The Twentieth Century (Volume 33) (Paperback)

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1893. Excerpt: ... how fiction is read by some people to the exclusion of every other form of literature except the daily papers--is it unreasonable to feel some apprehension lest the mental faculties become enervated and the intellect hampered when the realities of life come to be dealt with? The lesson of fiction is that life is nothing without love and marriage: it brings people to the threshold, where real anxiety and trial begins, and leaves them there. But real life is not accomplished with the end of its love passages. It is little to a man's credit that he should act heroically when he is in love, for then, despite himself, he takes more thought for another than for himself. You love: no higher shall you go, For this is true as Gospel text; Not noble then is never so Either in this world or the next. But to equip him for the real wear and tear of life his mind should be stored with examples of those who have encountered constant vexation, and have triumphed over disappointment, perplexity, failure, and even disaster. It is well for him to read the Waverley Novels, but it is far better to read Lockhart's Life of Scott, for that marvellous biography brings him acquainted with a life led as nobly in foul weather as in fair; of overwhelming losses surmounted by a stout spirit; and a kindly nature unsoured by disappointment or distrust. One grudges to observe the amount of time spent on sentimental love-stories, while such lives as those of the great artists Michelangelo and Benvenuto Cellini go unread. There is nothing in fiction more absorbing than the lives of these two men. Each of them, as a boy, had to encounter that most formidable of all external obstacles--an angry father armed with a rod; in vain were repeated floggings to dissuade each of them from entering upon that career upon which ea...