online distributed proofreaders team one hundred best books with commentary and an essay on books and reading by john cowper powys 1916 preface this selection of "one hundred best books" is made after a different method and with a different purpose from the selections already in existence. those apparently are designed to stuff the minds of young persons with an accumulation of "standard learning" calculated to alarm and discourage the boldest. the following list is frankly subjective in its choice; being indeed the selection of one individual, wandering at large and in freedom through these "realms of gold." the compiler holds the view that in expressing his own predilection, he is also supplying the need of kindred minds; minds that read purely for the pleasure of reading, and have no sinister wish to transform themselves by that process into what are called "cultivated persons." the compiler feels that any one who succeeds in reading, with reasonable receptivity, the books in this list, must become, at the end, a person with whom it would be a delight to share that most classic of all pleasurable arts--the art of intelligent conversation. books and reading there is scarcely any question, the sudden explosion of which out of a clear sky, excites more charming perturbation in the mind of a man--professionally, as they say, "of letters"--than the question, so often tossed disdainfully off from young and ardent lips, as to "what one should read," if one has--quite strangely and accidentally--read hitherto absolutely nothing at all. to secure the privilege of being the purveyor of spiritual germination to such provocatively virgin soil, is for the moment so entirely exciting that all the great stiff images from the dusty museum of "standard authors," seem to swim in a sort of blurred mist before our eyes, and even, some of them at least, to nod and beckon and put out their tongues. after a while, however, the shock of first excitement diminishing, that solemn goblin responsibility lifts up its head, and though we bang at it and shoo it away, and perhaps lock it up, the pure sweet pleasure of our seductive enterprise, the "native hue," as the poet says, of our "resolution" is henceforth "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought," and the fine design robbed of its freshest dew. as a matter of fact, much deeper contemplations and maturer ponderings, only tend, in the long run, to bring us back to our original starting-point. it is just this very bugbear of responsibility which in the consciences and mouths of grown-up persons sends the bravest of our youth post-haste to confusion--so impinging and inexorable are the thing's portentous horns. it is indeed after these maturer considerations that we manage to hit upon the right key really capable of impounding the obtrusive animal; the idea, namely, of indicating to our youthful questioner the importance of aesthetic austerity in these regions--an austerity not only no less exclusive, but far more exclusive than any mandate drawn from the decalogue. the necessary matter, in other words, at the beginning of such a tremendous adventure as this blowing wind into the sails of a newly built little schooner, or sometimes even of a poor rain-soaked harbor-rotten brig, bound for the fortunate islands, is the inspiration of the right mood, the right tone, the right temper, for the splendid voyage. it is not enough simply to say "acquire aesthetic severity." with spoils so inexhaustible offered to us on every side, some more definite orientation is desirable. such an orientation, limiting the enormous scope of the enterprise, within the sphere of the possible, can only be wisely found in a person's own individual taste; but since such a taste is, obviously, in a measure "acquired," the compiler of any list of books must endeavor, by a frank and almost shameless assertion of _his_ taste, to rouse to a divergent reciprocity the latent taste, still embryotic, perhaps, and quite inchoate, of the young person anxious to make some sort of a start. such a neophyte in the long voyage--a voyage not without its reefs and shoals--will be much more stirringly provoked to steer with a bold firm hand, even by the angry reaction he may feel from such suggestions, than by a dull academic chart--professing tedious judicial impartiality--of all the continents, promontories, and islands, marked on the official map. one does not trust youth enough, that is in short what is the matter with our educational method, in this part of it at least, which concerns "what one is to read." one teases oneself too much, and one's infants, too, poor darlings, with what might be called the "scholastic-veneration-cult"; the cult, namely, of becoming a superior person by reading the best authors. it comes back, after all, to what your young person emphatically is, in himself, independent of all this acquiring. if he has the responsive chord, the answering vibration, he may well get more imaginative stimulus from reading "alice in wonderland," than from all the upanishads and niebelungenlieds in the world. it is a matter of the imagination, and to the question "what is one to read?" the best reply must always be the most personal: "whatever profoundly and permanently stimulates your imagination." the list of books which follows in this volume constitutes in itself, in the mere perusal of the titles, such a potential stimulation. a reader who demands, for instance, why george eliot is omitted, and oliver onions included; why sophocles is excluded and catullus admitted, is brought face to face with that essential right of personal choice in these high matters, which is not only the foundation of all thrilling interest in literature, but the very ground and soil of all-powerful literary creation. the secret of the art of literary taste, may it not be found to be nothing else than the secret of the art of life itself--i mean the capacity for discovering the real fatality, the real predestined direction of one's intrinsic nature and the refusal, when this is found, to waste one's energies in alien paths and irrelevant junketings? a list of books of the kind appended here, becomes, by the very reason of its shameless subjectivity, a challenge to the intelligence perusing it--a challenge that is bound, in some degree or another, to fling such a reader back upon his own inveterate prejudices; to fling him back upon them with a sense that it is his affair reasonably to justify them. from quite another point of view, however, might the appended list find its excuse--i mean as being a typical choice; in other words, the natural choice of a certain particular minority of minds, who, while disagreeing in most essentials, in this one important essential find themselves in singular harmony. and this minority of minds, of minds with the especial prejudices and predilections indicated in this list, undoubtedly has a real and definite existence; there are such people, and any list of books which they made would exclude the writers here excluded, and include the writers here included, though in particular instances, the motives of the choice might differ. for purely psychological reasons then--as a kind of human document in criticism, shall we say?--such a list comes to have its value; nor can the value be anything but enhanced by the obvious fact that in this particular company there are several quite prominent and popular writers, both ancient and modern, signalized, as it were, if not penalized, by their surprising absence. the niches of such venerated names do not exactly call aloud for occupancy, for they are emphatically filled by less popular figures; but they manifest a sufficient sense of incongruity to give the reader's critical conscience the sort of jolt that is so salutary a mental stimulus. a further value might be discovered for our exclusive catalogue, in the interest of noting--and this interest might well appeal to those who would themselves have selected quite a different list--the curious way certain books and writers have of hanging inevitably together, and necessarily implying one another. thus it appears that the type of mind--it would be presumptuous to call it the best type of mind--which prefers euripides to sophocles, and heine to schiller, prefers also emily brontë to charlotte brontë, and oliver onions to compton mackenzie. given the mind that in compiling such a list would at once drag in the odyssey and the psalms, and run hastily on to sir thomas browne and charles lamb, we are instinctively conscious that when it reaches, with its arbitrary divining rod, our own unlucky age, it will skip quite lightly over thackeray; wave an ambiguous hand in the direction of meredith, and sit solemnly down to make elaborate mention of all the published works of walter pater, thomas hardy and mr. henry james. it seems to me that nothing is more necessary, in regard to the advice to be given to young and ardent people, in the matter of their reading, than some sort of communication of the idea--and it is not an easy idea to convey--that there is in this affair a subtle fusion desirable between one's natural indestructible prejudices, and a certain high authoritative standard; a standard which we may name, for want of a better word, "classical taste," and which itself is the resultant amalgam of all the finest personal reactions of all the finest critical senses, winnowed out, as it were, and austerely purged, by the washing of the waves of time. it will be found, as a matter of fact, that this latter element in the motives of our choice works as a rule negatively rather than positively, while the positive and active force in our appreciations remains, as it ought to remain, our own inviolable and quite personal bias. the winnowed taste of the ages, acquired by us as a sort of second nature, warns us what to avoid, while our own nerves and palate, stimulated to an ever deepening subtlety, as our choice narrows itself down, tells us what passionately and spontaneously we must snatch up and enjoy. it will be noted that in what we have tried to indicate as the only possible starting-point for adventurous criticism, there has been a constant assumption of a common ground between sensitive people; a common sensual and psychic language, so to speak, to which appeals may be made, and through which intelligent tokens may be exchanged. this common ground is not necessarily--one is reluctant to introduce metaphysical speculation--any hidden "law of beauty" or "principle of spiritual harmony." it is, indeed, as far as we can ever know for certain, only "objective" in the sense of being essentially human; in the sense, that is, of being something that inevitably appeals to what, below temperamental differences, remains permanent and unchanging in us. "nature," as leonardo says, "is the mistress of the higher intelligences"; and goethe, in his most oracular utterances, recalls us to the same truth. what imagination does, and what the personal vision of the individual artist does, is to deal successfully and masterfully with this "given," this basic element. and this basic element, this permanent common ground, this universal human assumption, is just precisely what, in popular language, we call "nature"; that substratum of objective reality in the appearances of things, which makes it possible for diversely constructed temperaments to make their differences effective and intelligible. there could be no recognizable differences, no conversation, in fact, if, in the impossible hypothesis of the absence of any such common language, we all shouted at one another "in vacuo" and out of pure darkness. it is from their refusal to recognize the necessity for something at least relatively objective in what the individual imagination works upon, that certain among modern artists, if not among modern poets, bewilder and puzzle us. they have a right to make endless experiments--every original mind has that--but they cannot let go their hold on some sort of objective solidity without becoming inarticulate, without giving vent to such unrelated and incoherent cries as overtake one in the corridors of bedlam. "nature is the mistress of the higher intelligencies," and though the individual imagination is at liberty to treat nature with a certain creative contempt, it cannot afford to depart altogether from her, lest by relinquishing the common language between men and men, it should simply flap its wings in an enchanted circle, and utter sounds that are not so much different from other sounds, as outside the region where any sound carries an intelligible meaning. the absurd idea that one gets wise by reading books is probably at the bottom of the abominable pedantry that thrusts so many tiresome pieces of antiquity down the throats of youth. there is no talisman for getting wise--some of the wisest in the world never open a book, and yet their native wit, so heavenly-free from "culture," would serve to challenge voltaire. lovers of books, like other infatuated lovers, best know the account they find in their exquisite obsessions. none of the explanations they give seem to cover the field of their enjoyment. the thing is a passion; a sort of delicate madness, and like other passions, quite unintelligible to those who are outside. persons who read for the purpose of making a success of their added erudition, or the better to adapt themselves--what a phrase!--to their "life's work," are, to my thinking, like the wretches who throw flowers into graves. what sacrilege, to trail the reluctances and coynesses, the shynesses and sweet reserves of these "furtivi amores" at the heels of a wretched ambition to be "cultivated" or learned, or to "get on" in the world! like the kingdom of heaven and all other high and sacred things, the choicest sorts of books only reveal the perfume of their rare essence to those who love them for themselves in pure disinterestedness. of course they "mix in," these best-loved authors, with every experience we encounter; they throw around places, hours, situations, occasions, a quite special glamour of their own, just as one's more human devotions do; but though they float, like a diffused aroma, round every circumstance of our days, and may even make tolerable the otherwise intolerable hours of our impertinent "life's work," we do not love them because they help us here or help us there; or make us wiser or make us better; we love them because they are what they are, and we are what we are; we love them, in fact, for the beautiful reason which the author of that noble book--a book not in our present list, by the way, because of something obstinately tough and tedious in him--i mean montaigne's essays--loved his sweet friend etienne. any other commerce between books and their readers smacks of baconian "fruits" and university lectures. it is a prostitution of pleasure to profit. as with all the rare things in life, the most delicate flavor of our pleasure is found not exactly and precisely in the actual taste of the author himself; not, i mean, in the snatching of huge bites out of him, but in the fragrance of anticipation; in the dreamy solicitations of indescribable afterthoughts; in those "airy tongues that syllable men's names" on the "sands and shores" of the remote margins of our consciousness. how delicious a pleasure there is in carrying about with us wherever we go a new book or a new translation from the pen of our especial master! we need not open it; we need not read it for days; but it is there--there to be caressed and to caress--when everything is propitious, and the profane voices are hushed. i suppose, to take an instance that has for myself a peculiar appeal, the present edition--"brought out" by the excellent house of macmillan--of the great dostoievsky, is producing even now in the sensibility of all sorts and conditions of queer readers, a thrilling series of recurrent pleasures, like the intermittent visits of one's well-beloved. would to god the mortal days of geniuses like dostoievsky could be so extended that for all the years of one's life, one would have such works, still not quite finished, in one's lucky hands! i sometimes doubt whether these sticklers for "the art of condensation" are really lovers of books at all. for myself, i would class their cursed short stories with their teasing "economy of material," as they call it, with those "books that are no books," those checker boards and moral treatises which used to annoy elia so. yes, i have a sneaking feeling that all this modern fuss about "art" and the "creative vision" and "the projection of visualized images," is the itching vice of quite a different class of people, from those who, in the old, sweet, epicurean way, loved to loiter through huge digressive books, with the ample unpremeditated enjoyment of leisurely travelers wayfaring along a wonderful road. how many luckless innocents have teased and fretted their minds into a forced appreciation of that artistic ogre flaubert, and his laborious pursuit of his precious "exact word," when they might have been pleasantly sailing down rabelais' rich stream of immortal nectar, or sweetly hugging themselves over the lovely mischievousness of tristram shandy! but one must be tolerant; one must make allowances. the world of books is no puritanical bourgeois-ridden democracy; it is a large free country, a great pantagruelian utopia, ruled by noble kings. our "one hundred best books" need not be yours, nor yours ours; the essential thing is that in this brief interval between darkness and darkness, which we call our life, we should be thrillingly and passionately amused; innocently, if so it can be arranged--and what better than books lends itself to that?--and harmlessly, too, let us hope, god help us, but at any rate, amused, for the only unpardonable sin is the sin of taking this passing world too gravely. our treasure is not here; it is in the kingdom of heaven, and the kingdom of heaven is imagination. imagination! how all other ways of escape from what is mediocre in our tangled lives grow pale beside that high and burning star! with imagination to help us we can make something of our days, something of the drama of this confused turmoil, and perhaps, after all--who can tell?--there is more in it than mere "amusement." once and again, as we pause in our reading, there comes a breath, a whisper, a rumor, of something else; of something over and above that "eternal now" which is the wisest preoccupation of our passion, but not wise are those who would seek to confine this fleeting intimation within the walls of reason or of system. it comes; it goes; it is; it is not. the hundred best books did not bring it; the hundred best books cannot take it away. strangely and wonderfully it blends itself with those vague memories of what we have read, somewhere, sometime, and not always alone. strangely and wonderfully it blends itself with those other moments when the best books in the world seem irrelevant, and all "culture" an impertinent intrusion; but however it comes and however it goes, it is the thing that makes our gravity ridiculous; our philosophy pedantic. it is the thing that gives to the "amusements" of the imagination that touch of burning fire; that breath of wider air; that taste of sharper salt, which, arriving when we least expect it, and least--heaven knows--deserve it, makes any final opinion upon the stuff of this world vain and false; and any condemnation of the opinions of others foolish and empty. it destroys our assurances as it alleviates our miseries, and in some unspeakable way, like a primrose growing on the edge of a sepulchre, it flings forth upon the heavy night, a fleeting signal, "bon espoir y gist au fond!" one hundred best books 1. the psalms of david. the psalms remain, whether in the latin version or in the authorized english translation, the most pathetic and poignant, as well as the most noble and dignified of all poetic literature. the rarest spirits of our race will always return to them at every epoch in their lives for consolation, for support and for repose. 