ISAAC D'ISRAELI

(1766-1848)

HE man who is content to please while others insist on being admired is so rare in literature that he is certain never to be forgotten. No one has ever thought of calling the author of "The Curiosities of Literature" a great writer, but who that ever knew him would wish him to be great at the expense of ceasing to be what he is? He has not the delicate wit of Addison, the humor of Lamb, or the brilliancy of De Quincey, but there are times when he can make the reader forget that there is, or that there need be, better writing than his. Like Robert Chambers, he is unobtrusively friendly; and at the same time he is wholly free from the vice of the critical style, which avoids stating facts except by involution and indirection. He writes as if he had an open book before him and were modestly answering a friend's question of what had most interested him in it. This, indeed, is what he does do, except that the open book is the literature of the world, in which he so immersed himself that it was the only world he lived in.

He was born at Enfield, England, May, 1766, from a family of Jewish origin. His father, who removed from Venice to England, wished him to become a merchant, but his distaste for trade was so great that one of his first literary attempts was a poem denouncing it. His father finally consented to allow him to follow his own inclinations, and he passed his subsequent life almost wholly in libraries. His son, the celebrated Earl of Beaconsfield, says that in the country he scarcely ever left his room "but to saunter in abstraction upon a terrace, muse over a chapter, or coin a sentence." He died January 19th, 1848. Among his works are "The Recreations of Authors," "The Calamities of Authors," "The Quarrels of Authors," and "The Amenities of Literature," all approximating the quality of "The Curiosities of Literature," but none of them equaling it. It was a masterpiece of its kind which even its own author could produce but once. Many of its essays are models worthy of imitation by all who, when they have something to say, are willing to give up admiration and be wholly forgotten by their hearers for the sake of saying it and having it remembered rather than wondered at.

MR.

THE MAN OF ONE BOOK

R. MAURICE, in his animated memoirs, has recently acquainted us with a fact which may be deemed important in the life of a literary man. He tells us, "We have just been informed that Sir William Jones invariably read through every year the works of Cicero, whose life indeed was the great exemplar of his own." The same passion for the works of Cicero has been participated in by others. When the best means of forming a good style were inquired of the learned Arnauld, he advised the daily study of Cicero; but it was observed that the object was not to form a Latin, but a French style; "In that case," replied Arnauld, "you must still read Cicero."

A predilection for some great author, among the vast number which must transiently occupy our attention, seems to be the happiest preservative for our taste; accustomed to that excellent author whom we have chosen for our favorite, we may in this intimacy possibly resemble him. It is to be feared that if we do not form such a permanent attachment, we may be acquiring knowledge, while our elevated taste becomes less and less lively. Taste embalms the knowledge which otherwise cannot preserve itself. He who has long been intimate with one great author will always be found to be a formidable antagonist; he has saturated his mind with the excellencies of genius; he has shaped his faculties insensibly to himself by his model, and he is like a man who even sleeps in armor, ready at a moment! The old Latin proverb reminds us of this fact: Cave ab homine unius libri; be cautious of the man of one book!

Pliny and Seneca give very safe advice on reading; that we should read much, but not very many books-but they had no "monthly lists of new publications!" Since their days others have favored us with "Methods of study" and "Catalogues of books to be read." Vain attempts to circumscribe that invisible circle of human knowledge which is perpetually enlarging itself! The multiplicity of books is an evil for the many; for we now find an helluo librorum, not only among the learned, but, with their pardon, among the unlearned; for those who, even to the prejudice of their health, persist only in reading the incessant book novelties of our own time, will after many years acquire a sort of learned ignorance. We are now in want of an art to teach how books are to be read, rather than not to read them; such

an art is practicable. be "the man of one book," and preserve an uninterrupted intercourse with that great author with whose mode of thinking we sympathize and whose charms of composition we can habitually retain.

But amidst this vast multitude still let us

It is remarkable that every great writer appears to have a predilection for some favorite author; and with Alexander, had they possessed a golden casket, would have enshrined the works they so constantly turned over. Demosthenes felt such delight in the history of Thucydides, that to obtain a familiar and perfect mastery of his style, he recopied his history eight times; while Brutus not only was constantly perusing Polybius even amidst the most busy periods of his life, but was abridging a copy of that author on the last awful night of his existence, when on the following day he was to try his fate against Antony and Octavius. Selim II. had the "Commentaries" of Cæsar translated for his use; and it is recorded that his military ardor was heightened by the perusal. We are told that Scipio Africanus was made a hero by the writings of Xenophon. When Clarendon was employed in writing his history, he was in a constant study of Livy and Tacitus, to acquire the full and flowing style of the one and the portrait painting of the other; he records this circumstance in a letter. Voltaire had usually on his table the "Athalie" of Racine, and the "Petit Careme" of Massillon; the tragedies of the one were the finest model of French verse, the sermons of the other of French prose. "Were I obliged to sell my library," exclaimed Diderot, "I would keep back Moses, Homer, and Richardson"; and by the éloge which this enthusiastic writer composed on our English novelist, it is doubtful, had the Frenchman been obliged to have lost two of them, whether Richardson had not been the elected favorite. Monsieur Thomas, a French writer, who at times displays high eloquence and profound thinking, Herault de Sechelles tells us, studied chiefly one author, but that author was Cicero; and never went into the country unaccompanied by some of his works. Fénelon was constantly employed on his Homer; he left a translation of the greater part of the "Odyssey," without any design of publication, but merely as an exercise for style. Montesquieu was a constant student of Tacitus, of whom he must be considered a forcible imitator. He has, in the manner of Tacitus, characterized Tacitus. "That historian," he says, "who abridged everything, because he saw

