EDITED BY MRS FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT. [COPYRIGHT.] Reading For Boys and Girls.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 420, 16 November 1889, Page 3

EDITED BY MRS FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT. [COPYRIGHT.] Reading For Boys and Girls.

BY ANDREW LANG.

Mkk who write what boys and girls are expected to read seem often to forget that they have been boys themselves. they remembered thai, perhaps they would write very differently. But .their memories are short. As I have been asked to try this adventure, to try to indito something about books which young peopl 6 shall not find unreadable, may I begin by sayins: that I do remember being a boy very vividly indeed. I own I cannot see a football but I want to have a drop kick at it, thereby probably dislocating our elderly ankle, nor can I behold a wicket pitched but 'my fingers itch ' (as the Highlander said with only too much truth) to bowl an over on that wicket. 'Tis gone ; 'tis gone ; there is no more work on the ball now than on a pillow (not so much if it be an embroidered one), and any intelligent youth oj fourteen could hit me all over the place. However, my heart is in the right one, and as it is so about games and fishing and every form of diversion, so I hope it is about books. I still like the books which you probably like, and I hope you may like the books which I have to recommend JBut it is ill work, recommending books,and will generally set people against those which we enjoy if we say ' You onght to read them.' There is no 'ought' in the matter ; read them or lei them alone, it is your own affair. You may be fond of coffee or raspberry tarts, but you don't tell me that I ought to consume these luxuries. The doctor says one must not, but his position i^ different. Ido not pretend to be a literary doctor, and say you must take my bookish prescriptions and must abstain from books you like if I disapprove of them. Indeed, it is not necessary that everybody should read anything at all. One man or boy may be fond of books, another may 'prefer carpentering-, sledging, •bicycling, playing the fiddle, stuffing dead squirrels, blowing birds' eggs,botanising, hunting, running away to sea, playing baseball, or what you please. Probably the majority of people are not bookish, and it is absolutely an immoral thing to prefer to reading some other way of passing one's time. 3?or my own part I don't re member the days when other people did not call me a bookworm with an air of pity and contempt. They did not know, for I kept it to myself, unless it showed on my early brow, that I thought them stupid, overgrown louts when they said : * Always reading ! What a bookworm that boy is '' It was not their business if one read halt a dozen books at a time, whereas ifchey did not worry through so many in rfc&e^ course of a yeav. And it is not my .affair if you do net jike reading, if stories ■give you no pleasure, and if you wonder what poetry means. 'It takes all eorts to make a world,' and why should we quarrel with each other for having different tastes ? A person who dislikes reading misses a great deal of pleasure. He does not make dozens of new friends in books, delightful friends, excellent sportsmen like leather-Stocking, the Pathfinder, in Cooper, or, like my truthful old chum, Allan , -Quatewnain (a most varacious man), or amusing boys like Tommy Traddles in •"David. Copperfield,' or Berry and Biggs andCuffaDd Dobbin, who fought, the tremendous battles described, by Mr Thackeray- A boy or man who dislikes reading never falls in love with Di Vernon and Beatrix- Esmond, ladies far wore beautiful and charming than any you are eyer likely to meet on earth ; he does not go through a score of adventures with wild beasts, cannibals, Spanish dons, French cuiraesiers, jred Indians, such as you may pass into and out of without a scratch, if you study Lever, Cooper and Charles Kingaley and the Icelandic Sagas, and Capt. Marryat 1 and Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and ' Treasure Island.' The person who hates books is not made t» laugh till he cries over Pip's adventures in ' Great Expectations,' over Mr Pickwick's experiences at the Ladies Boarding-school; over Tom Bultitude in ' Vice Versa : ' over the celebrated.'Jumping Frog.' Friends and fun and fighting, laughter and tears (if you Jike a good cry — I don't), music and magic -and poetry — these are all in books. Are you fond of reading? Then you are like the man in the ' Arabian Nights,' svho knew the charm that made the cave of treasures fnnbar its jrates. ' Open, Sesame !' you say, Hk"e v h£m, and the iron gates fly apart, and in you walk into the enchanted world. ' There ; ar6 all the battles fch'afc "ever were bought still going • on,- 'plenty that)' never jyere jought afc all. There is all tfte ■wealth of fairyland ; all that Dantes gained in ' Monte Crisbo,' and Poe in the *Gold Bug,' and Jim Hawkins in 'Treasure Island,' and Allan Quatermain in the mines of Solomon the King. There are the Greek's and Trojans hard ' at it stilHor the beauty of Helen— how the spears whiz ! There is Sintram with his ghostly companions, fcbere is King Arthur healing of his grievous wound beneath the apple trees of Avalon in the setting sun. Odysseus is leaping on the threshold and -showering the arrows down the hall ; riGunnar is thrusting away with the mysterious spear that sang before the battle ; 3lr Pickwick is asleep in the pound ; .Athos, Porthos, and Aramis are trying to •save King Charles ; Claverhouse is leading the charge dawn the paßs — s^e, he lifts his farm and waves go his men, *nd the silver ■bullet finds the .cisevjee in the armour ! "The whole world tih&b fras lived, and a rxnillion dear people who pever lived, -are &\l there within the .enoh^nted *cave, and if you only like Reading, then you have the magic password, and you can go in whenever you please, and fofgefc your troubles— if you have troubles to forget— with fab Falstaff >»nd the fairy Queen Titanin. Tbjn&whatg,

