On The Art of Reading | Page 6

rather not pull down our barns, and build smaller, and make
bonfires of what they would not hold? And yet, with regard to
Knowledge, the very opposite of this is what we do. We store the
whole religiously, and that though not twice alone, as with the bees in
Virgil, but scores of times in every year, is the teeming produce
gathered in. And then we put a fearful pressure on ourselves and others
to gorge of it as much as ever we can hold.
_Facit indignatio versus._ My author, gathering heat, puts it somewhat
dithyrambically: but there you have it, Gentlemen.
If you crave for Knowledge, the banquet of Knowledge grows and
groans on the board until the finer appetite sickens. If, still putting all
your trust in Knowledge, you try to dodge the difficulty by specialising,
you produce a brain bulging out inordinately on one side, on the other
cut flat down and mostly paralytic at that: and in short so long as I hold
that the Creator has an idea, of a man, so long shall I be sure that no

uneven specialist realises it. The real tragedy of the Library at
Alexandria was not that the incendiaries burned immensely, but that
they had neither the leisure nor the taste to discriminate.
VIII
The old schoolmaster whom I quoted just now goes on:
I believe, if the truth were known, men would be astonished at the
small amount of learning with which a high degree of culture is
compatible. In a moment of enthusiasm I ventured once to tell my
'English set' that if they could really master the ninth book of "Paradise
Lost", so as to rise to the height of its great argument and incorporate
all its beauties in themselves, they would at one blow, by virtue of that
alone, become highly cultivated men.... More and more various
learning might raise them to the same height by different paths, but
could hardly raise them higher.
Here let me interpose and quote the last three lines of that Book--three
lines only; simple, unornamented, but for every man and every woman
who have dwelt together since our first parents, in mere statement how
wise!
Thus they in mutual accusation spent The fruitless hours, _but neither
self-condemning;_ And of their vain contest appear'd no end.
A parent afterwards told me (my schoolmaster adds) that his son went
home and so buried himself in the book that food and sleep that day
had no attraction for him. Next morning, I need hardly say, the
difference in his appearance was remarkable: he had outgrown all his
intellectual clothes.
The end of this story strikes me, I confess, as rapid, and may be
compared with that of the growth of Delian Apollo in the Homeric
hymn; but we may agree that, in reading, it is not quantity so much that
tells, as quality and thoroughness of digestion.
IX

_What Does--What Knows--What Is...._
I am not likely to depreciate to you the value of _What Does,_ after
spending my first twelve lectures up here, on the art and practice of
Writing, encouraging you to do this thing which I daily delight in
trying to do: as God forbid that anyone should hint a slightening word
of what our sons and brothers are doing just now, and doing for us! But
Peace being the normal condition of man's activity, I look around me
for a vindication of what is noblest in What Does and am content with a
passage from George Eliot's poem "Stradivarius", the gist of which is
that God himself might conceivably make better fiddles than
Stradivari's, but by no means certainly; since, as a fact, God orders his
best fiddles of Stradivari. Says the great workman,
'God be praised, Antonio Stradivari has an eye That winces at false
work and loves the true, With hand and arm that play upon the tool As
willingly as any singing bird Sets him to sing his morning roundelay,
Because he likes to sing and likes the song.' Then Naldo: ''Tis a pretty
kind of fame At best, that comes of making violins; And saves no
masses, either. Thou wilt go To purgatory none the less.' But he:
''Twere purgatory here to make them ill; And for my fame--when any
master holds 'Twixt chin and hand a violin of mine, He will be glad that
Stradivari lived, Made violins, and made them of the best. The masters
only know whose work is good: They will choose mine, and while God
gives them skill I give them instruments to play upon, God choosing
me to help Him.' 'What! Were God At fault for violins, thou absent?'
'Yes; He were at fault for Stradivari's work.' 'Why, many hold
Giuseppe's violins As good as thine.' 'May be: they are