every thing." The famous Bourdaloue reperused every year St. Paul, St. Chrysostom, and Cicero. "These," says a French critic, «< were the sources of his masculine and solid eloquence." Grotius had such a taste for Lucan, that he always carried a pocket edition about him, and has been seen to kiss his handbook with the rapture of a true votary. If this anecdote be true, the elevated sentiments of the stern Roman were probably the attraction with the Batavian republican. The diversified reading of Leibnitz is well known; but he still attached himself to one or two favorites; Virgil was always in his hand when at leisure, and Leibnitz had read Virgil so often, that even in his old age he could repeat whole books by heart; Barclay's "Argenis" was his model for prose; when he was found dead in his chair, the "Argenis" had fallen from his hands. Rabelais and Marot were the perpetual favorites of La Fontaine; from one he borrowed his humor, and from the other his style. Quevedo was so passionately fond of the "Don Quixote" of Cervantes, that often in reading that unrivaled work he felt an impulse to burn his own inferior compositions; to be a sincere admirer and a hopeless rival is a case of authorship the hardest imaginable. Few writers can venture to anticipate the award of posterity; yet perhaps Quevedo had not even been what he was, without the perpetual excitement he received from his great master. Horace was the friend of his heart to Malherbe; he laid the Roman poet on his pillow, took him in the fields, and called his Horace his breviary. Plutarch, Montaigne, and Locke, were the three authors constantly in the hands of Rosseau, and he has drawn from them the groundwork of his ideas in his "Emilie." The favorite author of the great Earl of Chatham was Barrow; on his style he had formed his eloquence, and had read his great master so constantly, as to be able to repeat his elaborate sermons from memory. The great Lord Burleigh always carried Tally's "Offices" in his pocket; Charles V. and Bonaparte had Machiavel frequently in their hands; and Daviia was the perpetual study of Hampden; he seemed to have discovered in that historian of civil wars those which he anticipated in the land of his fathers.

These facts sufficiently illustrate the recorded circumstance of Sir William Jones's invariable habit of reading his Cicero through very year, and exemplify the happy result for him, who, amidst the multiplicity of his authors, still continues in this way to be "the man of one book."

ON THE POVERTY OF THE LEARNED

ORTUNE has rarely condescended to be the companion of Genius; others find a hundred byroads to her palace; there is but one open, and that a very indifferent one, for men of letters. Were we to erect an asylum for venerable genius, as we do for the brave and the helpless part of our citizens, it might be inscribed a Hospital for Incurables! When even Fame will not protect the man of genius from famine, Charity ought. Nor should such an act be considered as a debt incurred by the helpless member, but a just tribute we pay in his person to Genius itself. Even in these enlightened times such have lived in obscurity while their reputation was widely spread; and have perished in poverty, while their works were enriching the booksellers. Of the heroes of modern literature the accounts are as copious as they are melancholy.

Xylander sold his notes on Dion Cassius for a dinner. He tells us that at the age of eighteen he studied to acquire glory, but at twenty-five he studied to get bread.

Cervantes, the immortal genius of Spain, is supposed to have wanted bread; Camoens, the solitary pride of Portugal, deprived of the necessaries of life, perished in a hospital at Lisbon. This fact has been accidentally preserved in an entry in a copy of the first edition of the "Lusiad," in the possession of Lord Holland in a note written by a friar, who must have been a witness of the dying scene of the poet, and probably received the volume. which now preserves the sad memorial, and which recalled it to his mind, from the hands of the unhappy poet: "What a lamentable thing to see so great a genius so ill rewarded! I saw him die in a hospital in Lisbon, without having a sheet or a shroud, una sauana, to cover him, after having triumphed in the East Indies, and sailed five thousand five hundred leagues! What good advice for those who weary themselves night and day in study without profit." Camoens, when some hidalgo complained that he had not performed his promise in writing some verses for him, replied, "When I wrote verses I was young, had sufficient food, was a lover, and beloved by many friends, and by the ladies; then I felt poetical ardor; now I have no spirits, no peace of mind. See there my Javanese who asks me for two pieces to purchase firing, and I have them not to give him."