This Seems A Very Simple
Matter, And Yet It Is True That People Become Intensely Absorbed In
Watching And Living With Such Things.
Add to these the veined elms, whose
innumerable branches divide like the veins or the nerves of a
physiological
Diagram, or like sprays of delicate seaweed slow turning
from their winter outline to the soft green shading of summer; add to
these the upspringing of the wheat and its slow coming to that maturity
of gold which marks the fulness of the year; consider, then, the
incomparable beauty of the mowing grass. Now remember that they live
among these things, and by daily iteration the dullest mind becomes
wrapped up in and welded to them. Black type on white paper is but a flat
surface after these. Secondly, the books and papers themselves, made and
printed in such enormous quantities, do not touch a country mind. They
have such a cityfied air. Very correct, very scientific, and extremely
well edited, but thin in the matter. Something so stagey - you may see it,
for instance, in the books for children introducing fairies, which
fairies have short skirts, and caper about exactly like a pantomime among
stage frogs and stage mushrooms, and it is quite clear that the artist
who drew them, and the author who wrote of them, actually drew their
inspiration from the boards of a theatre. They have never dreamed among
the cowslips of the real fields, they have never watched the ways of the
birds from under an oak. Children instinctively see that these toy-books
are not natural, and do not care for them; they may be illustrated in
gold and colours, sumptuously got up, and yet they are failures. Children
do not take these to bed with them. I have seen this myself; I bought so
many books to please children, but could never do it till by chance some
one sent a little American toy-book, 'The History of the Owl and his
Little One, and the Manoeuvres of the Fox.' This had a little of the
spirit of the woods in it, and was read and re-read for a year. Only the
other day a lady was telling me much the same thing, how she had bought
book after book but could never hit on anything to please her little boy,
till at last she found an American publication, roughly illustrated,
which he always had by him. It is very strange that the art of the
old-fashioned book for children has gone over to New York, which seems to
us the land of newness.
For grown-up people the modern books which are sent out in such numbers,
often very cheap, have likewise an artificial cityfied air so obviously
got up and theatrical, such a mark of machinery on them, all stamped and
chucked out by the thousand, that they have no attraction for a people
who live with nature, and even in old age retain a certain childlike
faith in honesty and genuine work. The reprints of good old authors, too,
which may be had for a few pennies now, are so edited away that all the
golden ring of the metal is clipped out of them. Overlaid with notes, and
analyses, and critical exegesis, the original throb of the author's heart
has disappeared from these polished bones. Just to suggest the book that
would please the country reader, look for a moment at those works which
came into existence at the very first dawn of printing - those volumes
with strongly drawn and Durer-like illustrations, very rough, and without
perspective, but whose meaning is at once understood, and which somehow
convey what I may call a genuine impression. Any countryman would tell
you at once that the illustrations of half the books of the present day
are mere vamped-up shallowness, drawn from a city man's mind in a city
room by gaslight. You must consider that the countryman who lives out of
doors, and always with nature, is, as regards his reading, very much in
the same mental position as the people who lived four hundred years
ago - in the days when costly and rare manuscripts, few and far between,
chained to the desk, were just being superseded by printed books at a
fifth the price, which could be actually bought and carried home. Till
quite lately so few books have circulated in country places that they may
be said to have been like these old manuscripts. The early printed books
were simply the manuscripts printed, and that is why they remain to this
day the finest specimens of typography, quite incomparable and not to be
approached by present-day printers. The art of the scribe, elaborated
through centuries, had reached a marvellous perfection; the first printer
copied them - the magic Fust actually sold his first books as manuscripts.
Since printers have only copied printers, books have steadily declined in
excellence. I have been obliged to use the outside to suggest the
inside - country readers want that which is genuine, honest, and, in a
word, really good; you cannot please them with vamped-up book-making. Two
books occur to me at this moment which would be greatly appreciated in
every country home, from that of the peasant who has just begun to read
to the houses of well-educated and well-to-do people, if they only knew
of their existence and their contents - of course provided they were cheap
enough, for country people have to be careful of their money nowadays. I
allude to Darwin's 'Climbing Plants' and to his 'Earthworms;' these are
astonishing works of singular patience and careful observation. The first
gives most fascinating facts about such a common plant, for example, as
the hedge bryony and the circular motion of its tendrils. Any farmer, for
instance, will tell you that the hop-bine will insist upon going round
the pole in one direction, and you cannot persuade it to go the other.
These circular movements seem almost to resemble those of the planets
about their centre, all things down to the ether seem to have a rotatory
motion; and some foreign plants which he grew send their far-extended
tendrils round and round with so patent a movement that you can see it
hour by hour like the hand of a clock.
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