Reflexions of the "Gioomy Dean"
"Reading—a virtue or a vice," was the subject of an address by Dean Inge before the Livery Committee of the Stationers' Company, London, Referring to the opinion of great men on the subject, he quoted Bacon, who said "reading maketh a full man." dri quite modern times the reading habit had taken possession of us, with the result that we were becoming a nation of readers rather than of listeners. That was one reason why people did not go to church as they did. Tt was much more natural for them to take in their spiritual and intel. lectual nourishment by the eye than through the ear. Reading as a habit had displaced the habit of listening. Yet some successful men did not read at all, and he quoted the complaint that Mr. Lloyd George never read books. It was no use reading any subject unless one was interested in it. Books about hoaxs were not very fertilizing, and he thought pooks of that type over-valued.
On the subject of literary criticism, the Dean expressed doubt, and said that one should read the pooks as well as what was written of them. Biographies must be read, but few were really well done, for they were either given to a literary man who did not know the man he wrote of or else they were given to a wife or child who thought it necessary to draw a picture not always true to life. Queen Victoria had insisted on the Prince Conso: t being drawn as a plaster saint, which was cruel. The Priace was a human person. The result was that the Prince was looked upon as a thoroughly uninteresting an. Autobiography would be interesting if the truth were told. He could imagine writing his own life except with the opposite object.
On the subject of novels he was 'a firm adherent of the old English novel. He thought the old English novels superior to those produced in France or in any other country. The glorious traditions of Scott, Dickens, and Thackeray should be kept up. He was sorry that some of our novelists were obviously copying "the French and Russian novel. That was untrue to the genius of our race, and the works were by no means so valuable.
He must mention the habit of reading the newspaper. The average man spent hours a day reading ephemeral trash, which could not be of any good at all. That was a had habit—especially when people read reports of after dinner speeches he (the Dean) did not make. Of newspapers then the less
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.