SPECIAL INTRODUCTION WRITERS never weary themselves in sounding the praise of reading, though their readers sometimes weary of the iteration. And truly there is a flat monotone in this solemn preaching of the duty of persistence in «courses » of book-study. Even the lighter literature is mechanically «systematized » in blocks of periods, authors, schools, and so on, the latest specialist subdividing the divisions of his immediate predecessor. This is much like an attempt to substitute spade husbandry for steam cultivation. Its wisdom and utility depend upon the acreage to be tilled and the ambition of its owner. Hard work in specific studies is necessary to fit a man for his calling. Then comes pleasure-reading in leisure hours. It may be that some have grown so used to harness that their very recreation must be by rigid rule. For such the delights of roaming at large over the open champaign of breezy literature have no temptation. May they find happiness in cultivating their carefully fenced backyards. The wanderer through the wilderness of noble writings will enhance his pleasure by occasionally following in the track of the centuries. A certain orderliness brings out the best qualities of every sort of banquet, while yet the appetite is piqued by the variety and abundance of the viands. The literature of one period takes flavor from that which preceded it and gives a richer gusto to the style that follows. Haphazard reading fails to yield this extra charm, just as mechanical study blunts the subtler perceptions. The golden mean for the lover of all the good fellows who glorified our literature by honest work in all the styles of all the centuries is to sip their sweets as the bee sucks, now the meadow clover, and now the garden flowers, in happy free (vii) viii ENGLISH BELLES-LETTRES dom, yet with practical intent to make the most of them, by contrast and roving as the sun goes. The field of English pleasure-reading is old and vast and richly variegated. Our cullings make a nosegay grateful to the pleasure-sense and satisfying to the mind. The thousandth anniversary of great King Alfred, who established his nation on the rock of its people's enlightened patriotism, has brought his splendid character into public view. He was the first strong Englishman to foresee the more than kingly puissance of the song and written book. He used scholars as a higher type of fighting men, himself the lifelong active head and inspirer of the navy, the army, and the singers and writers whose joint labors made the unity and greatness of his country. His sympathetic paraphrase of the reflections of Boethius fitly heads the procession of these too little known good men and brave writers of oldtime England. If the new acquaintances Roger Ascham will make by this introduction of him do not find him one of the raciest, wittiest, and shrewdest good fellows they ever met in books, some other reason for the failure must be found than his quaint Elizabethan English, with its amusing and enviable defiance of pedantic diction-tinkers. Gascoigne's sturdy plain speech may amaze some misguided souls who have lived in the delusion that rasping, satirical criticism of high-placed wrongdoers is a product of latter-day progressive intellectuality. The gentler spirit of Philip Sidney and Selden's homely wisdom make a pleasing change of theme and style. The acceptance of the cremation usage gives this generation a closer interest in the majestic phrases of Sir Thomas Browne's seventeenth century prose-poem on urn burial. A dip into the mordant humor of John Arbuthnot, friend of Swift and Pope, and envied for his wit by both, followed by a pondering of Lord Bolingbroke's cogent philosophical Letter, will enlarge our appreciation of the varied and profound qualities in the less familiar writers of their time. Poor Chatterton's impracticable temperament and pitiful ending shed a sombre twilight glamour upon the output of his undoubted genius. And Coleridge, no more self-man ageable despite a long life of hard discipline, affords the reader the opportunity partly to realize some of the disheartening hindrances that have crushed to earth rare souls, whose truant or feeble guardian angels failed to ballast them with the coarser fibres that too often enable talent to pass itself off as genius. So this widely gathered handful of fragrant wild-flowers and choice blooms may serve to quicken the taste for more of the same growths; and if it shall send the reader on vague rambling quests over the hills and dales where the fairies dwell, he will at least have a bracing air and healthy exercise for his pains, and the likelihood of finding companionships that will give a new zest to life. Oliver A. Mrigh. |