[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
own, sufficient for the purposes of their rising literatures, then first learning revived, and
Walden& 74
scholars were enabled to discern from that remoteness the treasures of antiquity. What the
Roman and Grecian multitude could not hear, after the lapse of ages a few scholars read,
and a few scholars only are still reading it.
However much we may admire the orator's occasional bursts of eloquence, the noblest
written words are commonly as far behind or above the fleeting spoken language as the
firmament with its stars is behind the clouds. There are the stars, and they who can may
read them. The astronomers forever comment on and observe them. They are not
exhalations like our daily colloquies and vaporous breath. What is called eloquence in the
forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in the study. The orator yields to the inspiration
of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who can hear him; but
the writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, and who would be distracted by the
event and the crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and health of
mankind, to all in any age who can understand him.
No wonder that Alexander carried the Iliad with him on his expeditions in a precious
casket. A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with
us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself.
It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from
all human lips;--not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the
breath of life itself. The symbol of an ancient man's thought becomes a modern man's
speech. Two thousand summers have imparted to the monuments of Grecian literature, as
to her marbles, only a maturer golden and autumnal tint, for they have carried their own
serene and celestial atmosphere into all lands to protect them against the corrosion of
time. Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations
and nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves
of every cottage. They have no cause of their own to plead, but while they enlighten and
sustain the reader his common sense will not refuse them. Their authors are a natural and
irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an
influence on mankind. When the illiterate and perhaps scornful trader has earned by
enterprise and industry his coveted leisure and independence, and is admitted to the
circles of wealth and fashion, he turns inevitably at last to those still higher but yet
Walden& 75
inaccessible circles of intellect and genius, and is sensible only of the imperfection of his
culture and the vanity and insufficiency of all his riches, and further proves his good
sense by the pains which be takes to secure for his children that intellectual culture whose
want he so keenly feels; and thus it is that he becomes the founder of a family.
Those who have not learned to read the ancient classics in the language in which they
were written must have a very imperfect knowledge of the history of the human race; for
it is remarkable that no transcript of them has ever been made into any modern tongue,
unless our civilization itself may be regarded as such a transcript. Homer has never yet
been printed in English, nor Aeschylus, nor Virgil even--works as refined, as solidly
done, and as beautiful almost as the morning itself; for later writers, say what we will of
their genius, have rarely, if ever, equalled the elaborate beauty and finish and the lifelong
and heroic literary labors of the ancients. They only talk of forgetting them who never
knew them. It will be soon enough to forget them when we have the learning and the
genius which will enable us to attend to and appreciate them. That age will be rich indeed
when those relics which we call Classics, and the still older and more than classic but
even less known Scriptures of the nations, shall have still further accumulated, when the
Vaticans shall be filled with Vedas and Zendavestas and Bibles, with Homers and Dantes
and Shakespeares, and all the centuries to come shall have successively deposited their
trophies in the forum of the world. By such a pile we may hope to scale heaven at last.
The works of the great poets have never yet been read by mankind, for only great poets
can read them. They have only been read as the multitude read the stars, at most
astrologically, not astronomically. Most men have learned to read to serve a paltry
convenience, as they have learned to cipher in order to keep accounts and not be cheated
in trade; but of reading as a noble intellectual exercise they know little or nothing; yet this
only is reading, in a high sense, not that which lulls us as a luxury and suffers the nobler
faculties to sleep the while, but what we have to stand on tip-toe to read and devote our
most alert and wakeful hours to.
I think that having learned our letters we should read the best that is in literature, and not
be forever repeating our a-b-abs, and words of one syllable, in the fourth or fifth classes,
Walden& 76
sitting on the lowest and foremost form all our lives. Most men are satisfied if they read
or hear read, and perchance have been convicted by the wisdom of one good book, the
Bible, and for the rest of their lives vegetate and dissipate their faculties in what is called
easy reading. There is a work in several volumes in our Circulating Library entitled
"Little Reading," which I thought referred to a town of that name which I had not been to.
There are those who, like cormorants and ostriches, can digest all sorts of this, even after
the fullest dinner of meats and vegetables, for they suffer nothing to be wasted. If others
are the machines to provide this provender, they are the machines to read it. They read
the nine thousandth tale about Zebulon and Sophronia, and how they loved as none had
ever loved before, and neither did the course of their true love run smooth--at any rate,
how it did run and stumble, and get up again and go on! how some poor unfortunate got
up on to a steeple, who had better never have gone up as far as the belfry; and then,
having needlessly got him up there, the happy novelist rings the bell for all the world to
come together and hear, O dear! how he did get down again! For my part, I think that
they had better metamorphose all such aspiring heroes of universal noveldom into man
weather-cocks, as they used to put heroes among the constellations, and let them swing
round there till they are rusty, and not come down at all to bother honest men with their
pranks. The next time the novelist rings the bell I will not stir though the meeting-house
burn down. "The Skip of the Tip-Toe-Hop, a Romance of the Middle Ages, by the
celebrated author of 'Tittle-Tol-Tan,' to appear in monthly parts; a great rush; don't all
come together." All this they read with saucer eyes, and erect and primitive curiosity, and
with unwearied gizzard, whose corrugations even yet need no sharpening, just as some
little four-year-old bencher his two-cent gilt-covered edition of inderella--without any
improvement, that I can see, in the pronunciation, or accent, or emphasis, or any more
skill in extracting or inserting the moral. The result is dulness of sight, a stagnation of the
vital circulations, and a general deliquium and sloughing off of all the intellectual
faculties. This sort of gingerbread is baked daily and more sedulously than pure wheat or
rye-and-Indian in almost every oven, and finds a surer market.
