Books which have Influenced Me
First published in the British Weekly, May 13, 1887.
The Editor 15 has somewhat insidiously1 laid a trap for his correspondents, the question put appearing at first so innocent, truly cutting so deep. It is not, indeed, until after some reconnaissance and review that the writer awakes to find himself engaged upon something in the nature of autobiography2, or, perhaps worse, upon a chapter in the life of that little, beautiful brother whom we once all had, and whom we have all lost and mourned, the man we ought to have been, the man we hoped to be. But when word has been passed (even to an editor), it should, if possible, be kept; and if sometimes I am wise and say too little, and sometimes weak and say too much, the blame must lie at the door of the person who entrapped3 me.
15 Of the British Weekly.
The most influential4 books, and the truest in their influence, are works of fiction. They do not pin the reader to a dogma, which he must afterwards discover to be inexact; they do not teach him a lesson, which he must afterwards unlearn. They repeat, they rearrange, they clarify the lessons of life; they disengage us from ourselves, they constrain5 us to the acquaintance of others; and they show us the web of experience, not as we can see it for ourselves, but with a singular change — that monstrous6, consuming ego7 of ours being, for the nonce, struck out. To be so, they must be reasonably true to the human comedy; and any work that is so serves the turn of instruction. But the course of our education is answered best by those poems and romances where we breathe a magnanimous atmosphere of thought and meet generous and pious8 characters. Shakespeare has served me best. Few living friends have had upon me an influence so strong for good as Hamlet or Rosalind. The last character, already well beloved in the reading, I had the good fortune to see, I must think, in an impressionable hour, played by Mrs. Scott Siddons. Nothing has ever more moved, more delighted, more refreshed me; nor has the influence quite passed away. Kent’s brief speech over the dying Lear had a great effect upon my mind, and was the burthen of my reflections for long, so profoundly, so touchingly9 generous did it appear in sense, so overpowering in expression. Perhaps my dearest and best friend outside of Shakespeare is D’Artagnan — the elderly D’Artagnan of the Vicomte de Bragelonne. I know not a more human soul, nor, in his way, a finer; I shall be very sorry for the man who is so much of a pedant10 in morals that he cannot learn from the Captain of Musketeers. Lastly, I must name the Pilgrim’s Progress, a book that breathes of every beautiful and valuable emotion.
But of works of art little can be said; their influence is profound and silent, like the influence of nature; they mould by contact; we drink them up like water, and are bettered, yet know not how. It is in books more specifically didactic that we can follow out the effect, and distinguish and weigh and compare. A book which has been very influential upon me fell early into my hands, and so may stand first, though I think its influence was only sensible later on, and perhaps still keeps growing, for it is a book not easily outlived: the Essais of Montaigne. That temperate11 and genial12 picture of life is a great gift to place in the hands of persons of to-day; they will find in these smiling pages a magazine of heroism13 and wisdom, all of an antique strain; they will have their ‘linen decencies’ and excited orthodoxies fluttered, and will (if they have any gift of reading) perceive that these have not been fluttered without some excuse and ground of reason; and (again if they have any gift of reading) they will end by seeing that this old gentleman was in a dozen ways a finer fellow, and held in a dozen ways a nobler view of life, than they or their contemporaries.
The next book, in order of time, to influence me, was the New Testament14, and in particular the Gospel according to St. Matthew. I believe it would startle and move any one if they could make a certain effort of imagination and read it freshly like a book, not droningly and dully like a portion of the Bible. Any one would then be able to see in it those truths which we are all courteously15 supposed to know and all modestly refrain from applying. But upon this subject it is perhaps better to be silent.
I come next to Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, a book of singular service, a book which tumbled the world upside down for me, blew into space a thousand cobwebs of genteel and ethical16 illusion, and, having thus shaken my tabernacle of lies, set me back again upon a strong foundation of all the original and manly17 virtues18. But it is, once more, only a book for those who have the gift of reading. I will be very frank — I believe it is so with all good books except, perhaps, fiction. The average man lives, and must live, so wholly in convention, that gunpowder20 charges of the truth are more apt to discompose than to invigorate his creed21. Either he cries out upon blasphemy22 and indecency, and crouches23 the closer round that little idol24 of part-truths and part-conveniences which is the contemporary deity25, or he is convinced by what is new, forgets what is old, and becomes truly blasphemous26 and indecent himself. New truth is only useful to supplement the old; rough truth is only wanted to expand, not to destroy, our civil and often elegant conventions. He who cannot judge had better stick to fiction and the daily papers. There he will get little harm, and, in the first at least, some good.
Close upon the back of my discovery of Whitman, I came under the influence of Herbert Spencer. No more persuasive27 rabbi exists, and few better. How much of his vast structure will bear the touch of time, how much is clay and how much brass28, it were too curious to inquire. But his words, if dry, are always manly and honest; there dwells in his pages a spirit of highly abstract joy, plucked naked like an algebraic symbol but still joyful29; and the reader will find there a caput mortuum of piety30, with little indeed of its loveliness, but with most of its essentials; and these two qualities make him a wholesome31, as his intellectual vigour32 makes him a bracing33, writer. I should be much of a hound if I lost my gratitude34 to Herbert Spencer.
