The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1888-03-30
LITERARY voLupruARlEs.

Reading for Nero Pleasure ~ Against
Reading for study.
Perhaps the greatest pleasure in life
is an ill-rcgulated passion for reading.
Books are the best of friends, the most
complacent of companions. Unlike
their authors. they have no suscepti-
bilities to be rufiied. You may toss
them aside in a passing fit of impa-
tence, 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 duty and 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 exquisite Elzevirs, for
sumptuous editions in superb bind
ings is almost invariably antipathetical
to the love of reading The collector
is curious about margins. Typography
and castings, but comparatively indif-
ferent to contents. A library got to-
gether regardless of expense can sell
dom be a 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 embar-
rassment Of riches-but you
recognize your most familiar friends
in their court dresses, and you ap-
proach them with formality in fear
and trembling. Having no claim
to the genius of johnson or
a De Quincy, you dare not
make free with them in their finery as
those distinguished scholars would have
done. On the other hand. the volupt-
uary, with rare exceptions, has little
in common with the scholars who read
with purpose and drudge on severe
system. Drudgery and methods 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 some
times, although not very often, the
hardest work makes the lightest read
ing. But admiration or gratitude does
not lead him to imitation, even if he
have the memory. the mental grasp
and the style of Macauley. Yet for
the free-and-easy fashion of his self
indulgence he can quote eminent pre-
cedents. DR.. johnson himself laid
down the law that reading should be
done as inclination prompts one; he
was in the habit of dipping and skim
ming himself, as he tore over the pages
with knife or finger; he resented being
asked if he had read a book through,
saying that he had read it rs zone does
read such books" Scott had accumu-
lated his rich and miscellaneous stories
by casual studies of congcnial subjects;
it was only when he was beggared and
shaving for his creditors that tho
author of ''Waverly" and editor of
Swift consented to "cram'' for his
Life of Buonaparte. There is some-
thing pitiful in his rueful praise of the
notion of Constable, who
kept crushing the enslaved genius of
the night-lamp under piles of contem-
porary treaties and pondcrous files Of
the "Moniteur. But Southey was,
perhaps, the most melancholy example
of the literary voluptuary broken into
harness. He could seldom write ex-
cept on subjects that pleased him. In
the face of disappointments he fondly
believed in fame and a future as an
English classic. He bcqueathed to the
more kindly appreciation Of posterity
the poems that had scarcely cleared
the publishing expenses. He devoted
valuable time and untold trouble to
histories of the Brazils and
abstruse annotations of Spanish litera-
ture; and laboring indefatigably all the
time to maintain his family, he only
to make the two ends meet
by more paying pot boilers for the
periodicals. Leading the existence of
. Woodworking hermit among the
hills, he was compelled to
himself with costly library.
Yet for the life of him, unless for special
purposes when the collar was chatting,
he could spare no time to the books in
which he could have reveled, and when
the literary Tantalus died, worn out,
he collection was dispensed which
had never been enjoyed.-Blackvood