in many of the allusions than you would otherwise have done. We would therefore advise you to get, if possible, a biographical notice of the writer whose work you are about to study. You will thus, as it were, be introduced to him. You will become acquainted with his life, his character, and the circumstances amid which he composed the book; and you will therefore read his pages with far more pleasure and intelligence. When we read, for instance, the life of Burns, and see how sorely he was tossed by passion and mischance, what a depth of pathos appears in the following lines: "Then gently scan your brother man, Still gentler sister woman; Though they may gang a kennin' wrang, "One point must still be greatly dark, And just as lamely can ye mark "Who made the heart, 'tis He alone He knows each chord-its various tone, "Then at the balance let's be mute, What's done we partly may compute, 2. Read the preface carefully. Most people skip the preface; but we would make the perusal of it the test of an accomplished reader. In it the author takes us, as it were, into his confidence, and describes to us his motives for writing the book, and his reasons for making it what it is. In this way he awakens our interest, and gives us a foretaste of the volume itself. For example, we are much more deeply impressed with the truthfulness of Nicholas Nickleby after we have read in the preface that several Yorkshire schoolmasters claimed to be the original of Squeers, that one meditated raising An Italian an action of damages against Dickens, that another was bent upon going to London to cudgel him, and that a third said, “It must be me, for the character is so like me.” writer calls the preface the sauce of the book. ather liken it to what is called an appetizer. We would If 3. Take a comprehensive survey of the table of contents. the preface is the appetizer, the table of contents is the bill of fare. It gives us a full plan of the feast that is to follow, and enables us to determine what articles we should avoid, and for what articles we should reserve our energies. It is like the map of a journey, showing us through what tracts our way lies, and to what destination it will lead us. And just as after a journey we find it both pleasant and profitable to reopen the map and trace the road we have come, so after reading a book we may find it advisable to turn back to the table of contents, and find there a complete summary of what we have just been studying. 4. Give your whole attention to whatever you read. A book is a representation of the best workings of the author's soul. In order to understand it, we must shut out our own circumstances, cast off our own personal identity, and lose ourselves in the writer before us. We must follow him closely through all his lines of thought, understand clearly all his ideas, and enter into all his feelings. Anything less than this is not worthy of the name of reading. That such an abstraction is possible might be shown by many examples. One will suffice. The great Italian poet Dante, on a certain occasion, went to a street to see some grand procession. While he waited for it, he took up a book from a stall, opened it, became interested, then completely absorbed, and did not stir until he had finished it. He awoke as out of a trance, and then ascertained that during his deep fit of study the procession had passed before him without making the slightest impression upon his senses. To realize the meaning of an author thoroughly, some old fashioned people resort to reading aloud. A homely instance of this may be given. The scene is a farmer's ingle on a winter night. A large fire glows in the roomy chimney, and from the mantelpiece hangs a rush-lamp lighting up a group of rustic and good-humored faces. In the snuggest corner sits the good-man with the county paper in his hand. He is about to get into his brain the account of a monster turnip or the district ploughing match. It is a difficult process, and requires the most delicate handling. He sidles a little in his chair, so that the light may fall directly upon the paper, fixes his glasses upon his nose, knits his brows, puts his forefinger upon the first line, and commanding silence, proceeds. His eyes decipher the words, his tongue pronounces them, they sink through his ears into his head, and when he is done, a selfsatisfied smile shows that the difficult operation has been successful, and that the valuable information has been lodged safely in his brain. 5. Be sure to note the most valuable passages as you read. Keep a note-book beside you, and jot down as briefly as you please any facts or lines of argument or sentences that strike you. If the keeping of a note-book be a care too harassing for you, then, if the book be your own, write your notes on the margin with a pencil. We might recommend to you a set of signs; but each one can easily invent for himself a system of marks to denote, as the case may be, that he approves or disapproves of a sentiment, that he doubts or disputes a statement, that he thinks the style clear or obscure, vigorous or commonplace, elegant or clumsy, pathetic or humorous. Note-taking may thus be done in various ways, but done in some way it must be. Without it you cannot be intelligent readers. For how can you be intelligent without being discriminating; and how can you be discriminating without distinguishing between the good and the bad, the remarkable and the commonplace; and how can you distinguish between these without affixing some distinctive marks? You will find, too, that all great scholars have been great note-takers. They have proved themselves in their reading as well as in other things men of mark. Locke, Southey, Sir William Hamilton, never read without having their note-books and commonplace books beside them, into which they put, for future use, all the valuable facts and ideas upon which they alighted. Their memories were unusually great and tenacious, but they treated their memories with the utmost consideration. They did not burden and tax and torture them unnecessarily. They used their notebook as a sort of outside palpable memory for holding minute yet important details, which their inner and real memory could not have retained without much wearisome toil. 66 We may remark, in passing, that long notes are not necessary. Carlyle, in annotating Cromwell's letters, comes to the following interesting passage in one addressed to Richard Mayor, Esquire : Sir, my son had a great desire to come down and wait upon your daughter. I perceive he minds that more than to attend to business here." Upon this passage Carlyle writes a note at the foot of the page. It consists of two words, The dog!" "I perceive," says Cromwell, "that he likes your daughter better than his business. dog!" adds Carlyle. 66 "The 6. Write out in your own language a summary of the facts you have noted. It is not enough to note several random particulars. These particulars will float about for some time in a disconnected way in your memory, and then be lost. You must arrange them after a method of your own. The arranging of them after your own method will make them more completely your own; the expressing of them in your own words will make them much more clear and definite; and the mere fact of writing them down will fix them more securely in your memory. "I have always found," says Grote, "that to make myself master of a subject, the best mode was to sit down and give an account of it to myself.” We are quite prepared, however, to hear some objectors say, that in their case the advice is quite impracticable. They have no time; paper and ink are not always at hand; they are slow with the pen, and writing is a difficult and a tedious task. But we are also prepared with a remedy in the shape of an alternative. Accordingly we say, if you cannot write a summary, speak a summary. When you have just read a congenial book and are full of the subject, then try to communicate a clear and correct account of it to a friend. Of course you must be careful in selecting a suitable friend upon whom to operate. You, just like other people, have among your friends some dull, commonplace persons-kind, good creatures, with better hearts than heads. Now if you inflict your lucubrations upon them, they will be bored, they will vote you a pedant, and they will abandon your company. And you, just like other people, cannot dispense with dull companions. Dull companions are the buffers of society: they prevent the more active and impetuous spirits from coming into collision. They are the shadows of society they make the lights stand out in greater relief and brilliancy. You must not, therefore, inflict your summaries upon them. Seek rather some kindred spirit, and give him the benefit of what you have read; and you will find that, while you instruct him, you will also make your knowledge more definite to yourself. You will, in fact, discover that this kind of teaching, like charity, "Is twice blessed, It blesseth him that gives and him that takes." This habit is one of the reasons why some men appear to have wonderful memories. Whatever they hear or read they tell to every one they meet, and thus it never leaves their minds. They are, in fact, like ambitious and persistent school-boys, who impress a lesson on their memory by going about and insisting upon saying it to every member of the household. 7. Apply the results of your reading to your every-day duties. You have all seen a father teaching his boy to walk. |