SOLID READING.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 960, 29 October 1910, Page 9

SOLID READING.

Dr.; Eliot's: failure to bring together, a library ideally adapted to railway readiag'^casts ; tip, .essential, discredit; on: his ih;<i;-fodt shelf."''- The incident peon seized upon, of course;- as another instance of the degeneracy, of modern, literary, $fste.' /.What, it actually does, prove is that people;,travel on' trains now. who did not. travel. fifty-years ago. In. the welter of discussion that surged' about .'the- five-foot shelf, tile original purpose of that miniature collection was .lost sight of. 'Dr. Eliot asserted that any man; to whom. the. benefits of. a cultural education had been denied in youth could secure' the essence of a cultural , education ont of , the fifty volumes.on his five-foot; shelf. R(!call this special public, that Dr.; Eliot'had in mind,. and .thero is, little;; occasion . left, for the . huge merriment aroused by the inclusion, of such palatable bits' of reading as the "Jpurnal ;of John Woplnian" or Izaak Walton's' Lives of the poets Donne and Herbert. " Dr. Eliot was no fanatic of the. old school which holds that all reading must be solid and edifying. But he did know, that to the man whoso hunger for books has never been satisfied, no book can 'be too heavywhereas very many books might easily be too light. The long-denied ap-petite-for the printed word might easily be disappointed if set to work on chocolate and mayonnaise, ' whereas pre®'®eY s uch a book as Woolman's or AValtons will answer to the reverent awe with ; which , the : unlettered man .looks upon Books. / . .. i ?°° of the, criticism . that is being directed, against a debauched literary taste overlooks.the enormous extension that has come over-the function of reading. The'exercise of reading to-day does -not mean what it meant live hundred years ago; nor even it meant .fifty years ago; and yet we insist on investing it with the dignity BBd ■ importance the exercise enjoyed in the past. Five hundred years ago, ancl to a proportionately less extent fifty years books. answered to a comparatively restricted-measure of. a man's needs. .A man. in those days'had. his •Teligion, which he found in, the Church - nis_ artistic sensibilities,--which -lie -satisfied m the contemplation of architecture sntt sculpture: 'and painting; his amusements, which be obtained in martial-ex-erciso or- in travel, or in pageants, or J?- festivals, or in gossip in tho public square; and he had his books. To tpese •he . turned,' in. the familiar phrase, :when he ! wanted to commune with the greatest thoughts and the greatest souls of the past. To-day the average man' has 'no such variety of avocations. To satisfy our aesthetic demands; we read books on art. To satisfy t.ie curiosity for new lands and new faces, we read books of travel., To satisfy the human desire for-pageantry and festival, wo read romantic novels; To satisfy the human desire for laughter, wo read the, comic journals. AVe no longer . gossip in the -public-squares but read newspapers. Our rural population does not dance on the village green or attend weekly market 'fairs and engage jn wrestling -and' singlestick exercise; our farmers nowadays Stay at homo and read.

It stands to reason, therefore,. that a higher solemnity must have characterised the practice of reading'when books meant high intellectual and moral communion, than' can attach to reading to-day when books answer to the appetite for instruction, religion, art, recreation, physical exercise, gossip! horse-play, pageantry, laughter,: and scandal. You will find college professors to-day who stave off mental fatigue by a deep plunge into litorature of tlie Nick Carter and Deadwood Dick type. Yet the professor's labours over ' the latest German treatise on experimental psychology and his excursions into Nick Carter are described by .the same word —reading. - The. tired business man of a hundred years ago found his recreation at tho inn or at his guild meeting. Today he goes to.the theatre and reads novels, and the fare set up for his entertainment goes by the name of literature. The good uajne of literature iiuffers in the proccss; but it need not if one would v only remember what a Ihrong of vastly dißeront appetites sit

down to the same table. Art does not suffer because the sum?'chisel and mallet that shape an ex'quisito bit of carving may he used to build an outhouse. It is merely acoident that the same happy idea of Guteiiberg's should have becomo the medium for holding Dr. Eliot spellbound and entertaining the shop-girl who chews gum and says "foist." ,1' If modem life had kept something of the' well-rounded existence that was the gift of an earlier age, cheap reading would now be less plentiful. Wo cannot help thinking in this connection of the man "who has excited so much • interest of late as thcjadvocate and practitioner of the.old-fashioned solid reading. Mr. (iaynor's fondness for Marcus Aurelius lipictetus and Montaigne is not a -sporadic appotito, but fits in admirably Jn's crit-iro mode of life. When Mr. Gayiior retids, ho reads solidly; when ho wants rrcreation, he walks, attends' to the hay 'on his "farm, and looks after his horsey arid his pigs. A man so engaged is apt to find 110 time hanging heavy on. his hands nor much inclination for- what ye. call light read-ing.-/-New York "Post."

