790 
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS. 
how very anxiously you would endeavour to analyse the 
precise meaning of every word which I said; how you 
would rush to your dictionaries directly it was all over and 
seek out those expressions which you had failed to interpret! 
And this would be simply attendance; this would be giving 
that attention to the subject of the lecture which it is ab¬ 
solutely indispensable you should give if you intend to obtain 
any advantage from it. 
Well, this being done, the next question for you is, What 
are you to do after you have attended ? Then comes the 
subject of reading, and in speaking of this I wish to guard 
you against making a very gross blunder which I am afraid 
is very often made. There is an apprehension that reading 
means going through the words of a book; and if you take 
a volume and sit down and go through it in the course of an 
evening or two, you fancy that you have read it. I assure 
you that you have done nothing of the sort. 
Do you know what is meant by the term “ literary” ? Do 
you know that it means something in relation to letters, and 
that a literary man is a man who really understands the 
construction of every word which comes before him, just as 
you pathologists or anatomists will understand the structure 
of every tissue of the animal body ; that it is a question of 
letters and not simply of words; that it is necessary to know 
what this word precisely means ’now and what it really did 
mean formerly, what the author meant in using it, and 
whether you have rightly apprehended his meaning in the 
interpretation which you put upon it. 
It was the remark of some one that before we read at all 
we should think oursqlves hungry and then read ourselves 
full. Do you know, for example, that if you are inquiring 
closely upon any one subject, suppose you want to know 
something of the constitution of a particular material, you do 
not take one book on the subject and read it straight through, 
but you go to your library and take out a number of volumes, 
some of which say little and some a great deal about this 
matter, and you examine them; and having satisfied yourself 
that you have learned all that you can of what other people 
think of the subject, then you may safely set to work to think 
about it yourself. This is absolutely reading. If you want 
to know something of the functions of a particular part of 
the animal body, while you have that want simply fixed in 
your mind get all the books which are accessible to give you 
any knowledge on that particular subject; you may depend 
upon it carrying on your studies in this way will enable 
you to grasp them one by one and in such a manner that 
