UNREADABLE BOOKS.

Thames Star, Volume IIII, Issue 1704, 19 June 1874, Page 3

UNREADABLE BOOKS.

In " The: Literary Life," by Frances Jacox, we find tho following introduced by an allusion to Voltaire's sarcasm on Dante, that "his reputation will now continually be growing and greater, because there is now nobody who reads him": —"'What will you say,'writes Lord Chesterfield,' when I tell you truly, that I cannot possibly read our countryman Milton through? Keep this secret for me, for if it should be known I should be abused by every tasteless pedant and every solid divine iv Europe.' Plato is regarded by one of his mod m expositors, tx- Jrl. Lewes, as both a tedious and a difficult writer, and though often quoted at second hand, ona that is xarely read except by professed students aud critics. Men ot culture usually attack a dialogue or two out of curfcsi ty, but their curiosity seldom inspirits them t« further progress.' Jphaucer,—' in what * terms, exclaims WChdmas Moore,' some speak of him, while ~I confess I find him unreadable.' Lord Lansdoinie was willing to own that, he had always felt the same, though lie did not dare to speak of it. M. de Tocqueville" could-not read the tragedies of Voltaire, as he acknowledged to his friend, Mr. Senior. The latter asked him, ' Can you read the " Henriade ?"' 'No, nor can anybody else,' was tho reply. C. R. Leslie mentions Mr. "Rose observing at Abbotsford that he had never known anybody who had read Voltaire's 'Henriade ' through. Sir Walter replied,'l have read it, and live ; but indeed in my youth I read everything.' Mrs. Browning confesses humbly before gods and men that she never did and never could read to the end of Akenside's * Pleasures of the imagination.' We have heard Mr. 8,. W. Emerson make the same confession. The philosophy no doubt: spoiled the poetry and ttie poetry the philosophy. Dr Thomas Brown, of Edinburgh, on the other hand, drew largely on Akenside for his favourite illustration of ethical doctrine, but whether he admired his poetry as poetry is another thing. Charles Lamb could read almost anything but the Histories of Josephus and Paley's Moral Philosophy, adding, however, to the list all those volumes 'which no gentleman's library should be without, ' including the works of Hume, Gibbon, Robertson, Beattie, Soane, Jenkyni, and all' Directorios, scientific Treatises, Almanacs, and Statutes at large.' Compared with the labour of reading Dr. N area's three quarto volumes on Burleigh and his Times, Macaulay declared all other labour the labour of thieves on the tread mill, of children in factories, of n»groes in sugar plantations, to be an : agreeable recreation. Carlyle'describes the perusal of Whitelocke, Heylin, Prynne, and the like, 'as all flat, yjundless, dead, and dismal as an Irish bsg,' threatening the reader with lockjaw, or at least the suspension of his thinking faculties. * Of Carlyle himself, the ' Country Parson' remarks, that' he cannot see anything to admire in his writings,' ■' I tried to read " Sartor Besartus," and could not do it. I confess further that I would rather read Mr. Helps than Milton, and that I value the " Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" more highly than all the writings of Sheley put together.' : Samuel Kogers had now admiration of Shakespeare* and would often quote Ben Jorison's reply to the players, who toasted thatl in all Shakspeare's writings he had never blotted put a-line,. •Would that he had blotted but a thouByron should'haye said to Roger 3 what he said to Moore,.' Well,, after all, Tom, don't ybui.think Shakspeare was something of * hHtabug ?'" :