Four Years of Novel Reading | Page 4

a trained reader, fills his soul with a sense of artistic beauty, and makes him long to be good. If novel-reading, taken as a whole, has been a curse rather than a blessing, the fault lies. not in our authors, but in our distorted educational system, which insists upon careful training in mathematics, or language, or physical science, subjects comparatively easy and remote from life, yet leaves literature, nios^ difficult and vital of all studies, to take care of itself. In this matter, surely, we may take our moral censors with us. Fiction is going to be read, whether they like it or not; but they may attain the object at which they are really aiming, if they turn their energy into the channel of demanding that preliminary training which will determine whether fiction shall be a dissipation or a mental and moral food.
But how is this cultivation to be attained? Not, surely,, by the reading of reviews. Who could think of getting an ear for music by reading reports of concerts in the musical columns of the press? We know we can be trained in music only by hearing the music itself. Taste in fiction can be cultivated only by reading and re-reading the works of the great masters, with docile attention always, and sometimes with distinct effort and study. I am not speaking of the professed student, with leisure and means to use the machinery of university education to assist him in developing his receptive powers. But the busy men and women, to whom literature can never be anything else than recreation, may make their recreation productive, if they are willing to invest in it a little of the mental capital we call study. The practical problem is to find modes of studying fiction such as will fit themselves into the routine of ordinary busy life.
The object of the present book is to introduce a little experiment that has been made in this matter of popularizing the study of fiction. It has been tried in a mining village of Northumberland (England), and in spite of limitations of leisure and social opportunity it has flourished long enough to present "four years of novel-reading." The pages that follow will speak for themselves; here it is enough to say, that the plan consists in the reading, by all the members of this " Classical Novel-Reading Union," of the same novel at the same period, while the announcement of the novel to be read is accompanied with suggestions, coming from some " literary authority," of some one or two " points to be noted " in the book. The scheme includes meetings for discussing the novel and reading essays; but its essence lies in the two things I have mentioned, simultaneous reading, and reading in the light of an expert's suggestions as to important points. The history of this novel-reading union is sketched below by its secretary, and a record follows of the work done. It cannot but be interesting to note the works selected, the ideas they have called out, and especially the suggestions made by those who have been consulted as literary authorities.
It is interesting, again, to note that this list of literary authorities includes, not only local friends, or those whose work is education, but sometimes novelists of such rank as Mr. Justin McCarthy, Miss Peard, and the author of John Inglesant. A few representative essays are added, selected from those read at meetings of the Union. They reflect only the opinions of the individual writers; but they will add to the general interest of the present volume.
The reader will understand that what is here introduced is not put forward as a model method of studying fiction. It is too early to talk of models ; fiction-study is in the tentative stage, and only experiment is possible; what is here done is to record an experiment. It is an experiment that can be tried on a larger scale by the formation of similar unions, or on a smaller scale by a few friends reading together ; while isolated readers can join this or similar societies at a distance, and gain the major part of the advantages of the plan. Without going farther, the four years' experience here presented will afford a not inconsiderable training in novel-reading to any who may try to follow it. I will add, that if any readers of these pages are induced to try for themselves the plan here described, or any other plan suggested by it, and would find some means of making public their experience in the matter, they would be doing good service in helping towards that comparison of experiments which leads up to the survival of the fittest method. Whether it be by the union of several students in a society,