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[DESULTORY READING.]

IV.  Another topic is Desultory Reading.  This is the whole of the reading of the unstudious mass; it is but a part of the reading of the true student.  It may mean, for one thing, jumping from book to book, perhaps reading no one through, except for pure amusement.  It may also include the reading of periodicals, where no one subject is treated at any length.  As a general rule, such reading does not give us new foundations, or constitute the point of departure of a fresh department of knowledge; yet the amount of labour and thought bestowed upon articles in periodicals, may render them efficacious in adding to a previous stock of materials, or in correcting imperfect views.  The truth is, that to the studious man, the desultory is not desultory.  The only difference with him is that he has two attitudes that he may assume—­the severe and the easy-going; the one is most associated with systematic works on leading subjects; the other with short essays, periodicals, newspapers, and conversation.  In this last attitude, which is reserved for hours of relaxation, he skips matters of difficulty, and absorbs scattered and interesting particulars without expressly aiming at the solution of problems or the discussion of abstract principles.  There is no reason why an essay in a periodical, a pamphlet, or a speech in Parliament, may not take a first place in anyone’s education.  All the labour and resource that go to form a work of magnitude may be concentrated in any one of these.  Still, they are presented in the form that we are accustomed to associate with our desultory work, and our times of relaxation; and so, they seldom produce in the minds of readers the effect that they are capable of producing.  The thorough student will not fail to extract materials from one and all of them, but even he will scarcely choose from such sources the text for the commencement of a new study.

The desultory is not a bad way of increasing our resources of expression.  Although there be a systematic and a best mode of acquiring language, there is also an inferior, yet not ineffective mode; namely, reading copiously whatever authors have at once a good style and a sustaining interest.  Hence, for this purpose, shifting from book to book, taking up short and light compositions, may be of considerable value; anything is better than not reading at all, or than reading compositions inferior in point of style.  The desultory man will not be without a certain flow of language as well as a command of ideas; notwithstanding which, he will never be confounded with the studious man.

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