X.—The "Prison Test."
THERE can be nothing like a campaign for finding out the faults of books ; no one would go a second time into action with anything but what he thought the very best. At the other end of the scale, there is nothing like enforced solitude for discovering a book's merits. Lamb might have relented even towards "scientific treatises, almanacs, and Statutes at Large," had he "done" six months in gaol or been stranded on a desert island. On the other hand that there are books which have withstood even this strain is known to all readers of Macaulay's Life, An officer had been committed, says Mr. Trevelyan, for knocking down a policeman. The authorities intercepted the prisoner's French novels, but allowed him to have the Bible and Macaulay's history. He preferred picking oakum to reading about the Revolution of 1688. This story, as Mr. Trevelyan adds, avenged Guicciardini for the anecdote told by Macaulay in the second paragraph of his essay on Burleigh:—"There was, it is said, a criminal in Italy who was suffered to make his choice between Guicciardini and the galleys. He chose the history. But the war of Pisa was too much for him. He changed his mind and went to the oar." Remembering these tales, we were naturally anxious, in order to make our researches complete, to apply the "prison test." It so happened that a friend of ours of literary tastes was recently enjoying her Majesty's hospitality in certain northern latitudes, and we seized the opportunity, therefore, to send him Sir John Lubbock's list. Here is his answer:—
I am so overwhelmed by the number of Sir John Lubbock's Hundred Books, which I have never even opened, that I have sent the list to the chaplain, who is the librarian of the State institution in which I have at present the honour to reside, with a request to furnish me at once with as many of the Hundred as are in stock, in order that I may at once attempt to make up for lost time. The chaplain informs me that the prison library, which numbers over 2,000 volumes on its shelves, only contains ten—namely:—
Butler's "Analogy."
Keble's "Christian Year."
Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress."
Smith's "Wealth of Nations."
Locke's "Conduct of the Understanding."
Cook's Voyages.
Milton.
Goldsmith's"Vicar of Wakefield"
Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe."
Macaulay's Essays.
With a levity which seemed to us highly unbecoming in prisoner, and which we cannot too severely deprecate, our friend added the following suggestion: Why not send a confidential interviewer to ask Sir John Lubbock whether he has read all his hundred books, and if not, why not?"