LECTURES. I. ON THE FRIENDSHIP OF BOOKS.1 I I HAVE proposed to speak to you this evening on the Friendship of Books. I have some fear that an age of reading is not always favourable to the cultivation of this friendship. I do not mean that we are in any special danger of looking upon them as enemies. That is no doubt the temptation of some persons. have known both boys and men who have looked at books with a kind of rage and hatred, as if they were the natural foes of the human species. I am far from thinking that these were bad boys or bad men; nor were they stupid. Some of them I have found very intelligent, and have learnt much from them. I could trace the dislike in some cases to a cause which I thought honourable. The dogs and horses which they did care about, and were always on good terms with, they regarded as living creatures, who could receive affection, and in some measure could return it. Their horses could carry them over hills and moors; their dogs had been out with them from morning till night, and took interest in the pursuit that was interesting them. Books seemed to them dead things in stiff 1 Delivered first at Ellesmere, at the request of Archdeacon Allen, in the autumn of 1856; afterwards at Harrow. bindings, that might be patted and caressed ever so much and would take no notice, that knew nothing of toil or pleasure, of hill or stubble-field, of sunrise or sunsetting, of the earnest chase or the feast after it. Was it not better to leave them in the shelves which seemed to be made for them? Was it not treating them most respectfully not to finger or soil them, but to secure the services of a housemaid who should occasionally dust them? I frankly own that I have great sympathy with these feelings, and with those who entertain them. If books are only dead things, if they do not speak to one, or answer one when one speaks to them, if they have nothing to do with the common things that we are busy with—with the sky over our head, and the ground under our feet-I think that they had better stay on the shelves; I think any horse or dog, or tree or flower, is a better companion for human beings than they are. And therefore I say again, it is not with those who count them enemies that I find fault. They have much to say for themselves; if their premises are right they are right in their conclusions. What I regret is that many of us spend much of our time in reading books, and in talking of books-that we like nothing worse than the reputation of being indifferent to them, and nothing better than the reputation of knowing a great deal about them; and yet that, after all, we do not know them in the same way as we know our fellowcreatures, not even in the way we know any dumb animal that we walk with or play with. This is a great misfortune, in my opinion, and one which I am afraid is increasing as what we call "the taste for literature" increases. I cannot enter into all the different reasons which lead me to think so, nor can I trace the evil to its source. But I will mention one characteristic of the reading in our times, which must have much to do with it. A large part of our reading is given to Reviews, and Magazines, and Newspapers. Now I am certain that He these must have a very important use. We should all of us be trying to find out what the use of them is, because it is clear that we are born into an age in which they exercise great power; and that fact must bring a great responsibility, not only upon those who wield the power, but upon us who have to see that it does us good, and not hurt. But whatever good effects works of this kind may have produced, we certainly are not able to make them our friends. Perhaps you will wonder that I should say that a newspaper or a review is a much less awful thing than a quarto or a folio-I mean of course to those who are not going themselves to be cut up in it, but only to have the pleasure of seeing their friends and neighbours cut up. Moreover the writer of the newspaper or magazine, or review, commonly assumes an off-hand, dashing air. He has a number of colloquial phrases, and stockjests, which seem intended to put us at our ease. speaks in a loud, rattling tone, like one who wishes to shake hands the first time you meet him. But then, when you stretch out your hand, what is it you meet? Not that of a man, but of a shadow, of something that calls itself "We." Be friends with a "We"! How is that possible? If the mist is scattered, if we discover that there is an actual human being there, then the case is altered altogether. If Lord Jeffrey, or Mr. Macaulay, or Sir James Stephen, publishes articles which he has written in a Review, with his name affixed to them, or if a "Times Correspondent" whom, in our superstition, we had supposed to be one of the fairies or genii that descend from some other world to our planet, appears with an ordinary name, and dressed like a mortal, why, then we feel we are on fair terms. A person is presenting himself to us, one who may have a right to judge us, but who is willing to be tried himself by his peers. That, you see, is because the We has become I. All his apparent dignity is dissolved; we can recognize him as a fellow-creature. Now, I do not say this the least in condemnation of |