion of the feeling expressed by Asoham. T know', he says, “when God’s Bible was banished the Court and Morte Arthur received into the Prince’s Chamber.” With the_ purely utilitarian argument every generation ,has been familiar. ‘Don’t upbraid me,” says the Niece in Steele’s “Tender Husband,” "with my Mother Bridget and an excellent housewife.” “Yes," retorts the Aunt, “I say she was, and spent her time in better Learning than ever you did. Not in reading of Fights and Battels of Dwarfs and Giants; but in writing out

recipes for Broths, Possets, Caudles, and Surfeit Waters, as became a Good Country Gentlewoman.” The Aunt and the Niece survive. But the question is how men and women would otherwise occupy their _ leisure. Time is only wasted on novels if it would have been better employed. No doubt many women, like Mrs Popys, have annoyed their husbands by sitting up till twelve o’clock reading the “Grand Cyrus” and telling Jong stories out of their favourite, novels, “though nothing to the purpose nor in any good manner.” But if the high-mettled Dorothy Osborn wasted time on her “Parismene,” her

“Illustre Bassa,” or her “Parthenissa,” they did not prevent her from being, as she stands revealed in her charming letters, a fascinating type of English girlhood, and the playful superstitions that the novels may have encouraged only make her more attractive. The general influence of novel-reading outweighs the arguments founded on its abuse. No protests have ever convinced

the nation that its life is not immeasurably more enriched than impoverished by prose fiction, or induced it to cut one man’s meat because it may be another’s poison. Left to the control of public opinion alone, English novels have developed freely. Abroad, prose fiction has enjoyed similar freedom. The Inquisition judged heretics; it never censured novelists. —Romance by a Pope.— One of the most popular romances of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was written by a Pope. Pius 11. On romances were fed "the youthful imaginations of the founder of the Jesuit Order, Ignatius Loyola, and of the restorer of conventual discipline, St. Teresa, who, in collaboration with her brother, is said to have written a romance of chivalry. “Astrea” was the favourite reading of St Francois de Sales. The faults of Charles I are forgotten in the manner of his death, and it was Pamela’s prayer from the “Arcadia” that supported his fortitude. Jeremy Taylor thought it not inconsistent with “Holy Living”and Holy Dying” to quote Mile, de Scuderi with approval or to point a moral by a tale from Petronius. Nor was a taste for novels confined to Catholics or Anglicans. Even in the days of Puritan ascendancy, when all amusements were under a ban, novels still had their devotees. The greatest of Puritan noets, John Milton, was steeped to the lips in the lore of the Table Bound, and the sonorous names of “Lancelot, or Pelleas, or Pellenore” fell on his * • t • rm. . _i s n •.

ear like music. The greatest of Puritan prose writers, John Bunyan, who had once loved “Bevis of Southampton” above all other books, did not disdain to oast his immortal allegory in the mould of a romance of chivalry. —“Legislators of the World.”— These scattered illustrations of the ancient discussion on the good or bad influence of novels have not been chosen wholly at random. They belong to times when the controversy might have had before it the practical issue of total prohibition. To-day the dispute is academic. The most fanatical moralist would hardly demand that the nation should “go Pussyfoot” in the matter of novels. They have become a national institution; they have done inestimable service; they have added immensely to the mental resources of the nation; they have opened out new casements in the minds of millions; they command and, on the whole, deserve their hosts of enthusiastic admirers; they have made the fame and sometimes the fortunes of their authors.