XOLD FRIENDS
Come, and take choice of my library,And so beguile thy sorrow.Goldsmith.
Come, and take choice of my library,And so beguile thy sorrow.Goldsmith.
Come, and take choice of my library,And so beguile thy sorrow.Goldsmith.
Come, and take choice of my library,
And so beguile thy sorrow.
Goldsmith.
NOW let us dwell upon our every-day and every-hour books—our dear old familiar friends. ‘On a shelf in my bookcase,’ says Alexander Smith, ‘are collected a number of volumes which look somewhat the worse for wear. Those of them that originally possessed gilding have had it fingered off, each of them has leaves turned down, and they open of themselves in places wherein I have been happy, and with whose every word I am familiar as with the furniture of the room in which I nightly slumber; each of them has remarks relevant and irrelevant scribbled on their margins. Those favourite volumes cannot be called peculiar glories of literature; but out of the world of books I have singled them, as I have singled my intimates out of the world of men.’
Ah! that makes pleasant reading. For do not the sentiments expressed reflect our own feelings? And do they not place us in gracious anddistinguished company? In his charming way, Goldsmith whispers, ‘The first time I read an excellent book, it is to me as if I had gained a new friend. When I read over a book I have perused before, it resembles the meeting with an old one.’ And to this Dillon adds, ‘Choose an author as you would choose a friend’; whilst Langford, touching the same theme, declares that ‘a wise man will select his book with care, for he will not wish to class them all under the sacred name of friends.’
And as friendship has its roots deep set in love and sympathy, and is for ‘serene days and country rambles, and also for rough roads and hard fare, shipwreck, poverty, and persecution, and, moreover, keeps company with the sallies of the wit,’ it is easy enough to understand why such authors as Charles Lamb, Oliver Goldsmith, William Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, Richard Jefferies, Thomas De Quincey, Joseph Addison, and, of later years, Robert Louis Stevenson, have our affections.
Here they stand—Lamb, Goldsmith, Hazlitt, Hunt, Jefferies—the whole lovable company. What shall I say concerning these friends of ours? I am moved by deep and serious feelings. But, according to his own telling, the gentle Elia, the first in mind, ‘had a general aversionfrom being treated like a grave or respectable character, and kept a wary eye upon the advances of age that should so entitle him. He herded always, while it was possible, with people younger than himself. He did not conform to the march of time, but was dragged along in the procession. His manners lagged behind his years. He was too much of the boy man. Thetoga virilisnever sate gracefully on his shoulders. The impressions of infancy had burnt into him, and he resented the impertinence of manhood.’ And therein, surely, rests the secret of his charm. In spite of his brave confessions, how firm to discerning hearts is the bed of the stream over which his thoughts flow! Who can doubt the source of a stream that flows so sweetly?
And what of Oliver Goldsmith—poor ‘Goldy,’ as he was called by his circle of intimates on earth? He, too, was very human, and, indeed, had many weaknesses. And they tell us—they who write of such matters with authority—that his days of poverty and wretchedness were largely, if not entirely, the outcome of his follies. Even in the sphere in which he shines—a clear, bright, inextinguishable star—it is said that he had many short-comings. ‘He had neither the gift of knowledge nor thepower of research. As an essayist and poet, he has neither extended views nor originality; as a critic, upon the few occasions upon which he embarks on criticism his sympathies are of the most restricted kind.’ And yet for the warmth and gentleness of his heart and the purity of his style we love him. ‘His playful and delicate style transformed everything he touched into something radiant with warmth and fragrant with a perfume all its own.’
And how fared it with Hazlitt—the keen critic, the impassioned writer—‘unbending and severe, insurgent in his political views’? Are we not told that he was really more of an artist and sentimentalist than a politician? ‘As for his life, it was aesthetic, Bohemian, and irregular in the extreme. The restraints of domestic life were intolerable; he wanted to be alone to write; rough accommodation and coarse fare appeased him best;tinkerdomwas the ordinary state of his interior environment; save for two pictures (which served as a link with past aspiration and were treasured accordingly), he had no property; a fugitive amour seemed to furnish the emotional side of him with the stimulant it most required; he was a night rambler and a reveller in Rousseau, over whoseHéloiseandConfessionshe expended literally pints of tears.’ Such was the temperament ofthe writer, artist, and sentimentalist who gave us those incomparable essays ‘On Going a Journey,’ ‘On the Ignorance of the Learned,’ and ‘On Familiar Style.’
And what of those other old friends, Hunt, Jefferies, De Quincey, Robert Louis Stevenson? But our inquiries have gone far enough. What boots it to repeat that our friends were human in life, just as surely as they are human in their books, but with a humanity that allures, charms, captivates? They do not preach to us, these old friends of ours, or make open claims to virtue; and yet we are never so conscious of goodness as when they are near. Their lightest raillery scorns a mean act. In their company meanness flees as from a pestilence.... Ourfriends!
Wisely is it said that the ‘best way to represent to life the manifold use of friendship is to cast and see how many things there are which a wise man cannot do himself; and then it will appear that it was a sparing speech of the ancients to say, “that a friend is more than himself”: for that a friend is far more than himself.’
And so I thank heaven for my friends, for the wise, the lovely, and the noble-minded who stand side by side, ever willing, ever ready, upon my humble shelf.