his essay Concerning Scylla and Charybdis, and the Swing of the Pendulum; for that Common-place Philosopher loves to remind us how curious it is to look over a volume which we once thought (to use his own diction) magnificent, enthralling, incomparable, and wonder how on earth we ever cared for that stilted rubbish. There are works, as Goethe's English biographer remarks-adverting to the general disappointment felt on a first reading of Faust-which, on a first acquaintance, ravish us with delight: the ideas are new; the form is new; the execution striking:in the glow of enthusiasm we pronounce the new work a masterpiece: we study it, learn it by heart, and somewhat weary our friends by the emphasis of enthusiasm. "In a few years, or it may be months, the work has become unreadable, and we marvel at our ancient admiration. The ideas are no longer novel; they appear truisms or perhaps falsisms. The execution is no longer admirable, for we have discovered its trick. In familiarising our minds with it, our admiration has been slowly strangled by the contempt which familiarity is said to breed, but which familiarity only breeds in contemptible minds, or for things contemptible. The work then was no masterpiece? Not in the least. A masterpiece excites no sudden enthusiasm; it must be studied much and long, before it is fully comprehended; we must grow up to it for it will not descend to us." Directly in the teeth of most "intellectual tea-circles," it may be asserted, and by Mr. Carlyle it is asserted, that no good book, or good thing of any sort, shows its best face at first; nay, that the commonest quality in a true work of Art, if its excellence have any depth and compass, is that at first sight it occasions a certain disappointment.* Plus cette bibliothèque est restrainte, mieux elle vaut, writes M. de Sacy, when discussing the works of which "les gens de bon goût et les honnêtes gens composent leur bibliothèque choisie."-When there were few books, Mr. Mill has said, and when few read at all save those who had been accustomed to read the best authors, books were written with the well-grounded expectation that they would be read carefully, and if they deserved it, would be read often. But now the world "gorges itself with intellectual food, and in order to swallow the more, bolts it. Nothing is now read slowly, or twice over. Books are run through with no less rapidity, and scarcely leave a more durable impression, than a newspaper article." It is to this among other causes, that Mr. Mill attributes the production of so few books of any value. If to Goldsmith's Citizen of the World, expatiating on the unspeakable pleasures that attend the life of * "A number of years ago, Jean Paul's copy of Novalis led him to infer that the German reading world was of a quick disposition; inasmuch as, with respect to books that required more than one perusal, it declined perusing them at all. Paul's Novalis, we suppose, was of the first edition, uncut, dusty," &c. -Carlyle, Critical Miscellanies, ii. a voluntary student, the first time he reads an excellent book, it is to him just as if he had gained a new friend,-so, when he reads over a book he has perused before, it resembles the meeting with an old one. So advantageous, argues Hume, is practice to the discernment of beauty, that before we can give judgment on any work of importance, it will be indispensable more than once to peruse that individual performance, and survey it in different lights with attention and deliberation. There is, he goes on to say, a flutter or hurry of thought which attends the first perusal of any piece, and which confounds the genuine sentiment of beauty. "The relation of the parts is not discerned: the true characters of style are little distinguished: the several perfections and defects seem wrapped up in a species of confusion, and present themselves indistinctly to the imagination. Not to mention, that there is a species of beauty, which as it is florid and superficial, pleases at first; but being found incompatible with a just expression either of reason or passion, soon palls upon the taste, and is then rejected with disdain, at least rated at a much lower value." In another of his essays Hume casually informs us, that, as regards Martial, the first line of an epigram recals the whole, "and I have no pleasure in repeating to myself what I know already. But each line, each word in Catullus, has its merit; and I am never tired with the perusal of him. It is sufficient to run over Cowley once; but Parnell, after the fiftieth reading, is as fresh as at first.". A fiftieth reading of Parnell! What per-centage of the reading world's present population has vouchsafed Parnell a first? Talking of fiftieth times, here is a fragment from Byron's diary at Ravenna; written on a day when snow was on the ground, and sirocco above in the sky: “Read the conclusion, for the fiftieth time (I have read all W. Scott's novels at least fifty times), of the third series of "Tales of my Landlord'-grand work-Scotch Fielding," &c. A really good novel will bear, as a really good critic has affirmed, to be read again and again, to be thought over in various connections, to be meditated upon in various moods, to be discussed and commented on. There are second-rate novels-and he takes an example-the merits of which are almost certain to strike us at a first reading, and quite sure to escape us at a second. "We liked the spirited narrative yesterday-to-day it seems poor, for we know what we are going to be told." The characters, it is added, seemed not amiss at first, for we were always expecting a new insight into them but on a second reading we can scarcely endure them, because we know that this insight into their essence is never to be given us, and that the delineations will be sketchy and external to the last page. "If you are pleased with a common acquaintance," we have been warned, "be rather careful not to see him again." If you have read a common novel with pleasure, the warning of criticism is never to open it again. : Sir Walter Scott's journal shall furnish us with examples from his experience. In 1826 we find him reading over for a second time Lady Morgan's novel of O'Donnel, in which he indulgently recognises some striking and beautiful passages of situation and description, with not a little that is "very rich and entertaining" in the comic part. "I do not remember being so much pleased with it at first. There is a want of story, always fatal to a book the first reading-and it is well if it gets a chance of a second. Alas, poor novel! Also read again, and for the third time at least, Miss Austen's very finely written novel of Pride and Prejudice." That would bear, and reward, the third reading, and a fourth. But one finds it harder to go along with Scott in another of his enjoyable third readings. Some twenty years before this we find him writing to Robert Southey: "As I don't much admire compliments, you may believe me sincere when I tell you that I have read Madoc three times since my first cursory perusal, and each time with increased admiration of the poetry." The world seems in no hurry to ratify Scott's confident prediction, that (although Southey might have to content himself for a while with the applause of the few whom nature has gifted with the rare taste for discriminating in poetry, yet) "the mere readers of verse must one day come in, and then Madoc will assume his real place at the feet of Milton. Now this opinion of mine was not that (to speak frankly) which I formed on reading the poem at first, though I then felt much of its merit." It reads almost |