Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/149

Rh Macaulay and Montaigne are nearly forgotten. Interest in this class of literature should be revived.

Rarely has a busy man or woman the time to peruse the whole of an author, however famous. It would rarely be of use to read wholes, even with amplest leisure. It is the mark of a great writer to have uttered a good deal of trash; and it is almost a sure proof of a reader's pedantry if he has read all which a given author has published, unless he has done so to hunt up errors or peculiarities. It shows that he has read not con amore, but merely that he might boast. Too many read just to be able to say they have read. The desire of reputation for attainments often outruns the desire for attainments. One young lady who said she had read Shakespeare was asked if she was familiar with Romeo and Juliet. She replied that she had often read Romeo, but that Juliet was somehow always out of the library when she called for it.

As already said, we can not read all even of the best; which remark naturally forces a search for some principle or principles by which to make selection. Two principles suggest themselves, one objective, the other subjective. The objective one is that the very greatest classics in the world's literature, Homer, Plato, Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe, should be more or less familiar to all. The subjective principle is: Consulting your occupation or your bent, select some specialty in letters and do your main reading with reference to that.

If you are a member of a profession your stock and standard reading ought to be related to that profession, not narrowly, of course, but generally, in a way to give life, breadth and atmosphere to your daily toil, relieving the tedium of homely tasks and spreading a hue of intelligence over business which but for this might seem leaden. Every great branch of mental work by which men earn bread has, besides the technical volumes which set forth its laws, a side literature, little technical, which connects it by a seamless web with polite letters. This is the library where a professional man should do his main reading.

A teacher, for instance, who has to teach literature or history should, for general reading, cultivate literature or history at large. The course to pursue in these cases is obvious. But how if chemistry or physics, or biology is your department? In such a case read the history of the science and of science in general, the biographies of great scientific discoverers and the excellent fiction and verse to which scientific men and scientific interest have given birth. Thus a physiographer would read, among other things, Shelley's "Cloud"; perhaps also his "Ode to the West Wind." There is no more interesting and there is no more valuable reading than well-written biographies of scientific men. The history of scientific discovery widens into the history of discoveries in general and this into the history of civilization.

If you have no profession, being only a person of leisure, let your