New-York tribune., 1905-01-06
NEWSPAPERS AND BOOKS.
What John Morley Thinks About
Reading Both.

Mr.. John Morley's FIRST notable address fol-
lowing his return 20 England after his Ameri-
can visit delivered the other day at the
opening ct new public free library. Defining
democracy government by public opinion"
he reminded his hearers that public opinion in
all classes was In constant need OF stimulation
and OF Improvement He cited newspapers as
highly valuable agencies OF such stimulation.
What mankind had TO do. he said. to live
IN the open air and under the broad skies Of
public aud private activity; and the meanings
and tendencies OF that activity-both in their
own country and in countries whose fortunes
were partly wrapped up in theirs-they could
not understand their way through with
out newspapers. He. for his part, thought that
reading abundant newspapers was not an IL
legitimate, but an entirely wholesome process"
He repeated a suggestion that in other cases
had borne good fruit:-that in a library like
theirs there should be formed a newspaper
class IN which, every evening somebody or
other should take the events recorded all over
the world in a single day and explain what they
were all about He would suggest that the
librarian might take out Of the shelves OF the
reference library or the lending library a group
OF books once twice a week. If necessary.
bearing upon what chanced TO be the great
topic Of the day
HIS head. said the lecturer ought to possess four
or FIVE books. md If he had time he would be
able TO show them. and they would be surprised
10 ind, how very slim the volumes would be
which contained, after all. the of the matter
the gems. the pearls. the pure gold Of litera
ture- They would never. he declared know the
right mode Of dealing with the difficulties of the
present unless they had notion of the gen
eral of things in the past, and some sense
OF general hopes and expectations for the future.
Remsrking on the fact that OF the books taken
from the local library Go per cent were fiction.
he ventured to urge that there was something
TO be said for fiction. not for trash. He claimed
for both fiction and poetry place among things
useful. Our prosaic lives had need of the sort
OF Imagination that fiction poetry could
give them. Nobody, he hoped would be sorry
that 65 per cent Of the books taken should
represent works of Walter Scott. Dumas. Dick
ems, Thackeray, George Eliot Jane Austen and
Mrs Gasken. II the list Of works Of fiction
provided in their library more than twice
large as the number of books history
and biography he did not care so long they
promoted cheerfulness and sympathy and good
humOr He reading the other day that
the world of books was a world of shadows
in sense it was true-we were all shadows, but
great ideals launched into the world not
shadows; they were the substance. Would any
man say that Napoleon Bonaparte was sub
stance. and Goethe and Byron but transient
shadows or that Pitt and Fox and Canning
and Castlereagh were the substance. and Scott
and Shelley and Wordsworth were phantoms?
II would be very wrong il any said any
such thing. He who was not stimulated and re-
freshed by poetry had but mutilated existence
Shakespeare was the poet of poets. but in look
ing out for poets let the rule be preferences. not
exclusions. And here he would like to say some
thing which might bring storm of criticism
upon him. If ne were librarian there, and were
asked what poet he would recommend, he
thought he would say Byron. Byron not
the greatest Of poets. but he had daring and en-
ergy and historic sense a loathing-which he
hoped they all felt-for cant I'm all its aspects.
There were two cants-the cant of the upper ten
thousand and the cant Of the million-and Byron
losthed them both. Byron at the beginning
Of the last century the great central inspiring
force of democracy on the Continent of Europe.
and he tMr. Morley thought that when the de-
mocracy expanded its reading and applied itself
for inspiration TO poetry. apart from the inspra-
tion OF facts and the needs and demands of the
time. Byron would once more have his day.
Emerson. he added laid down three rules for
readers. Emerson was a man of great purity Of
mind. Of great depth of thought, perhaps unsur-
passed in either quality by any previous writer
of the nineteenth century. He said First. do
not read book that is not year old; second,
never read any but books that are famed; third
never read any book but what you like" He