WHAT KIND OF READER ARE YOU?

Quotation from Samuel Taylor Coleridge:

Readers may be divided into four classes: 1. Sponges, who absorb all they read, and return it nearly in the same state, only a little dirtied. 2. Sand- glasses who retain nothing and are content to get through a book for getting through the time 3. Strain-bags, who retain merely the dregs of what they read 4. Mogul diamonds, equally rare and valuable, who profit by what they read, and enable others to profit by it also. (Coleridge Notes and Lectures Upon Shakespeare And Some of the Old Poets and Dramatists )

Dear Reader, I cannot claim to be anything like a mogul diamond, though all reports from Coleridge biographies suggest that was very much what he was, from the days when as a schoolboy in the dormitory of Christ’s Hospital school he would enchant his fellow pupils with stories from what he had read to the time when at university he would relay the latest speeches verbatim from pamphlets he had read earlier on the progress of Wilberforce’s Anti-slavery campaign in Parliament to fellow students.

The other day I heard the actress Miriam Margoyles speak passionately about the great English critic F. R. Leavis in his English classes who would inspire her and countless other students with the passion of his love of literature. How we need to be in the presence of teachers like that! In days when there is so much talk of teaching being done by internet, how we must emphasise the importance of the teacher being present, sharing his or her passion.

I would not dream of putting myself beside these “diamonds”. However, if in these blog posts, in an infinitely more modest way, I have gained profit from what I have read, my hope I can pass on some of that profit too.