Literature.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1193, 4 November 1882, Page 4 (Supplement)

Literature.

MR. BRIGHT ON BOOKS. Mr. Bright’s speech at the inauguration, or opening, of the revived Birmingham Free Libraries was one of his happiest efforts. He is known far and wide as a keen lover of books, as one who finds his highest enjoyment in his library, and as a delicately discriminating judge of poetry. To say that he loves the bye-ways, rather than the high road of literature is to misrepresent him. If, at Birmingham, he discoursed of the lesser poets, and gave undue promise to American writers, he only expressed those preferences which every constant reader of books imbibes. If he dwelt awhile in the bye-ways, it was because he had travelled along the high road. His personal stories of the stray volumes he had seen in cottages, of the influence of books, of the effect of the atmosphere of a library upon the cultivated mind, were told with that simple strength of Saxon English which characterises all Mr. Bright’s set orations. A more admirable discourse for the opening of such a noble library as the munificence of wealthy Birmingham men, has given to their fellow-townsmen, could not be conceived. If in it the speaker dwelt over much on Bancroft’s History of the United States, because it glorifies Quakerism “ and the voluntary principle in every department of human affairs,” he did not forget to give his audience the quaint story of the old lady who kept her Shakspeare in a hole in the wall, lest her over-strict neighbours should blame her for reading it, nor to hold up Milton as the grandest of English poets. Mr. Bright’s brief survey was that of a reader of a very serious cast of thought. There is a broader view, which includes our scientific and philosophical literature, the literature of travel and adventure, the whole bright range of fiction, our dramatists and essayists, biographers and historians. Over such immense ranges of the products of genius of the past and the present, Mr. Bright could not be expected to travel in an hour. With much of these forms of literature he has probably no sympathy, and onjy a passing acquaintance. But that which he does love in letters is good, and sound, and pure; and his remarks on some of his favourites make up a discourse on books which deserves to be scattered broadcast over the land in some cheap form. —(Lloyd's Weekly.)