Part 10 (1/2)
All truths being inter-dependent, every road will lead to the end of the world, and so while studying one subject a man becomes interested in others, and his range of inquiry expands. When he kindles one dry stick, many green ones will catch, and his brightest blazes are lit up by unexpected sparks. One quickly learns to love hunting, and before working up many topics, he forms an investigating habit which will perpetuate itself. Thus while seeking an oyster, he finds a pearl, like SAUL who sought a.s.ses and found a kingdom. Henceforth he reads more by subjects, each a cord to string pearls on, than by volumes, for he feels that,
”Unless to some particular end designed, Reading is but a specious trifling of the mind, And then, like ill-digested food, To humors turns and not to blood.”
But less and less of that sort is his reading, though it range through all time, and tax all the world. Such an inquirer will live longer than METHUSELAH, for he will have more thoughts, yet he will wish each of his minutes was a millenary. He will read with an appet.i.te growing as long as he lives; indeed reading will help him to live longer. A thousand such readers feel what one has spoken out, saying:
”In a library I was thrown, instead of worse society, into the company of poets, philosophers and sages--to me good angels and ministers of grace. From these silent instructors who often do more than fathers for our interests, from these delightful a.s.sociates I learned something of the divine and more of the human religion. They were my interpreters in the House Beautiful of G.o.d, and my guides among the Delectable Mountains of Nature,
Blessing be with them and eternal praise, Who gave me n.o.bler loves and n.o.bler cares.”
Pre-eminently to the _young_ will the myriad-minded library be an oracle in perplexities. They have been better trained in public schools than we of the last generation were. They have broken ground in more various studies, and their curiosity has been stimulated concerning more questions. Each question, each study puts in their hand a new _key_ to the locks which shut up libraries. Singers love to sing, and it is joy for the just to do justice, so will our youth rejoice to use in the library the skill they have acquired in school as naturally as when they get jack knives they take to whittling. The public schools then find in free libraries their fitting supplement, and complement. Schools without libraries feed a prisoner with salted viands and then tantalize his thirst with pitchers and bottles, all empty. The free school and the free library will join hands like husband and wife in a well-matched marriage.
”He is the half-part of a blessed man, Left to be finished by such as she; And she a fair divided excellence, Whose fulness of perfection lies in him; But two such silver currents when they join, Do glorify the banks that bind them in.
Each befits the other, as ALEXANDER said concerning the finest poem and the most costly casket in the world when he enshrined the Iliad in the Persian box of gold and gems. Both are lotteries where tickets cost nothing and everybody may draw all the prizes.
In addition to this, the free library will be to some nothing less than an _inspiration_. _To some_--I wish I could say _to all_, but alas, it is only an ”elect few” whom the library can inspire. Spectacles are invaluable,--but only to those who have eyes. One Sultan never wore a s.h.i.+rt that had not every word of the Koran written on it yet absorbed little piety. AARON'S excuse for making only a golden calf was, that the Jews did not bring him gold enough to make an ox. The cherubim who know most can never equal the seraphim who love most. An ugly and stupid man, walking with a lady on each arm, boasts that he is between wit and beauty, but may not imbibe one particle of either.
To some, however, a free library will make up for the lack of a liberal education. More than that. It will furnish such an education every jot and t.i.ttle of it, and that, in some sense, better than was ever bestowed in a college, because acquired in the face of greater difficulties.
Libraries have often vouchsafed this priceless boon. That in Salem did to BOWDITCH, the mathematician, in the last century, and to WHIPPLE, the essayist, in this. The Edinburgh library made HUME an historian. Another was inspiration to COBBETT. So was that of the Erfurt convent to LUTHER.
”It had purchased,” says his biographer, ”at heavy cost, several Latin Bibles just printed for the first time in the neighboring city of Mainz.
When he first opened one of these tomes his eyes fell on the story of HANNAH and SAMUEL. ”O, G.o.d,” he murmured, ”could I have one of these books I would seek no other worldly treasure.” A great revolution then took place in his soul. His happiest hours were in the library.
