The Pleasure of Books

I add, for the sake of remembering this wonderful essay in the future, a Longfellow's "My Books":

Sadly as some old mediæval knight
Gazed at the arms he could no longer wield,
The sword two-handed and the shining shield
Suspended in the hall, and full in sight,
While secret longings for the lost delight
Of tourney or adventure in the field
Came over him, and tears but half concealed
Trembled and fell upon his beard of white,
So I behold these books upon their shelf,
My ornaments and arms of other days;
Not wholly useless, though no longer used,
For they remind me of my other self,
Younger and stronger, and the pleasant ways
In which I walked, now clouded and confused.

On to William Lyon Phelps brilliant essay, "The Pleasure of Books":

"The habit of reading is one of the greatest resources of mankind; and we enjoy reading books that belong to us much more than if they are borrowed. A borrowed book is like a guest in the house; it must be treated with punctiliousness, with a certain considerate formality. You must see that it sustains no damage; it must not suffer while under your roof. You cannot leave it carelessly, you cannot mark it, you cannot turn down the pages, you cannot use it familiarly. And then, some day, although this is seldom done, you really ought to return it.

But your own books belong to you; you treat them with that affectionate intimacy that annihilates formality. Books are for use, not for show; you should own no book that you are afraid to mark up, or afraid to place on the table, wide open and face down. A good reason for marking favorite passages in books is that this practice enables you to remember more easily the significant sayings, to refer to them quickly, and then in later years, it is like visiting a forest where you once blazed a trail. You have the pleasure of going over the old ground, and recalling both the intellectual scenery and your own earlier self.

Everyone should begin collecting a private library in youth; the instinct of private property, which is fundamental in human beings, can here be cultivated with every advantage and no evils. One should have one's own bookshelves, which should not have doors, glass windows, or keys; they should be free and accessible to the hand as well as to the eye. The best of mural decorations is books; they are more varied in color and appearance than any wallpaper, they are more attractive in design, and they have the prime advantage of being separate personalities, so that if you sit alone in the room in the firelight, you are surrounded with intimate friends. The knowledge that they are there in plain view is both stimulating and refreshing. You do not have to read them all. Most of my indoor life is spent in a room containing six thousand books; and I have a stock answer to the invariable question that comes from strangers. "Have you read all of these books?"

"Some of them twice." This reply is both true and unexpected.

There are of course no friends like living, breathing, corporeal men and women; my devotion to reading has never made me a recluse. How could it? Books are of the people, by the people, for the people. Literature is the immortal part of history; it is the best and most enduring part of personality. But book-friends have this advantage over living friends; you can enjoy the most truly aristocratic society in the world whenever you want it. The great dead are beyond our physical reach, and the great living are usually almost as inaccessible; as for our personal friends and acquaintances, we cannot always see them. Perchance they are asleep, or away on a journey. But in a private library, you can at any moment converse with Socrates or Shakespeare or Carlyle or Dumas or Dickens or Shaw or Barrie or Galsworthy. And there is no doubt that in these books you see these men at their best. They wrote for you. They "laid themselves out," they did their ultimate best to entertain you, to make a favorable impression. You are necessary to them as an audience is to an actor; only instead of seeing them masked, you look into their innermost heart of heart."

1933

Francis Appleton

Another woman (like Natalya Pushkina and Helen of Troy) who changed the world with sheer, incomprehensible beauty.

Longfellow proposed to Francis Appleton the first day he met her.  She was his muse, whether she liked it or not.  Longfellow had to wait through seven years of nos, during which time he published a book about his

unsuccessful attempts in the form of a thinly-veiled travel romance. Hyperion (1839) did not help his cause; Fanny, who was a woman of good taste, had this to say about it:

There are really some exquisite things in this book, though it is desultory, objectless, a thing of shreds and patches like the author’s mind... The hero is evidently himself, and... the heroine is wooed (like some persons I know have been) by the reading of German ballads in her unwilling ears.

The romance of this story is mind-blowing; every letter, every poem, every anecdote becomes a testimony to the power of love to inspire and transcend.  I cannot find in history and literature a more profound story or more pure example of true love.

When she died in 1861, tragically and prematurely as a result of circumstances too awful to relate, Longfellow was destroyed.  He coped by translating Dante.  He handed himself over to the Italian bard who's love for Beatrice Portinari superseded death; Dante's epic puts the poet as the protagonist, and when he finally makes it through hell, the lovely Beatrice guides him to heaven.  It was not until eighteen years later that Longfellow wrote his only poem about the loss of Francis (reproduced below) -- but it is perhaps better to look at all the poetry she inspired in life rather than the single one he could hardly bring himself to write after her death.  This poem exists well within the realm of the infandum.

The Cross of Snow

In the long, sleepless watches of the night,
   A gentle face — the face of one long dead —
   Looks at me from the wall, where round its head
   The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light.
Here in this room she died; and soul more white
   Never through martyrdom of fire was led
   To its repose; nor can in books be read
   The legend of a life more benedight.
There is a mountain in the distant West
   That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines
   Displays a cross of snow upon its side.
Such is the cross I wear upon my breast
   These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes
   And seasons, changeless since the day she died.