2. homer. the odyssey. _butcher and lang's prose translation_. the odyssey must continue to appeal to adventurous persons more powerfully than any other of the ancient stories because, blent with the classic quality of its pure greek style, there can be found in it that magical element of thrilling romance, which belongs not to one age, but to all time. 3. the bacchanals. the bacchæ of euripides. _translated by professor gilbert murray_. euripides, the favourite poet of john milton and goethe, is the most modern in feeling, the most romantic in mood of all the greek poets. one is conscious that in his work, as in the sculpture of praxiteles, the calm beauty of the apollonian temper is touched by the wilder rhythm of the perilous music of dionysus. 4. horace. _any selection in latin of the odes of horace and complete prose translation published by macmillan_. flawlessly hammered out, as if from eternal bronze--"aere perennius"--the odes of horace are the consummate expression of the pride, the reserve, the tragic playfulness, the epicurean calm, the absolute distinction of the imperial roman spirit. a few lines taken at random and learned by heart would act as a talisman in all hours to drive away the insolent pressure of the vulgar and common crowd. 5. catullus. _any latin edition and the prose translation published by macmillan bound up with tibullus_. catullus, the contemporary of julius caesar, is, of all the ancient lyrical poets, the one most modern and neurotic in feeling. one discerns in his work, breathing through the ancient roman reserve, the pressure of that passionate and rebellious reaction to life, which we enjoy in the most magical of all later poets from villon to verlaine. 6. dante 's divine comedy. _best edition the "temple classics," in three small volumes, with the italian original and english prose translation on opposite pages_. dante's poetry can legitimately be enjoyed in single great passages, of which there are more in the "inferno" than in the other sections of the poem. his peculiar quality is a certain blending of mordant realism with a high and penetrating beauty. there is no need in reading him to vex oneself with symbolic interpretations. he is at his best, when from behind his scholastic philosophy, bursts forth, in direct personal betrayal, his pride, his humility, his passion, and his disdain. 7. rabelais. _the english translation with the doré illustrations_. rabelais is the philosopher's bible and his book of outrageous jests. he is the recondite cult of wise and magnanimous spirits. he reconciles nature with art, man with god, and religious piety with shameless enjoyment. his style restores to us our courage and our joy; and his noble buffoonery gives us back the sweet wantonness of our youth. rabelais is the greatest intellect in literature. no one has ever had a humor so large; an imagination so creative, or a spirit so world-swallowing, so humane, so friendly. 8. candide. _any french edition or english translation_. voltaire was a true man of action, a knight of the holy ghost. he plunged fiercely into the human arena, and fought through a laborious life, against obscurantism, stupidity and tyranny. he had a clear-cut, aristocratic mind. he hated mystical balderdash, clumsy barbarity, and stupid hypocrisy. candide is not only a complete refutation of optimism; it is a book full of that mischievous humor, which has the power, more than anything else, of reconciling us to the business of enduring life. 9. shakespeare. _in the temple edition_. it is time shakespeare was read for the beauty of his poetry, and enjoyed without pedantry and with some imagination. the less usual and more cynical of his plays, such as troilus, and cressida, measure for measure and timon of athens, will be found to contain some very interesting commentaries upon life. the shakespearean attitude of mind is quite a definite and articulate one, and one that can be, by slow degrees, acquired, even by persons who are not cultivated or clever. it is an attitude "compounded of many simples," and, like the melancholy of jaques, it wraps us about "in a most humorous sadness." but the essential secret of shakespeare's genius is best apprehended in the felicity of certain isolated passionate speeches, and in the magic of his songs. 10. milton. _any edition_. no epicurean lover of the subtler delicacies in poetic rhythm or of the more exalted and translunar harmonies in the imaginative suggestiveness of words, can afford to leave milton untouched. in sheer felicity of beauty--the beauty of suggestive words, each one carrying "a perfume in the mention," and together, by their arrangement in relation to one another, conveying a thrill of absolute and final satisfaction--no poem in our language surpasses lycidas, and only the fine great odes of john keats approach or equal it. there are passages, too, in paradise lost, paradise regained and samson agonistes, which, for calm, flowing, and immortal loveliness, are not surpassed in any poetry in the world. milton's work witnesses to the value in art of what is ancient and traditional, but while he willingly uses every tradition of antiquity, he stamps all he writes with his own formidable image and superscription. 11. sir thomas browne. religio medici and urn burial. _in the "scott library" series_. the very spirit of ancient norwich, the mellowest and most historic of all english cities, breathes in these sumptuous and aromatic pages. after lamb and pater, both of whom loved him well, browne is the subtlest adept in the recondite mysteries of rhythmic prose who can be enjoyed in our language. not to catch the cadences of his peculiar music is to confess oneself deaf to the finer harmonies of words. 12. goethe. faust, _translated in english poetry by bayard taylor_. wilhelm meister, _in carlyle's translation_. goethe's conversations with eckerman, _translation in bohn's library_. no other human name, except da vinci's, carries the high associations of oracular and occult wisdom as far as goethe's does. he hears the voices of "the mothers" more clearly than other men and in heathen loneliness he "builds up the pyramid of his existence." the deep authority of his formidable insight can be best enjoyed, not without little side-lights of a laconic irony, in the "conversations"; while in wilhelm meister we learn to become adepts in the art of living in the beautiful and true, in faust that abysmal doubt as to the whole mad business of life is undermined with a craft equal to his own in the delineation and defeat of "the queer son of chaos." 15. nietzsche. zarathustra, the joyful wisdom, and ecce homo _are all translated in the english edition of foulis and published in america by macmillan. lichtenberger's exposition of his doctrines is in the same series. the most artistic life of him is by daniel halêvy, translated from the french_. nietzsche's writings when they fall into the hands of philistines are more misunderstood than any others. to appreciate his noble and tragic distinction with the due pinch of attic salt it is necessary to be possessed of more imagination than most persons are able to summon up. the dramatic grandeur of nietzsche's extraordinary intellect overtops all the flashes of his psychological insight; and his terrific conclusions remain as mere foot-prints of his progress from height to height. 18. heine. heine's prose works with the "confessions," _translated in the "scott library." a good short life of heine in the "great writers" series_. heine's genius remains unique. full of dreamy attachment to germany he lived and died in paris, but his heart was always with the exiles of israel. mocker and ribald, he touches depths of sentimental tenderness sounded by none other. he fooled the philosophers, provoked the pious, and confused the minds of his free-thinking friends by outbursts of wilful reaction. he sticks the horns of satyrish "diablerie" on the lovely forehead of the most delicate romance; and he flings into his magical poems of love and the sea the naughty mud-pellets of an outrageous capriciousness. 19. sudermann. song of songs. _translation into english published by huebsch of new york_. sudermann is the most remarkable and characteristic of modern german writers. his massive and laborious realism, his firm and exhaustive exposition of turbulent and troubled hearts, his heavy sledge-hammer style, his comprehension of the shadowy background of the most ponderous sensuality, are all found at their best in this solemn and sordid and pitiable tale. 20. hauptmann. the fool in christ, _translation published by huebsch, new york_. hauptmann seems, of all recent teutonic authors, the one who has in the highest degree that tender imaginative sentiment mixed with rugged and humorous piety which one finds in the old german protestant mystics and in such works of art as the engravings of albert durer and the wooden madonna of nuremburg. "the fool in christ"--outside some of the characters in dostoievsky--is the nearest modern approach to a literary interpretation of what remains timeless and permanent in the christ-idea. 21. ibsen. _any edition of ibsen containing the_ wild duck. ibsen is still the most formidable of obstinate individualists. absolute self-reliance is the note he constantly strikes. he is obsessed by the psychology of moral problems; but for him there are no universal ethical laws--"the golden rule is that there is no golden rule"--thus while in the pillars of society he advocates candid confession and honest revelation of the truth of things; in the "wild duck" he attacks the pig-headed meddler, who comes "dunning us with claims of the ideal." ultimately, though absorbed in "matters of conscience," it is as an artist rather than as a philosopher that he visualizes the world. 22. strindberg. the confessions of a fool. strindberg has obtained, because of his own neurotic and almost feminine clairvoyance, a diabolical insight into the perversities of the feminine character. this merciless insight manifested in all his works reaches its intensest degree in the "confessions of a fool," where the woman implicated surpasses the perversities of the normal as greatly as the lashing energy with which he pursues her to her inmost retreats surpasses the vengeance of any ordinary lover. 23. emerson. _routledge's complete works of emerson, or any other edition containing everything in one volume_. the clear, chaste, remote and distinguished wisdom of emerson with its shrewd preacher's wit and country-bred humor, will always be of stirring and tonic value to certain kindred minds. others will prove him of little worth; but it is to be noted that nietzsche found him a sane and noble influence principally on the ground of his serene detachment from the phenomena of sin and disease and death. he will always remain suggestive and stimulating to those who demand a spiritual interpretation of the universe but reluct at committing themselves to any particular creed. 24. walt whitman. _the complete unexpurgated edition of all his poems, with his prose works and mr. traubel's books about him as a further elucidation_. walt whitman is the only optimist and perhaps the only prophet of democracy one can read without shame. the magical beauty of his style at its best has not even yet received complete justice. he has the power of restoring us to courage and joy even under circumstances of aggravated gloom. he puts us in some indescribable manner "en rapport" with the large, cool, liquid spaces and with the immense and transparent depths. more than any he is the poet of passionate friendship and the poet of all those exquisite evasive emotions which arise when our loves and our regrets are blended with the presence of nature. 25. edgar lee masters. spoon river anthology, _published by macmillan_. after whitman and poe, mr. masters is by far the most original and interesting of american poets. there is something chaucerian about the quizzical and whimsical manner in which he tells his brief and homely stories. his characters are penetrated with the bleak and yet cheerful tone of the "middle west." something quaint, humorous and astringent emerges as their dominant note. mr. masters has the massive ironical observation and the shrewd humane wit of the great english novelists of the eighteenth century. his dead people reveal "the true truth" of their sordid and troubled lives. the little chances, the unguessed-at accidents, the undeserved blows of a capricious destiny, which batter so many of us into helpless inertness, are the aspects of life which interest him most. 26. theodore dreiser. the titan. of all modern novelists theodore dreiser most entirely catches the spirit of america. here is the huge torrential stream of material energies. here are the men and women, so pushed and driven and parched and bleached, by the enormous forces of industry and commerce, that all distinction in them seems to be reduced to a strange colorlessness; while the primordial animal cravings, greedy, earth-born, fumble after their aims across the sad and littered stage of sombre scenery. there is something epic--something enormous and amorphous--like the body of an elemental giant--about each of these books. in the "titan," especially, the peculiar power of dreiser's massive, coulter-like impetus is evident. here we realize how, between animal passion and material ambition, there is little room left in such a nature as cooperwood's for any complicated subtlety. all is simple, direct, hard and healthy--a very epitome and incarnation of the life-force, as it manifests itself in america. 27. cervantes. don quixote. _in any translation except those vulgarized by eighteenth century taste_. cervantes' great, ironical, romantic story is written in a style so noble, so nervous, so humane, so branded with reality, that, as the wise critic has said, the mere touch and impact of it puts courage into our veins. it is not necessary to read every word of this old book. there are tedious passages. but not to have ever opened it; not to have caught the tone, the temper, the terrible courage, the infinite sadness of it, is to have missed being present at one of the "great gestures" of the undying, unconquerable spirit of humanity. 28. victor hugo. the toilers of the sea. _in any translation_. victor hugo is the greatest of all incorrigible romanticists. something between a prophet, a charlatan, a rhetorician, and a spoiled child, he believes in god, in democracy, in innocence, in justice, and he has a noble and unqualified devotion to human heroism and the depths of the dangerous sea. he has that arbitrary, maniacal inventive imagination which is very rare except in children--and in spite of his theatrical gestures he has the power of conjuring up scenes of incredible beauty and terror. 29. balzac. lost illusions. cousin bette. pére goriot. human comedy, _in any translation. saintsbury's is as good as any_. balzac's books create a complete world, which has many points of contact with reality; but, in a deep essential sense, is the projection of the novelist's own passionate imagination. a thundering tide of subterranean energy, furious and titanic, sweeps, with its weight of ponderous details, through every page of these dramatic volumes. every character has its obsession, its secret vice, its spiritual drug. even when, as in the case of vautrin, he lets his demonic fancy carry him very far, there is a grandeur, an amplitude, a smouldering flame of passion, which redeem a thousand preposterous extravagances. his dramatic psychology is often drowned in the tide of his creative energy; but though his world is not always the world of our experience, it is always a world in which we are magnetized to feel at home. it is consistent with its own amazing laws; the laws of the incredible balzacian genius. profoundly moral in its basic tendency, the "human comedy" seems to point, in its philosophical undercurrent, at the permanent need in our wayward and childish emotionalism, for wise and master-guides, both in the sphere of religion and in the sphere of politics. 32. guy de maupassant. le maison tellier. madame tellier's establishment. _any translation, preferably not one bound in paper or in an "edition de luxe."_ guy de maupassant's short stories remain, with those of henry james and joseph conrad, the very best of their kind. after "madame tellier's establishment" perhaps the stories called respectively "a farm girl" and "love" are the best he wrote. he has the eternal excellencies of savage humanity, savage sincerity, and savage brevity. his pessimism is deep, absolute, unshaken;--and the world, as we know it, deserves what he gives it of sensualized literary reactions, each one like the falling thud of the blade of a murderous axe. his racking, scooping, combing insight, into the recesses of man's natural appetites will never be surpassed. how under the glance of his norman anger, all manner of pretty subterfuges fade away; and "the real thing" stands out, as nature and the earth know it--"stark, bleak, terrible and lovely." his subjects may not wander very far from the basic situations. he does not deal in spiritual subtleties. but when he hits, he hits the mark. 33. stendhal (henri beyle). le rouge et le noir. _either the original french or any translation, if possible with a preface; for the life of stendhal is of extraordinary interest_. stendhal is one of those who, following goethe and anticipating nietzsche, has not hesitated to propound the psychological justifications for a life based upon pagan rather than christian ethics. a shrewd and sly observer, with his own peculiar brand of the egoistic cult, stendhal lived a life of desperately absorbing emotions, most of them intellectual and erotic. he made an æsthetic use of the will to power before even nietzsche used that singular expression. in "le rouge et le noir" the eternal sex-struggle with its fierce accompaniment of "odi et amo" is concentrated in the clash of opposing forms of pride; the pride of intellect against the pride of sex-vanity. no writer has ever lived with more contempt for mere sedentary theories or a fiercer mania for the jagged and multifarious edges of life's pluralistic eccentricity. for any reader teased and worried by idealistic perversion this obstinate materialistic sage will have untold value. and yet he knows, none better, the place of sentiment in life! 34. anatole france. l'orme de mail. l'abbe jerome coignard. le livre de mon ami. _either in french or the authorized english translation_. anatole france, now translated into english, is the most classical, the most ironical, the most refined, of all modern european writers. he is also, of all others, the most antipathetic to the anglo-saxon type of mind. in a word he is a humanist of the great tradition--a civilized artist--a great and wise man. he is rabelaisian and voltairian, at the same time. his style has something of the urbanity, the unction, the fine malice, of renan; but it has also a quality peculiar to its creator--a sort of transparent objectivity, lucid as rarified air, and contemptuously cold as a fragment of antique marble. monsieur bergeret, who appears in all four of the masterpieces devoted to contemporary france, is a creation worthy, as some one has said, of the author of tristram shandy. one cannot forget that anatole france spent his childhood among the bookshops on the south side of the seine. we are conscious all the while in reading him of the wise, tender, pitiful detachment of a true scholar of the classics, contemplating the mad pell-mell of human life from a certain epicurean remoteness, and loving and mocking the sons and daughters of men, as if they were little children or comical small animals. 