What was it that so fascinated the young student, as he stood by the river shore? Not the Pons Asinorum.What book so delighted him, and blinded him to all the rest of the world, so that he did not care to see the apple-woman with her fruit, or (more tempting still to sons of Eve) the pretty girls with their apple cheeks, who laughed and prattled round the fountain! What was the book? Do you suppose it was Livy, or the Greek grammar? No; it was a NOVEL that you were reading, you lazy, not very clean, good-for-nothing, sensible boy! It was D'Artagnan locking up General Monk in a box, or almost succeeding in keeping Charles the First's head on.It was the prisoner of the Chateau d'If cutting himself out of the sack fifty feet under water (I mention the novels I like best myself--novels without love or talking, or any of that sort of nonsense, but containing plenty of fighting, escaping, robbery, and rescuing)--cutting himself out of the sack, and swimming to the island of Monte Cristo.O Dumas! O thou brave, kind, gallant old Alexandre! Ihereby offer thee homage, and give thee thanks for many pleasant hours.I have read thee (being sick in bed) for thirteen hours of a happy day, and had the ladies of the house fighting for the volumes.
Be assured that lazy boy was reading Dumas (or I will go so far as to let the reader here pronounce the eulogium, or insert the name of his favorite author); and as for the anger, or it may be, the reverberations of his schoolmaster, or the remonstrances of his father, or the tender pleadings of his mother that he should not let the supper grow cold--I don't believe the scapegrace cared one fig.
No! Figs are sweet, but fictions are sweeter.
Have you ever seen a score of white-bearded, white-robed warriors, or grave seniors of the city, seated at the gate of Jaffa or Beyrout, and listening to the story-teller reciting his marvels out of "Antar" or the "Arabian Nights?" I was once present when a young gentleman at table put a tart away from him, and said to his neighbor, the Younger Son (with rather a fatuous air), "I never eat sweets.""Not eat sweets! and do you know why?" says T.
"Because I am past that kind of thing," says the young gentleman.
"Because you are a glutton and a sot!" cries the Elder (and Juvenis winces a little)."All people who have natural, healthy appetites, love sweets; all children, all women, all Eastern people, whose tastes are not corrupted by gluttony and strong drink." And a plateful of raspberries and cream disappeared before the philosopher.
You take the allegory? Novels are sweets.All people with healthy literary appetites love them--almost all women;--a vast number of clever, hard-headed men.Why, one of the most learned physicians in England said to me only yesterday, "I have just read So-and-So for the second time" (naming one of Jones's exquisite fictions).
Judges, bishops, chancellors, mathematicians, are notorious novel-readers; as well as young boys and sweet girls, and their kind, tender mothers.Who has not read about Eldon, and how he cried over novels every night when he was not at whist?
As for that lazy naughty boy at Chur, I doubt whether HE will like novels when he is thirty years of age.He is taking too great a glut of them now.He is eating jelly until he will be sick.He will know most plots by the time he is twenty, so that HE will never be surprised when the Stranger turns out to be the rightful earl,--when the old waterman, throwing off his beggarly gabardine, shows his stars and the collars of his various orders, and clasping Antonia to his bosom, proves himself to be the prince, her long-lost father.He will recognize the novelist's same characters, though they appear in red-heeled pumps and ailes-de-pigeon, or the garb of the nineteenth century.He will get weary of sweets, as boys of private schools grow (or used to grow, for I have done growing some little time myself, and the practice may have ended too)--as private school-boys used to grow tired of the pudding before their mutton at dinner.