which it involves.  It is clear that Shakespeare read in such a way as to possess what he read; he not only remembered it, but he incorporated it into himself.  No other kind of reading could have brought the East out of its grave, with its rich and languorous atmosphere steeping the senses in the charm of Cleopatra, or recalled the massive and powerfully organised life of Rome about the person of the great Caesar.  Shakespeare read his books with such insight and imagination that they became part of himself; and so far as this process is concerned, the reader of to-day can follow in his steps.

The majority of people have not learned this secret; they read for information or for refreshment; they do not read for enrichment.  Feeding one’s nature at all the sources of life, browsing at will on all the uplands of knowledge and thought, do not bear the fruit of acquirement only; they put us into personal possession of the vitality, the truth, and the beauty about us.  A man may know the plays of Shakespeare accurately as regards their order, form, construction, and language, and yet remain almost without knowledge of what Shakespeare was at heart, and of his significance in the history of the human soul.  It is this deeper knowledge, however, which is essential for culture; for culture is such an appropriation of knowledge that it becomes a part of ourselves.  It is no longer something added by the memory; it is something possessed by the soul.  A pedant is formed by his memory; a man of culture is formed by the habit of meditation, and by the constant use of the imagination.  An alert and curious man goes through the world taking note of all that passes under his eyes, and collects a great mass of information, which is in no sense incorporated into his own mind, but remains a definite territory outside his own nature, which he has annexed.  A man of receptive mind and heart, on the other hand, meditating on what he sees, and getting at its meaning by the divining-rod of the imagination, discovers the law behind the phenomena, the truth behind the fact, the vital force which flows through all things, and gives them their significance.  The first man gains information; the second gains culture.  The pedant pours out an endless succession of facts with a monotonous uniformity of emphasis, and exhausts while he instructs; the man of culture gives us a few facts, luminous in their relation to one another, and freshens and stimulates by bringing us into contact with ideas and with life.

To get at the heart of books we must live with and in them; we must make them our constant companions; we must turn them over and over in thought, slowly penetrating their innermost meaning; and when we possess their thought we must work it into our own thought.  The reading of a real book ought to be an event in one’s history; it ought to enlarge the vision, deepen the base of conviction, and add to the reader whatever knowledge, insight, beauty, and power it contains.