BOOKS AND CRITICS. 



159 



calls historical or geographical associations, and 

 brings back to the spectator familiar scenes in 

 the midst of unfamiliar surroundings, besides 

 yielding grateful evidence of human care and in- 

 dustry. 



Intellectually, the obelisk accords with the 

 natural love of symmetry, both in itself, owing to 

 the even arrangement of its sides and angles, and 

 with reference to its surroundings, in those cases 

 where it occupies the central or nodal position in 

 a regular inclosure. In a landscape, it yields us 

 the pleasurable feeling of individuality and recog- 

 nizability, aiding us in the determination of dis- 

 tant topographical details. In a city, it decorates 

 and defines the noticeable sites. And in all cases 

 alike it produces either the intellectual pleasure 

 resulting from a sense of harmony with neighbor- 

 ing conditions, or the intellectual discomfort due 

 to a consciousness of discord and incongruity. 



Now, if ano belisk, with all its apparent sim- 

 plicity, really involves so immense a number of 



feelings for its proper perception, we may per- 

 haps form some dim idea of the infinite plexus 

 of feelings which are concerned in the proper 

 perception of a great work of art. We may thus 

 be led, by an easy example, to hesitate before we 

 accept those current aesthetic dogmas which at- 

 tribute the sense of beauty to any one faculty, 

 intellectual or emotional. And we may conclude 

 that every separate thrill of that developed emo- 

 tion which we call the consciousness of beauty is 

 ultimately analyzable into an immense number of 

 factors, the main and original members of which 

 are purely sensuous, while its minor and deriva- 

 tive members are more or less distinctly ideal. 

 To the child and the savage a beautiful object is 

 chiefly one which gives immediate and pleasura- 

 ble stimulation to the eye or the ear : to the culti- 

 vated man, a beautiful object is still the same in 

 essence, with the superadded gratifications of the 

 highly-evolved intelligence and moral nature. — 

 Cornhill Magazine. 



BOOKS AXD CRITICS. 1 



Br MAKE PATTISON. 



BEFORE advancing any statements which may 

 appear to you doubtful, I will bespeak 

 your favorable attention by saying something 

 which cannot be contradicted. 



A man should not talk about what he does 

 not know. That is a proposition which must be 

 granted me. I will go on to say further — it is 

 not the same thing — a man should speak of what 

 he knows. When it was proposed to me to say 

 something to you this evening, I wished that what 

 I said should be about something I knew. 



I think I do know something about the use of 

 books. Not the contents of books, but the value 

 and use of them. All men have read some books. 

 Many have read much. There are many men 

 who have read more books than I have. Few in 

 this busy, energetic island in which we live can 

 say, what I have to confess of myself, that my 

 whole life has been passed in handling books. 



The books of which we are going to speak to- 

 night are the books of our day — modern litera- 

 ture, or what are commonly called " new books." 



So various are the contents of the many-col- 

 ored volumes which solicit our attention month 

 after month for at least nine months of the year 



1 A lecture delivered October 29, 1877. 



that it may seem an impossible thing to render 

 any account of so many-sided a phenomenon in 

 the short space of one lecture. But I am not 

 proposing to pass in review book by book, or 

 writer by writer — that would be endless. I am 

 not proposing to you to speak of individuals at 

 all ; I want you to take a comprehensive point 

 of view, to consider our books en masse, as a col- 

 lective phenomenon — say from such a point of 

 view as is indicated by the questions, " Who 

 write them ? Who read them ? Why do they 

 write or read them ? What is the educational or 

 social value of the labor so expended in reading 

 or writing ? " 



Literature is a commodity, and as such it is 

 subject to economic law. Books, like any other 

 commodity, can only be produced by the com- 

 bination of labor and capital — the labor of the 

 author, the capital of the publisher. They would 

 not be written unless the author labored to write 

 them. They could not. be printed unless there 

 was somebody ready to advance money for the 

 paper and the work of the printing-press. The 

 publisher, the capitalist, risks his money on a 

 book because he expects to turn it over with a 

 trade-profit — say twelve per cent. — on it. On 



