Charles Bossuet's mind was first fired to study by reading, at an early age, Fontenelle's 'Eloges' of men of science. Another work of Fontenelle's--'On the Plurality of Worlds'--influenced the mind of Lalande in making choice of a profession. "It is with pleasure," says Lalande himself in a preface to the book, which be afterwards edited, "that I acknowledge my obligation to it for that devouring activity which its perusal first excited in me at the age of sixteen, and which I have since retained."In like manner, Lacepede was directed to the study of natural history by the perusal of Buffon's 'Histoire Naturelle,' which he found in his father's library, and read over and over again until he almost knew it by heart. Goethe was greatly influenced by the reading of Goldsmith's 'Vicar of Wakefield,' just at the critical moment of his mental development; and he attributed to it much of his best education. The reading of a prose 'Life of Gotz vou Berlichingen' afterwards stimulated him to delineate his character in a poetic form. "The figure of a rude, well-meaning self-helper," he said, "in a wild anarchic time, excited my deepest sympathy."Keats was an insatiable reader when a boy; but it was the perusal of the 'Faerie Queen,' at the age of seventeen, that first lit the fire of his genius. The same poem is also said to have been the inspirer of Cowley, who found a copy of it accidentally lying on the window of his mother's apartment; and reading and admiring it, he became, as he relates, irrecoverably a poet.
Coleridge speaks of the great influence which the poems of Bowles had in forming his own mind. The works of a past age, says he, seem to a young man to be things of another race; but the writings of a contemporary "possess a reality for him, and inspire an actual friendship as of a man for a man. His very admiration is the wind which fans and feeds his hope. The poems themselves assume the properties of flesh and blood." (15)But men have not merely been stimulated to undertake special literary pursuits by the perusal of particular books; they have been also stimulated by them to enter upon particular lines of action in the serious business of life. Thus Henry Martyn was powerfully influenced to enter upon his heroic career as a missionary by perusing the Lives of Henry Brainerd and Dr. Carey, who had opened up the furrows in which he went forth to sow the seed.
Bentham has described the extraordinary influence which the perusal of 'Telemachus' exercised upon his mind in boyhood.
"Another book," said he, "and of far higher character (than a collection of Fairy Tales, to which he refers), was placed in my hands. It was 'Telemachus.' In my own imagination, and at the age of six or seven, I identified my own personality with that of the hero, who seemed to me a model of perfect virtue; and in my walk of life, whatever it may come to be, why (said I to myself every now and then)--why should not I be a Telemachus? .... That romance may be regarded as THE FOUNDATION-STONE OF MY WHOLECHARACTER--the starting-post from whence my career of life commenced. The first dawning in my mind of the 'Principles of Utility' may, I think, be traced to it." (16)Cobbett's first favourite, because his only book, which he bought for threepence, was Swift's 'Tale of a Tub,' the repeated perusal of which had, doubtless, much to do with the formation of his pithy, straightforward, and hard-hitting style of writing. The delight with which Pope, when a schoolboy, read Ogilvy's 'Homer'
was, most probably, the origin of the English 'Iliad;' as the 'Percy Reliques' fired the juvenile mind of Scott, and stimulated him to enter upon the collection and composition of his 'Border Ballads.' Keightley's first reading of 'Paradise Lost,' when a boy, led to his afterwards undertaking his Life of the poet.
"The reading," he says, "of 'Paradise Lost' for the first time forms, or should form, an era in the life of every one possessed of taste and poetic feeling. To my mind, that time is ever present.... Ever since, the poetry of Milton has formed my constant study--a source of delight in prosperity, of strength and consolation in adversity."Good books are thus among the best of companions; and, by elevating the thoughts and aspirations, they act as preservatives against low associations. "A natural turn for reading and intellectual pursuits," says Thomas Hood, "probably preserved me from the moral shipwreck so apt to befal those who are deprived in early life of their parental pilotage. My books kept me from the ring, the dogpit, the tavern, the saloon. The closet associate of Pope and Addison, the mind accustomed to the noble though silent discourse of Shakspeare and Milton, will hardly seek or put up with low company and slaves."It has been truly said, that the best books are those which most resemble good actions. They are purifying, elevating, and sustaining; they enlarge and liberalize the mind; they preserve it against vulgar worldliness; they tend to produce highminded cheerfulness and equanimity of character; they fashion, and shape, and humanize the mind. In the Northern universities, the schools in which the ancient classics are studied, are appropriately styled "The Humanity Classes." (17)Erasmus, the great scholar, was even of opinion that books were the necessaries of life, and clothes the luxuries; and he frequently postponed buying the latter until he had supplied himself with the former. His greatest favourites were the works of Cicero, which he says he always felt himself the better for reading. "I can never," he says, "read the works of Cicero on 'Old Age,' or 'Friendship,' or his 'Tusculan Disputations,'