A Book for All Readers | Page 7

mine of
information, and should be added if funds are sufficient. Certain sets of
collective biographies which are important are American Statesmen, 26
vols., Englishmen of Letters, -- vols., Autobiography, 33 vols., Famous
Women series, 21 vols., Heroes of the Nation series, 24 vols.,
American Pioneers and Patriots, 12 vols., and Plutarch's Lives. Then of
indispensable single biographies there are Boswell's Johnson,
Lockhart's Scott, Froude's Carlyle, Trevelyan's Macaulay, Froude's
Caesar, Lewes' Goethe, etc.
4. Of notable essays, a high class of literature in which there are many
names, may be named Addison, Montaigne, Bacon, Goldsmith,
Emerson, Lamb, De Quincey, Holmes, Lowell, etc.
5. Poetry stands at the head of all the literature of imagination. Some
people of highly utilitarian views decry poetry, and desire to feed all
readers upon facts. But that this is a great mistake will be apparent
when we consider that the highest expressions of moral and intellectual
truth and the most finely wrought examples of literature in every nation
are in poetic form. Take out of the world's literature the works of its
great poets, and you would leave it poor indeed. Poetry is the only great
source for the nurture of imagination, and without imagination man is a
poor creature. I read the other day a dictum of a certain writer, alleging
that Dickens's Christmas Carol is far more effective as a piece of
writing than Milton's noble ode "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity."
Such comparisons are of small value. In point of fact, no library can
spare either of them. I need not repeat the familiar names of the great
poets; they are found in all styles of production, and some of the best
are among the least expensive.
6. Travels and voyages form a very entertaining as well as highly
instructive part of a library. A good selection of the more notable will
prove a valuable resource to readers of nearly every age.
7. The wide field of science should be carefully gleaned for a good
range of approved text-books in each department. So progressive is the

modern world that the latest books are apt to be the best in each science,
something which is by no means true in literature.
8. In law, medicine, theology, political science, sociology, economics,
art, architecture, music, eloquence, and language, the library should be
provided with the leading modern works.
9. We come now to fiction, which the experience of all libraries shows
is the favorite pabulum of about three readers out of four. The great
demand for this class of reading renders it all the more important to
make a wise and improving selection of that which forms the minds of
multitudes, and especially of the young. This selection presents to
every librarian and library director or trustee some perplexing problems.
To buy indiscriminately the new novels of the day, good, bad, and
indifferent (the last named greatly predominating) would be a very poor
discharge of the duty devolving upon those who are the responsible
choosers of the reading of any community. Conceding, as we must, the
vast influence and untold value of fiction as a vehicle of entertainment
and instruction, the question arises--where can the line be drawn
between the good and improving novels, and novels which are neither
good nor improving? This involves something more than the moral
tone and influence of the fictions: it involves their merits and demerits
as literature also. I hold it to be the bounden duty of those who select
the reading of a community to maintain a standard of good taste, as
well as of good morals. They have no business to fill the library with
wretched models of writing, when there are thousand of good models
ready, in numbers far greater than they have money to purchase. Weak
and flabby and silly books tend to make weak and flabby and silly
brains. Why should library guides put in circulation such stuff as the
dime novels, or "Old Sleuth" stories, or the slip-slop novels of "The
Duchess," when the great masters of romantic fiction have endowed us
with so many books replete with intellectual and moral power? To
furnish immature minds with the miserable trash which does not
deserve the name of literature, is as blameworthy as to put before them
books full of feverish excitement, or stories of successful crime.
We are told, indeed (and some librarians even have said it) that for

unformed readers to read a bad book is better than to read none at all. I
do not believe it. You might as well say that it is better for one to
swallow poison than not to swallow any thing at all. I hold that library
providers are as much bound to furnish wholesome food for the minds
of the young who resort to them