Goethe’s Life, by Lewes, had a great importance for me when it first fell into my hands — a strange instance of the partiality of man’s good and man’s evil. I know no one whom I less admire than Goethe; he seems a very epitome35 of the sins of genius, breaking open the doors of private life, and wantonly wounding friends, in that crowning offence of Werther, and in his own character a mere36 pen-and-ink Napoleon, conscious of the rights and duties of superior talents as a Spanish inquisitor was conscious of the rights and duties of his office. And yet in his fine devotion to his art, in his honest and serviceable friendship for Schiller, what lessons are contained! Biography, usually so false to its office, does here for once perform for us some of the work of fiction, reminding us, that is, of the truly mingled37 tissue of man’s nature, and how huge faults and shining virtues cohabit and persevere38 in the same character. History serves us well to this effect, but in the originals, not in the pages of the popular epitomiser, who is bound, by the very nature of his task, to make us feel the difference of epochs instead of the essential identity of man, and even in the originals only to those who can recognise their own human virtues and defects in strange forms, often inverted39 and under strange names, often interchanged. Martial40 is a poet of no good repute, and it gives a man new thoughts to read his works dispassionately, and find in this unseemly jester’s serious passages the image of a kind, wise, and self-respecting gentleman. It is customary, I suppose, in reading Martial, to leave out these pleasant verses; I never heard of them, at least, until I found them for myself; and this partiality is one among a thousand things that help to build up our distorted and hysterical42 conception of the great Roman Empire.
This brings us by a natural transition to a very noble book — the Meditations43 of Marcus Aurelius. The dispassionate gravity, the noble forgetfulness of self, the tenderness of others, that are there expressed and were practised on so great a scale in the life of its writer, make this book a book quite by itself. No one can read it and not be moved. Yet it scarcely or rarely appeals to the feelings — those very mobile, those not very trusty parts of man. Its address lies further back: its lesson comes more deeply home; when you have read, you carry away with you a memory of the man himself; it is as though you had touched a loyal hand, looked into brave eyes, and made a noble friend; there is another bond on you thenceforward, binding44 you to life and to the love of virtue19.
Wordsworth should perhaps come next. Every one has been influenced by Wordsworth, and it is hard to tell precisely45 how. A certain innocence46, a rugged47 austerity of joy, a sight of the stars, ‘the silence that is in the lonely hills,’ something of the cold thrill of dawn, cling to his work and give it a particular address to what is best in us. I do not know that you learn a lesson; you need not — Mill did not — agree with any one of his beliefs; and yet the spell is cast. Such are the best teachers; a dogma learned is only a new error — the old one was perhaps as good; but a spirit communicated is a perpetual possession. These best teachers climb beyond teaching to the plane of art; it is themselves, and what is best in themselves, that they communicate.
I should never forgive myself if I forgot The Egoist. It is art, if you like, but it belongs purely48 to didactic art, and from all the novels I have read (and I have read thousands) stands in a place by itself. Here is a Nathan for the modern David; here is a book to send the blood into men’s faces. Satire49, the angry picture of human faults, is not great art; we can all be angry with our neighbour; what we want is to be shown, not his defects, of which we are too conscious, but his merits, to which we are too blind. And The Egoist is a satire; so much must be allowed; but it is a satire of a singular quality, which tells you nothing of that obvious mote50, which is engaged from first to last with that invisible beam. It is yourself that is hunted down; these are your own faults that are dragged into the day and numbered, with lingering relish51, with cruel cunning and precision. A young friend of Mr. Meredith’s (as I have the story) came to him in an agony. ‘This is too bad of you,’ he cried. ‘Willoughby is me!’ ‘No, my dear fellow,’ said the author; ‘he is all of us.’
I have read The Egoist five or six times myself, and I mean to read it again; for I am like the young friend of the anecdote52 — I think Willoughby an unmanly but a very serviceable exposure of myself.
I suppose, when I am done, I shall find that I have forgotten much that was most influential, as I see already I have forgotten Thoreau, and Hazlitt, whose paper ‘On the Spirit of Obligations’ was a turning-point in my life, and Penn, whose little book of aphorisms53 had a brief but strong effect on me, and Mitford’s Tales of Old Japan, wherein I learned for the first time the proper attitude of any rational man to his country’s laws — a secret found, and kept, in the Asiatic islands. That I should commemorate54 all is more than I can hope or the Editor could ask. It will be more to the point, after having said so much upon improving books, to say a word or two about the improvable reader. The gift of reading, as I have called it, is not very common, nor very generally understood. It consists, first of all, in a vast intellectual endowment — a free grace, I find I must call it — by which a man rises to understand that he is not punctually right, nor those from whom he differs absolutely wrong. He may hold dogmas; he may hold them passionately41; and he may know that others hold them but coldly, or hold them differently, or hold them not at all. Well, if he has the gift of reading, these others will be full of meat for him. They will see the other side of propositions and the other side of virtues. He need not change his dogma for that, but he may change his reading of that dogma, and he must supplement and correct his deductions55 from it. A human truth, which is always very much a lie, hides as much of life as it displays. It is men who hold another truth, or, as it seems to us, perhaps, a dangerous lie, who can extend our restricted field of knowledge, and rouse our drowsy56 consciences. Something that seems quite new, or that seems insolently57 false or very dangerous, is the test of a reader. If he tries to see what it means, what truth excuses it, he has the gift, and let him read. If he is merely hurt, or offended, or exclaims upon his author’s folly58, he had better take to the daily papers; he will never be a reader.
