EIGHTH READER Hearty Reading BY SYDNEY SMITH Sydney Smith (1771-1845): An English clergyman and author. He published some volumes of sermons characterized by earnestness and moderation, but his reputation rests chiefly on his miscellaneous and critical writings. He was distinguished for his wit, humor, and conversational powers. This advice about reading is taken from a "Lecture on the Conduct of the Understanding." Curiosity is a passion very favorable to the love of study, and a passion very susceptible of increase by cultivation. Sound travels so many feet in a second, and light travels so many feet in a second. Nothing more probable; but you do not care how light and sound travel. Very likely: 5 but make yourself care; get up, shake yourself well, pretend to care, make believe to care, and very soon you will care, and care so much that you will sit for hours thinking about light and sound, and be extremely angry with any one who interrupts you in your pursuits, and tolerate no 10 other conversation but about light and sound, and catch yourself plaguing everybody to death who approaches you with the discussion of these subjects. I am sure that a man ought to read as he would grasp a nettle: do it lightly, and you get molested; grasp it 15 with all your strength and you feel none of its asperities. There is nothing so horrible as languid study; when you sit looking at the clock, wishing the time was over or that somebody would call on you and put you out of your missery. The only way to read with any efficacy is to read so heartily that dinner-time comes two hours before you expected it. To sit with your Livy before you, and hear the geese cackling that saved the Capitol; and to see with your 10 own eyes the Carthaginian sutlers gathering up the rings of the Roman knights after the battle of Cannæ and heaping them into bushels; and to be so intimately present at the actions you are reading of that when anybody knocks at the door it will take you two or three seconds to deter15 mine whether you are in your own study, or in the plains of Lombardy, looking at Hannibal's weather-beaten face, and admiring the splendor of his single eye, - this is the only kind of study which is not tiresome, and almost the only kind which is not useless; this is the knowledge which 20 gets into the system and which a man carries about and uses like his limbs, without perceiving that it is extraneous, weighty, or inconvenient. As pěr'i ties: roughnesses; severities. Titus Liv'ў (59 в.с.18 A.D.): a Roman historian. Consult a history of Rome for an account of how the sacred geese saved the Capitol from the Gauls, of the battle of Can'næ, in which the Romans were defeated by the Car tha gin'i ans, and of Han'ni bal (248-183 B.c.), the great Carthaginian general. Sut'lers: persons who follow an army and sell provisions to the soldiers. Éx tra'něoŭs: not essential; foreign. The Coming of Arthur BY ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892): An English poet from whose writings a number of selections have been given in earlier books of this series. This selection is a part of the poem entitled, "The Coming of Arthur," the first of the series of poems comprising Tennyson's great epic, "The Idylls of the King." Arthur, lately made king, had sent to King Leodogran asking his daughter Guinevere in marriage. Leodogran consulted Queen Bellicent as to Arthur's kingship. This extract gives her answer. "Bleys, our Merlin's master, as they say, It seemed in heaven, a ship, the shape thereof 5 10 15 Wave after wave each mightier than the last, 5 And down the wave and in the flame was borne Free sky and stars: 'And this same child,' he said, Save on the further side; but when I met 20 Merlin, and asked him if these things were truth 25 "Rain, rain, and sun! a rainbow in the sky! ""Rain, rain, and sun! a rainbow on the lea ! "Rain, sun, and rain! and the free blossom blows : Sun, rain, and sun! and where is he who knows? From the great deep to the great deep he goes.' "So Merlin riddling angered me; but thou 5 For comfort after their wage-work is done, 10 Hath spoken also, not in jest, and sworn Though men may wound him that he will not die, 15 She spake and King Leodogran rejoiced, Dreaming, a slope of land that ever grew, 20 Field after field, up to a height, the peak 30 |