THE ART OF READING,
PRESENT

THE habit of reading is to-day, it seems so natural an

part of our intellectual life, the realize that there was a time unknown. Of course, the a could not exist before the inve ten language, an invention wh marvellous in the eyes of prim it is no wonder that the Greeks Cadmus, that Egyptian hiero held sacred, and that the Goth used in prophecy and religion.

1Lord Bacon has a magnificent eulog of letters in his Advancement of Lear

something mysterious about these strange figures which could communicate thought, and a sacred character was early attributed by all races to the written word; to this day the Chinese regard as a sacrilege the destruction of even scraps of printed paper, otherwise than by the purifying action of fire.

It is undoubtedly due to this innate reverence for the letter in a strictly literal sense, that certain formulas, or combinations of words, have always been regarded as having peculiar power, not only in religious worship, but in what has been variously called white magic, pow-wowing, or Beschwörungsformeln. This is a superstition which by no means is peculiar to the distant past alone, but which we find exemplified in all ages, from the time

the invention of the ship was thought so noble, which carrieth riches and commodities from place to place and consociateth the most remote regions in participation of their fruits, how much more are letters to be magnified, which as ships pass through the vast seas of time, and make ages so distant to participate of the wisdom, illuminations, and inventions, the one of the other?"

when "Circe burnt her fragrant fires and sang her magic songs as she wove at the immortal loom," down through the sortes Virgilianae of the Middle Ages, the Cabbala of the Renaissance, the Bibel-los of German Pietists, to the Christian Science of to-day, when the reading or repeating of passages from Mrs. Eddy's Science and Health is supposed to have a healing effect. Even mottoes and quotations owe something of their charm to this same influence. Nay, the sacred books of the East, the Bible as the literal word of God, the use of Latin in the services of the Roman Church, are all probably more or less influenced by this atavistic reverence for the written word.

In the earliest ages, long after written language was invented, reading as we understand it now, was not known. Even after the Homeric poems were reduced to writing, they were chiefly brought to the knowledge

of the people by the Rhapsodes, or public reciters; and this phenomenon was repeated during the Dark Ages by Minnesinger and Troubadour, who went from castle to castle, or stood in the public squares, singing the songs of King Arthur and Charlemagne, making their numbers flow,

For old unhappy, far-off things,

Or battles long ago.

It was only later, and especially after the invention of printing, that the mediaeval epics were actually read by the general public.

Yet reading, though infinitely less widely spread than to-day, became a veritable passion among certain Greeks and Romans. Horace tells his readers to turn over and over again the pages of the Greek writers; Cicero declares that reading, Emollit mores nec sinit esse feros, while we shall see later with what

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Softens our manners, and does not allow us to become wild.

enthusiasm, and at the same time remorse, the early Christian Fathers plunged into the reading of the great classics. Reading had become such a passion with the Romans that we hear, from time to time a warning voice, even as in later times. Thus Seneca says, "the reading of many authors and the greatest variety of books produces a vague and unsteady state of mind. We must linger over the great writers and get nourishment from them. Even in study, which is the noblest occupation of man, we must go about it in a common-sense way and be reasonable."

Like so many other things, during the long night of the Dark Ages, the ability to read was well-nigh lost. Learning practically died out, Greek was unknown, scholars were few and far between, and only a small number of those outside the Church could read; while the reading of the clergy themselves was largely confined to the breviary, lives of the