1 pleasing 1 shift this is, when you are obliged : to live in grimy towns, where there are no j rivers, few trees, no fishing, nothing but crowded streets, hard pavements, drink, tobacco, chimneys, smoke, factories, while everything is away that one naturally loves and ought to love and live for. If I did not like reading, and had to dwell in a town, it would be better for me to be buried — By some field path where cricketers might pass Along its mazes, And o'er my head the green, short English grass, The English daisies. However, though reading had these pleasures, and many another pleasure and many advantages ot' teaching, of consoling, of strengthening, there is no wickedness, nor harm, nor anything contemptible in not caring for reading. You are born to like it or dislike it. There is nothing to be proud of, though there is much to be thankful for, if you are fond of books. There is nothing to be proud ot in not being fond of them either, though you will find many persons who show this kind of self complacency. The officer who, when asked if he had seen ' Punch ' that week, 1 thanked his dtara he wa? not a bookwoim,' was not a very sagacious officer. On the other hand, the bravest and most skilful soldiers are often extremely attached to books and would be ' bookworms ' if they had time to spare from their protession. One does not wish any boy or girl to be a book-worm and nothing else, to sit poring over novels when the trout are rising, the balls are flying, or when the hot weather insists that you shall go and swim in the stream , or the sea. Out-and-out bookworms of this kind may be uncommonly clever fellows and may even come to great distinction as scholars, or in science, but they grow without ever having been young. Evorybody knows that there i« a time foxall things — a time for books, and a time for bat, and time for poetry and fishing-poles. The happy man is'he who has a liking for all things that are good, and can take them all in their turn. We may read much, and if I had my time over again I would not. study so hard as I did at college. When I was at school I had nothing to reproach myself with on this scoie ! Well, if you have got as far as this you 1 are clearly a fellow who can stand reading, not one of those who dislike the very sight ot printed paper. What, then, ought you to read? I don't kno.v that there is much 1 ought ' in the matter, as long as j'ou do not read wicked books : that i^, books which you are perfectly aware that you ought not to read. There is in the heart a kind of monitor which tells you with perfect and even disagreeable distinctness that this or that book is not one for you, but if you insist on a i ule never read a book which you would feel inclined to smuggle out of the way when your mother comes into the 'rb6'nV.--There was a time when motheis and parents and guardians did not read much themselves and objected to almost every volume a boy could take up. Novels were wrong, poetry was wrong, plays were dreadfully wrong, and those were hard times for boys and girls. But this is altered, and most people know the difference between a good book and bad one quite distinctly. To be sure, you may turn a good one into a bad one by reading it at the wrong time ; for example, if you pull out a drawer in your desk, put ' The Scalp Hunters ' in, place a Virgil before 3'ou on the table, pretend to be busy with that and push in the drawer when your father, schoolmaster, tutor or whoever is responsible for you, enters the room This is ingenious, and 1 -may even have .->een it practised, but is it not acting a lie ? It is far fiorii bqing correct or gentlemanly conduct; anyrow. , I So, having'easily settled what b:oks you ought~not to read, let us come to an understanding about those which, on the whole, you had better read. As long as a book is innocent and doe^ not j^ive you bad ideas or put mischief into your head, I really think it is better 3011 should read anything than that you should not read at all. Clearly, we do not begin with Shakspero, or Emerson, or even Sir Walter Scott ; we begin with 'Who Killed Cock Robin?' ' Puss in Boots,' and the ' Yellow Dwarf. Very good they were ; I can read them now with excitement, though long quite familiar with the plots and characters. But you have exhausted the fairy tales and what are you to read from eight years old, let us say, to sixteen? After that, or even j before, if you really care for books you will read all you come across that are worth reading, with some which are not. What should you read ? Well, what you like. The great thing is to get Ihe habit of i-eading, and this you will not acquire by trying to read what you don't like. Then is excellence all a matter of private taste — of liking or disliking? Scarcely that; there are many books which all people who care most for books have admired most and found best for fifty or a hundred or two thousand or even three thousand years. Now, it seems reasonable to suppose that works which pleated most the people who most enjoy books during very many centuries, and while languages, taies and religions have passed away, must be the besfc book?. This would be plain if one were speaking of joiner matters If after all that has been tried and indented the cleverest generals '•till thought bows and arrows the best weapons of war, we may be pretty sure that they would be the best. Now, the books which have stood the trial of time and change we call classics — Greek and Latin, or English, French, Spanish* or Italian classics The=e are held among old books to be far the best, and of new books it is probable that those will be the besfc which the most experienced find to be most excellent. But of course it is much more difficult to be certain about new books ; we may like them by a kind of accident or in mere obedience to fashion. Then ought you to be always reading classics — Homer, Virgil, Shakepere, Addison, Pope, Dryden, Fielding, Sir Walter Scott's novels— and nothing else? Not/at all. These may be the best books ; I think they are ; but they may jiot be t*he I best books for you. The language or the manners described, or the ideas,, may seem so strange and odd to you that you cannot understand them, are weaiied by them, turn them asido ftnd never come back to them. In that case you will perhaps go about abusing time past, and saying that you are much cleverer than'the people who admired Shakspere, or Homer, or Scott or Pope. You may even find modern writers who maintain this very positively, and vvho maintain that the boys and girls of to-day are quicker and cleverer than grown men, and women in Wordsworth's and Byron's time. This is uncommonly unlikely to be true, and people who really know the past scarcely think so highly of the present. Is it likely' that in one particular thirty years every one who isi born will be so very superior to ail the generations that went before ? This is nonsense, and dull nonsense. The favouriteß of a thousand years can hardly help being good, though you may not know enough or be old enough or clever enough ' to like them. But do not let that make you either dispirited or cou,QOjLted. Head what you like, read plenty of jit, ancjl £n fcjme it is a hundred chances to one that yo^'wity find that you agree with older people and olqtar generations in your ,taste for books. ' '"- ."'-'"'

So, in the meanwhile, I end with saying, read what you like. Try the booka that other people, and even that I myself afterwords, may think you will enjoy. If you find that you do not care tor them, leave them alone. You may take pleasure in them later. Don't discard them merely because we , think well of them ; don't admire them merely because we admire them. Never try to beat yourself into a passion for a book bocause it is considered the right thing to praise it. Be natural, tbut do not suppose that a book is a dull or bad book merely because it fails to amuse you just now. In the next of these papers we- shall speak of some books that you are almost certain to find good reading. And what is good reading for boys and girls ie good reading for men and women. Books written for or at boys and girls are worth considering. Good books are good for everybody. Girls don't read • Mary Brown, a Book for Girls.' Boys, don't read i Maurice Gret, a Book for Boys.' 1 magine you scarcely need this advice.