New-York tribune., 1899-01-08
ILLUSTRATED SUPPLEMENT.

.sro adduce instances Of great culture
.forDed on what Is called desultOry reading
would be to survey the whole course OF lit
"erary history" Ergo desultory reading is
good thing. Thus "The London Spectator" and
thus every lover Of books But is there not
something speciOus about this conclusion!
Desutory reading Is like everything else In the
history Of the indivdual-if it suits his DISPOSE
ton, all well and good: II 1t does not, then he
will be. intellectually speaking, ruined Dog
matism I'm the matter Is unwise. The root or
the highest happiness In reading Is taste, and
that, which may be cultivated, is nevertheless
half if not wholly instructive in its origin
Without taste desultOry reading often means
indiscrimnate, scrappy and unfruitful reading,
to which the misguided reader owes nothing
but mixed chronology, uncertainty In all his
torical and biographical things, and IN utterly
dspropOrtiOnate idea of authors whose true sig
niGcance he might have learned through sys-
tcInatic reading Such a victim is matchlcss
for jumping to conclusions" with awful re-
suits The specially gifted or the merely ma
turcd and trained man may jump to conclu-
sions-nay, he may fly to them-and dcsultory
reading will only enrich his mind. But the
average mind is better Off for being systematic
in its processes, for stunning the temptation
that most alluring Of all temptatons-to
browse in library"
Let us be proud and rejoice! Mr.. Alfred
Mutt, a publisher Of folkore and Of solid lit
erature generally, shakes his head over the
light assurance offered to him that the
libraries will take at least three hundred
"copies" of book dealing with some such abb
ter Of fact" he says "only some fifty out Of
"the three hundred and fifty existing Dsttu-
"tions can be counted upon to buy works Of a
Scholarly character, and Of these the major
city are in the United States" This is pleas
ant news and fills us with tenderness for Mr..
Mutt, publishing weighty books at n loss. Yet,
though we yield to none in respect for scholar
ship, may we not remark that beyond a GER
tain point scholarship, like virtue, is its own
reward? There is scholarship and there is
scholarship. "Thc utterly inadequate machin-
'ery for the material encouragement Of schol-
"arly research in the English-speaklng world"
may be, as Mr.. Mutt protests, "a crying scan-
dal" but we believe that, carefully looked into,
1t would prove to be quite abreast OF its obli-
cations in all essentials Were only fifty copies
of "The Origin Of Species" bought by the pub
lie libraries? We trow not. Nothing in lit
eraturc, nothing in scholarship that touches the
vital interests Of the race Is left unsupported.
There may be delay, but it is brief. On the
other hand, scholarship that is all pedantry,
dry as the dust in the heart Of the desert and
Just about as profitable for thought, may
think itself well treated II 1t is supported at
ALL The scholars who write exclusively for
one another, for one man In Copenhagen and
another in Lisbon, but never for the great hui
man family. get quite as much support as they
deserve Let them not exaggerate the impor-
tance to mankind Of 4 Maay's method of comb
ing his hair or Hottentots effort to create a
verb out of the obscure gutturals of his fore
fathers. These things are interesting. they are
valuable, but do not let us talk as If the fate
of the world hung upon them.
Mr.. Bernard Capes objects to being told that
his style suggests that he has sat at the feet
of Mr. Meredith. He never did anything OF the
sort he declares. In fact he has only read
one Of Mr.. Mercdth's books, "The Shaving Of
Shagpat," and that was years ago" He writes
all this to The Academy" with some warmth
and the natural inference to be drawn from
his letter is that his critic, a sad ignoramus has
made one more blunder. We sympathize with
Mr.. Capes-and with his critic. Was it blum
der. after all? Points of literary style are diff
cult to tabulaie No could demonstrate
mathematically that Mr.. Capes had a style ex-
actly like Mr.. Meredth's. But the critic, in
saying that the one suggests the other, is on
firmer ground than Mr.. Capes thinks, and his
only indiscreton is in assuming that the young
er writer deliberately initiated his senior. The
characterization of Mr. Capes Meredithian
must stand as justified by the facts. 1t is not
rs though il Werc brOad question Of style 4