safed to redeemed man: and our life is also in the world of books. And books, we know, Are a substantial world, both pure and good: Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, Our pastime and our happiness will grow.* I have spoken of literature as only one of the powers from which the mind of man is to receive culture and discipline, for although the common danger lies in another direction, it may encroach upon other powers to our grievous spiritual injury. It may win us too much away from the discipline of actual life into an intellectual luxuriousness: it may withdraw us too much from all of earth and sky that for wise purposes is sensible to us, and we may thus lose that contemplative spirit, which can "find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in every thing." We must not be unmindful how exquisitely the individual man and the external world are fitted to each other, so that it is scarce a poetic exaggeration, that One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man, Than all the sages can.† My present purpose is to consider this one agency-literature—as a means of culture of character, manly and womanly; but, at the same time, let it be borne in mind that nothing conduces more to the well-being and strength of the soul than to keep it open to all the healthful influences which are provided for it, and to hold them all *Wordsworth. Sonnet, "Personal Talk," p. 186. in true adjustment. There is a time for the eye to dwell on the printed page, but there is also a time to gaze "on earth, air, ocean, and the starry sky;" there is a time to look into the faces of our fellow-beings, the bright and laughing face, or the sad and sorrowing one; there is a time too for silent, solitary, spiritual looking inward into the soul itself; and thus by no one function, but by many, does man build up his moral being. Such is education, in its large and true significancy. Looking to literature as our present subject, and having ascertained that its prime quality is its power of addressing itself to man as man, let us now see for what purpose it so deals with our common humanity, so that we may have a principle to guide us in our choice of books. One of the most acute and logical minds of our time, that of him who has coupled his name with a morbid and ill-omened title-I refer to Mr. De Quincey, the English opium-eater-has drawn a distinction between two species of literature. "There is," he says, "first, the literature of knowledge, and, secondly, the literature of power. The function of the first is to teach; ... The very the function of the second is to move. highest work that has ever existed in the literature of knowledge is but a provisional work; a book upon trial and sufferance. Let its teaching be even partially revised, let it be but expanded, nay, even let its teaching be but placed in a better order, and instantly it is superseded. Whereas the feeblest work in the literature of power, surviving at all, survives as finished and unalterable among men. For instance, the Principia of Sir Isaac Newton was a book militant on earth from the first. In all stages of its progress it would have to fight for its existence: first, as regards absolute truth; secondly, when that combat is over, as regards its form or mode of presenting the truth. And as soon as a La Place or anybody else builds higher upon the foundations laid by this book, effectually he throws it out of the sunshine into decay and darkness; by weapons even from this book he superannuates and destroys it, so that soon the name of Newton remains as a mere nominis umbra, but his book, as a living power, has transmigrated into other forms. Now, on the contrary, the Iliad, the Prometheus of Eschylus, the Othello or King Lear, the Hamlet or Macbeth, and the Paradise Lost are not militant, but triumphant power as long as the languages exist in which they speak or can be taught to speak. They never can transmigrate into new incarnations. All the literature of knowledge builds only groundnests, that are swept away by floods, or confounded by the plough; but the literature of power builds nests in aerial altitudes, of temples sacred from violation, or of forests inaccessible to fraud. This is a great prerogative of the power-literature. . . . The knowledge-literature, like the fashion of this world, passeth away. . . . But all literature, properly so called, . . . for the very same reason that it is so much more durable than the literature of knowledge is . . . more intense and electrically searching in its impressions. The directions in which the tragedy of this planet has trained our human feelings to play, and the combinations into which the power of this planet has thrown our human passions of love and hatred, of admiration and contempt, exercises a power bad or good over human life that cannot be contemplated when seen stretching through many generations, without a sentiment allied to awe. And of this let every one be assured, that he owes to the impassioned books which he has read many a thousand more of emotions than he can consciously trace back to them. Dim by their origination, these emotions yet arise in him, and mould him through life like the forgotten incidents of childhood."* The distinction thus drawn between the literature of knowledge and the literature of power is, however, of uncertain application to many books in which, while the chief object is to impart information of some kind, power is given also; but this is certain that in all literature of a high order a nation's purest literature, it is power that is given, and not knowledge. But what, it may be asked, is this Power which literature creates in the spirits of men? what is this soul-engendered energy? The knowledgeliterature is measurable, and we can judge of the utility of this or that branch of it, its aptness to this or that man, this or that woman: but the power-literature is immeasurable, because it partakes of the infinite, and passing through and beyond the mere intellect, it dwells in the deep places of the soul. The common products of education are tangible and temporal, but there is a higher education that lifts you into the region of things eternal, "Truths that wake to perish never." There is an education which deals with acquirements, accomplishments, learning it may be, and, in all this, there may be vast variety and a huge profit, but there will be a transitoriness and withal weariness and vexation of spirit in it. There is a higher education, which is akin to religion, for it is a ministry of the soul, and deals not so much with what we know as with what we are, what we can do and what we can suffer, and what we may become here and hereafter. * Essay on Pope, pp. 149, 152. American edition. Thus it is that there are books of knowledge, and of power-books that make us more knowing, and books that make us wiser, and, in that wisdom, better. This great distinctive principle gives good guidance to us, and it may be made most practical if a little thoughtful discrimination be bestowed in our intercourse with books; instead of apathy on the one hand, or on the other the voracious appetite that takes no heed of the various uses of books. A book may be read merely to talk about, and that is perhaps the meanest thing to read it for: it may be read for amusement, and that may be seasonable and salutary; but it also may be read for happiness, rather than for mere pleasure, for a perpetual rather than a passing joy: it may give health of mind, vigour, and vision: the heart may beat all the truer for it; the mind's eye may see all the clearer for it. As you close a book, ask yourself what it has done for you; and better, perhaps, than criticism or any outer counsel, shall the silent communings of your heart tell you whether the oracle was a good or an evil one. I have thus sought to show how, amid the hundreds of thousands of books which are accumulating in the world, we may select as "literature" those which are characterized by the universality of being addressed to man as man; and how, in the next place, we may contract it to a more essential literature, in the books which strengthen rather than store the mind-giving it power rather than apparel; and then, how we may raise it to a purer and higher literature, in the books which, by calling forth the good elements in our being and by chastening the evil ones, give spiritual health, and innocence, and moral power. Let these principles be taken to heart, and let there be some |