The “guide-post” method is the only way to advise readers, for much will always depend on individual taste and inclination, and to read without pleasure is a hopeless task. Dr. Johnson said very wisely that, for general improvement, a man should read whatever his immediate inclination prompted him to. He continued—
“If we read without inclination, half the mind is employed in fixing the attention, so that there is but one-half to be employed on what we read.”
At the same time, this is only a partial truth. To throw aside everything that does not allure at the outset is not wise. Many books that will charm and instruct are hard to “get into,” and a little self-control and perseverance will reap their reward in study as in everything else. The truth lies midway between two extremes. Do not get out of a library some book because you are told to read it, and at the close of a day’s work force yourself to pore over the pages until you fall asleep. On the other hand, do not confine your reading exclusively to story-books and the lighter magazines because they attract you and require no effort of attention. Girls are by far too prone to do this, forgetting that a taste for deeper books may be cultivated like every other taste.
It is true that many of the novels of the present day deal with the graver problems of life, and occasionally require an education to understand them. Still, however philosophical and thoughtful they may be, they should not constitute the sole intellectual food of any mind.
“Why?” you may say. “If I can learn all about early civilisation in a book like Georg Ebers’ _Egyptian Princess_, about mediæval and Scottish history in Scott’s novels, about the Stuart period in _John Inglesant_, about music in a story like _Charles Anchester_, about modern problems of every kind in George Eliot’s, Sir Walter Besant’s, and Mrs. Humphry Ward’s pages—not to go further—why not confine my reading to this interesting and attractive form?”
There is an essay by the late Professor T. H. Green of Oxford, which should be very widely studied.[1] He answers the question “Why not?” in a most forcible and masterly way, and the gist of his reply is this. The novel must perforce reproduce the circumstantial view of life; we are called to look again upon the incidents which day by day distract our attention overmuch from the “unseen and eternal” realities, and are apt to be enthralled afresh by the view that “to marry and live happily ever after” is man’s and woman’s chief end. In other words, the aspect of things the novelist shows us is “merely the outward and natural as applied to the inner or ideal.” He cannot give a complete representation of life; for instance, reproduce its slowness, its discipline by long years of silent waiting and patient labour. Much must be omitted of necessity, by reason of conditions of the craft; much also, by reason of artistic effect, must be so arranged and rounded off as to give the impression of a happiness impossible in life. The lesson of life, then, in its completeness, cannot be taught even by the best novel.