BAD BOOKS.

“Je ferai quelque jour une apologie dans les formes, des plats et mauvais livres. Ils sont sans prix pour un bon esprit.”⁠[15]⁠

Grimm, p. 1. T. 3. p. 107.

“Il y a autant d’invention à s’enrichir par un sot livre, qu’il y a de sottise à l’acheter. C’est ignorer le goût du peuple que de ne pas hasarder quelquefois, de grandes fadaises.”⁠[16]⁠

La Bruyère.

I have just risen from perusing a tolerably accurate, but dull and unphilosophical censure of our modern literature. No more Miltons, no more Shakspeares, no more Bacons, and Jeremy Taylors!! One might as well lament that there were no more knights-errant and battering rams. Every age knows its own wants, and provides for them; and Milton would not probably succeed much better, were he to reappear in this nineteenth century, with a new Paradise Lost, than the Laureate, Robert Southey, Esq. has done with his Vision of Judgment. It must, indeed, be admitted, that if La Bruyère is right, our English booksellers are very inventive personages; for they produce more bad books than the rest of Europe put together. But there is also abundance of excellence afloat—of that precise excellence which society requires; and as the overflowing fertility of literature has generated a tact, prompt and accurate as an instinct, for discovering what books are to be bought and studied, what may be read, and what cast aside, the putting forth of nonsense and villainy is much less mischievous than is supposed. In fact, a man is drawn by a sort of elective attraction to the works which harmonize with his intellectual peculiarities, assort with his feelings, and dovetail with his wit, just as animals are drawn by nature to their appropriate bodily nourishment; and the frequency of bad books proves only that fools and knaves now employ their leisure in reading, instead of the more dangerous and brutal pastimes which occupied their predecessors.

This evil of bad books is no novelty. Whoever runs his eye over the catalogue lying on his library table, will be convinced, that in any age, the number of really useful and valuable works bore no very large proportion to the entire mass of literature. Men are apt to imagine, that Ovid, and Virgil, and Horace, had the field to themselves; but the “mad, melting, reciters of August” were, no doubt, as abundant in their day, as in the silver age of latinity, which so rapidly followed. The unrolling of the manuscripts of Pompeii has proved that “trash” preceded the invention of reviews, and belongs to an elder antiquity than that of “the Row:” and it may be questioned, whether, at the burning of the library at Alexandria, there were an hundred volumes utterly lost to the world, which were not more serviceable as fuel for the baths, than as food for the mind.

The first efforts of the press were expended in disseminating the accumulated errors of a thousand years, which had previously been in the exclusive possession of the few; and since then, each successive generation has pretty equally divided its time between refuting the mistakes of its predecessors, and popularizing and accrediting others of its own. Ignorance, pedantry, and bad taste, infect the earlier writers, notwithstanding their eloquence and energy. Their alchymy, their astrology, their witchcraft, were scarcely less mischievous, than their false morality and silly politics. Of theology it is dangerous to speak; but as every one will admit that whatever has been written without the pale of his own narrow sect, is pernicious error; and as what every body says must be true, the reader may draw his own consequence. Medicine, to this very day, continues a tissue of ill-understood facts, a chaos of false inferences and incongruous systems. The science of law is a nullity; and each particular code a standing monument of the barbarity and perversity of the species: and as for philosophy, why the less that is said on the subject the better. Of all the works of imagination, with which the press teemed during the last two centuries, how very few live and are read! History has ever been a record of errors, of party misrepresentation, and of mistaken views, passed through the cullender of the historian’s fancy: while, as to essentials, it is the play of Hamlet, with the part of the Prince of Denmark omitted by particular desire. Each generation, again, has had its harvest of pamphlets, embodying the corrupt interests and false views of the moment, which have fretted their little hour on the stage, and then have been consigned to the trunk-makers, pastry-cooks, and bibliomaniacs.

We are told that literature having become a matter of mercantile speculation, and authorship having acquired much pecuniary value, men are in haste to realize; so that, among the multitude of competitors, an author dreads to be anticipated; and hurries his crude thoughts before the public, lest, while he is digesting them, the market should change, and all chance of reward be cut off for ever. But if authors do not now “keep their piece nine years,” something must be attributed also to the quickened movements of intellect: writing, aye, and thinking also, are more easily performed than formerly; and a work is not always the worse for being thrown off at a heat.

Another cause for the multiplication of flimsy books, is the universality of authorship; and this fashion for writing is, at least, as good a fashion as that of driving coaches and beating the watch. When all sorts and conditions of persons publish, all sorts and conditions of persons must read; and the annual quality of publications, is less an exponent of the talent in the market, than of the minimum of wit, sense and utility, beyond which the public will not buy. Let there arise a demand for any species of nonsense and absurdity, and there will be found a corresponding supply.