Rossetti's Beata Beatrix (ca. 1864-70)

Railroaded

...business success--money-getting...comes from a rather low instinct. Certainly  so far as my observation goes, it is rarely met with in combination with the finer or more interesting traits of character.  I have known, and known tolerably well, a good many "successful" men--"big" financially--men famous during the last half-century; and a less interesting crowd I do not care to encounter.  Not one that I have ever known would I care to meet again, either in this world or the next; nor is one of them associated in my mind with the idea of humor, thought or refinement.  A set of mere money-getters and traders, they were essentially unattractive and uninteresting.
--Charles Francis Adams

The Flowering of New England

For Cambridge had ripened, in these few short years, as a well-tended graden ripens in June.  All in a mist of birds and honeysuckle, the literary mind had put forth shoots.  Thoughts were growing, books were growing under the quiet boughs of the ancient elm-trees, in the fragrant shadows of the locusts, the perfume of the daphne and the lilac.  Robins darted down the leafy paths, orioles swung on their nests; one heard the murmur of bees and doves and the bobolink's song in the meadows along the river. The scent of the syringa filled the air.  These were the scholastic shades that poets had always loved; and books, whether in verse or prose, were springing from the Cambridge mind, thick and fast as the grass of the Cambridge door-yards...Everyone in Cambridge appeared to be writing a book.
-- Van Wyck Brooks

Marcus Aurelius' Daily Affirmation

When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest  jealous, and surly.  They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that he wrongdoer has a nature related to my own—not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness.  Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him.  We were born to work together like feet, hands, and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower.  To obstruct each other is unnatural.  To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are obstructions.

It is a worthwhile exercise to write oneself such an affirmation, a daily reminder of one's place in the universe, and of one's weaknesses for the simple sake of self-betterment and resolution.  I keep this quote next to Franklin's 13 tenets.

1. TEMPERANCE. 

Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.

2. SILENCE. 

Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.

3. ORDER. 

Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.

4. RESOLUTION. 

Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.

5. FRUGALITY. 

Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.

6. INDUSTRY. 

Lose no time; be always employ’d in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.

7. SINCERITY. 

Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.

8. JUSTICE. 

Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.

9. MODERATION. 

Avoid extreams; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.

10. CLEANLINESS. 

Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation.

11. TRANQUILLITY. 

Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.

12. CHASTITY. 

Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dulness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.

13. HUMILITY. 

Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

Franklin's Free and Easy Society had a list of worthwhile questions to be asked again and again:

1. 1.      Have you met with any thing in the author you last read, remarkable, or suitable to be communicated to the Junto? particularly in history, morality, poetry, physics, travels, mechanic arts, or other parts of knowledge?

2.      What new story have you lately heard agreeable for telling in conversation?

3.      Hath any citizen in your knowledge failed in his business lately, and what have you heard of the cause?

4.      Have you lately heard of any citizen’s thriving well, and by what means?

5.      Have you lately heard how any present rich man, here or elsewhere, got his estate?

6.      Do you know of any fellow citizen, who has lately done a worthy action, deserving praise and imitation? or who has committed an error proper for us to be warned against and avoid?

7.      What unhappy effects of intemperance have you lately observed or heard? of imprudence? of passion? or of any other vice or folly?

8.      What happy effects of temperance? of prudence? of moderation? or of any other virtue?

9.      Have you or any of your acquaintance been lately sick or wounded? If so, what remedies were used, and what were their effects?

10.  Who do you know that are shortly going [on] voyages or journeys, if one should have occasion to send by them?

11.  Do you think of any thing at present, in which the Junto may be serviceable to mankind? to their country, to their friends, or to themselves?

12.  Hath any deserving stranger arrived in town since last meeting, that you heard of? and what have you heard or observed of his character or merits? and whether think you, it lies in the power of the Junto to oblige him, or encourage him as he deserves?

13.  Do you know of any deserving young beginner lately set up, whom it lies in the power of the Junto any way to encourage?

14.  Have you lately observed any defect in the laws, of which it would be proper to move the legislature an amendment? Or do you know of any beneficial law that is wanting?

15.  Have you lately observed any encroachment on the just liberties of the people?

16.  Hath any body attacked your reputation lately? and what can the Junto do towards securing it?

17.  Is there any man whose friendship you want, and which the Junto, or any of them, can procure for you?

18.  Have you lately heard any member’s character attacked, and how have you defended it?

19.  Hath any man injured you, from whom it is in the power of the Junto to procure redress?

20.  In what manner can the Junto, or any of them, assist you in any of your honourable designs?

21.  Have you any weighty affair in hand, in which you think the advice of the Junto may be of service?

22.  What benefits have you lately received from any man not present?

23.  Is there any difficulty in matters of opinion, of justice, and injustice, which you would gladly have discussed at this time?

24.  Do you see any thing amiss in the present customs or proceedings of the Junto, which might be amended?

25.  Any person to be qualified as a member was to stand up, lay his hand upon his breast, and be asked the following questions, viz.

26.  Have you any particular disrespect to any present members? Answer. I have not.

27.  Do you sincerely declare that you love mankind in general, of what profession or religion soever? Answer. I do.

28.  Do you think any person ought to be harmed in his body, name, or goods, for mere speculative opinions, or his external way of worship? Answer. No.

29.  Do you love truth for truth's sake, and will you endeavor impartially to find and receive it yourself, and communicate it to others? Answer. Yes.