Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/466

450 Q. Have we not to deal with literature for ordinary men?

A. For both ordinary and extraordinary men; the whole public.

Q. Are not the ordinary men very much the more numerous?

A. Certainly.

Q. Is it not, therefore, necessary to provide some kind of literature, as good as you can, but such that the ordinary mind can receive and can turn into some profit, together with the normal work of life?

A. I am not calling into question in the least the desirableness of a large supply of literature of an enlivening and amusing and pleasant kind, as well as a large supply of graver literature. My remarks point to the literature that is neither instructive nor æsthetic in the higher sense, but which is bad in art, bad in tone, worthless in matter. There is a large quantity of that literature, and that literature I take to be the one which will be most fostered by the proposed measures. I do not in the least reprobate the reading of lighter works if they are good in quality. I refer to the class of works which I regard as not good in quality.

Q. But do not you think you must leave that to settle itself on those principles of free trade which you have just enunciated so clearly?

A. Certainly; I am objecting to a policy which would tend to encourage the one and not encourage the other.

Q. (Sir H. Holland). The subscribers to the London Library are, as you say, the élite of readers?

A. Yes.

Q. And is not that the reason why there is this difference as to the reading of good and bad books taken out from that library; is it not attributable to the fact that these people have probably bought and have in their own houses the good books, but that they want to look through these other books, and therefore get them from the library?

A. There may be a qualification of that kind; but inasmuch as a very large proportion of the readers of the London Library are ladies, and those who come for lighter literature, I do not think it at all probable that they would have bought Lecky or Maine, or any books of that kind.

Q. I ask the question because I rather think that you will find a very curious difference from that which you have been stating if you go to the Manchester and Liverpool free libraries. You will find there that the workingmen take out largely Macaulay's "History of England" and that class of books.

A. Well, whatever qualifications may be made in this estimate, or the inferences from this estimate, I do not think they can touch the general proposition that books of this kind which in the London Library circulate most largely, are books of the kind which circulate most largely among the general public, and books of the kind which a publisher of rival editions would choose. That is my point.

Q. But might not that very evil to which you refer be met by