37. remy de gourmont. une nuit au luxembourg. _translated with a preface by arthur ransome, published by luce, boston_. remy de gourmont's death must be regretted by all lovers of the rare in art and the remote in character. as a poet his "litany of the rose" has that strange, ambiguous, sinister, and lovely appeal, the full appreciation of which is an initiation into all the "enclosed gardens" of the world. he is a great critic--perhaps the greatest since walter pater--and as a philosopher his constant and frank advocacy of a noble and shameless hedonism has helped to clear the air in the track of nietzsche's thunder-bolts. his audacity in placing an exposition of the very principles of epicurean hedonism, touched with spinozistic equanimity, into the mouth of our lord, wandering through the luxembourg gardens, may perhaps startle certain gentle souls, but the dorian delicacy of what might for a moment appear blasphemous robs this charming idyll of any gross or merely popular profanity. it is a book for those who have passed through more than one intellectual renaissance. like the "golden ass" of apuleius it has a philosophical justification for its mythological audacity. 38. paul bourget. le disciple. "le disciple" is perhaps the best work of this voluminous and interesting writer. devoid of irony, deficient in humor, lacking any large imaginative power, paul bourget holds, all the same, an unassailable place among french writers. though a devoted adherent of goethe and stendhal, bourget represents, along with bordeaux, the conservative ethical reaction. he upholds catholicism and the sacredness of the "home." he is a master in plot and has a clear, vigorous and appealing style. a gravely portentous sentiment sometimes spoils his tragic effects; but every lover of paris will enjoy the unctuous elaboration of the "backgrounds" of his stories, touched often with the most delicate and mellow evocations of that city's atmosphere. 39. romain rolland. jean christophe. _translated by gilbert cannan_. rolland's "christophe" is without doubt the most remarkable book that has appeared in europe since nietzsche's "ecce homo." it is a profoundly suggestive treatise upon the relations between art and life. it contains a deep and heroic philosophy--the philosophy of the worship of the mysterious life-force as god; and of the reaching out beyond the turmoil of good and evil towards some vast and dimly articulated reconciliation. since "wilhelm meister" no book has been written more valuable as an intellectual ladder to the higher levels of æsthetic thought and feeling. massive and dramatic, powerful and suggestive, it magnetizes us into an acceptance of its daring and optimistic hopes for the world; of its noble suggestions of a spiritual synthesis of the opposing race-traditions of europe. of all the books mentioned in this list it is the one which the compiler would most strongly recommend to the notice of those anxious to win a firmer intellectual standing-ground. 40. gabriele d'annunzio. the flame of life. the triumph of death. _translated by arthur hornblow_. d'annunzio is the most truly italian, the most inveterately latin, of all recent writers. without light and shade, without "nuance," without humor or irony, he compels our attention by the clear-cut, monumental images he projects, by the purple and scarlet splendor of his imperial dreams. his philosophy, though lacking in the deep and tragic imagination of nietzsche, has something of the nietzschean intellectual fury. he teaches a shameless and antinomian hedonism, narrower, less humane, but more fervid and emotional, than that taught by remy de gourmont. in "the triumph of death" we find a fierce smoldering voluptuousness, expressed with a hard and brutal realism which recalls the frescoes on the walls of ancient pompeii. in "the flame of life" we have in superb rhetoric the most colored and ardent description of venice to be found in all literature. perhaps the finest passage he ever wrote is that account of the speech of the master of life in the doge's palace with its incomparable eulogy upon veronese and its allusion to pisanello's head of sigismondo malatesta. 42. dostoievsky. crime and punishment. the idiot. the brothers karamazov. the insulted and injured. the possessed. _translated by constance garnett and published by macmillan. other translations in everyman's library_. dostoievsky is the greatest and most racial of all russian writers. he is the subtlest psychologist in fiction. as an artist he has a dark and sombre intensity and an imaginative vehemence only surpassed by shakespeare. as a philosopher he anticipates nietzsche in the direction of his insight, though in his conclusions he is diametrically opposite. he teaches that out of weakness, abnormality, perversity, foolishness, desperation, abandonment, and a morbid pleasure in humiliation, it is possible to arrive at high and unutterable levels of spiritual ecstasy. his ideal is sanctity--not morality--and his revelations of the impassioned and insane motives of human nature--its instinct towards self-destruction for instance--will never be surpassed for their terrible and convincing truth. the strange slavophil dream of the regeneration of the world by the power of the russian soul and the magic of the "white christ who comes out of russia" could not be more arrestingly expressed than in these passionate and extraordinary works of art. 47. turgeniev. virgin soil. a sportsman's sketches. _translated by constance garnett. and "lisa" in everyman's library_. turgeniev is by far the most "artistic" as he is the most disillusioned and ironical of russian writers. with a tender poetical delicacy, almost worthy of shakespeare, he sketches his appealing portraits of young girls. his style is clear--objective--winnowed and fastidious. he has certain charming old-fashioned weaknesses--as for instance his trick of over-emphasizing the differences between his bad and good characters; but there is a clear-cut distinction, and a lucid charm about his work that reminds one of certain old crayon drawings or certain delicate water-color sketches. his allusions to natural scenery are always introduced with peculiar appropriateness and are never permitted to dominate the dramatic element of the story as happens so often in other writers. there is a sad and tender vein of unobtrusive moralizing running through his work but one is conscious that at bottom he is profoundly pessimistic and disenchanted. the gaiety of turgeniev is winning and unforced; his sentiment natural and never "staled or rung upon." the pensive detachment of a sensitive and yet not altogether unworldly spirit seems to be the final impression evoked by his books. 50. gorki--foma gordyeff. _translation published by scribners_. maxim gorki is one of the most interesting of russian writers. his books have that flavour of the soil and that courageous spirit of vagabondage and social independence which is so rare and valuable a quality in literature. "foma gordyeff" is, after dostoievsky's masterpieces, the most suggestive and arresting of russian stories. that paralysis of the will which descends like an evil cloud upon foma and at the same time seems to cause the ground to open under his feet and precipitate him into mysterious depths of nothingness, is at once tragically significant of certain aspects of the russian soul and full of mysterious warnings to all those modern spirits in whom the power of action is "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." for those who have been "fooled to the top of their bent" by the stupidities and brutalities of the crowd there is a savage satisfaction in reading of foma's insane outbursts of misanthropy. 51. tchekoff--seagull. _tchekoff's plays and short stories are published by scribners in admirable translations_. tchekoff is one of the gentlest and sweetest tempered of russian writers. there is in him a genuine graciousness, a politeness of soul, an innate delicacy, which is not touched--as such qualities often are in the work of turgeniev--with any kind of self-conscious olympianism. a doctor, a consumptive, and a passionate lover of children, there is a whimsical humanity about all that tchekoff writes which has a singular and quite special appeal. the "seagull" is a play full of delicate subtleties and dreamy glimpses of shy humane wisdom. the manner in which outward things--the mere background and scenery of the play--are used to deepen and enhance the dramatic interest is a thing peculiarly characteristic of this author. tchekoff has that kind of imaginative sensibility which makes every material object one encounters significant with spiritual intimations. the mere business of plot--whether in his plays or stories--is not the important matter. the important matter is a certain sudden and pathetic illumination thrown upon the essential truth by some casual grouping of persons or of things--some emphatic or symbolic gesture--some significant movement among the silent "listeners." 52. artzibasheff. sanine, _translation published by huebsch_. artzibasheff is an extremist. the suicidal "motif" in the "breaking-point" is worked out with an appalling and devastating thoroughness. pessimism, in a superficial sense, could hardly go further; though compared with dostoievsky's insight into the "infinite" in character, one is conscious of a certain closing of doors and narrowing of issues. "sanine" himself is a sort of idealization of the sublimated common sense which seems to be this writer's selected virtue. artzibasheff appears to advocate, as the wisest and sanest way of dealing with life, a certain robust and contemptuous self-assertion, kindly, genial, without baseness or malice; but free from any scruple and quite untroubled by remorse. if regarded seriously--as he appears to be intended to be--as an approximate human ideal, one cannot help feeling that in spite of his humorous anarchism and subjective zest for life, sanine has in him something sententious and tiresome. he is, so to speak, an immoral prig; nor do his vivacious spirits compensate us for the lack of delicacy and irony in him. on the other hand there is something direct, downright and "honest" about his clear-thinking, and his shameless eroticism which wins our liking and affection, if not our admiration. artzibasheff is indeed one of the few writers who dare excite our sympathy not only for the seduced in this world but for the seducer. 53. sterne--tristram shandy. sterne is a writer who less than any one else in the present list reveals the secrets of his manner and mind to the casual and hasty reader. "tristram shandy" and "the sentimental journey" are books to be enjoyed slowly and lingeringly, with many humorous after-thoughts and a certain rabelaisian unction. a shrewd and ironical wisdom, gentle and light-fingered and redolent of evasive sentiment, is evoked from these digressive and wanton pages. at his best sterne is capable of an imaginative interpretation of character which for delicacy and subtlety has never been surpassed. for the epicurean in literature, his unfailing charm will be found in his style--a style so baffling in the furtive beauty of its disarming simplicity that even the greatest of literary critics have been unable to analyze its peculiar flavour. there is a winnowed purity about it, and a kind of elfish grace; and with both these things there mixes, strangely enough, a certain homely, almost dutch domesticity, quaint and mellow and a little wanton--like a picture by jan steen. 54. jonathan swift. tale of a tub. swift's mysterious and saturnine character, his outbursts of terrible rage; his exquisite moments of tenderness; his sledge-hammer blows; his diabolical irony; form a dramatic and tragic spectacle which no psychologist can afford to miss. with the "saeva indignatio" alluded to in his own epitaph, he puts his back, as it were, to the "flamantia moenia mundi" and hits out, insanely and blindly, at the human crowd he loathes. his secretive and desperate passion for stella, his little girl pupil; his barbarous treatment of vanessa--his savage championship of the irish people against the government--make up the dominant "notes" of a character so formidable that the terror of his personality strikes us with the force of an engine of destruction. his misanthropy is like the misanthropy of shakespeare's timon--his crushing sarcasms strike blow after blow at the poor flesh and blood he despises. the hatefulness of average humanity drives him to distraction and in his madness, like a wounded titan, he spares nothing. to the whole human race he seems to utter the terrible words he puts into the mouth of god: "i to such blockheads set my wit, and damn you all--go, go, you're bit!" 55. charles lamb. the essays of elia. charles lamb remains, of all english prose-writers, the one whose manner is the most beautiful. so rich, so delicate, so imaginative, so full of surprises, is the style of this seductive writer, that, for sheer magic and inspiration, his equals can only be found among the very greatest poets. it is impossible to over-estimate the value of charles lamb's philosophy. he indicates in his delicate evasive way--not directly, but as it were, in little fragments and morsels and broken snatches--a deep and subtle reconciliation between the wisdom of epicurus and the wisdom of christ. and through and beyond all this, there may be felt, as with the great poets, an indescribable sense of something withdrawn, withheld, reserved, inscrutable--a sense of a secret, rather to be intimated to the initiated, than revealed to the vulgar--a sense of a clue to a sort of pantagruelian serenity; a serenity produced by no crude optimism but by some happy inward knowledge of a neglected hope. the great rabelaisian motto, "bon espoir y gist au fond!" seems to emanate from the most wistful and poignant of his pages. he pities the unpitied, he redeems the commonplace, he makes the ordinary as if it were not ordinary, and by the sheer genius of his imagination he throws an indescribable glamour over the "little things" of the darkest of our days. moving among old books, old houses, old streets, old acquaintances, old wines, old pictures, old memories, he is yet possessed of so original and personal a touch that his own wit seems as though it were the very soul and body of the qualities he so caressingly interprets. 56. sir walter scott. guy mannering. bride of lammermoor. heart of midlothian. the large, easy, leisurely manner of scott's writing, its digressiveness, its nonchalant carelessness, its indifference to artistic quality, has in some sort of way numbed and atrophied the interest in his work of those who have been caught up and waylaid by the modern spirit. and yet scott's novels have ample and admirable excellencies. in his expansive and digressive fashion he can give his characters--especially the older and the more idiosyncratic among them--a surprising and convincing verisimilitude. he can create a plot which, though not dramatically flawless, has movement and energy and stir. the sweetness and modesty of his disposition lends itself to his portrayal of the more gracious aspects of human life, especially as seen in the humours and oddities of very simple and naïve persons. under the stress of occasional emotion he can rise to quite noble heights of feeling and he is able to throw a startling glamour of romance over certain familiar and recurrent human situations. at his best there is a grandeur and simplicity of utterance about what his characters say and an ease and largeness of sympathy about his own commentaries upon them, which must win admiration even from those most avid of modern pathology. without the passion of balzac, or the insight of dostoievsky, or the art of turgeniev, there is yet, in the sweetness of scott's own personality, and in the biblical grandeur of certain of the scenes he evokes, a quality and a charm which it would be at once foolish and arbitrary to neglect. 59. thackeray. the history of henry esmond. thackeray is a writer who occupies a curious and very interesting position. devoid of the noble and romantic sympathies of scott, and corrupted to the basic fibres of his being by early victorian snobbishness, he is yet--none can deny it--a powerful creator of living people and an accomplished and graceful stylist. without philosophy, without faith, without moral courage, the uneasy slave of conventional morality, and with a hopeless vein of sheer worldly philistinism in his book, thackeray is yet able, by a certain unconquerable insight into the motives and impulses of mediocre people, and by a certain weight and mass of creative force, to give a convincing reality to his pictures of life, which is almost devastating in its sneering and sentimental accuracy. the most winning and attractive thing about him is his devotion to the eighteenth century; a century whose manners he is able to depict in his large and gracious way without being disturbed by the pressure of that contemporary vulgarity which finds a too lively response in something bourgeois and snobbish in his own nature. dealing with the eighteenth century he escapes not only from his age but from himself. 60. charles dickens. great expectations. the compiler has placed in this list only one of dickens' books for a somewhat different reason from that which has influenced him in other cases. all dickens' novels have a unique value, and such an equal value, that almost any one of them, chosen at random, can serve as an example of the rest. those who still are not prohibited, by temperamental difficulty or by some modern fashion, from enjoying the peculiar atmosphere of this astonishing person's work, will be found reverting to him constantly and indiscriminately. "great expectations" is perhaps, as a more "artistic" book than the rest, the most fitted of them all to entice towards a more sympathetic understanding of his mood, those who are held from reading him by some more or less accidental reason. the most characteristic thing about this great genius is the power he possesses of breathing palpable life into what is often called the inanimate. like hans andersen, the writer of fairy-stories, and, in a measure, like all children, dickens endows with fantastic spirituality the most apparently dead things in our ordinary environment. his imagination plays superb tricks with such objects and things, touching the most dilapidated of them with a magic such as the genius of a great poet uses, when dealing with nature--only the "nature" of dickens is made of less lovely matters than leaves and flowers. the wild exaggerations of dickens--his reckless contempt for realistic possibility--need not hinder us from enjoying, apart from his revelling humor and his too facile sentiment, those inspired outbursts of inevitable truth, wherein the inmost identity of his queer people stands revealed to us. his world may be a world of goblins and fairies, but there cross it sometimes figures of an arresting appeal and human voices of divine imagination. 61. jane austen. pride and prejudice. jane austen's delicate and ironic art will remain unassailable through all changes of taste and varieties of opinion. what she really possesses--what might be called the clue to her inimitable secret--is nothing less than the power of giving expression to that undying ironic detachment, touched with a fine malice but full of tender understanding, which all women, to some degree or other, share, and which all men, to some degree or other, suffer from; in other words, the terrible and beautiful insight of the maternal instinct. the clear charm of her unequalled style--a style quite classical in its economy of material and its dignified reserve--is a charm frequently caught in the wit and fine malice of one's unmarried aunts; but it is, none the less, the very epitome of maternal humor. as a creative realist, giving to her characters the very body and pressure of actual life, no writer, living or dead, has surpassed her. without romance, without philosophy, without social theories, without pathological curiosity, without the remotest interest in "nature," she has yet managed to achieve a triumphant artistic success; and to leave an impression of serene wisdom such as no other woman writer has equaled or approached. 