ON READING BETWEEN THE LINES.

I

WAS once much amused, on taking up a book of travels

and experiences, on observing a satiric note addressed to the printer: "These lines are to be spaced out widely, as there is much to be read between them." Now there is certainly a happy art, never more needed than in these modern days, of "reading between the lines." There is an old proverb which says that we should believe nothing that we hear, and only half that we see. The ages of faith are over, in which "that we saw it in print" was sufficient to assure conviction. Without actually going so far as to disbelieve what we read in print or manuscript, it is nevertheless true that something remains to be read over and above what we find in the manuscript or print. We may call it a gloss, or a marginal reading, or an interpretation; but, however it may be described, the process is assuredly that of "reading between the lines." Even in public writing how much there is of private reading! If you are reading a leading article, or a debate in Parliament, or even the report of a law-case, you may often detect the bias. The intention is to write up or to write down. Even City articles are not immaculate. Even friendly correspondence

has its special aim. That is a very good direction to " space out the lines widely, as there is much to be read between them."

I remember once being very much struck by a literal instance of "reading between the lines." I was visiting a great scholar, one whose name is deservedly high throughout the learned world. I found him after breakfast poring diligently over an ancient manuscript. Those strong glasses and those faded characters must indeed be trying to the eyesight. This," said the great authority on ancient manuscripts," is a palimpsest." He was literally "reading between the lines." It was the usual kind of thing. There had been some old skin covered with writing; and more parchment being required for further writing, this parchment had been washed and prepared for the use of another scribe. The former writing had not been obliterated; but the characters were faded and could only with great difficulty be deciphered. In order that he might write the more easily, the copyist had avoided the former traces of manuscript; and thus the ancient manuscript was legible "between the lines." It has frequently happened that in the scriptorium of the ancient monastery the monk has written down some wild worthless legend, such as we may read by the hundred in the Acta Sanctorum; and, to save expense and pains, has sacrificed some priceless text of Virgil or Cicero. To the best of my memory, in the case I am mentioning, it was a cursive manuscript of some

portion of the New Testament, which itself might have been a copy of those big earliest manuscripts of old which were called the Unical Mss. Thus, through the simple process of literally reading "between the lines," one of the most valuable manuscripts in the world may have been discovered. One of our poets has an interesting conceit of human life itself being a palimpsest. There is many a writing on our lives that memory can only faintly recall, and yet which is written as if with a pen of adamant and a point of diamond. Sometimes between the familiar lines of to-day we can discover tracings of the writings of far-off times, traces of thoughts and words and deeds which are forgotten, save for these sudden shocks of memory, but which have coloured and shaped the course of our lives.

It is curious to note how Messieurs the Novelists have introduced writing between the lines as a trick of their craft. I am one of those who think that Monte Christo is a most delicious book, showing, as no other novelist had hitherto done, the poetry and privileges of wealth. Being at Marseilles the other day, I was much interested in seeing the allée in which Mercédes lived, and the café in which Edouard Dantes was arrested. A friend once took me by the arm, in a most enthusiastic manner, down a certain street. "In that street," he exclaimed, "Mr. Micawber used to dwell." Imaginary personages are often more powerful than real personages. M. Dumas very neatly works in an incident of reading between the lines. The old

abbé in the Château d'If relates how he found out the secret of the treasure buried in the island by rescuing the remains of a burned paper. He cunningly reads between the lines and is enabled to give an approximation to the actual writing. Mr. Wilkie Collins in the Moonstone makes a medical man take down some muttured ravings, from which, by a process analogous to reading between the lines, he constructs a coherent whole. In a puzzle story such a trick is very useful.

In the matter of testimonials it is always as well to read between the lines. The testimonial is valuable not so much for what it says as for what it does not say. This is the case through the whole gamut of testimonials, from the gorgeous epergnes presented to one another by the members of some Mutual Admiration Society to the characters given to domestic servants. Once a celebrated man told me that he had been asked to give a testimonial to a gentleman whom we will call Mr. Anscombe, who was a candidate for a professorship in a colonial university. "I only met Mr. Anscombe once in my life," said our friend," and on that occasion he was in a state of beastly intoxication." I hastened to observe that under such circumstances he could hardly be expected to give a testimonial. "O yes, I did," said the great man, "I managed to put something together that would serve his turn." I presume that a character for sobriety would hardly be among the good points enumerated; but then, to be sure, that would be a matter that would

hardly be looked for as requiring mention in the application of a man of learning for a professorship. And yet various sad instances might be given of very learned men being overcome by some very brutal vice. One might almost give a separate paper to this subject of testimonials. Occasionally they serve other purposes besides those of giving a character.

The late Archdeacon Sinclair told the writer that when Sir William Hamilton was a candidate for a chair in the University of Edinburgh, in the gift of the Lord Provost and Baillie, Sir William came to the archdeacon in a state of great tribulation, and wished him to write a testimonial which he might lay before the civic patrons. "They don't know anything about my writings, and have rather got the idea that I am an atheist." The archdeacon wrote a very careful letter to the corporation, in which he cautiously explained to their collective wisdom that, so far from Sir William Hamilton's writings being atheistical, they had a precisely contrary tendency. Sir William won the chair, and I believe that Mr. Sinclair always considered that he had a very great hand in his getting it.

In this matter of the giving of characters there is generally a good deal of reading between the lines. In giving a character it is well to weigh and scrutinise every expression you use, as certainly your correspondent will not fail to weigh and scrutinise your expressions. There has been a great deal of unpleasant litigation in this matter of the giving of characters. If you give a character which the