The last generation ran very much upon literary cobblers and poetic milk-maids. The present goes principally upon lords and honourables; and low as the “collective wisdom” may rate in the estimation of some persons, M. P. in a title page, is worth at least an extra hundred pounds. Amateur writing, like amateur fiddling, need not be of the very best. Those who are placed beyond the reach of great interests, have rarely strong passions; and if they trifle agreeably, they have done all that can reasonably be expected from them. The “degenerate race to come,” will, perhaps, read nothing but the works of those who put their mark to their MS., who write by deputy, and publish by dictation: or, perhaps, Mr. Babbage, improving on his calculating machine, will apply it to the purposes of general literature; and then authors, like coach-horses, may be displaced by steam engines; and “the trade,” emigrating to Manchester or Birmingham, may send opinions into the market per sample, and manufacture doctrines of every shade and pattern, “as bespoke.” For this change we are not wholly unprepared. Already the study is converted into a counting-house; the ledger has become the true primum mobile of intellect; and the rapid sale of a work is the signal for multiplying it, in all possible varieties, and in all sorts of spurious imitation. To-day, satirical poems are the vogue, to-morrow, ottava rima; the next day, books of the church, and the day after, the lives of demireps of both sexes. The Scotch robber so lately “your only wear,” is now falling into “the sere and yellow leaf;” and Heaven knows what embryo original is about to start a new idea, for the benefit of the writing community.

Another order of writers, peculiar to our age, are speculating tradesmen, who, treading on the heels of physicians, write books to puff their wares, and make their title page an advertisement of their shop. Cooks and confectioners recommend the lightness of their pastry by that of their style; and put forward the flavour of their wit, as a specimen of that of their ragouts. Shakspeare speaks of “cutler’s poetry;” but we boast of anthologies of razor-strop manufacturers, venders of lottery tickets, and composers of French wines.

To return, however, from the starting point, where is the vast evil of this teeming multiplicity, and its consequent mediocrity of books? The reviewers have set the fashion of obloquy and vituperation, as if blockheads and dolts were not their best friends, and as necessary to their trade as the evil spirit is said to be to that of the clergy, or thieves and rogues to my Lord Chief Justice. If none but good books appeared, what would become of their essays on “every thing in the world, and all that sort of thing,” which form the “striking article” of their quarterly numbers. Reviewers should know that bad books make good reviews, exactly as “de mauvais vin on fait de bon vinaigre.”⁠[17] Without the necessary supply, adieu the opportunity for being witty in print, and of shewing forth your own superiority, and enlivening the town at the small expence of an author’s feelings.

It is something very unreasonable and selfish in the wise and the learned to desire that nothing should be published but what suits themselves. The woollen manufacturer is not restricted to superfine articles, nor the Glasgow weaver to fine muslins. If the whole community must be clothed, even though all cannot afford to dress like gentlemen, by parity of reasoning, the whole should be amused, although all cannot afford to be wits and philosophers. We tolerate the fabrication of Tunbridge toys and glass beads, and boggle about the printing of somniferous essays for aldermen after dinner, of vapid novels for ladies’ maids, and of sentimental mysticism for blue-stocking peeresses. It is no more than fair that such persons should be supplied with their favourite articles, and—

As for the cant of bad books debasing the intellect and corrupting the morals of the public, the fact is quite the other way: it is the public who debauch the littérateur. None read silly and wicked books, but the silly and the wicked: and the charge is a mere confounding of cause and effect. But, were things otherwise, have not the public their taverns and gaming-houses, under the sanction of the highest authorities?

Books are, or ought to be, pictures of the human mind; and if the witty and the wise alone found a reflection of themselves in the productions of the press, the literary world would be as oddly constituted as the political. The virtual representation of the commons would be but a cold type of the general disfranchisement of the reading public. We have no need here of parliamentary returns to prove the fact. No bookseller, who knows what he is about, will have any thing to do with an original thinker, a man of science, a philosopher, or in general with any one whose matter exceeds “two handsome volumes in octavo.” Such works may be excellent, may confer lasting benefits on the species, and entitle their authors to immortal fame; but they don’t sell; or, at best, they make but a slow return of capital. “Quis leget hæc?” Mr. Colburn or Mr. Murray would ask; and the answer comes pat, “vel duo vel nemo, turpe et miserabile.” “Sir, let me see you and your works no more.”

As an article of trade, we may say of books, that bad is the best. The nauseous absurdities of “cheap and nasty” tract societies, the spawn of delirious fanaticism or canting hypocrisy, “go off” better than the soundest works of a judicious churchman, and infinitely exceed the sale of the most popular political economy.

The human intellect, like the livery of London, must be addressed by its own recorder, and he who writes too deeply for his age, might as well write in a foreign language. If you will but write down to the level of the general understanding, shock no prejudice, startle no man’s faith, break no new ground, give none the trouble of thinking, expose no mystery of the human breast, but “amuse the eyes” without “grieving the heart,” you will, if not positively as dull as an oyster, be sure of a third edition, and a place at half the tea-tables of London. The mediocre, the foolish, and the common-place, are the publisher’s best customers; and to deprive them of their appropriate reading, would be as politically unjust, as it is economically impolitic. In literature, as in all things, we want a free trade: no embargoes on stupidity, no protecting duties on right opinions. Why should the harmless literature of nations, and the innocent amusement of the mass, be eclipsed or trampled under foot by an arrogant censorship? ’Twere worse than the three-piled sanctity of a judaical sabbath, or the anti-cake-and-ale virtue stolen from the puritans of the great rebellion.

