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    I will ask you this question . If my friend who is at this time endeavouring to establish a Mechanics' Institute in the small country town of Marlborough , were to begin by looking out a real good reader , * an intelligent reader , a feeling reader , an animated reader , and having found such a treasure ,, were to employ him

    every evening to read aloud such works as are certain , when well read , to draw a delighted audience and to send them away an improved audience , would you sanction with your approbation this first step to knowledge , if it were made through those pleasant paths which have been traced out for us by the fabulist , or in modern language , the writer of fictions ? 1

    We hear much talk of' our immortal Shakspeare . I would ask how many persons out of a thousand have read his works through ? once ? twice ? how many are in the habit of reading hi 3 best works , his * Othello / e Macbeth / and ' Hamlet , ' say once a year ? Might I not dare to ask how many persons out of (a thousand ( must I qualify my question by adding * in a countrytown ? ' ) have read these immortal works * once in their lives ?

    The same question might , I am convinced , in spite of some appearances to the contrary , be asked respecting the works of Scott , and of Edgeworth ,, and of Martineau . If we might be allowed to exclude from the number of those who may be said to have read these works ; first , persons who read them over once in their season , whilst the work is fresh in the market ; and , secondly , those who read them even more than once for mere excitement , which

    excitement they cease to feel when the mind is familiar with the plot , I fear the number of persons who may be said to have read the more modern works of Scott , Edgeworth , and Martiaeau , is smaller than is generally supposed . It was not thus that the fictions of Homer were treated by an intellectual people . Sanctioned by legislators , published by princes , commented on by philosophers , they were read and

    recited , and sung and acted by the people , by the people , which proved , in yet surviving records of matter , and in imperishable records of mind , what effects may be produced by cultivating the imagination and the feelings . There were , indeed , as I have already pointed out in the words of Plato , great intellectual and moral , and , we may add , political evils , attached to the pious frauds , which the mythology of Homer had inspired in earlier times , but which it could not sustain when the period for

    * Let me remind any person who may be inclined to underrate good reading a » only a superficial accomplishment , that when not a mere mechanical art , but founded on a thorough understanding and delicate feelijg of such works as Shakspeare * s , it implies intelligence , taste , and organ iaation , of no common kind . The high claims laid for the perfect orator to physical , intellectual , and moral perfections , might be made for the good reader . Only I would insist that our progress be either analytical , viz . from the practice to the art , and from the art to the science , or synthetical , viz . from the science to the art , and from the tut to the practice , and not in the common mixtd mode , which commence * with rules of art , . at the middle .

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    14 The Diffusion of Knowledge amongst the People .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1834, page 14, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2629/page/14/