St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1888-01-04
LITERARY VOLUPTUARIEs.
Reading for Pleasure as Against
Reading for Study-COquettin
With Books.


Reading for Pleasure as Against
Reading for Study-Coquetting
With Books.
Blackwood's Magazine
Perhaps the greatest pleasure in life
is an ill-regulated passion for reading.
Books are the best of friends, the most
complacent of companions. Unlike
their authors, they have no suscepti-
bilities to be ruffied You may toss
them aside in passing fit of impa-
thence, to find yourself on as pleasant
terms as ever with them when your
humOr changes. In that silent, though
eloquent and vivacious company, there
can be no mOnOtOny, as there are no
jealousies; and, indeed, Inconsistency
becomes a duty and a virtue, as
with the sage King solomon
among his hundreds of wives. We
may talk of tossing cherished volumes
aside. for the literary vOluptuary has
nothing in common with the luxurious
collector. The passion for equisite
ElZevirs, for SumptuOuS editions in SUI
perb bindings, is almost invariably anti
pathetical to the love of reading. The
collector is curious about margins,
Typography and castings, but compare
lively u COHlCIIlS. n
got together regardless of expense can
seldom be place of real enjoyment to
any one, least Of all to its pOsSeSSor. The
books one loves will be there-nay, you
are bothered by an embarrassment of
rlcheS-but you scarcely recognize your
most familiar friends in their court
dresses, and you approach them with
f0rmality in fear and trembling. HAY
ing no CLAIMS to the genius of a johnson
or De Quincy, you dare not make
free with them in their finery as
those distinguished scholars would have
done. On the other hand. the vol
nptuary, with rare exceptions, has little
in common with the scholars who read
with purpose and drudge on severe
system. Drudgery and method of all
kinds are ineXpressibly distasteful to
him. All is fish that comes to his net;
he is grateful to the men who have been
laboring to please him, for sometimes,
although not very often, the hardest
work makes the lighteSt reading. But
admiration or gratitude does not lead
him to imitation, even if he have the
memory, the mental grasp and the style
of a Macaulay. Yet, for the free-and-
easy fashion of his Self-indulgence he
can quote eminent precedents. DR..
johnson himself laid down the law that
reading should be done as inclination
prompts one; he was in the habit of
dipping and Swimming himself, as he
tore over the pages with knife or finger;
read book through. saying that
he had lead it as zone does
read such books" Scott had accumu-
lated his rich and miscellaneous stores
by casual studies of congenial subjects;
it was only when he was beggared and
shaving for his creditors that the author
of ''Wayerly" and editor of Swift con-
Sented to ''cram" for his Life of BuO-
naparte." There is something pitiful in
his rueful praise of the magnificent no.
tons of Constable, who kept crushing
the enslaved genius of the night-lamp
under piles of contemporary treatises
and pOnderous files of the "MOniteur.''
But S0uthey was, perhaps, the most
vOluptuary broken into harness. He
could seldom write except on subjects
that pleased him. In the face of disap-
pointments he fOndly believed in
fame. and a future as an English
classic. He beQueathed to the
more kindly appreciation of poster
lty the poems that had scarcely cleared
the publishing expenses. 1t devoted
valuable time and untold trouble to I'M
popular histories of the Brazils and
abstrusc annotations of Spanish litera-
ture: and laboring indefatigably all the
time TO maintain his family, he only
managed to make the two ends meet by
more paying ''pOt boilers for the peri
odicals. Leading the existence of a
Woodworking hermit among the Cum
berland hills. he was compelled to sur
round himself with a costly library.
Yet for the life of him, unless for spe-
cial purposes when the collar was
chatting, he could spare no time to the
books i'll which he could have reveled
and when the literary Tantalus died,
Worn out, the collection was dispersed
which had never been employed.