62. emily brontë. wüthering heights. of all the books of all the brontës, this one is the supreme masterpiece. charlotte has genius and imagination. she has passion too. but there is a certain demonic violence about emily which carries her work into a region of high and desperate beauty forbidden to the gentler spirit of her sister. the love of heathcliff and catherine breaks the bonds of ordinary sensual or sentimental relationship and hurls itself into that darker, stranger, more unearthly air, wherein one hears the voices of the great lovers; and where sappho and michaelangelo and swift and shelley and nietzsche gasp forth their imprecations and their terrible ecstasies. crude and rough and jagged and pitiless, the style of this astounding book seems to rend and tear, like a broken saw, at the very roots of existence. in some curious way, as in balzac and dostoievsky, emotions and situations which have the tone and mood of quite gross melodrama are so driven inwards by sheer diabolical intensity, that they touch the granite substratum of what is eternal in human passion. the smell of rain-drenched moors, the crying of the wind in the scotch firs, the long lines of black rooks drifting across the twilight,--these things become, in the savage style of this extraordinary girl, the very symbols and tokens of the power that rends her spirit. 63. george meredith. harry richmond. "harry richmond" is at once the least meredithian and the best of all meredith's books. meredith, though to a much less degree than george eliot, is one of those pseudo-philosophic, pseudo-ethical writers, who influence a generation or two and then stem to become antiquated and faded. it is when he is least philosophical and least moralistic--as in the superbly imaginative figure of richmond roy--that he is at his greatest. there is, throughout his work, an unpleasing strain, like the vibration of a rope drawn out too tight,--a strain and a tug of intellectual intensity, that is not fulfilled by any corresponding intellectual wisdom. his descriptions of nature, in his poems, as well as in his prose works, have an original vigor and a pungent tang of their own; but the twisted violence of their introduction, full of queer jolts and jerks, prevents their impressing one with any sense of calm or finality. they are too aphoristic, these passages. they are too clever. they smell too much of the lamp. the same fault may be remarked in the rounding off of the meredithian plots where one is so seldom conscious of the presence of the "inevitable" and so teased by the "obstinate questionings" of purely mental problems. reading henry james one feels like a wisp of straw floating down a wide smooth river; reading meredith one is flicked and flapped and beaten, as if beneath a hand with a flail. 64. henry james. the ambassadors. the tragic muse. the soft side. the better sort. the wings of the dove. the golden bowl. henry james is the most purely "artistic" as he is the most profoundly "intellectual" of all the european writers of our age. his fame will steadily grow, and his extraordinary genius will more and more create that finer taste by which alone he can be appreciated. no novelist who has ever lived has "taken art" so seriously. but it is art, and not life, he takes seriously; and, therefore, along with his methods of elaborate patience, one is conscious of a most delicate and whimsical playfulness--sparing literally nothing. in spite of his beautiful cosmopolitanism it must never be forgotten that at bottom henry james is richly and wonderfully american. that tender and gracious "penchant" of his for pure-souled and modest-minded young men, for their high resolves, their noble renunciations, their touching faith, is an indication of how much he has exploited--in the completest aesthetic sense--the naive puritanism of his great nation. in regard to his style one may remark three main divergent epochs; the first closing with the opening of the "nineties," and the third beginning about the year 1903. of these the second seems to the present compiler the best; being, indeed, more intellectualized and subtle than the first and less mannered and obscure than the final one. the finest works he produced would thus be found to be those on one side or the other of the year 1900. the subtlety of henry james is a subtlety which is caused not by philosophical but by psychological distinctions and it is a subtlety which enlarges our sympathy for the average human nature of middle class people to a degree that must, in the very deepest sense of the word, be called moral. the wisdom to be derived from him is all of a piece with the pleasure--both being the result of a fuller, richer, and more discriminating consciousness of the tragic complexity of quite little and unimportant characters. to a real lover of henry james the greyest and least promising aspects of ordinary life seem to hold up to us infinite possibilities of delicate excitement. it is indeed out of excitement--partly intellectual and partly aesthetic,--that his great effects are produced. and yet the final effect is always one of resignation and calm--as with all the supreme masters. 70. thomas hardy. tess of the d'urbevilles. the return of the native. the mayor of casterbridge. far from the madding crowd. wessex poems. thomas hardy remains the greatest poet and novelist of the england of our age. his poetry, wessex poems, poems of past and present, time's laughing-stock, satires of circumstance, make up the most powerful and original contribution to modern verse, produced recently, either in england or america. not to value hardy's poetry as highly as all but his very greatest prose is to betray oneself as having missed the full pregnancy of his bitter and lovely wisdom. he has, like henry james, three "manners" or styles--the first containing such lighter, friendlier work, as "life's little ironies," "under a greenwood tree," and "the trumpet major"--the second being the period of the great tragedies which assume the place, in his work, of "hamlet," "lear," "macbeth" and "othello," in the work of shakespeare--the third, of curious and imaginative interest, expresses in quite a particular way, mr. hardy's own peculiar point of view. the well-beloved, jude the obscure, and the later poems would belong to this epoch. at his best hardy is a novelist second to none. his style has a grandeur, a distinction, a concentration, which we find neither in balzac nor dostoievsky. not to appreciate the power and beauty of his manner, when his real inspiration holds him, is to confess that the genuinely classical in style and the genuinely pagan in feeling has no meaning for you. no english writer, whether in prose or poetry, has ever caught so completely the magic of the earth and the quaint humors, tragical and laughable, of those who live inured to her moods; who live with her moroseness, her whimsicality, her vindictiveness, her austerity, her evasive grace. mr. hardy's clairvoyant feeling for nature is, however, only the background of his work. he is no idyllic posture-monger. the march of events as they drive forward the primitive earth-born men and women of wessex, thrills one with the same weight of accumulated fatality, as--the comparison is tedious and pedantic--the fortunes of the ill-starred houses of argos and thebes. one peculiarity of mr. hardy's method must finally be mentioned, as giving their most characteristic quality to these formidable scenes--i mean his preference for form over color. who can forget those desolately emphatic human protagonists silhouetted so austerely along the tops of hills and against the perspectives of long white roads? 75. joseph conrad. chance. lord jim. victory. youth. almayer's folly. _published by doubleday page & co. with a critical monograph, so admirably written (it is given gratis) by wilson follet that one longs to see more criticism from such an accomplished hand_. conrad's work--and, considering his foreign origin and his late choice of english as a medium of expression, it is no less than an astounding achievement--is work of the very highest literary and psychological value. it is, indeed, as mr. follet says, only such criticism as is passionately anxious to prove for itself the true "romance of the intellect" that can hope to deal adequately with such an output. the background of conrad's books is primarily the sea itself; and after the sea, ships. no one has indicated the extraordinary romance of ships in the way he has done--of ships in the open sea, in the harbour, at the wharf, or driven far up some perilous tropical river. but it is neither the sea nor the tropical recesses nor the sun-scorched river-edges of his backgrounds that make up the essence of romance in the conrad books. this is found in nothing less than the mysterious potencies for courage and for fear, for good and for evil, of human beings themselves--of human beings isolated by some external "diablerie" which throws every feature of them into terrible and baffling relief. the finest and deepest effects of conrad's art are always found when, in the process of the story, some solitary man and woman encounter each other, far from civilization, and tearing off, as it were, the mask of one another's souls, are confronted by a deeper and more inveterate mystery--the eternal mystery of difference, which separates all men born into the world and keeps us perpetually alone. in the case of heyst and lena--of flora de barral and her captain anthony--of charles and mrs. gould--of aissa and willems--of almayer's daughter and her malay lover, mr. conrad takes up the ancient planetary theme of the loves of men and women and throws upon it a sudden, original, and singularly stimulating light; a light, that like a lantern carried down into the very cave of the "mothers," throws its flickering and ambiguous rays over the large, dumb, formless shapes--the primordial motives of human hearts--which grope and fumble in that thick darkness. the style of conrad, simpler than that of james, less monumental than that of hardy, has nevertheless a certain forward-driving impetus hardly less effective than these more famous mediums of expression. "lord jim" is perhaps his masterpiece and may be regarded as the most interesting book written recently in our language with the exception of henry james' "golden bowl." for sheer excitement and the thrilling sensation of delayed dénouement it must be conceded that not one of our classical novelists can touch conrad. "victory" remains an absorbing evidence of his power of concentrating at one and the same moment our dramatic and our psychological interest. 80. walter pater. marius the epicurean. studies in the renaissance. imaginary portraits. plato and platonism. gaston de latour. walter pater's writings are more capable than any in our list of offering, if approached at the suitable hour and moment, new vistas and possibilities both intellectual and emotional. that wise and massive egoism taught by goethe, that impassioned "living to oneself" indicated by stendhal, find in walter pater a new qualification and a new sanction. himself a supreme master of the rare and exquisite in style, he becomes, for those who really understand him, something more penetrating and insidious than a mere personality. he becomes an atmosphere, an attitude, a tone, a temper--and one too which may serve us to most rich and recondite purpose, as we wander through the world seeking the excitement and consecration of impassioned cults and organized discriminations. for this austere and elaborately constructed style of his is nothing less than the palpable expression of his own discriminating days; the wayfaring, so self-consciously and scrupulously guarded, of his own fastidious "hedonism," seeking its elaborate satisfactions among the chance-offered occasions of hour, or person or of place. walter pater remains, for those who are permitted to feel these things, the one who above all others has the subtlest and most stimulating method of approach with regard to all the great arts, and most especially with regard to the art of literature. no one, after reading him, can remain gross, academic, vulgar, or indiscriminate. and, with the rest, we seem to be aware of a secret attitude not only towards art but towards life also, to miss the key to which would be to fail in that architecture of the soul and senses which is the object of the discipline not merely of the æsthetic but of the religious cult. for the supreme initiation into which we are led by these elaborate and patient essays, is the initiation into the world of inner austerity, which makes its clear-cut and passionate distinctions in our emotional as well as in our intellectual life. everything, without exception, as we read pater becomes "a matter of taste"; but the high and exclusive nature of this taste, to which no sensations but those which are vulgar and common are forbidden, is itself a guarantee of the gentleness and delicacy of the passions evoked. his ultimate philosophy seems to be that--as he himself has described it in "marius,"--of aristippus of cyrene; but this "undermining of metaphysic by means of metaphysic" lands him in no mere arid agnosticism or weary emptiness of suspended judgment; but in a rich and imaginative region of infinite possibilities, from the shores of which he is able to launch forth at will; or to gather up at his pleasure the delicate shells strewn upon the sand. 85. george bernard shaw. man and superman. mr. shaw has found his role and his occupation very happily cut out for him in the unfailing stupidity, not untouched by a sense of humor, of our anglo-saxon democracy in england and america. in germany, too, there seems naïveté and simplicity enough to be still entertained by these mischievously whimsical and yet portentously moral comedies. it appears however that the civilization for which rabelais and voltaire wrote, is less willing to acclaim as an extraordinary genius one who has the wit to pierce with a bodkin the idolatries and illusions of such pathetically simple people. bernard shaw takes the universe very seriously. by calling it the life-force he permits himself to address it in that heroic vein reserved, among more ordinary intelligencies, for anthropomorphic deities. bernard shaw's sense of the comic draws its spirit from the contrast between clever people and stupid people, and seems to appear at its best when engaged in upsetting the pseudo-historical, pseudo-philosophical illusions of anglo-saxons, in charmingly ridiculous pantomimes, which the redeeming humor of that patient race has just intelligence enough thoroughly to enjoy. if he were himself less moralistically earnest the spice of the jest would disappear. his humor is not universal humor. it is topical humor; and topical humor derives its point from moral contrast,--the contrast in this case between the virtue of mr. shaw and the vices of modern society. "man and superman" is undoubtedly his most interesting work from a philosophical point of view, but his later plays--such bewitching farces as "fanny's first play," "androcles," and "pygmalion"--seem to express more completely than anything else that rollicking combative roguishness which is his most characteristic quality. 86. gilbert k. chesterton. orthodoxy. mr. chesterton may congratulate himself upon being the only man of letters in england who has had the originality or the insight or the temperamental courage to adopt a definitely reactionary philosophy; whereas in france we have huysmans, barrés, bourget, bordeaux, and many others, whose persuasive and romantic rôle it is to prop up tottering altars; in england we have only mr. chesterton. that is doubtless why it is necessary for him to exaggerate his paradoxes so extravagantly; and also why he is so important and so dear to the hearts of intelligent clergymen. mr. chesterton's grand philosophical "coup" is a simple and effective one--the turning of everything, complacently and hilariously, upside down. one has the salutary amusement in reading him of visualizing the universe in the posture of a gargantuan baby, "prepared" for a sound smacking. mr. chesterton himself is the chief actor in this performance and wonderful pyrotechnic stars leap into space as its happy result. mr. chesterton has his own peculiar "religion"--a sort of chelsea embankment catholicism, in which, in place of pontifical encyclicals, we have punch and judy jokes, and in place of apostolic doctrine we have umbrellas, lamp-posts, electric-signs and prestidigitating clerics. mr. chesterton is never more entertaining, never more entirely at ease, than when turning one or other of the really noble and tragic figures of human intellect into preposterous "aunt sallies" at whose battered heads he can fling the turnips and potatoes of the average man's average suspicion, dipped for that purpose in a fiery sort of brandy of his own whimsical wit. if we don't become "like little children"; in other words like jovial, middle-aged swashbucklers, and protest our belief in flying pigs, pusses in boots, jacks on the top of beanstalks, old women who live in shoes, fairies, fandangos, prester johns, and blue devils, there is no hope for us and we are condemned to a dreadful purgatory of pedantic and atheistic dullness, along with li hung chang, george eliot, herbert spencer and other heretics whose view of the dogma of the immortality of the soul differs from that of mr. chesterton. 87. oscar wilde. intentions. the importance of being earnest. de profundis. "intentions" is perhaps the most original of all wilde's remarkable works. his supreme art, as he himself well knew, was, after all, the art of conversation. one might even put it that his greatest achievement in life was just the achievement of being brazenly and shamelessly what he naturally was--especially in conversation. to call him a "poseur" with the implication that he pretended or assumed a manner, were just as absurd as to call a tiger striped with the implication that the beast deliberately "put on" that mark of distinction. if it is a pose to enjoy the sensation of one's own spontaneous gestures, wilde was indeed the worst of pretenders. but the stupid gravity of many generals, judges and archbishops is not more natural to them than his exquisite insolence was to him. below the wit and provocative persiflage of "intentions" there is a deep and true conception of the nature of art--a conception which might well serve as the "philosophy" of much of the most interesting and arresting of modern work. wilde's extraordinary charm largely depends upon something invincibly boyish and youthful in him. his personality, as he himself says, has become almost symbolic--symbolic, that is, of a certain shameless and beautiful defiance of the world, expressed in an unconquerable insolence worthy of the very spirit of hard, brave, flagrant youth. "the importance of being earnest" is perhaps the gayest, least responsible, and most adorably witty of all english comedies; just as "salome" is the most richly colored and smoulderingly sensual of all modern tragedies. one actually touches with one's fingers the feasting-cups of the tetrarch; and the passion of the daughter of herodias hangs round one like an exotic perfume. in "de profundis" we sound the sea-floor of a quite open secret; the secret namely of the invincible attraction of a certain type of artist and sensualist towards the "white christ" who came forth from the tomb where he had been laid, with precious ointments about him, by the arimathaean. in "the soul of man" another symbolic reversion displays itself--that reversion namely of the soul of the true artist towards the revolutionary organization which, along with insensitiveness and brutality, proposes to abolish ugliness also. the name of oscar wilde thus becomes a name "to conjure with" and a fantastic beacon-fire to which those "oppressed and humiliated" may repair and take new heart. 