NOVEL READING

THE morals of a people, as well as their intellectual character, are affected by the literature of a people. This is true of individuals and of nations. Alexander’s character was moulded and shaped very much, by the constant reading of Homer. He is said to have carried continually with him the Iliad, that by contemplating the life and character of Achilles, the great ideal hero of the poem, he might himself become truly heroic. Our Puritan fathers were truly brave, as well as good men, but they had drank in the spirit of Milton, Howe and Baxter, the great authors of their age and nation.

He who said “Let me write the ballads of a nation, and I care not who makes her laws,” meant to state a great principle. He meant to state, that the morals of society are more affected by works, which address the imagination, than by philosophy and legislative enactments. The young especially, whose passions are ardent, whose imagination is ever on the wing, love to dwell in an ideal world, rather than in a world of reality. They crave the romantic, the strained, the start ling. Works of fiction are evidently adapted to feed and fire this natural propensity.

We have only then to multiply works of this character, and scatter them broadcast over the land, and the minds of the young receive an effectual bias which may fit them to move in some ideal world, but not in this world of toil and trial, and moral responsibility. To do this— to make the mind robust and healthy—to fit moral agents for their high duties and destinies, the mind and the moral feelings must undergo a severe and rigid discipline, which it is not the province of fiction to impart. From the multiplication of works of fiction, from their cheapness, from their universal diffusion, we see the danger to which the youth of our country are exposed. Indeed, we have experienced, to some extent, the fascinating power of this species of literature; we have stood within the charmed circle, and our imagination has reeled beneath the intoxicating influence. And now, that we have retreated from the enchanted ground, we see the danger over whom the sorceress is still weaving her spell, and breathing her incantations. May we not then be permitted to lift up the voice of warning—to speak very briefly, of the effects upon the intellect and the heart, of indiscriminate novel reading?

That this species of excitement affects injuriously the intellectual character, there can be no doubt. All the powers of the mind should be duly exercised to secure a happy and harmonious development— the reason, the conscience, the memory, as well as the imagination. But it is this peculiar design of works of fiction, to address and stimulate to excess, the latter faculty. The reasoning power, which is the chief glory of man, is not called into exercise; the conscience finds little or nothing to awaken its energies, but is rather blinded by the deceptive radiance shed around it; the memory is taxed in following the intricacies of a plot; rather than the actings of principle, the exaggerated development of an exciting story, rather than the truthful representations of incident and character. The exercise is consequently morbid and unhealthy. The harmony of the mind, by such a process, is destroyed, and the imagination is left to travel wildly and without restraint over a false and fairy land. A love for the excitement of romance imparts a disrelish for works of a positive and practical utility. Science, philosophy, and history, are laid aside, as requiring too much thought and study. An habitual novel reader is like an epicure, who lives to eat, and does not eat to live, and who has no appetite for plain food, unless accompanied with wines and stimulating cordials. With what utter disgust would he turn away from the lofty conceptions of Dugald Stewart, the reasoning of a Butler, or the eloquence of a Bates, or a Barrows. He denounces these, as characterized by unendurable dullness and stupidity. Excitement, mere excitement, is the luxury of his life and the ultimatum of his reading. And what has produced this mental distortion, this excessive and absorbing love of the fabulous, the ideal, rather than the true and the useful? There must have been brought to bear the arts of fascination and sorcery. The enchantress, who mingles the wine-cup and wreathes the dance, must have been with the deluded victim, beguiling him with the music of her blandishment, and inducing him to sacrifice all that is lofty and noble in mind, at the shrine of her own idolatry.