T,tVO POETS AND A SONNET. / L:

/The following sonnet on "Silence" is interesting not only in itself, but also fn account of a rather curious discussion about its authorship:—

There is a silence -where hath been no : sound, ' , There is a silence where no sound may be, • • . j In the cold grave—under the .deep, deep

se<v. ' ■ ' Or in wide desert where no life is found,' Which hath been mute, and still must sleep profound; • > ' , !No voice is . husli'd—no Kfe treads silently, . But clouds and cloudy, shadows wander free, That never. spoke—over. the ■ idle ground; But in green ruins, in the desolate walls Of antique palaces, where Man hath 'i - been, ; ' Though the .dun . fox, or wild hyena, . calls, ' ■ ; And owls that, flit continually between, Shriek to tho .echo, and the low winds moan, There tho. true Silence is, self-conscious and' alone.

The Doshnjon, ;on March 5, of this yealy reprinted, under the heading of ."Books and Authors," ail article from the "Manchester Guardian," referring to this sonnet as">a newly-discorered poem ..by Edgar. Allan Poe. The "Guardian;' stated that Mr.. Killis Campbell, of the Uuiv-ersfty of Texas, had found it in ;an American magazine of the year 1839. ;• The mention oi the matter in these columns brought us.a letter from "Bookworm/! who. pointed out that the sonii.et. referred to was one which had hitherto-: been . always attributed to Thomas Hood, He quoted evidence to show .that Hood was really the author. " : ; Curiously: enough, the _ same sonnet has«again come up for discussion quite lately, in another English paper. This' time .it-.has'been • "discovered" by Mr. John H: Ingram, as "an unknown poem by Edgar Allan Poe." The "Westminster .Gazette'' printed, it, "by tho' courtesy of Mir.' Ingram," on September 12. Several.' correspondents' 7 immediately Wrote to ..pqint out; just" Vhat ' 'Bookworm" ' pomted out" in -The Dominion last. March._' .'Mr. Samuel . Waddington. mentioned in. his letter to the "Westminster" that',he had . included ■ this "Well-known. sonnet on . 'Silence,' written by Tlioriias Hood," in his ."English Sonnets' by Poets of the Past," published by Messrs/ George'.Bell, and Sons in 1811. He added the following interesting note"lt has ahviys seemed to me to be one of our finest English sonnets, and, 'as I have elsewhere stated, the. sonnets of Hood scarcely, appear to have, received the . recognition that they ' deserve.' They, have a' strength' of thought and/clearness of expression that! should ensure them a higher •Wnli' have j-et been permitted to take. ''Tho one beginning.'lt is not death, that sometime in a sigh,' , is, indeed, ainiost unequalled for solemn,' tender pathos!" Mr.'.lngram—who" is regarded as tho best, English, authority on: the works'of "oe—replied,-that before the authorship of the sonnet on.-.'.'Silence'.' could -be assigned to Thqmas Hood, it would ' bo necessary to prove tliat it- was publish- € 4. an earlier date by Hood'-or his editors than that of its issue, in America. , He ■ also, .^aid: "Tho first , publication of-, the poem in America ' was' * in 1839, in- Burton's 'Gentleman's ' Magazine,'. where it; appeared over the signature tP.,?. as did some well-louown poems by Poe. In 1849 Poe contributed several poems, including three new, and various revisions of old pieces, to the 'Flag of Our TJnion,' and with ■ them was reprinted the sonnet to 'Silcnco'. now in question. The lines not only resemble roe s other poems in mannerism, but have sentences in common with some of his other productions." • . . The proof demanded by Mr. Ingram appears to have been supplied by The JJominio}} s correspondent, who stated .'.here last March: ' I find in the complete odition of Hood's works, edited by his son and daughter, a note stating that it was contributed by Hood to'the 'London Magazine'' in the year 1823." J? l ' ,® e honpurs-clearly rest with the defenders of Hood's authorship. It remains to be explained how Pce—who was a very conscientious writer and a vigorous castigator of plagiarists—al-lowed-the sonnet to appear over his customary signature, "P," in-a magazine edited by himsolf. a'ome, at anyrate, of the resemblances which Mr. Ingram has noticed between this poem and certain of Poes undoubted productions are doubtless the result of unconscious. memory of the lines of a poet for . whom he had publicly expressed a' wai'm..aunuration. . .