90. rudyard kipling. the jungle book. whatever one may feel about mr. kipling's other work, about his rampagious imperialism, his self-conscious swashbucklerism, his pipe-clay and his journalism, his moralistic breeziness and his patronage of the "white man's burden," one cannot help admitting that the jungle-book is one of the immortal children's tales of the world. in spite of the somewhat priggish introduction, even here, of what might be called his anglo-saxon propaganda, the jungle-book carries one further, it almost seems, and more convincingly, into the very heart and inwards of beast-life and wood-magic, than any other work ever written. the figures of these animals are quite biblical in their emphatic picturesqueness, and never has the romance of these spotted and striped aboriginals, in their primordial struggles for food and water, been more thrillingly conveyed. every scene, every situation, brands itself upon the memory as perhaps nothing else in literature does except the stories in the old testament. the best of all children's books--"grimm's fairy tales" itself--takes no deeper hold upon the youthful mind. mr. kipling's genius which in his other work is constantly "dropping bricks" as the expressive phrase has it, and running amuck through strenuous banalities, rises in the jungle-book to heights of poetic and imaginative suggestion which will give him an undying position among the great writers of our race. 91. charles l. dodgson. alice in wonderland. _the edition with the original illustrations_. it would be ridiculous to compile a list of a hundred best books and leave out this one. lack of space alone prevents us from including "through the looking glass" too. "alice" is after all as much of a classic now and by the same right, the right of a universal appeal, to every type of child, as mother goose of the nursery rhymes. she had only to appear--this slender-legged, straight-haired, early-victorian little prude, to enter at once the inmost arcana of the temple of art. the book is a singular evidence of what the power of a desperate devotion can do--a devotion like this of mr. dodgson to all little girls--when a certain whimsical genius belongs to the possessed by it. the creator of alice has really done nothing but permit his absorbing worship of many demure little maids to focus and concentrate itself into an almost incredible transformation of what was the intrinsic nature of the writer into what was the intrinsic nature of the "written-about." the author of this book has indeed, so to speak, eluded the limitations of his own skin, and by the magic of his love for little girls has passed--carrying his grown-up cleverness with him--actually into the little girl's inmost consciousness. the book might be quite as witty as it is and quite as amusing but it would not carry for us that peculiar "perfume in the mention," that provocative enchantment, if it were not much more--oh, so much more--than merely amusing. the thousand and one reactions, impressions, intimations, of a little girl's consciousness, are reproduced here with a faithfulness that is absolutely startling. what really makes the transformation complete is the absence in "alice" of that half-comic sententious priggishness which, as soon as we have ceased to be children, we find so curiously irritating in kingsley's "water babies." 92. john galsworthy. the country house. the man of property. fraternity. john galsworthy is almost alone among modern writers in the possession of a genius, which in the most exact sense of that admirable word, can only be described as the genius of a gentleman. it is a style singularly sensitive, a little vibrant perhaps sometimes, and so tense as to become attenuated, but of a most rare and wistful beauty. his humor which is his weakest point is a thing of almost feminine perceptions but quaintly pliable, as the sense of humor in women often is, to an odd strain of peevish extravagance. the chivalrous nobility of mr. galsworthy's habitual mood is at once the cause of certain fragilities and betrayals in the mass and weight of his art and the cause of the indignant pity which evokes some of his finest touches. it seems to irritate his nerves almost to frenzy to contemplate the shackles and fetters with which, whether in the domestic or social or legal world, the free spirits of men and women are bound down and imprisoned. the touching figure of mrs. pendyce in the "country house"--the tragic figure of irene soames forsyte in the "man of property"--the pitiful figure of the little model in "fraternity"--have all something of the same quality. 95. w. somerset maugham. of human bondage. in this remarkable book mr. w. somerset maugham surpasses by a long distance the average novels of recent appearance. the portion of the book which deals with paris, especially with that mad poet there, who expounds the philosophy of the "pattern," is as suggestive a piece of literature as any we have seen for half a dozen years. the passage towards the end of the book on the subject of the genius of el greco is also profoundly interesting; and the sentences which comment so gravely and beautifully upon the cry of the christ, "father, forgive them; they know not what they do," have a rare and most moving power. 96. gilbert cannan. round the corner. "round the corner" is perhaps mr. cannan's best book but "young earnest" and "old mole" are also curious and interesting volumes. mr. cannan is as typical a modern writer as could be found anywhere. and yet modernity is not his only charm. he has genuine psychological insight and though this insight comes in flashes and is not continuous it often gives an original twist to his characters which helps to make them strangely convincing and appealing. "round the corner" is a genuine masterpiece. it is the history of the most charming and touching clergyman described in all english fiction since the vicar of wakefield; and the massive, solid manner in which the story is constructed, the vigor and reality of the interplay of the various members of francis' family, the admirable portrait of the mother, the grand and solemn close of the book, make it one of the most powerful works of fiction england has produced during the last decade. now and again--and what praise could go further?--there are little touches of clear-cut realism, of that kind which has a mystical background, which actually suggest some of the lighter and more idyllic work of goethe himself. the book has genuine wisdom in it, of a sort superior to any philosophical system, and one feels at the close the tonic and soothing effect of a powerful moral influence, sweetening and refining one's general reaction towards life. 97. vincent o'sullivan. the good girl. _published by dutton & co._ this admirable work of art is not known as well as it deserves either in england or america. it is a work of genius in every sense of that word, and it produces on the mind that curious sense of completeness and finality which only such works produce. mr. l.u. wilkinson--himself a writer of powerful achievement--says of "the good girl": "it does what i have always desired should be done; it reduces 'atmosphere' and 'nature' to their proper subordinate place. it wastes no energy. it focuses one's intellect and one's emotion. it creates characters who resemble none others in fiction. it is imaginative realism of the highest level of excellence." the complex figure of vendred, the hero of the story, the evasive provocative mona lisa-like portrait of mrs. dover, the extraordinary and stimulating art with which her husband is described, the agitating and tragic appeal made to us by vendred's child-wife, the unfortunate louise--all these together make up one of the most absorbing and unforgettable impressions we have received for many years. of mr. and mrs. dover in their relation to one another the following passage reverberates through one's mind:--"they would sit opposite one another silently, criticising with a drastic pitiless criticism. this in itself showed where they had arrived; for faith has to be shaken before there is room for criticism, and if love survives the criticism of lovers, it is altogether different from the love they began with. lovers can be almost anything they choose to each other and still be in love, but they cannot be critical. that is blighting." perhaps the most tragic thing in the book is the letter written by louise to vendred when the luckless child discovers her husband's intrigue with her mother:--"i came to you in the middle of the night last night because i was afraid of the wind. the fire was burning and i saw. i am gone, you will never see me again." the last scenes of the unfortunate girl's life--indirectly described by the ruffian who got possession of her in paris--produce on the mind that sickening sense of the wanton stupidity of the universe which fills one with hopeless pity. the author of this book must have a noble and formidable soul. 98. oliver onions. the story of louie. "the story of louie" is the last and finest volume of an astonishing trilogy--the first two volumes of which are named respectively "in accordance with the evidence" and "the debit account." the mere fact that in the midst of our contemptible hatred of "long books" this excellent trilogy should have appeared, is an indication of the daring and originality of mr. oliver onions. mr. onions is one of the few modern writers--along with hardy, conrad and james--who is entirely untouched by political or ethical propagandism. his trilogy is a genuinely creative work of a high and exclusive order. the manner in which, to quote mr. l.u. wilkinson again--"the whole prospect is, as it were, strained through the character of one or other of the leading persons is in itself a proof of this writer's fine artistic instinct." the way in which all the leading persons in the book stand out in clear relief and indelibly print themselves on the mind is evidence of the value of this method. and what masterly irony in the contrast between "evie" for instance as jeffries sees her and "evie" as she is seen by her rival louie! nowhere in literature, except in dostoievsky, has the ferocious struggle of two women over a man been so savagely and truly portrayed as in the great scene in "louie" between that young woman and evie when the latter visits her in her rooms. oliver onions' humor has that large and vigorous expansiveness, touched with something almost sardonic, which we associate with some of the very greatest writers. there is always present in his work a certain free sweep of imagination which deals masterfully and suggestively with all manner of sordid material. 99. arnold bennett. clayhanger. "clayhanger" with its sequels, "hilda lessways" and "these twain," makes up an imposing and convincing trilogy of middle-class life in the english pottery towns. to these books should be added "old wives' tale," "anna of the five towns" and all the others among this writer's works which deal with these pottery places he knows so superbly well. outside the five towns mr. bennett loses something of the power of his touch. he is an interesting example of a writer with a definite "milieu" out of whose happy security he is always ill-advised to stray. but within his own region he is a powerful master. no one in modern english fiction has treated so creatively and illuminatingly the least interesting and least romantic strata of human society which is perhaps to be found in the whole world. and yet he endows this paralyzing bourgeoisie with astonishing life. one turns back from much more exciting literature to these ignorant, conceited, restricted and undistinguished people. one turns back to them because mr. bennett shows one the tragic humanity, eternally and mysteriously fascinating, to be found beneath these vulgar and unlovely exteriors. nor when it comes to the problem of sex itself is this writer less of a master. never has the undying conflict, the world-old struggle, between those who, in the catullian phrase, "love and hate" at the same time, been more convincingly brought into the light than in the relations between these uninteresting but strangely appealing people. arnold bennett's knowledge of the five towns gives to his work a background of significant congruity whose interaction upon the characters of his plots has the same kind of weight and portentousness as the interaction of nature in the books of mr. hardy. such a background may be in itself materialistic and sordid, but in the imaginative reaction it produces upon the characters it has the genuine poetic quality. 100. oxford book of english verse. this is by far the best anthology of english poetry, its only rival being the first series of palgrave's golden treasury. those interested in the work of more recent poets and in the latest poetic "movements" in england and america would be wise to turn to putnam's "georgian poetry"--two series--and "the new poetry" by harriet monroe, published by macmillan. the compiler of this selection of books feels himself that the most poetical among the younger poets of our age is walter de la mare and of the poems which mr. de la mare has so far written, he finds the best to be those extraordinary and magical verses entitled "the listeners" which seem to come nearer to giving a voice to the unutterable margin of our days than any others written within the last ten years. the following pages contain an alphabetical list by author of the one hundred best books, also the titles of other books recommended in the text by mr. powys. the numerals following the titles of the books refer to the number given the books in this list, while the prices attached thereto are the publisher's list prices. if sent by mail or express it is necessary to add the cost, which is usually about 10 per cent, of the price. g. arnold shaw, publisher grand central terminal, new york index with prices of recommended editions of john cowper powys' list of one hundred best books and other books mentioned in the text binding and price author title leather cloth artzibasheff ........ sanine (52) ....................... $1.35 artzibasheff ........ breaking point .................... 1.40 austen, jane ........ *pride and prejudice (61) ......... $1.25 .75 balzac, honore de ... *lost illusions (29) centenary ed.. 1.35 balzac, honore de ... *cousin bette (30) centenary ed.... 1.35 balzac, honore de ... *old goriot (31) centenary ed...... 1.35 bennett, arnold ..... clayhanger (99).................... 1.50 bennett, arnold ..... hilda lessways .................... 1.50 bennett, arnold ..... these twain ....................... 1.50 bennett, arnold ..... old wives' tale ................... 1.50 bennett, arnold ..... anna of the five towns ............ 1.20 brontë, emily ....... wüthering heights (62) ............ 1.75 bourget, paul ....... le disciple (38)................... .75 browne, sir thos..... *religio medici and urn burial (11) in scott library ........... .40 browne, sir thos..... *religio (golden treasury series) . 1.00 cannan, gilbert...... round the corner (96) ............. 1.35 cannan, gilbert...... young earnest ..................... 1.35 cannan, gilbert...... old mole .......................... 1.35 catullus............. loeb library edition (5) .......... 2.00 1.50 cervantes............ *don quixote (27) trans. w.j. jarvis ........................... 2.00 carroll, lewis....... alice in wonderland (91) ......... 1.00 carroll, lewis....... thro the looking glass ........... 1.00 chesterton, g.k...... orthodoxy (86) ................... 1.50 conrad, joseph....... chance (75) ...................... 1.50 conrad, joseph....... lord jim (76) .................... 1.50 conrad, joseph....... victory (77) ..................... 1.50 conrad, joseph ...... youth (78) ....................... 1.50 conrad, joseph ...... almayer's folly (79) ............. 1.35 dante ............... divine comedy (6) ................ temple classics, 3 vols. ......... 1.35 d'annunzio, g. ...... the flame of life (40) ........... 1.50 d'annunzio, g. ...... the triumph of death (41) ........ 1.50 de la mare, walter... the listeners .................... 1.20 dickens, charles..... *great expectations (60), oxford edition ................. .75 dickens, charles..... *great expectations, oxford red venetian ................... 1.25 dickens, charles..... *great expectations, india paper, lambskin ....................... 1.75 dostoievsky, f....... *crime and punishment, trans. c. garnett (42) ................... 1.50 dostoievsky, f....... *the idiot (43), c. garnett ...... 1.50 dostoievsky, f....... the brothers karamazov (44) c. garnett ........................ 1.50 dostoievsky, f....... the insulted and injured (45) c. garnett ........................ 1.50 dostoievsky, f....... the possessed (46) c. garnett .... 1.50 dreiser, theodore.... the titan (26) ................... 1.40 emerson, r.w......... essays (23), first and second series in one volume. cambridge classics edition ............... .90 euripides ........... the bacchae (3), trans, by gilbert murray ......................... .65 france, anatole ..... the elm tree on the mall (34) .... 1.75 france, anatole ..... the opinions of jerome coignard (35) .................. 1.75 france, anatole ..... my friend's book (36) ............ 1.75 galsworthy, john..... the country house (92) ........... 1.35 galsworthy, john..... the man of property (93) ......... 1.35 galsworthy, john..... fraternity (94) .................. 1.35 georgian poetry...... 1911/1912 ........................ 1.50 georgian poetry...... 1913/1914 ........................ 1.50 goethe............... *faust (12) trans. by bayard taylor 1.25 goethe............... *wilhelm meister (13) trans. by carlyle ........................ 1.25 goethe............... goethe's conversations with eckerman (14) .................. 1.25 gourmont, remy de.... a night in the luxembourg (37) ... 1.50 gorki, maxim......... foma gordyeeff (50) ... 1.00 hardy, thomas ....... tess of the d'urbevilles (70) .... 1.50 hardy, thomas........ the return of the native (71) .... 1.50 hardy, thomas........ the mayor of casterbridge (72).... 1.50 hardy, thomas........ far from the madding crowd (73) .. 1.50 hardy, thomas........ wessex poems (74) ................ 1.85 hardy, thomas........ poems of past and present ........ 1.60 hardy, thomas........ satires of circumstances ......... 1.50 hauptmann............ the fool in christ, (20) ......... 1.50 heine ............... prose works and "confessions" (18), scott library ............ .40 heine ............... life of--great writers series .... .40 horace............... *odes (4) prose translation ...... 1.25 hugo, victor ........ *the toilers of the sea (28) ..... 1.00 homer ............... *the odyssey, (2) butcher and lang ............................ .80 ibsen................ *the wild duck (21) .............. 1.00 james, henry ........ the ambassadors (64) ............. 2.00 james, henry ........ the tragic muse (65) 2 vols. each. 1.25 james, henry ........ the soft side (66) ............... 1.50 james, henry ........ the better sort (67) ............. 1.35 james, henry ........ the wings of a dove (68) 2 vols. . 2.25 james, henry ........ the golden bowl (69) 2 vols. ..... 2.25 kipling, rudyard..... the jungle book (90) ............. 1.50 lamb, charles ....... *essays of elia (55) eversley ed. 1.50 masters, edgar lee... spoon river anthology (25) ....... 1.50 1.25 maugham, w. somerset. of human bondage (95) ............ 1.50 maupassant, guy de .. madame tellier's establishment (32) paper ..................... .40 meredith, george .... harry richmond (65) pocket ed. ... 1.00 milton ......(10) eversley edition (or*), 3 vols. set 4.50 monroe, harriet ..... the new poetry ................... 1.50 nietzsche, f......... zarathustra (15) ................. 2.00 nietzsche, f......... the joyful wisdom (16) ........... 1.60 nietzsche, f......... ecce homo (17) ................... 2.00 nietzsche, f......... commentary by lichtenberger ...... 1.50 nietzsche, f......... life of by daniel halevy, trans. . 1.25 onions, oliver ...... the story of louie (98) .......... 1.25 onions, oliver ...... in accordance with the evidence .. 1.25 onions, oliver ...... the debit account ................ 1.25 o'sullivan, vincent.. the good girl (97) ............... 1.35 oxford book of english verse (100), crown 8 vo. ....... 