The best books are not read even by those who are called good readers. What does our [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl szkicerysunki.xlx.pl
own, sufficient for the purposes of their rising literatures, then first learning revived, and
Walden& 74
scholars were enabled to discern from that remoteness the treasures of antiquity. What the
Roman and Grecian multitude could not hear, after the lapse of ages a few scholars read,
and a few scholars only are still reading it.
However much we may admire the orator's occasional bursts of eloquence, the noblest
written words are commonly as far behind or above the fleeting spoken language as the
firmament with its stars is behind the clouds. There are the stars, and they who can may
read them. The astronomers forever comment on and observe them. They are not
exhalations like our daily colloquies and vaporous breath. What is called eloquence in the
forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in the study. The orator yields to the inspiration
of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who can hear him; but
the writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, and who would be distracted by the
event and the crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and health of
mankind, to all in any age who can understand him.
No wonder that Alexander carried the Iliad with him on his expeditions in a precious
casket. A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with
us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself.
It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from
all human lips;--not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the
breath of life itself. The symbol of an ancient man's thought becomes a modern man's
speech. Two thousand summers have imparted to the monuments of Grecian literature, as
to her marbles, only a maturer golden and autumnal tint, for they have carried their own
serene and celestial atmosphere into all lands to protect them against the corrosion of
time. Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations
and nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves
of every cottage. They have no cause of their own to plead, but while they enlighten and
sustain the reader his common sense will not refuse them. Their authors are a natural and
irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an
influence on mankind. When the illiterate and perhaps scornful trader has earned by
enterprise and industry his coveted leisure and independence, and is admitted to the
circles of wealth and fashion, he turns inevitably at last to those still higher but yet
Walden& 75
inaccessible circles of intellect and genius, and is sensible only of the imperfection of his
culture and the vanity and insufficiency of all his riches, and further proves his good
sense by the pains which be takes to secure for his children that intellectual culture whose
want he so keenly feels; and thus it is that he becomes the founder of a family.
Those who have not learned to read the ancient classics in the language in which they
were written must have a very imperfect knowledge of the history of the human race; for
it is remarkable that no transcript of them has ever been made into any modern tongue,
unless our civilization itself may be regarded as such a transcript. Homer has never yet
been printed in English, nor Aeschylus, nor Virgil even--works as refined, as solidly
done, and as beautiful almost as the morning itself; for later writers, say what we will of
their genius, have rarely, if ever, equalled the elaborate beauty and finish and the lifelong
and heroic literary labors of the ancients. They only talk of forgetting them who never
knew them. It will be soon enough to forget them when we have the learning and the
genius which will enable us to attend to and appreciate them. That age will be rich indeed
when those relics which we call Classics, and the still older and more than classic but
even less known Scriptures of the nations, shall have still further accumulated, when the
Vaticans shall be filled with Vedas and Zendavestas and Bibles, with Homers and Dantes
and Shakespeares, and all the centuries to come shall have successively deposited their
trophies in the forum of the world. By such a pile we may hope to scale heaven at last.
The works of the great poets have never yet been read by mankind, for only great poets
can read them. They have only been read as the multitude read the stars, at most
astrologically, not astronomically. Most men have learned to read to serve a paltry
convenience, as they have learned to cipher in order to keep accounts and not be cheated
in trade; but of reading as a noble intellectual exercise they know little or nothing; yet this
only is reading, in a high sense, not that which lulls us as a luxury and suffers the nobler
faculties to sleep the while, but what we have to stand on tip-toe to read and devote our
most alert and wakeful hours to.
I think that having learned our letters we should read the best that is in literature, and not
be forever repeating our a-b-abs, and words of one syllable, in the fourth or fifth classes,
Walden& 76
sitting on the lowest and foremost form all our lives. Most men are satisfied if they read
or hear read, and perchance have been convicted by the wisdom of one good book, the
Bible, and for the rest of their lives vegetate and dissipate their faculties in what is called
easy reading. There is a work in several volumes in our Circulating Library entitled
"Little Reading," which I thought referred to a town of that name which I had not been to.
There are those who, like cormorants and ostriches, can digest all sorts of this, even after
the fullest dinner of meats and vegetables, for they suffer nothing to be wasted. If others
are the machines to provide this provender, they are the machines to read it. They read
the nine thousandth tale about Zebulon and Sophronia, and how they loved as none had
ever loved before, and neither did the course of their true love run smooth--at any rate,
how it did run and stumble, and get up again and go on! how some poor unfortunate got
up on to a steeple, who had better never have gone up as far as the belfry; and then,
having needlessly got him up there, the happy novelist rings the bell for all the world to
come together and hear, O dear! how he did get down again! For my part, I think that
they had better metamorphose all such aspiring heroes of universal noveldom into man
weather-cocks, as they used to put heroes among the constellations, and let them swing
round there till they are rusty, and not come down at all to bother honest men with their
pranks. The next time the novelist rings the bell I will not stir though the meeting-house
burn down. "The Skip of the Tip-Toe-Hop, a Romance of the Middle Ages, by the
celebrated author of 'Tittle-Tol-Tan,' to appear in monthly parts; a great rush; don't all
come together." All this they read with saucer eyes, and erect and primitive curiosity, and
with unwearied gizzard, whose corrugations even yet need no sharpening, just as some
little four-year-old bencher his two-cent gilt-covered edition of inderella--without any
improvement, that I can see, in the pronunciation, or accent, or emphasis, or any more
skill in extracting or inserting the moral. The result is dulness of sight, a stagnation of the
vital circulations, and a general deliquium and sloughing off of all the intellectual
faculties. This sort of gingerbread is baked daily and more sedulously than pure wheat or
rye-and-Indian in almost every oven, and finds a surer market.
The best books are not read even by those who are called good readers. What does our [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]