The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1901-06-11


were the very gifted contemporaries Of
the greatest poet of all ages. We copy
with satisfaction even delight. the fol-
lowing from a recent address Of DR..
| Gilman, as furnished the Philadelphia
North American by Mr.. Albert E.
Hunt. Said the able teacher:
This IS an epoch Of ~Carnegieism.
Here in our city we haye half a million
volumes in sight of the monument. A
splendid free library, with branches
throughout the city, stands ready to
satisfy all cravings in their direction.
Lovers Library. purveying books in a
cart like the milkman.
"It is a kind of craze that has got
hold Of the people. It is a dangerous
habit like a stimulant.
1T is quite time that we establish a
professorship Of what to read and how
10 cad. Let US read less and think
more"
Wisely said and it is every word
true. You can not possibly tell now
what to read ard what to refuse unless
you adopt Carlyle's two years rule or
Waldo Emerson's n year rule not to
| read any book until one a after 1T
is published. The press notices with
but few exceptions are misleading, full
some in %laudation, indiscriminate, ex-
cessive and in most cases false and
unfaithful. The publishers gather a
few lines or words from this or that
newspaper of current issues of novels,
and parade them in bold letters. The
novels that sell so rapidly and by the
hundred thousands are not much
praised by the true and faithful critics.
A book appears. has a big rush for
three or four months and is showed
aside for another new book praised be-
yond all sense. 1t has come to pass in
the last few years that Balzac is a
George sand il Balzac's equal. And
men are not ashamed to indulge in
such senseless twaddle. There is too
much rubbish but not enough reading
of the great masters, the solid and i'm
mortal works Of the Greek poets, the
Greek philosophers, the best Latins,
the best Italians, the best of Ger
many "a few of the greatest French
authors. and the noblest thinkers and
most splendid poets Of Great Britain.
There is no chance now of making Sc
lections. There is no literary court of
appeals-no coterie or academy capa-
BILE of selecting the best literature for
reading. The faint is wide spread and
the taste uncertain. if we may judge
from some selections we have seen
made some times for others. If you
cannot be aided judiciously and wisely
in selections of books, what must be
done? Must imperfect tastes be made
absolutely vicious tastes by the poison
Gus. rotten pabulum upon which it
creme? Must the crude. over-praised,
inferior books be made to forever usurp
the noble productions. of masters? Why
have the great looks survived through
the centuries? Why are Homer and
Aeschylus and Sophocles and E%uripides
and Aristophanes and the chief lyric
poets of Greece still the delight and
comfort of the cultured minds of the
present? What has kept them alive?
1t is the great thoughts, the solemn
verities, their universal qualities, the
splendid imagery the noble e%loquence,
the poetic ardor, the commanding music
that "a eternized the names of some
of the worlds most famous and high
est endowed sons. And so it has been
with the greatest authors who have
lived since the palmiest days of Greece.
Dante and Petrarch and Goethe and
Schiller and Victor Hugo and the i'm
mortals Of the British isles nave lived
through the power. originality, beauty,
splendor and Importance of their pro-
ductions. The rouble now is that the
great writer's are neglected except by
the studious few-by those. who like
Alexander the Great, sleep with Homer
under their pillows. and finding sublime
truths and great ideas and magnificent
poetic beauties cast in the shape of in
tellectual coin they gather it and
treasure it as beyond al lprice. Old
Fuller said that "tis thought and di-
gestion which make books servicea-
BILE" 1t a been said that "Aeschylus
and Aristotle. Shakespeare and Bacon,
are priests who preach and expound
mysteries of man and the universe"
The sublimest of all poets, John Mil
ton. said you had "as good kill a man
as kill a good book" And so books
have been praised and treasured by the
wise n inspired of men. What is to
be don then. if people continue to read
the rubbish and neglect the best and
safest? There is no guild of letters to
decide. People will not discriminate.
Mr.. Hunt writes:
Drop your Doyles and your Barries,
then; your Mary Johnstons and your
Winston Churchills; aye, and even
your Hardys and your Kiplings for a.
while. We will assume that you know
your Shakespeare but do o know
Chaucer, with his fine humanity and
his glowing joy of life? Do you know
Spenser. concentrated essence of all
the of the world? Do you
know Milton and his stately harmonies?l
Do you know those marvellous gifts of
the spacious times of great Eliza
beth"-what a modern critic has called
the greatest mart of the greatest lit