2.00 oxford book of english verse, india paper edition ..... 2.75 palgrave ............ golden treasury, first series* ... 1.00 pater, walter ....... marius the epicurean (80), 2 vols. 4.00 pater, walter ....... studies in the renaissance (81) .. 2.00 pater, walter ....... imaginary portraits (82) ......... 2.00 pater, walter ....... plato and platonism (83) ......... 2.00 pater, walter ....... gaston de latour (84) ............ 2.00 rabelais ............ (7) edition with doré illustrations rare selection in french classics for english readers' series .... 1.25 rolland, romain ..... jean christophe (39) (trans. g. cannan), 3 vols. .... 4.50 scott, sir walter ... *guy mannering (56), dryburgh edition ........................ 1.25 scott, sir walter ... *bride of lammermoor (57) ........ 1.25 scott, sir walter ... *heart of midlothian (58) ........ 1.25 shakespeare ......... troilus and cressida (9), temple . .55 .35 shakespeare ......... measure for measure, temple ...... .55 .35 shakespeare ......... timon of athens, temple edition .. .55 .35 shaw, george bernard man and superman (85) ............ 1.25 stendhal ............ the red and the black (33) ....... 1.75 sterne, laurence .... *tristram shandy (53) lib. of eng. classics, 2 vols. each ................... 1.50 strindberg, august .. the confessions of a fool (22) ... 1.35 sudermann ........... song of songs (19) ............... 1.40 swift, jonathan ..... *tale of a tub (54), bohn lib. ... 1.25 thackeray, w.m. ..... *henry esmond (59), cranford series ......................... 2.00 thackeray, w.m. ..... *henry esmond, oxford edition .... .75 thackeray, w.m. ..... *henry esmond, india paper ed. ... 1.75 turgeniev ........... *virgin soil, trans. constance garnett, 2 vols. each (47) ..... 1.00 turgeniev ........... sportsman's sketches, trans. constance garnett, 2 vols. each (48) .............. 1.00 turgeniev ........... *lisa, trans. constance garnett, (49) .................. 1.00 tschekoff ........... the sea gull (51) ................ 1.50 voltaire ............ candide (8) in morley's universal library ........................ .35 whitman, walt ....... *leaves of grass (24) ............ 1.25 wilde, oscar ........ intentions (87) ravenna edition .. 1.25 wilde, oscar ........ the importance of being earnest (88) ................... 1.25 wilde, oscar ........ de profundis (89) ................ 1.25 an asterisk (*) before the title of a book indicates that it may be obtained in everyman's library, as well as the edition named, price 40 cts, in cloth, and 80 cts. in leather. the end reminiscent of dostoievsky wood and stone a romance by john cowper powys _12mo, 722 pages, $1.50 net_ this is an epoch marking novel by an author "who is dramatic as is no other now writing."--oakland _enquirer_. in this startling and original romance, the author turns aside from the track of his contemporaries and reverts to models drawn from races which have bolder and less conventional views of literature than the anglo-saxon race. following the lead of the great russian dostoievsky, he proceeds boldly to lay bare the secret passions, the unacknowledged motives and impulses, which lurk below the placid-seeming surface of ordinary human nature. it has been reviewed favorably by all of america's principal newspapers, as the following extracts from press notices will indicate: boston transcript: "his mastery of language, his knowledge of human impulses, his interpretation of the forces of nature and of the power of inanimate objects over human beings, all pronounce him a writer of no mean rank.... he can express philosophy in terms of narrative without prostituting his art; he can suggest an answer without drawing a moral; with a clearer vision he could stand among the masters in literary achievement." chicago tribune: "psychologically speaking, it is one of the most remarkable pieces of fiction ever written.... i do not hesitate to say that a new novelist of power has appeared upon the scene." evening sun, new york: "mr. powys, master essayist, comes forward with a first novel which is brilliant in style, absorbing in plot, deep and thoughtful in its purpose." philadelphia press: "it undoubtedly will set a new mark in literature of the contemporary period.... mr. powys' style is the style of thomas hardy." philadelphia record: "every page is a joy, every chapter a fresh proof of powys' genius." n.y. evening post: "the best novel one reviewer has read in a good while." new york times: "mr. powys is evidently a keen observer of life and responsive to all its phases." n.y. tribune: "a good story well told." n.y. herald: "here is a novel worth reading." the nation: "a book of distinctive flavor." review of reviews: "an exceptional novel ... a brilliant intellectual piece of work." philadelphia north american: "a notable achievement in fictitious literature." springfield republican: "this is a book which will have more than the ephemeral existence of the average novel." new haven courier journal: "one of the most notable and important novels that has appeared in the last twelve months." hartford courant: "the book is very interesting, provokingly interesting." democrat and chronicle, rochester: "among the few works of fiction that stand out in the very forefront of this season's production." g. arnold shaw, publisher to the university lecturers association grand central terminal, new york shaw's fall fiction rodmoor, a romance by john cowper powys. _12mo. about 400 pages. $1.50 net_ the new york _evening post_ said of mr. powys' first novel "wood and stone" that it was "one of the best novels of the twelvemonth" while the boston _transcript_ said that "with a clearer vision he could stand among the masters in literary achievement." the chicago _tribune_ said of the same work, "psychologically speaking, it is one of the most remarkable pieces of fiction ever written." the announcement of a second novel by the same brilliant author is therefore one of extraordinary interest. in this new novel, mr. powys, while unhesitatingly using to his purpose those new fields of psychological interest opened up for us by recent russian writers, reverts, in the general style and content of his story, to that more idealistic, more simple mood, which we associate with such great romanticists as emily brontë and victor hugo. quaker-born, a romance of the great war, by ian campbell hannah. _12mo. about 320 pages. $1.35 net_ while this is dr. hannah's first novel, it is his eighth published work; he thus brings to bear the skill of the literary craftsman upon his dramatic theme of the quakers' conscientious objections to war. to fight or not to fight is the problem that confronted edward alexander when he witnessed the bombardment of scarborough; he decided as an englishman, not as a quaker--but, the next day a telegram came summoning him to the death-bed of his mother, who demanded as her dying wish that he should not abandon the principles of the friends. he had the strength to reverse his decision but neither his fiancée nor his best cambridge friend could understand. how he nearly lost the former while saving the life of the latter on the battle field in flanders is the basis of an absorbing plot which holds the interest from beginning to end of this thrilling story of young love. an admirable book recommended especially to those who detest alike the mawkish sentiment of the "best-seller" and the revolting realistic novels of our day. the child of the moat, a story of 1550, by i.b. stoughton holborn. _12mo. about 320 pages. $1.25 net_ this is a book for girls of from 13 to 16 written for a child rescued from the _lusitania_. many complain that girls' books are too tame and prefer those written for boys. mr. holborn therefore promised to write a girls' book with as much adventure as stevenson's "treasure island." he has succeeded and the hair-breadth escapes of the heroine should satisfy the most exacting. the scene is laid in the stirring times of the reformation and those who know the author as an archaeological lecturer will recognize his bent in several picturesque touches, such as the striking dressing scene before the heroine's birthday-party. the book is a remarkable contribution to children's literature and suggests a raising of the standard if more were written by men of learning and scholarship who are true child-lovers. after all was not "alice in wonderland" written by an erudite oxford don and everyone who has read the present author's volume of poems "children of fancy" will know him as a lover of children. g. arnold shaw, publisher to the university lecturers association grand central terminal, new york recommended by the a.l.a. booklist adopted for required reading by the pittsburgh teachers reading circle visions and revisions a book of literary devotions by john cowper powys _8vo, 298 pp. half white cloth with blue fabriano paper sides, $2.00 net_ this volume of essays on great writers by the well-known lecturer was the first of a series of three books with the same purpose as the author's brilliant lectures; namely, to enable one to discriminate between the great and the mediocre in ancient and modern literature: the other two books being "one hundred best books" and "suspended judgments." within a year of its publication, four editions of "visions and revisions" were printed--an extraordinary record considering that it was only the second book issued by a new publisher. the value of the book to the student and its interest for the general reader are guaranteed by the international fame of the author as an interpreter of great literature and by the enthusiastic reviews it received from the american press. review of reviews, new york: "seventeen essays ... remarkable for the omission of all that is tedious and cumbersome in literary appreciations, such as pedantry, muckraking, theorizing, and, in particular, constructive criticism." book news monthly, philadelphia: "not one line in the entire book that is not tense with thought and feeling. with all readers who crave mental stimulation ... 'visions and revisions' is sure of a great and enthusiastic appreciation." the nation and the evening post, new york: "their imagery is bright, clear and frequently picturesque. the rhythm falls with a pleasing cadence on the ear." brooklyn daily eagle: "a volume of singularly acute and readable literary criticism." chicago herald: "an essayist at once scholarly, human and charming is john cowper powys.... almost every page carries some arresting thought, quaintly appealing phrase, or picture spelling passage." reedy's mirror, st. louis: "powys keeps you wide awake in the reading because he's thinking and writing from the standpoint of life, not of theory or system. powys has a system but it is hardly a system. it is a sort of surrender to the revelation each writer has to make." kansas city star: "john cowper powys' essays are wonderfully illuminating.... mr. powys writes in at least a semblance of the grand style." "visions and revisions" contains the following essays:-rabelais dickens thomas hardy dante goethe walter pater shakespeare matthew arnold dostoievsky el greco shelley edgar allan poe milton keats walt whitman charles lamb nietzsche conclusion g. arnold shaw, publisher to the university lecturers association grand central terminal, new york suspended judgments essays on books and sensations by john cowper powys 8vo. about 400 pages. half cloth with blue fabriano paper sides............................................$2.00 net _the book news monthly_ said of "visions and revisions": "not one line in the entire book that is not tense with thought and feeling." the author of "visions and revisions" says of this new book of essays: "in 'suspended judgments' i have sought to express with more deliberation and in a less spasmodic manner than in 'visions,' the various after-thoughts and reactions both intellectual and sensational which have been produced in me, in recent years, by the re-reading of my favorite writers. i have tried to capture what might be called the 'psychic residuum' of earlier fleeting impressions and i have tried to turn this emotional aftermath into a permanent contribution--at any rate for those of similar temperament--to the psychology of literary appreciation. "to the purely critical essays in this volume i have added a certain number of others dealing with what, in popular parlance, are called 'general topics,' but what in reality are always--in the most extreme sense of that word--personal to the mind reacting from them. i have called the book 'suspended judgments' because while one lives, one grows, and while one grows, one waits and expects." suspended judgments contains these essays: the art of discrimination in literature montaigne emily brontë pascal joseph conrad voltaire henry james rousseau oscar wilde balzac aubrey beardsley victor hugo de maupassant friends anatole france religion paul verlaine love remy de gourmant cities william blake morality byron education g. arnold shaw, publisher to the university lecturers association grand central terminal, new york "rhymes or real poems?"--_boston globe_ wolf's--bane rhymes by john cowper powys _8vo, 120 pages, $1.25 net_ in these remarkable poems mr. powys strikes a new and startlingly unfamiliar note; their interest lies in the fact that they are the unaffected outcries and protests of a soul in exile, and their originality is to be found in that they sweep aside all facile and commonplace consolations and give expression to the natural and incurable sadness of the heart of man. new york evening post says: "as regards what mr. powys modestly calls his 'rhymes,' we hesitate to say how many years it is necessary to go back in order to find their equals in sheer poetic originality." book news monthly says: "such poems as those are worthy of a permanent existence in literature." kansas city star says: "it is unmistakably verse of lasting quality." the war and culture an answer to professor musterberg by john cowper powys _12mo, 113 pages, 60 cents_ mr. powys says of this book that he has sought to correct that plausible and superficial view of the russian people as "the half-civilised legions to whom we have taught killing by machinery"--a view to which even so independent a thinker as george bernard shaw appears to have fallen a victim. the _nation_ says:--"it is more weighty than many of the more pretentious treatises on the subject." the soliloquy of a hermit by theodore francis powys _12mo, 144 pages, $1.00_ a profoundly original interpretation of life by the great lecturer's hermit brother of which the dial, chicago says: "truly a satirist and humorist of a different kidney from the ordinary sort is this companionable hermit. there is many a chuckle in his little book." g. arnold shaw, publisher to the university lecturers association grand central terminal, new york books by i.b. stoughton holborn children of fancy _second edition, 256 pages, $2.00 net_ this volume has a special claim to attention as the poet was invited to read these poems at oxford university at the 1915 summer meeting. the oxford chronicle in a long account "of one of the greatest pleasures provided for the meeting," remarked that "the ideal is perfectly attained when the poet can recite his own poems with the artistry with which mr. holborn introduced to his audience his charming 'children of fancy.'" mr. holborn swam with part of the mss. from the _lusitania_, and the edinburgh _evening news_ says that "he has commemorated the tragedy in lines of sublime pathos." american review of reviews says: "mr. holborn's poetry is delicate, musical, rhapsodic; often shaped to enfold classical themes, always of proportioned comeliness, filled with a vague haunting of indefinable beauty that can never be embraced in words. it is a book of poetry for poets; one can hardly say more." adopted for required reading by the pittsburgh teachers reading circle the need for art in life _cloth, 116 pp., 75 cents net_ the object of mr. holborn's little book is to show that the peculiar evil of the present day is a lack of the proper love and appreciation of art and beauty. our social and political problems which we attempt to tackle on scientific and moral lines can never be righted in that way, as we have not made a scientifically correct diagnosis of the disease. he makes a careful analytical survey of the three great epochs in our past civilization and clearly demonstrates that wherever one of the fundamentals of man's existence is wanting the man as a whole must fail. it makes no difference whether the lack be on the intellectual, artistic or moral side--the result is equally disastrous to the complete man. the boston transcript says: "this is one of the greatest little books of the age. if it is not epoch-making, it should be. it treats in charming style and convincing manner a theme of vital and universal interest. the thoughtful man who reads it will feel that a new classic has been added to the world's literature." architectures of european religions _blue buckram, gold stamping, 264 pp., $2.00 net_ g. arnold shaw, publisher to the university lecturers association grand central terminal, new york recommended by the a.l.a. booklist specially suitable for schools and colleges arms and the map a study in nationalities and frontiers by ian campbell hannah, m.a., d.c.l. _12mo, 256 pages, $1.23 net_ this work, which has had a large sale in england, will be invaluable when the terms of peace begin to be seriously discussed. every european people is reviewed and the evolution of the different nationalities is carefully explained. particular reference is made to the so-called "irredentist" lands, whose people want to be under a different flag from that under which they live. the colonizing methods of all the nations are dealt with, and especially the place in the sun that germany hasn't got. new york times says: "such a volume as this will undoubtedly be of value in presenting ... facts of great importance in a brief and interesting fashion." brooklyn daily eagle says: "it is hard to find a man who presents his arguments so broad-mindedly as dr. hannah. his spirit is that of a catholic scholar striving earnestly to find the truth and present it sympathetically." philadelphia north american says: "it is in no sense history, but rather a preparatory effort to mark broadly the outlines of any future peace settlement that would have even a fighting chance of permanency. only in perusing a critical study of this character can the vast problems of post-bellum imminence be fully apprehended." philadelphia press says: "his work is immensely readable and particularly interesting at this time and will throw much fresh light on the situation." other books by ian c. hannah eastern asia, a history ..................................$2.50 capitals of the northlands (a tale of ten cities)......... 2.00 the berwick and lothian coast (in the county coast series) 2.00 the heart of east anglia (a history of norwich)........... 