On The Art of Reading. Arthur Quiller-Couch

year, is the teeming produce gathered in. And then we put a fearful pressure on ourselves and others to gorge of it as much as ever we can hold.

      Facit indignatio versus. My author, gathering heat, puts it somewhat dithyrambically: but there you have it, Gentlemen.

      If you crave for Knowledge, the banquet of Knowledge grows and groans on the board until the finer appetite sickens. If, still putting all your trust in Knowledge, you try to dodge the difficulty by specialising, you produce a brain bulging out inordinately on one side, on the other cut flat down and mostly paralytic at that: and in short so long as I hold that the Creator has an idea, of a man, so long shall I be sure that no uneven specialist realises it. The real tragedy of the Library at Alexandria was not that the incendiaries burned immensely, but that they had neither the leisure nor the taste to discriminate.

      VIII

      The old schoolmaster whom I quoted just now goes on:

      I believe, if the truth were known, men would be astonished at the small amount of learning with which a high degree of culture is compatible. In a moment of enthusiasm I ventured once to tell my 'English set' that if they could really master the ninth book of "Paradise Lost", so as to rise to the height of its great argument and incorporate all its beauties in themselves, they would at one blow, by virtue of that alone, become highly cultivated men. … More and more various learning might raise them to the same height by different paths, but could hardly raise them higher.

      Here let me interpose and quote the last three lines of that Book—three lines only; simple, unornamented, but for every man and every woman who have dwelt together since our first parents, in mere statement how wise!

      Thus they in mutual accusation spent

       The fruitless hours, but neither self-condemning; And of their vain contest appear'd no end.

      A parent afterwards told me (my schoolmaster adds) that his son went home and so buried himself in the book that food and sleep that day had no attraction for him. Next morning, I need hardly say, the difference in his appearance was remarkable: he had outgrown all his intellectual clothes.

      The end of this story strikes me, I confess, as rapid, and may be compared with that of the growth of Delian Apollo in the Homeric hymn; but we may agree that, in reading, it is not quantity so much that tells, as quality and thoroughness of digestion.

      IX

       What Does—What Knows—What Is. …

      I am not likely to depreciate to you the value of What Does, after spending my first twelve lectures up here, on the art and practice of Writing, encouraging you to do this thing which I daily delight in trying to do: as God forbid that anyone should hint a slightening word of what our sons and brothers are doing just now, and doing for us! But Peace being the normal condition of man's activity, I look around me for a vindication of what is noblest in What Does and am content with a passage from George Eliot's poem "Stradivarius", the gist of which is that God himself might conceivably make better fiddles than Stradivari's, but by no means certainly; since, as a fact, God orders his best fiddles of Stradivari. Says the great workman,

      'God be praised,

       Antonio Stradivari has an eye

       That winces at false work and loves the true,

       With hand and arm that play upon the tool

       As willingly as any singing bird

       Sets him to sing his morning roundelay,

       Because he likes to sing and likes the song.'

       Then Naldo: ''Tis a pretty kind of fame

       At best, that comes of making violins;

       And saves no masses, either. Thou wilt go

       To purgatory none the less.'

       But he:

       ''Twere purgatory here to make them ill;

       And for my fame—when any master holds

       'Twixt chin and hand a violin of mine,

       He will be glad that Stradivari lived,

       Made violins, and made them of the best.

       The masters only know whose work is good:

       They will choose mine, and while God gives them skill

       I give them instruments to play upon,

       God choosing me to help Him.'

       'What! Were God

       At fault for violins, thou absent?'

       'Yes;

       He were at fault for Stradivari's work.'

       'Why, many hold Giuseppe's

       violins As good as thine.'

       'May be: they are different.

       His quality declines: he spoils his hand

       With over-drinking. But were his the best,

       He could not work for two. My work is mine,

       And heresy or not, if my hand slacked

       I should rob God—since He is fullest good—

       Leaving a blank instead of violins.

       I say, not God Himself can make man's best

       Without best men to help him. …

       'Tis God gives skill,

       But not without men's hands: He could not make

       Antonio Stradivari's violins

       Without Antonio. Get thee to thy easel.'

      So much then for What Does: I do not depreciate it.

      X

      Neither do I depreciate—in Cambridge, save the mark!—What Knows. All knowledge is venerable; and I suppose you will find the last vindication of the scholar's life at its baldest in Browning's "A Grammarian's Funeral":

      Others mistrust and say, 'But time escapes:

       Live now or never!'

       He said, 'What's time? Leave Now for dog and apes!

       Man has Forever.'

       Back to his book then; deeper drooped his head:

       Calculus racked him:

       Leaden before, his eyes grew dross of lead:

       Tussis attacked him. …

       So, with the throttling hands of death at strife,

       Ground he at grammar;

       Still, thro' the rattle, parts of speech were rife:

       While he could stammer

       He settled Hoti's business—let it be!—

       Properly based Oun—

       Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De,

       Dead from the waist down.

       Well, here's the platform, here's the proper place:

       Hail to your purlieus,

       All ye highfliers of the feathered race,

       Swallows and curlews!

       Here's the top-peak; the multitude below

       Live, for they can, there:

       This man decided not to Live but Know—

       Bury this man there.

      Nevertheless Knowledge is not, cannot be, everything; and indeed, as a matter of experience, cannot even be counted upon to educate. Some of us have known men of extreme learning who yet are, some of them, uncouth in conduct, others violent and overbearing in converse, others unfair in controversy, others even unscrupulous in action—men of whom the sophist Thrasymachus in Plato's "Republic" may stand for the general