Concerning such a scholar--
”We cannot say: ''Tis pity He lacks instructions,' for he seems a master To most that teach.”
The influence of ancient Libraries on cla.s.sical writers is manifest from their quotations. PLUTARCH'S have been traced to 250 authors. PLINY'S to 2,000 works. Cla.s.sical Libraries preserved in Constantinople, so long as studied, made there a Goshen of light in the Dark Ages, and when carried to Italy proved a Promethean spark to kindle occidental culture anew. It is well known that inventions are oftenest struck out in the Patent Office, the grand store-house of inventions. In the world of mind, as well as of matter, new ideas are suggested where old ideas most congregate, or are most communed with. According to CHAUCER,
”Out of old fields, as man saith, Cometh all the new corn from year to year, And out of old books, in good faith, Cometh all the new science that men lear.”
The idea of writing the ”Life of COLUMBUS” first darted into the mind of IRVING, when, in Madrid, he found himself surrounded by an unrivaled magazine of materials made ready to his hand, and for which the world had been ransacked. Thus the sight of means to make good books makes good books made.
Not only those volumes which compose the body of literature, but those finer essences which form its soul,--the literature of power,--stamped in Nature's mint of ecstasy--are marked all over with proofs of familiarity with the best that had been achieved,--each in its own department. n.o.body has hesitated thus to affirm concerning VIRGIL, DANTE, Ta.s.sO, MILTON. But it is commonly said that SHAKESPEARE was _ignorant_. The truth is that no ignorant man, no ordinary, scholar can understand his allusions, historical, romantic, cla.s.sical, or those to art, science, nationalities, customs--or even his words. He could get more from a Library in a day than most men in a life-time, but he needed it still.
In speaking of SHAKESPEARE, I mean the man who wrote the Plays reputed his, no matter whether that author was BACON, or JOHN SMITH, or even our townsman GEORGE B.
We ought to say that SHAKESPEARE was a universal man,--because he was heir of all ages,--and his was universal knowledge, a knowledge which neither can we fathom nor could he find without a library.
His peculiarity was ability to discern the immortal part of books, or to stamp what were otherwise perishable with his own immortality. Whoever can do much without tools, can do more with them. Accordingly men do their broken weapons rather use than their bare hands. Whoever can do much without a library, can do more with a library. DAVID did much with a sling, but more with better arms, and builded an armory on which there hung a thousand bucklers, all s.h.i.+elds of mighty men.
If then there be among us any one person endued with any spark of Shakespearian or other genius he will find it kindling to a flame through contact in this library with similar celestial fires. To such a ”meeting soul!” as MILTON calls it,--the library will prove a better bonanza than has been prospected in our States of silver and gold.
Though having nothing he shall possess all things,--infinite riches in a little room.
Thus our Free Library will amuse, and instruct, and inspire. Over its entrance I seem to read as on the front of the oldest in the world, the inscription, ”The healing of the soul,” or the words of FRANKLIN to his namesake town, ”I give you books instead of a bell, sense rather than sound.” Let it have free course for a generation, calling to culture as ceaselessly as a standing army calls to war, and this community will say with SENECA, ”Leisure without books and letters is mental death and burial.”
The first public library in Ohio--just two years younger than the State--was founded in Ames. It was bought by hunters who threw together a lot of racc.o.o.n skins, sent them in a sleigh by one of their number to Boston and there bartered them for books. They soon hunted Greek as zealously as game, and while Ames remained a hamlet ten of them, or their children, were among the early graduates of the State University.
The influences of a library are _c.u.mulative_, and sometimes become manifest only after a long lapse of ages. The cuniform library of a.s.syrian bricks, dating from pre-historic periods, burned up, buried and forgotten just now emerges from its grave speaking in a voice heard round the world, and no less authoritative than a second book of Genesis. From its shelves more centuries look down upon us than upon NAPOLEON at the Pyramids.