2.00 some irish religious houses (reprinted from the _archeological journal_) ............................... .50 irish cathedrals (reprinted from the _archaeological journal_) .50 g. arnold shaw, publisher to the university lecturers association grand central terminal, new yor literary taste: how to form it with detailed instructions for collecting a complete library of english literature by arnold bennett 1913 contents chapter i the aim chapter ii your particular case chapter iii why a classic is a classic chapter iv where to begin chapter v how to read a classic chapter vi the question of style chapter vii wrestling with an author chapter viii system in reading chapter ix verse chapter x broad counsels chapter xi an english library: period i chapter xii an english library: period ii chapter xiii an english library: period iii chapter xiv mental stocktaking chapter i the aim at the beginning a misconception must be removed from the path. many people, if not most, look on literary taste as an elegant accomplishment, by acquiring which they will complete themselves, and make themselves finally fit as members of a correct society. they are secretly ashamed of their ignorance of literature, in the same way as they would be ashamed of their ignorance of etiquette at a high entertainment, or of their inability to ride a horse if suddenly called upon to do so. there are certain things that a man ought to know, or to know about, and literature is one of them: such is their idea. they have learnt to dress themselves with propriety, and to behave with propriety on all occasions; they are fairly "up" in the questions of the day; by industry and enterprise they are succeeding in their vocations; it behoves them, then, not to forget that an acquaintance with literature is an indispensable part of a self-respecting man's personal baggage. painting doesn't matter; music doesn't matter very much. but "everyone is supposed to know" about literature. then, literature is such a charming distraction! literary taste thus serves two purposes: as a certificate of correct culture and as a private pastime. a young professor of mathematics, immense at mathematics and games, dangerous at chess, capable of haydn on the violin, once said to me, after listening to some chat on books, "yes, i must take up literature." as though saying: "i was rather forgetting literature. however, i've polished off all these other things. i'll have a shy at literature now." this attitude, or any attitude which resembles it, is wrong. to him who really comprehends what literature is, and what the function of literature is, this attitude is simply ludicrous. it is also fatal to the formation of literary taste. people who regard literary taste simply as an accomplishment, and literature simply as a distraction, will never truly succeed either in acquiring the accomplishment or in using it half-acquired as a distraction; though the one is the most perfect of distractions, and though the other is unsurpassed by any other accomplishment in elegance or in power to impress the universal snobbery of civilised mankind. literature, instead of being an accessory, is the fundamental _sine qua non_ of complete living. i am extremely anxious to avoid rhetorical exaggerations. i do not think i am guilty of one in asserting that he who has not been "presented to the freedom" of literature has not wakened up out of his prenatal sleep. he is merely not born. he can't see; he can't hear; he can't feel, in any full sense. he can only eat his dinner. what more than anything else annoys people who know the true function of literature, and have profited thereby, is the spectacle of so many thousands of individuals going about under the delusion that they are alive, when, as a fact, they are no nearer being alive than a bear in winter. i will tell you what literature is! no--i only wish i could. but i can't. no one can. gleams can be thrown on the secret, inklings given, but no more. i will try to give you an inkling. and, to do so, i will take you back into your own history, or forward into it. that evening when you went for a walk with your faithful friend, the friend from whom you hid nothing--or almost nothing ...! you were, in truth, somewhat inclined to hide from him the particular matter which monopolised your mind that evening, but somehow you contrived to get on to it, drawn by an overpowering fascination. and as your faithful friend was sympathetic and discreet, and flattered you by a respectful curiosity, you proceeded further and further into the said matter, growing more and more confidential, until at last you cried out, in a terrific whisper: "my boy, she is simply miraculous!" at that moment you were in the domain of literature. let me explain. of course, in the ordinary acceptation of the word, she was not miraculous. your faithful friend had never noticed that she was miraculous, nor had about forty thousand other fairly keen observers. she was just a girl. troy had not been burnt for her. a girl cannot be called a miracle. if a girl is to be called a miracle, then you might call pretty nearly anything a miracle.... that is just it: you might. you can. you ought. amid all the miracles of the universe you had just wakened up to one. you were full of your discovery. you were under a divine impulsion to impart that discovery. you had a strong sense of the marvellous beauty of something, and you had to share it. you were in a passion about something, and you had to vent yourself on somebody. you were drawn towards the whole of the rest of the human race. mark the effect of your mood and utterance on your faithful friend. he knew that she was not a miracle. no other person could have made him believe that she was a miracle. but you, by the force and sincerity of your own vision of her, and by the fervour of your desire to make him participate in your vision, did for quite a long time cause him to feel that he had been blind to the miracle of that girl. you were producing literature. you were alive. your eyes were unlidded, your ears were unstopped, to some part of the beauty and the strangeness of the world; and a strong instinct within you forced you to tell someone. it was not enough for you that you saw and heard. others had to see and hear. others had to be wakened up. and they were! it is quite possible--i am not quite sure--that your faithful friend the very next day, or the next month, looked at some other girl, and suddenly saw that she, too, was miraculous! the influence of literature! the makers of literature are those who have seen and felt the miraculous interestingness of the universe. and the greatest makers of literature are those whose vision has been the widest, and whose feeling has been the most intense. your own fragment of insight was accidental, and perhaps temporary. _their_ lives are one long ecstasy of denying that the world is a dull place. is it nothing to you to learn to understand that the world is not a dull place? is it nothing to you to be led out of the tunnel on to the hillside, to have all your senses quickened, to be invigorated by the true savour of life, to feel your heart beating under that correct necktie of yours? these makers of literature render you their equals. the aim of literary study is not to amuse the hours of leisure; it is to awake oneself, it is to be alive, to intensify one's capacity for pleasure, for sympathy, and for comprehension. it is not to affect one hour, but twenty-four hours. it is to change utterly one's relations with the world. an understanding appreciation of literature means an understanding appreciation of the world, and it means nothing else. not isolated and unconnected parts of life, but all of life, brought together and correlated in a synthetic map! the spirit of literature is unifying; it joins the candle and the star, and by the magic of an image shows that the beauty of the greater is in the less. and, not content with the disclosure of beauty and the bringing together of all things whatever within its focus, it enforces a moral wisdom by the tracing everywhere of cause and effect. it consoles doubly--by the revelation of unsuspected loveliness, and by the proof that our lot is the common lot. it is the supreme cry of the discoverer, offering sympathy and asking for it in a single gesture. in attending a university extension lecture on the sources of shakespeare's plots, or in studying the researches of george saintsbury into the origins of english prosody, or in weighing the evidence for and against the assertion that rousseau was a scoundrel, one is apt to forget what literature really is and is for. it is well to remind ourselves that literature is first and last a means of life, and that the enterprise of forming one's literary taste is an enterprise of learning how best to use this means of life. people who don't want to live, people who would sooner hibernate than feel intensely, will be wise to eschew literature. they had better, to quote from the finest passage in a fine poem, "sit around and eat blackberries." the sight of a "common bush afire with god" might upset their nerves. chapter ii your particular case the attitude of the average decent person towards the classics of his own tongue is one of distrust--i had almost said, of fear. i will not take the case of shakespeare, for shakespeare is "taught" in schools; that is to say, the board of education and all authorities pedagogic bind themselves together in a determined effort to make every boy in the land a lifelong enemy of shakespeare. (it is a mercy they don't "teach" blake.) i will take, for an example, sir thomas browne, as to whom the average person has no offensive juvenile memories. he is bound to have read somewhere that the style of sir thomas browne is unsurpassed by anything in english literature. one day he sees the _religio medici_ in a shop-window (or, rather, outside a shop-window, for he would hesitate about entering a bookshop), and he buys it, by way of a mild experiment. he does not expect to be enchanted by it; a profound instinct tells him that sir thomas browne is "not in his line"; and in the result he is even less enchanted than he expected to be. he reads the introduction, and he glances at the first page or two of the work. he sees nothing but words. the work makes no appeal to him whatever. he is surrounded by trees, and cannot perceive the forest. he puts the book away. if sir thomas browne is mentioned, he will say, "yes, very fine!" with a feeling of pride that he has at any rate bought and inspected sir thomas browne. deep in his heart is a suspicion that people who get enthusiastic about sir thomas browne are vain and conceited _poseurs_. after a year or so, when he has recovered from the discouragement caused by sir thomas browne, he may, if he is young and hopeful, repeat the experiment with congreve or addison. same sequel! and so on for perhaps a decade, until his commerce with the classics finally expires! that, magazines and newish fiction apart, is the literary history of the average decent person. and even your case, though you are genuinely preoccupied with thoughts of literature, bears certain disturbing resemblances to the drab case of the average person. you do not approach the classics with gusto--anyhow, not with the same gusto as you would approach a new novel by a modern author who had taken your fancy. you never murmured to yourself, when reading gibbon's _decline and fall_ in bed: "well, i really must read one more chapter before i go to sleep!" speaking generally, the classics do not afford you a pleasure commensurate with their renown. you peruse them with a sense of duty, a sense of doing the right thing, a sense of "improving yourself," rather than with a sense of gladness. you do not smack your lips; you say: "that is good for me." you make little plans for reading, and then you invent excuses for breaking the plans. something new, something which is not a classic, will surely draw you away from a classic. it is all very well for you to pretend to agree with the verdict of the elect that _clarissa harlowe_ is one of the greatest novels in the world--a new kipling, or even a new number of a magazine, will cause you to neglect _clarissa harlowe_, just as though kipling, etc., could not be kept for a few days without turning sour! so that you have to ordain rules for yourself, as: "i will not read anything else until i have read richardson, or gibbon, for an hour each day." thus proving that you regard a classic as a pill, the swallowing of which merits jam! and the more modern a classic is, the more it resembles the stuff of the year and the less it resembles the classics of the centuries, the more easy and enticing do you find that classic. hence you are glad that george eliot, the brontës, thackeray, are considered as classics, because you really _do_ enjoy them. your sentiments concerning them approach your sentiments concerning a "rattling good story" in a magazine. i may have exaggerated--or, on the other hand, i may have understated--the unsatisfactory characteristics of your particular case, but it is probable that in the mirror i hold up you recognise the rough outlines of your likeness. you do not care to admit it; but it is so. you are not content with yourself. the desire to be more truly literary persists in you. you feel that there is something wrong in you, but you cannot put your finger on the spot. further, you feel that you are a bit of a sham. something within you continually forces you to exhibit for the classics an enthusiasm which you do not sincerely feel. you even try to persuade yourself that you are enjoying a book, when the next moment you drop it in the middle and forget to resume it. you occasionally buy classical works, and do not read them at all; you practically decide that it is enough to possess them, and that the mere possession of them gives you a _cachet_. the truth is, you are a sham. and your soul is a sea of uneasy remorse. you reflect: "according to what matthew arnold says, i ought to be perfectly mad about wordsworth's _prelude_. and i am not. why am i not? have i got to be learned, to undertake a vast course of study, in order to be perfectly mad about wordsworth's _prelude_? or am i born without the faculty of pure taste in literature, despite my vague longings? i do wish i could smack my lips over wordsworth's _prelude_ as i did over that splendid story by h.g. wells, _the country of the blind_, in the _strand magazine_!".... yes, i am convinced that in your dissatisfied, your diviner moments, you address yourself in these terms. i am convinced that i have diagnosed your symptoms. now the enterprise of forming one's literary taste is an agreeable one; if it is not agreeable it cannot succeed. but this does not imply that it is an easy or a brief one. the enterprise of beating colonel bogey at golf is an agreeable one, but it means honest and regular work. a fact to be borne in mind always! you are certainly not going to realise your ambition--and so great, so influential an ambition!--by spasmodic and half-hearted effort. you must begin by making up your mind adequately. you must rise to the height of the affair. you must approach a grand undertaking in the grand manner. you ought to mark the day in the calendar as a solemnity. human nature is weak, and has need of tricky aids, even in the pursuit of happiness. time will be necessary to you, and time regularly and sacredly set apart. many people affirm that they cannot be regular, that regularity numbs them. i think this is true of a very few people, and that in the rest the objection to regularity is merely an attempt to excuse idleness. i am inclined to think that you personally are capable of regularity. and i am sure that if you firmly and constantly devote certain specific hours on certain specific days of the week to this business of forming your literary taste, you will arrive at the goal much sooner. the simple act of resolution will help you. this is the first preliminary. the second preliminary is to surround yourself with books, to create for yourself a bookish atmosphere. the merely physical side of books is important--more important than it may seem to the inexperienced. theoretically (save for works of reference), a student has need for but one book at a time. theoretically, an amateur of literature might develop his taste by expending sixpence a week, or a penny a day, in one sixpenny edition of a classic after another sixpenny edition of a classic, and he might store his library in a hat-box or a biscuit-tin. but in practice he would have to be a monster of resolution to succeed in such conditions. the eye must be flattered; the hand must be flattered; the sense of owning must be flattered. sacrifices must be made for the acquisition of literature. that which has cost a sacrifice is always endeared. a detailed scheme of buying books will come later, in the light of further knowledge. for the present, buy--buy whatever has received the _imprimatur_ of critical authority. buy without any immediate reference to what you will read. buy! surround yourself with volumes, as handsome as you can afford. and for reading, all that i will now particularly enjoin is a general and inclusive tasting, in order to attain a sort of familiarity with the look of "literature in all its branches." a turning over of the pages of a volume of chambers's _cyclopædia of english literature_, the third for preference, may be suggested as an admirable and a diverting exercise. you might mark the authors that flash an appeal to you. chapter iii why a classic is a classic the large majority of our fellow-citizens care as much about literature as they care about aeroplanes or the programme of the legislature. they do not ignore it; they are not quite indifferent to it. but their interest in it is faint and perfunctory; or, if their interest happens to be violent, it is spasmodic. ask the two hundred thousand persons whose enthusiasm made the vogue of a popular novel ten years ago what they think of that novel now, and you will gather that they have utterly forgotten it, and that they would no more dream of reading it again than of reading bishop stubbs's _select charters_. probably if they did read it again they would not enjoy it--not because the said novel is a whit worse now than it was ten years ago; not because their taste has improved--but because they have not had sufficient practice to be able to rely on their taste as a means of permanent pleasure. they simply don't know from one day to the next what will please them. in the face of this one may ask: why does the great and universal fame of classical authors continue? the answer is that the fame of classical authors is entirely independent of the majority. do you suppose that if the fame of shakespeare depended on the man in the street it would survive a fortnight? the fame of classical authors is originally made, and it is maintained, by a passionate few. even when a first-class author has enjoyed immense success during his lifetime, the majority have never appreciated him so sincerely as they have appreciated second-rate men. he has always been reinforced by the ardour of the passionate few. and in the case of an author who has emerged into glory after his death the happy sequel has been due solely to the obstinate perseverance of the few. they could not leave him alone; they would not. they kept on savouring him, and talking about him, and buying him, and they generally behaved with such eager zeal, and they were so authoritative and sure of themselves, that at last the majority grew accustomed to the sound of his name and placidly agreed to the proposition that he was a genius; the majority really did not care very much either way. and it is by the passionate few that the renown of genius is kept alive from one generation to another. these few are always at work. they are always rediscovering genius. their curiosity and enthusiasm are exhaustless, so that there is little chance of genius being ignored. and, moreover, they are always working either for or against the verdicts of the majority. the majority can make a reputation, but it is too careless to maintain it. if, by accident, the passionate few agree with the majority in a particular instance, they will frequently remind the majority that such and such a reputation has been made, and the majority will idly concur: "ah, yes. by the way, we must not forget that such and such a reputation exists." without that persistent memory-jogging the reputation would quickly fall into the oblivion which is death. the passionate few only have their way by reason of the fact that they are genuinely interested in literature, that literature matters to them. they conquer by their obstinacy alone, by their eternal repetition of the same statements. do you suppose they could prove to the man in the street that shakespeare was a great artist? the said man would not even understand the terms they employed. but when he is told ten thousand times, and generation after generation, that shakespeare was a great artist, the said man believes--not by reason, but by faith. and he too repeats that shakespeare was a