But the evil of restraint would not stop here. The wisest and the best are sometimes glad to take refuge in a bad book, and to find relief from the dulness of their own thoughts in the absurdities of another’s. It is a rich literary year that produces three first-rate novels, the supply to a moderate consumer, of barely ten days! How then are the public to get through a long summer’s course of watering-places, without the aid of the secondary Scotch novelists, and the third-rate imitators of Lord N. and Lady C. B.? In the long vacation, the chancellor himself might be reduced to the Minerva press, or be compelled to a second perusal of Almacks. Your hungry reader is not nice, or at worst he eats, like Pistol, his unsavoury leek, and grumbles. In this respect dulness has great privileges. Genius never writes in folio, and if it ventures in quarto, the bulk is as much owing to the publisher, as a dandy’s to Stultz’s buckram. Besides, there is a metaphysical length in a bad book, valuable to the literary glutton beyond expression. A volume of S.’s polemics is matter for a week, and a surfeit of all desire for reading for a month afterwards. In short, dulness is in literature, what bread is to a good dinner—it prevents the cayenne and coulis from palsying the palate, and spoiling the digestion. It is the bitter olive to good port, or a Cheshire cheese in a wine merchant’s cellar. Certain philosophers have explained the existence of moral evil, as a necessary point of comparison for relishing the blessings of life; and if so, why may not bad books be tolerated, as contributing to the delight with which we enjoy the few that are worth reading?

The same argument applies equally to error. Truth is “caviare to the general,” and if given undiluted, the scandal would be intolerable. Literature is the food, not the physic of the mind; and till we see the opulent contented with roots and water, we must allow them the luxury of conventional nonsense. Without literary rogues and false prophets, also, there would be no controversy. Truth and error are too unfairly matched if both must have a fair hearing; but when one error is pitted against another, the quarrel is “a very pretty quarrel,” and may afford good sport to the bye-stander. The controversialist puts not up Ajax’s prayer for light; but, like Æneas, is concealed in his cloud, and lives and triumphs in the friendly darkness.

If it be the great defect of Catholicism that it closes the door against all inquiry, pure and unadulterated truth is equally liable to the imputation. Men are better engaged in bowling down each other’s prejudices, than in not thinking at all. If error were not recorded in print, it would not be canvassed, and “on doit savoir gré à ceux qui osent établir les paradoxes. Si la raison reçue se trouve vraie, on a l’avantage de croire par raison, ce qu’on croyait par habitude; si elle est fausse, on est délivré d’une erreur.”⁠[19] (Condorcet.)

Few, if any books, are so totally worthless as not to contribute sometimes to the reader’s ideas; and what they do not communicate, they may suggest. There are likewise degrees of comparison in absurdity; and as one nail drives out another, a mitigated piece of nonsense is a good cure for that which is more aggravated. One man’s opinion may be true, as it respects another’s, though false to the nature of things. Such opinions are stages on the journey of knowledge; and they may serve the ignorant, though the philosopher despises them.

I have but one more consideration to urge, and that is the value of bad books as an instrument of commerce. What multitudes are supported by the mere manufacture! What type founders, ink makers, painters, engravers, paper makers, and pressmen! what folders, and stitchers, and distributers, tanners, leather-sellers, and binders, find an industrious and honest subsistence out of the small class of writers alone, who print for their own amusement, and whose circulation extends not beyond the presentation copies! How many live by “parsons much bemused in beer,” by visitation charges, libretti for the opera, proceedings of learned societies, experiences of hypochondriacal old gentlemen, and hysterically evangelical ladies; religious novels by persons of quality, and novels of high life by persons who live in low! But enumeration is useless. All the good books in existence would not supply six months’ matter for the London press. It is by the printing of nonsense alone, that booksellers ride in their coaches, that the revenue is supported, and a countless host of sooty artizans maintained in comfort and independence.

I should not feel, therefore, any great qualms of conscience in adding another volume to the mass, even at the risk of its being dull or foolish. A heavy volume is not worse than a heavy visiter, and the book may be laid down without rudeness; while the bore must be endured, until “il s’ennuye nous d’ennuyer.” If the purchaser finds, too late, that he has bought folly or impertinence, let him put it in handsome binding; for if gold and frippery will pass such qualities current when incarnated in a coxcomb, they will perhaps do as much for them when embodied in print. At all events the volume will fill a shelf as well as better books; and this, after a time, becomes the destiny of the gravest authors, in the most select libraries. Not, however, that one should write expressly “afin d’embobiliner les pauvres gens,” but with a loyal intent to be as little stale, flat, and unprofitable as possible. Of this, however, authors are unfortunately not always the best judges; and moreover there is so much danger in the imputation of setting the Thames on fire, that, what between reviewers, attornies general, and hypocritical readers, they have no great encouragement in putting forth their best wares.