But the effects of novel reading are perhaps more marked upon the moral character. Most professed novel writers are, we believe, no great sticklers for morality. A very low standard satisfies them. A romantic love, a reckless daring, an uncomplaining patience under the imaginary evils of life, fealty and fortitude, are among the loftiest of their delineated virtues; while positive vices, such as treachery and intrigue, seduction and murder, are unfrequently made the theme of eulogy. The pirate, the duelist, the debauchee are often made the admired heroes of a tale or a tragedy. The downward path to ruin is crowded with scenes and incidents the most enchanting and the most seductive. False views of life and character are presented. The prominent pictures or persons, in the ideal scene, are generally too highly colored—the lights are too strong—the shadows too deep—the heroes and heroines too brave or beautiful—the villains too interesting—the incidents and exploits too unlike the average realities of life. Can such a representation fail to affect the interested and excited reader? Will not his mind receive a bias prejudicial to his highest interests? And will not the heart drink in the false sentiments inculcated, as the earth drinketh in the dew?  If the morals and religion of our country are in danger from the rapid influx of foreign population, the dregs of European society, far greater is the danger from the popular literature that is flooding our country and sweeping away the high barriers of truth and virtue. Every good man, every patriot, every parent, has a vital interest in this matter. To the sons and daughters of our land must soon be committed its social interests;  for the right management and guardianship of which, they will be miserably prepared by their growing familiarity with the enervating and depraving pictures of foreign fashionable licentiousness, which everywhere abound in the popular literature of the day. Those who live in a world of dreams and visions, who are accustomed to follow the fabulous vicissitudes—the extatic joys and sorrows, the romantic exploits of some fancied hero or heroine, will find the sober realities and duties of life quite uncongenial to their excited sensibilities. They may have wept over the sorrows of a Werter, or over some tale of imaginary suffering, but for hearts really crushed under the heavy burdens of life, they can have little or no sympathy.

Their whole moral nature is sadly perverted, soured and alienated from the true ends and aims of human existence. In the works with which they have been familiar, their minds have found no true and unchanging standard of moral excellence—their passions and impulses no rightful and authoritative law—hence their moral derangement, and indeed the debasement of their entire being. While we are thus free to express the opinion, that the fictitious literature of all ages, from Boccacio down to Bulwer has, in the main, exerted a pernicious influence intellectually and morally upon society, we can not say this of all works of the imagination. Some have exerted a decidedly moral and elevating influence, and the most important and wholesome truth has been conveyed under the garb of fictitious narrative. 

The Great Teacher himself employed allegories and parables to represent the truths of his own system. If our censure were unqualified, then to be consistent, we must discard the parables of Scripture, the Paradise Lost, the Pilgrim’s Progress, and many other works which are an ornament to our literature, and an honor to the men who wrote them. Some works of the imagination are beautiful—they are magnificent and above all praise. They present religion in the most evangelical and attractive aspect. The mind of the reader is carried along in an ecstasy of interest, over hallowed yet enchanted ground, and is constantly impressed with a sense both of the power and preciousness of religion. Full of exquisite imagery—of noble thoughts happily expressed, and of high and holy principles, they will shed their bright and blessed influence around many a fire-side, imparting courage and constancy to the weak and the wavering.

Says Isaac Taylor: Genuine zest disappears wherever fiction holds sway. I am intending no onslaught on novel-reading. I have no puritanic horror of novels. I have listened to the most of those that were the popular fictions of that by-gone time. I would say this only to the heads of families.   Make your choice—freely admit from the circulating library the three volume novels of the season, and then be content to find that all residue of zest is gone as to history, or biography, or science, or anything else that is real and genuine, Christianity included.

Novel-reading is an infatuation which masters souls as surely as dram-drinking does. Many are the melancholy spectacles which one encounters in town—as, for instance, a woman, wasted, worn, in tatters, and near to starvation—this is a sad sight. And so it is sad to meet the well-dressed lady of forty or fifty, with the three greasy- boarded volumes, which are all to be devoured between the noon of to-day and the dawn of to-morrow! The alternative for the individual or for the family is this: novel-reading with its consequent emmui and often apathy, or else genuine feeling, employment, with zest, as to whatever is real in life, in history, in science, in poetry and general literature. Fiction of any sort in one scale and reality in the other, the beam will never stand on the level