And here, with the aptest illustrative force, after I have laid down my part-truth, I must step in with its opposite. For, after all, we are vessels59 of a very limited content. Not all men can read all books; it is only in a chosen few that any man will find his appointed food; and the fittest lessons are the most palatable60, and make themselves welcome to the mind. A writer learns this early, and it is his chief support; he goes on unafraid, laying down the law; and he is sure at heart that most of what he says is demonstrably false, and much of a mingled strain, and some hurtful, and very little good for service; but he is sure besides that when his words fall into the hands of any genuine reader, they will be weighed and winnowed61, and only that which suits will be assimilated; and when they fall into the hands of one who cannot intelligently read, they come there quite silent and inarticulate, falling upon deaf ears, and his secret is kept as if he had not written.
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insidiously
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| 潜在地，隐伏地，阴险地 | |
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autobiography
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| n.自传 | |
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entrapped
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| v.使陷入圈套，使入陷阱( entrap的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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influential
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| adj.有影响的，有权势的 | |
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constrain
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| vt.限制，约束；克制，抑制 | |
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monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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ego
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| n.自我，自己，自尊 | |
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pious
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| adj.虔诚的；道貌岸然的 | |
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touchingly
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| adv.令人同情地，感人地，动人地 | |
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pedant
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| n.迂儒；卖弄学问的人 | |
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temperate
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| adj.温和的，温带的，自我克制的，不过分的 | |
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genial
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| adj.亲切的，和蔼的，愉快的，脾气好的 | |
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heroism
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| n.大无畏精神，英勇 | |
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testament
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| n.遗嘱；证明 | |
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courteously
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| adv.有礼貌地，亲切地 | |
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ethical
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| adj.伦理的，道德的，合乎道德的 | |
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manly
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| adj.有男子气概的；adv.男子般地，果断地 | |
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virtues
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| 美德( virtue的名词复数 )； 德行； 优点； 长处 | |
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virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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gunpowder
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| n.火药 | |
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creed
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| n.信条；信念，纲领 | |
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blasphemy
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| n.亵渎，渎神 | |
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crouches
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| n.蹲着的姿势( crouch的名词复数 )v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的第三人称单数 ) | |
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idol
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| n.偶像，红人，宠儿 | |
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deity
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| n.神，神性；被奉若神明的人(或物) | |
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blasphemous
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| adj.亵渎神明的，不敬神的 | |
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persuasive
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| adj.有说服力的，能说得使人相信的 | |
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brass
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| n.黄铜；黄铜器，铜管乐器 | |
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joyful
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| adj.欢乐的，令人欢欣的 | |
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piety
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| n.虔诚，虔敬 | |
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wholesome
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| adj.适合；卫生的；有益健康的；显示身心健康的 | |
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vigour
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| （=vigor）n.智力，体力，精力 | |
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bracing
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| adj.令人振奋的 | |
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gratitude
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| adj.感激，感谢 | |
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epitome
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| n.典型，梗概 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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persevere
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| v.坚持，坚忍，不屈不挠 | |
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inverted
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| adj.反向的，倒转的v.使倒置，使反转( invert的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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martial
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| adj.战争的，军事的，尚武的，威武的 | |
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passionately
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| ad.热烈地，激烈地 | |
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hysterical
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| adj.情绪异常激动的，歇斯底里般的 | |
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meditations
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| 默想( meditation的名词复数 )； 默念； 沉思； 冥想 | |
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binding
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| 有约束力的，有效的，应遵守的 | |
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precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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innocence
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| n.无罪；天真；无害 | |
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rugged
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| adj.高低不平的，粗糙的，粗壮的，强健的 | |
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purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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satire
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| n.讽刺，讽刺文学，讽刺作品 | |
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mote
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| n.微粒；斑点 | |
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relish
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| n.滋味，享受，爱好，调味品；vt.加调味料，享受，品味；vi.有滋味 | |
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anecdote
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| n.轶事，趣闻，短故事 | |
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aphorisms
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| 格言，警句( aphorism的名词复数 ) | |
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commemorate
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| vt.纪念，庆祝 | |
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deductions
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| 扣除( deduction的名词复数 )； 结论； 扣除的量； 推演 | |
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drowsy
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| adj.昏昏欲睡的，令人发困的 | |
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insolently
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| adv.自豪地，自傲地 | |
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folly
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| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
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vessels
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| n.血管( vessel的名词复数 )；船；容器；（具有特殊品质或接受特殊品质的）人 | |
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palatable
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| adj.可口的，美味的；惬意的 | |
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winnowed
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| adj.扬净的，风选的v.扬( winnow的过去式和过去分词 )；辨别；选择；除去 | |
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