But nothing can be
more deceptive than this arithmetic, where none but a natural method
is really pertinent. I visit occasionally the Cambridge Library, and
I can seldom go there without renewing the conviction that the best
of it all is already within the four walls of my study at home. The
inspection of the catalogue brings me continually back to the few
standard writers who are on every private shelf; and to these it can
afford only the most slight and casual additions. The crowds and
centuries of books are only commentary and elucidation, echoes and
weakeners of these few great voices of Time.
The best rule of reading will be a method from nature, and not a
mechanical one of hours and pages. It holds each student to a
pursuit of his native aim, instead of a desultory miscellany. Let
him read what is proper to him, and not waste his memory on a crowd
of mediocrities. As whole nations have derived their culture from a
single book,--as the Bible has been the literature as well as the
religion of large portions of Europe,--as Hafiz was the eminent
genius of the Persians, Confucius of the Chinese, Cervantes of the
Spaniards; so, perhaps, the human mind would be a gainer, if all the
secondary writers were lost,--say, in England, all but Shakspeare,
Milton, and Bacon, through the profounder study so drawn to those
wonderful minds.
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