ON READING NEW BOOKS
IT is hereby confessed too—nay, affirmed—that this our time is as likely to produce great literary work as any of the ages that have gone before. There is no reason to suppose that the modern mind is any whit inferior in creative power to the ancient, albeit the moderns have not, as the ancients had, “the first rifling of the beauties of nature.” For our images, our metaphors, our similes and what not we must go a bit further afield than Homer had to go. We can no longer—at least we no longer should, though many there be who do—say “as red as blood,” “as white as snow,” and so forth. Our predecessors harvested that crop and threshed it out before we had the bad luck to be born. But much that was closed to them is open to us, for still creation widens to man’s view.
No; thelaudatores temporis actiare not to be trusted when they say that the days of great literature are past. At any time a supreme genius may rise anywhere on the literaryhorizon and, flaming in the sky, splendor the world with a new glory. But the readers of new books need not put on colored spectacles to protect their eyes. It is not they that will recognize him. They will not be able to distinguish him from the little luminaries whose advent they are always “hailing” as the dawn of a new and wonderful day. It is unlikely, indeed, that he will be recognized at all in his own day for what he is. It may be that when he “swims into our ken” we shall none of us eye the blue vault and bless the useful light, but swear that it is a malign and baleful beam. Nay, worse, he may never be recognized by posterity. Great work in letters has no inherent quality, no innate vitality, that will necessarily preserve it long enough to demand judgment from those qualified by time to consider it without such distractions as the circumstances and conditions under which it was produced. And only so can a true judgment be given. It is likely that more great writers have died and been forever forgotten than have had their fame bruited about the world. Ah, well, they must take their chances. I, for my part, am not going to read dozens of the very newest books annuallylest I overlook a genius now and then. Dozens are large numbers when it is books that one is talking about. Probably not so many worth reading were written in either half of the Nineteenth Century.
The reader of new books is in the position of one who, having at hand a mine of precious metals, easy of working and by his utmost diligence inexhaustible, suffers it to lie untouched and goes prospecting on the chance of finding another as good. He may find one, though the odds are a thousand to one that he will not. If he does, he will find also that he did not need to be in a hurry about it. Every book that is worth reading is founded on something permanent in human nature or the constitution of things, and constructed on principles of art which are themselves eternal. Whether it is read in one decade or another—even in one century or another—is of no importance; its value and charm are unchanging and unchangeable. Reverting to my simile of the mine, a good book is located on the great mother-lode of human interest; whereas the work that immediately prospers in the praise of the multitude commonly taps some “pocket” in the country rock and the accidental deposit is soon exhausted.
The world is full of great books in lettered languages. If any one has lived long enough, and read with sufficient assiduity, to have possessed his mind of all the literary treasures accessible to him; if he has mastered all the tongues in which are any masterworks of genius yet untranslated; if the ages have nothing more to offer him; if he has availed himself of the utmost advantages that he can derive from the infallible censorship of time and advice of the posterity which he calls his ancestors—let him commit himself to the blind guidance of chance, stand at the tail end of a modern press and devour as much of its daily output as he can. That will, at least, enable him to shine in a conversation; and the socialilluminatiwhose achievements in that way are most admired will themselves assure you that such are the purpose and advantage of “literary culture”. And of all drawing-room authorities, he or she is most reverently esteemed who can most readily and accurately say what dullard wrote the latest and stupidest novel, but can not say why.