GENERAL.

Thames Star, Volume XLVII, Issue 10380, 6 December 1912, Page 7

GENERAL.

READING AND SPEECHES.

BY MR A. <T. BAIiFOTjR

Certainly;.onenofthe. most interesting and readable books of . the year is "Arfc^ui* Tames Balfour as Philosopherl; and Thinker." It is a collection; of Vft; 'writings, «peedhete, and addrwse*., „_._.,-., _ v ...., THE AjB.T QF KIEADING . ;;; ,. 1 "TFhe^ .best. method of,, .gilding against the danger of reading what, is useless'is to read' only what is intereejtipg," t says Mr. Balfour, who believejs in. ,the principle that everything can be made interesting. This," Mr TJalfour goes on 'c- say is "aj triiijb which, -will seem a paradox to a.whole class of reader, fitting cb-je-ots of our commiaerat' •>: \?}io tuny be often recognised by their ha nit of asking some adviser: f'-j a list of ('boofloß, and then markinlg out a soheafne of study in the course) of aJJ are to bt) consoiieintioua 1/• perujtexJ. These, unfortunate persons apparently reai "i book principally with; the object of getting to the end of it. They, re^Ji the wdrcljPiiiis w/ih the sameis^jissiiion. of triump.»i a« Indian feels who v a ,lr«?bn scalp to his girdle. They are not happy unless they mark by sonje »!t'finite performance each mep in the | weary path ol self-im]vo»'t.ajont. 'to begin a Toluiae and not to finish i it would be to deprive themselves of this satisfaction; it would be _^> lose all the reward of their earlier selfdenial by a lapse from, virtue at ihe and. To skip, according to their, literary code, sis- a species of cheating;. it is a mode of obtaining credit for eru- | dition ooi false .pretences; a plan by i which the advantages of learning are surreptitiously obtained by those who have not won them, fey honest toil. But |ali this is quite wrong. In mat--1 .tejrsi, literary works have no saving efficacy.

"He has only half-learnt the art. of , reading who has not added to it the [ even, more refined accomplishments of skipping and of skimming; and th« first step has hardly been taken in the direction of making literature * i pleasure until interest in! the subject, and not a desire to spare (so to speak) the author's feelings, or to accomplish an appointed task, is the prevailing motive of the reader." GOOD AD'YICE TO! NOVELISTS In, Mir Balfour's reflections concerning the novel, uttered 15 years ago,, there is a criticism! of coatemporajy fiiotion in respect of a certain deficiency wibich has 'been, as the Telegraph points out, in recent years, and ,is still being, most abundantly mad 1© good by wiiters likie Arnold Benq&tt and HI G. Wells.

Mr BWfour called attention to tihe. fact jthat -while the whole field of history! and wtorld of geography had been ransacked for subjects of fiction, there was one strange omission.

"There really is one aspect of human nature, and most interesting of all, which, for obvious reasons, has been very sparingly treated by the novelist," says Mr Balfour. "I mean the development of character extending through the life of the individual. . . A novel never —well, I ■was goinigl to put ifc too strongly-— a novel seldom or never —not in one case in a hundred, not in one case m a thpuaand, attempts to take an individual and to trave what in naltural science would) Tie called his life-his-tory. The very pleaisure which: we get fr'oXQ a good biography—the tratoing of a raan's life from childhood to youth, from youth to maturity, from maturity to age) —is practically excluded from the sphere of the novel-? ist." MIR B'AlLiFOlim, ON GREAT SPEEICHiEiS' Of speakers and speeches Mr Balfour says: ,"I have listened to men who could hardly put two sentences grammatically together, but who held the House of- Commons 'because they persuaded the jHouse by their personal magnetism ;atad by their ma-nder of speech that they knew what they were talknig about. I have heard men like Mr 'Gflp-distone and. Mr Blight—masters of. thieir Hjimie—Mir Gladstone: above 'all *he master of. ©very skilful resource the orator could have at Lisi disposal', and of whom I clan only say I negret his speeches are of a' ■kind that miajke it impossible for those who read them) in any sense to judge of their excellence. Posterity must take it from us who heard witb our own ears the" extraordinary gifts of pathos."