NOVEL READING AS A VICE.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4609, 29 December 1875, Page 3

NOVEL READING AS A VICE.

(From the Saturday Review.) The pleasure which we receive from reading a novel, for example, is due only in part to the indulgence of sympathetic emotions. When we read " Waverley," we have the pleasure, it is true, of weeping over the sorrows of Flora Mclvor, and of feeling a glow of loyalty to the unfortunate, Pretender. But we also imbibe, with more or less consciousness, Scott's theories about man and nature. We learn to appreciate the beauties of lake and moor. We look through his eyes at manly and simple characters, or we come to understand what were the passions which really moved human beings a century and a half ago. In other words, though Scott is not intentionally didactic, he unconsciously impresses upon us certain psychological, moral, and aesthetic views as distinctly a 3 though he were preaching a series of propositions, instead of setting before us a number of symbols. It would be easy enough to translate his pictorial representations into logic, and to work out the process by which Scott's romances, when assimilated by other minds, were transmuted into a set of definite philosophical or theological theories. In this sense even a more trivial novelist than Scott may become a more effective preacher than any official expounders of doctrine. By placing ourselves at his point of view we learn to adopt his theories ; we associate certain characters with the sentiments which he attributes to them; we regard certain

typical figures with reverence or ridicule, as the case may be, and find ourselves in possession of a whole body of prejudices and consecpiently of the code of opinions which they imply, before we have drawn any explicit inferences, or gone through any con scious process of reasoning whatever. By such means, the most purely artistic writer, the man who has no intention of inculcating any definite moral whatever, inay in fact be a most potent preacher ; and nobody who considers the influence exercised by the greatest literary names can doubt that the artistic embodiment of a given set of ideas has often been far more effective than the philosophical analysis of logicians. In this sense, therefore, there is no difficulty in understanding how the study of fiction may have a powerful moral influence. We do not of course mean the kind of fiction which is read merely with a view to killing time. But the study of any of the greater writers tend to strengthen or weaken certain important associations of ideas; to make us regard truly noble types of character with affection, or look upon them as ridiculous or repulsive. The novelist teaches lessons as effectually as the metaphysician, the moralist, or the political economist, though in less definite terms. There is no more difficulty in understanding why the study of his books should produce a good or bad moral effect than in understanding why the study of any art or philosophy may be effective, though divorced from immediate practice. We may learn in general terms what is good and evil, and what are the penalties and rewards of vice and virtue, without simultaneously applying, the doctrine in facts. The emotion does not immediately expend itself in work, but it raises the mind to that temperature at which impressions may be indelibly stamped upon it. In this way, therefore, though a man may not be stimulated to any definite good action by his reading, though he may not immediately rush out to volunteer in a good cause or put down a handsome subscription to a benevolent society, his moral nature may be enriched and stimulated. He gains a new set of associations with objects , previously uninteresting. The scenery which I had been dumb or inarticulate begins to talk to him with the voice of Scott or Wordsworth. He learns precisely as he would learn from the j society of an intelligent companion who points out objects of interest previously unnoticed. But it may still be asked whether a further result may not occasionally follow. There is the familiar case of the lover who liked to be parted from his mistress in order that he might have the pleasure of writiug sentimental letters about the pangs of separation. In like manner, when Dickens was making all England weep over the wrongs of workhouse boys, or the victims of Yorkshire schools, it might be doubted whether his readers learnt to be practically benevolent, or to expend all their little stock of sentiment upon imaginary woes. The question is one rather as to the use made of fiction by the reader than as to the intention of the writer. The good tendency is obvious enough. Life is apt to be a prosaic business in the main. Nine-tenths of the human race are doomed to spend most of their waking hours in a .wearisome round of petty drudgery. Even those whose energy is really devoted to some great purpose have to make the unpleasant discovery that much of their activity will have to be consumed in the routine of petty details. So far as a writer makes them conscious of the more poetical side of daily life, opens their eyes to the sorrows and joys of prosaic people, enables them to widen their sympathies, or to be more sensitive to the great issues which lie hidden under the surface of ordinary affairs, he is rendering them an essential service. If for a time they venture into dreamland under his guidance, something of the magic coloring may remain when they return to ordinary daylight. Though he preaches no moral of instantaneous application, he may modify their whole conception of .life and its issues. But it must be admitted that it is possible to make a poison or an opiate of what ought to be a medicine. The ideal world into Which we go from relief from our daily drudgery may reflect light upon ordinary things or may be an enervating region of periodical lotuseating. Some people might think that their sympathy for Oliver Twist excused them from caring about any flesh-and-blood sufferer. Others might be enabled to see more vividly sorrows which they had previously passed over because embodied in commonplace outsides. It is impossible to lay down any precise rules upon such questions ; everybody has to learn for himself what is the discipline which best suits his own case ; and the wisest general maxims are of very little service. Yet, without referring to individual cases, there are some marks sufficiently characteristic of the school which fosters the morbid tendency. Art, which is too much divorced from reference to the actual world, shows its sickliness by unmistakeable symptoms. It surfers from the blight of sentimentalism or sensationalism. When people begin to pet and coker their fine feelings, and to take delight in weeping for the sake of weeping, we may be pretty sure that they are losing a proper hold upon a world in which there is always sufficient cause for melancholy without creating artificial misery. When they delight in descriptions of the horrible or the nauseous, it is plain enough that such dram-drinking implies a depraved appetite, or, in other words, a hardening of the natural emotions. When such tendencies are strongly marked, as is generally the case with declining schools, we cannot doubt that the pleasure is of an enervating tendency. The emotions are not being refined and strengthened by occasional retreats into the ideal world, but are regarded as sources of luxurious enjoyment instead of being used for daily life.