Better than life

Wednesday, December 27th., Cadogan Square, London.

A young reader wrote the other day to ask for advice about choosing books. Of course such advice can be given, and in detail, but I doubt if any two advisers would agree in their counsel and no counsel would give satisfactory results. The fact is you can't help people; you can only help them to help themselves.

When a homing pigeon is released from its basket it rises and surveys all the earth within the range of its vision, and probably sees nothing that answers directly to the call of its soul. It tries an experiment, is disappointed, returns, and tries again; and so on till it gets a clue; the rest is as easy as sliding down a slope. A young reader is like that. What more can one say except to urge him (or her) to keep his head cool as he comes to the full realisation of the vast and varied mass of realy fine literature which English writers have produced in less than six hundred years. Nobody can read everything, or the hundredth part of everything. And the man who sets out to read everything will know nothing worth knowing, because his task will have cut him off from life itself.

The British Museum is a great place; it is perhaps the greatest place in the world. But who would make it his residence, fix his bed there, eat his oranges and brown bread there? Some people read on such lines that they might as well be living day and night in a museum. I enjoy going into museums. I am always popping in and out of them. But I have still more frequent adventures in the foolish, wise, vain, invaluable world. Such is the way for a sensible bibliophile. When I look back at my reading over the last twelve months I find that not much of it has stuck in my mind, but no more do I find that when I have visited the British Museum I bring away a store of knowledge. The fact is that the experience of the moment is the thing. If I had the year to live again I would not live it differently. So with life as with books which are, after all, better than life.