great artist, and he buys the complete works of shakespeare and puts them on his shelves, and he goes to see the marvellous stage-effects which accompany _king lear_ or _hamlet_, and comes back religiously convinced that shakespeare was a great artist. all because the passionate few could not keep their admiration of shakespeare to themselves. this is not cynicism; but truth. and it is important that those who wish to form their literary taste should grasp it. what causes the passionate few to make such a fuss about literature? there can be only one reply. they find a keen and lasting pleasure in literature. they enjoy literature as some men enjoy beer. the recurrence of this pleasure naturally keeps their interest in literature very much alive. they are for ever making new researches, for ever practising on themselves. they learn to understand themselves. they learn to know what they want. their taste becomes surer and surer as their experience lengthens. they do not enjoy to-day what will seem tedious to them to-morrow. when they find a book tedious, no amount of popular clatter will persuade them that it is pleasurable; and when they find it pleasurable no chill silence of the street-crowds will affect their conviction that the book is good and permanent. they have faith in themselves. what are the qualities in a book which give keen and lasting pleasure to the passionate few? this is a question so difficult that it has never yet been completely answered. you may talk lightly about truth, insight, knowledge, wisdom, humour, and beauty. but these comfortable words do not really carry you very far, for each of them has to be defined, especially the first and last. it is all very well for keats in his airy manner to assert that beauty is truth, truth beauty, and that that is all he knows or needs to know. i, for one, need to know a lot more. and i never shall know. nobody, not even hazlitt nor sainte-beuve, has ever finally explained why he thought a book beautiful. i take the first fine lines that come to hand- the woods of arcady are dead, and over is their antique joy-and i say that those lines are beautiful, because they give me pleasure. but why? no answer! i only know that the passionate few will, broadly, agree with me in deriving this mysterious pleasure from those lines. i am only convinced that the liveliness of our pleasure in those and many other lines by the same author will ultimately cause the majority to believe, by faith, that w.b. yeats is a genius. the one reassuring aspect of the literary affair is that the passionate few are passionate about the same things. a continuance of interest does, in actual practice, lead ultimately to the same judgments. there is only the difference in width of interest. some of the passionate few lack catholicity, or, rather, the whole of their interest is confined to one narrow channel; they have none left over. these men help specially to vitalise the reputations of the narrower geniuses: such as crashaw. but their active predilections never contradict the general verdict of the passionate few; rather they reinforce it. a classic is a work which gives pleasure to the minority which is intensely and permanently interested in literature. it lives on because the minority, eager to renew the sensation of pleasure, is eternally curious and is therefore engaged in an eternal process of rediscovery. a classic does not survive for any ethical reason. it does not survive because it conforms to certain canons, or because neglect would not kill it. it survives because it is a source of pleasure, and because the passionate few can no more neglect it than a bee can neglect a flower. the passionate few do not read "the right things" because they are right. that is to put the cart before the horse. "the right things" are the right things solely because the passionate few _like_ reading them. hence--and i now arrive at my point--the one primary essential to literary taste is a hot interest in literature. if you have that, all the rest will come. it matters nothing that at present you fail to find pleasure in certain classics. the driving impulse of your interest will force you to acquire experience, and experience will teach you the use of the means of pleasure. you do not know the secret ways of yourself: that is all. a continuance of interest must inevitably bring you to the keenest joys. but, of course, experience may be acquired judiciously or injudiciously, just as putney may be reached _via_ walham green or _via_ st. petersburg. chapter iv where to begin i wish particularly that my readers should not be intimidated by the apparent vastness and complexity of this enterprise of forming the literary taste. it is not so vast nor so complex as it looks. there is no need whatever for the inexperienced enthusiast to confuse and frighten himself with thoughts of "literature in all its branches." experts and pedagogues (chiefly pedagogues) have, for the purpose of convenience, split literature up into divisions and sub-divisions--such as prose and poetry; or imaginative, philosophic, historical; or elegiac, heroic, lyric; or religious and profane, etc., _ad infinitum_. but the greater truth is that literature is all one--and indivisible. the idea of the unity of literature should be well planted and fostered in the head. all literature is the expression of feeling, of passion, of emotion, caused by a sensation of the interestingness of life. what drives a historian to write history? nothing but the overwhelming impression made upon him by the survey of past times. he is forced into an attempt to reconstitute the picture for others. if hitherto you have failed to perceive that a historian is a being in strong emotion, trying to convey his emotion to others, read the passage in the _memoirs_ of gibbon, in which he describes how he finished the _decline and fall_. you will probably never again look upon the _decline and fall_ as a "dry" work. what applies to history applies to the other "dry" branches. even johnson's dictionary is packed with emotion. read the last paragraph of the preface to it: "in this work, when it shall be found that much is omitted, let it not be forgotten that much likewise is performed.... it may repress the triumph of malignant criticism to observe that if our language is not here fully displayed, i have only failed in an attempt which no human powers have hitherto completed...." and so on to the close: "i have protracted my work till most of those whom i wish to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds: i therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise." yes, tranquillity; but not frigid! the whole passage, one of the finest in english prose, is marked by the heat of emotion. you may discover the same quality in such books as spencer's _first principles_. you may discover it everywhere in literature, from the cold fire of pope's irony to the blasting temperatures of swinburne. literature does not begin till emotion has begun. there is even no essential, definable difference between those two great branches, prose and poetry. for prose may have rhythm. all that can be said is that verse will scan, while prose will not. the difference is purely formal. very few poets have succeeded in being so poetical as isaiah, sir thomas browne, and ruskin have been in prose. it can only be stated that, as a rule, writers have shown an instinctive tendency to choose verse for the expression of the very highest emotion. the supreme literature is in verse, but the finest achievements in prose approach so nearly to the finest achievements in verse that it is ill work deciding between them. in the sense in which poetry is best understood, all literature is poetry--or is, at any rate, poetical in quality. macaulay's ill-informed and unjust denunciations live because his genuine emotion made them into poetry, while his _lays of ancient rome_ are dead because they are not the expression of a genuine emotion. as the literary taste develops, this quality of emotion, restrained or loosed, will be more and more widely perceived at large in literature. it is the quality that must be looked for. it is the quality that unifies literature (and all the arts). it is not merely useless, it is harmful, for you to map out literature into divisions and branches, with different laws, rules, or canons. the first thing is to obtain some possession of literature. when you have actually felt some of the emotion which great writers have striven to impart to you, and when your emotions become so numerous and puzzling that you feel the need of arranging them and calling them by names, then--and not before--you can begin to study what has been attempted in the way of classifying and ticketing literature. manuals and treatises are excellent things in their kind, but they are simply dead weight at the start. you can only acquire really useful general ideas by first acquiring particular ideas, and putting those particular ideas together. you cannot make bricks without straw. do not worry about literature in the abstract, about theories as to literature. get at it. get hold of literature in the concrete as a dog gets hold of a bone. if you ask me where you ought to begin, i shall gaze at you as i might gaze at the faithful animal if he inquired which end of the bone he ought to attack. it doesn't matter in the slightest degree where you begin. begin wherever the fancy takes you to begin. literature is a whole. there is only one restriction for you. you must begin with an acknowledged classic; you must eschew modern works. the reason for this does not imply any depreciation of the present age at the expense of past ages. indeed, it is important, if you wish ultimately to have a wide, catholic taste, to guard against the too common assumption that nothing modern will stand comparison with the classics. in every age there have been people to sigh: "ah, yes. fifty years ago we had a few great writers. but they are all dead, and no young ones are arising to take their place." this attitude of mind is deplorable, if not silly, and is a certain proof of narrow taste. it is a surety that in 1959 gloomy and egregious persons will be saying: "ah, yes. at the beginning of the century there were great poets like swinburne, meredith, francis thompson, and yeats. great novelists like hardy and conrad. great historians like stubbs and maitland, etc., etc. but they are all dead now, and whom have we to take their place?" it is not until an age has receded into history, and all its mediocrity has dropped away from it, that we can see it as it is--as a group of men of genius. we forget the immense amount of twaddle that the great epochs produced. the total amount of fine literature created in a given period of time differs from epoch to epoch, but it does not differ much. and we may be perfectly sure that our own age will make a favourable impression upon that excellent judge, posterity. therefore, beware of disparaging the present in your own mind. while temporarily ignoring it, dwell upon the idea that its chaff contains about as much wheat as any similar quantity of chaff has contained wheat. the reason why you must avoid modern works at the beginning is simply that you are not in a position to choose among modern works. nobody at all is quite in a position to choose with certainty among modern works. to sift the wheat from the chaff is a process that takes an exceedingly long time. modern works have to pass before the bar of the taste of successive generations. whereas, with classics, which have been through the ordeal, almost the reverse is the case. _your taste has to pass before the bar of the classics_. that is the point. if you differ with a classic, it is you who are wrong, and not the book. if you differ with a modern work, you may be wrong or you may be right, but no judge is authoritative enough to decide. your taste is unformed. it needs guidance, and it needs authoritative guidance. into the business of forming literary taste faith enters. you probably will not specially care for a particular classic at first. if you did care for it at first, your taste, so far as that classic is concerned, would be formed, and our hypothesis is that your taste is not formed. how are you to arrive at the stage of caring for it? chiefly, of course, by examining it and honestly trying to understand it. but this process is materially helped by an act of faith, by the frame of mind which says: "i know on the highest authority that this thing is fine, that it is capable of giving me pleasure. hence i am determined to find pleasure in it." believe me that faith counts enormously in the development of that wide taste which is the instrument of wide pleasures. but it must be faith founded on unassailable authority. chapter v how to read a classic let us begin experimental reading with charles lamb. i choose lamb for various reasons: he is a great writer, wide in his appeal, of a highly sympathetic temperament; and his finest achievements are simple and very short. moreover, he may usefully lead to other and more complex matters, as will appear later. now, your natural tendency will be to think of charles lamb as a book, because he has arrived at the stage of being a classic. charles lamb was a man, not a book. it is extremely important that the beginner in literary study should always form an idea of the man behind the book. the book is nothing but the expression of the man. the book is nothing but the man trying to talk to you, trying to impart to you some of his feelings. an experienced student will divine the man from the book, will understand the man by the book, as is, of course, logically proper. but the beginner will do well to aid himself in understanding the book by means of independent information about the man. he will thus at once relate the book to something human, and strengthen in his mind the essential notion of the connection between literature and life. the earliest literature was delivered orally direct by the artist to the recipient. in some respects this arrangement was ideal. changes in the constitution of society have rendered it impossible. nevertheless, we can still, by the exercise of the imagination, hear mentally the accents of the artist speaking to us. we must so exercise our imagination as to feel the man behind the book. some biographical information about lamb should be acquired. there are excellent short biographies of him by canon ainger in the _dictionary of national biography_, in chambers's _encyclopædia_, and in chambers's _cyclopædia of english literature_. if you have none of these (but you ought to have the last), there are mr. e.v. lucas's exhaustive _life_ (methuen, 7s. 6d.), and, cheaper, mr. walter jerrold's _lamb_ (bell and sons, 1s.); also introductory studies prefixed to various editions of lamb's works. indeed, the facilities for collecting materials for a picture of charles lamb as a human being are prodigious. when you have made for yourself such a picture, read the _essays of elia_ the light of it. i will choose one of the most celebrated, _dream children: a reverie_. at this point, kindly put my book down, and read _dream children_. do not say to yourself that you will read it later, but read it now. when you have read it, you may proceed to my next paragraph. you are to consider _dream children_ as a human document. lamb was nearing fifty when he wrote it. you can see, especially from the last line, that the death of his elder brother, john lamb, was fresh and heavy on his mind. you will recollect that in youth he had had a disappointing love-affair with a girl named ann simmons, who afterwards married a man named bartrum. you will know that one of the influences of his childhood was his grandmother field, housekeeper of blakesware house, in hertfordshire, at which mansion he sometimes spent his holidays. you will know that he was a bachelor, living with his sister mary, who was subject to homicidal mania. and you will see in this essay, primarily, a supreme expression of the increasing loneliness of his life. he constructed all that preliminary tableau of paternal pleasure in order to bring home to you in the most poignant way his feeling of the solitude of his existence, his sense of all that he had missed and lost in the world. the key of the essay is one of profound sadness. but note that he makes his sadness beautiful; or, rather, he shows the beauty that resides in sadness. you watch him sitting there in his "bachelor arm-chair," and you say to yourself: "yes, it was sad, but it was somehow beautiful." when you have said that to yourself, charles lamb, so far as you are concerned, has accomplished his chief aim in writing the essay. how exactly he produces his effect can never be fully explained. but one reason of his success is certainly his regard for truth. he does not falsely idealise his brother, nor the relations between them. he does not say, as a sentimentalist would have said, "not the slightest cloud ever darkened our relations;" nor does he exaggerate his solitude. being a sane man, he has too much common-sense to assemble all his woes at once. he might have told you that bridget was a homicidal maniac; what he does tell you is that she was faithful. another reason of his success is his continual regard for beautiful things and fine actions, as illustrated in the major characteristics of his grandmother and his brother, and in the detailed description of blakesware house and the gardens thereof. then, subordinate to the main purpose, part of the machinery of the main purpose, is the picture of the children--real children until the moment when they fade away. the traits of childhood are accurately and humorously put in again and again: "here john smiled, as much as to say, 'that would be foolish indeed.'" "here little alice spread her hands." "here alice's little right foot played an involuntary movement, till, upon my looking grave, it desisted." "here john expanded all his eyebrows, and tried to look courageous." "here john slily deposited back upon the plate a bunch of grapes." "here the children fell a-crying ... and prayed me to tell them some stories about their pretty dead mother." and the exquisite: "here alice put out one of her dear mother's looks, too tender to be upbraiding." incidentally, while preparing his ultimate solemn effect, lamb has inspired you with a new, intensified vision of the wistful beauty of children--their imitativeness, their facile and generous emotions, their anxiety to be correct, their ingenuous haste to escape from grief into joy. you can see these children almost as clearly and as tenderly as lamb saw them. for days afterwards you will not be able to look upon a child without recalling lamb's portrayal of the grace of childhood. he will have shared with you his perception of beauty. if you possess children, he will have renewed for you the charm which custom does very decidedly stale. it is further to be noticed that the measure of his success in picturing the children is the measure of his success in his main effect. the more real they seem, the more touching is the revelation of the fact that they do not exist, and never have existed. and if you were moved by the reference to their "pretty dead mother," you will be still more moved when you learn that the girl who would have been their mother is not dead and is not lamb's. as, having read the essay, you reflect upon it, you will see how its emotional power over you has sprung from the sincere and unexaggerated expression of actual emotions exactly remembered by someone who had an eye always open for beauty, who was, indeed, obsessed by beauty. the beauty of old houses and gardens and aged virtuous characters, the beauty of children, the beauty of companionships, the softening beauty of dreams in an arm-chair--all these are brought together and mingled with the grief and regret which were the origin of the mood. why is _dream children_ a classic? it is a classic because it transmits to you, as to generations before you, distinguished emotion, because it makes you respond to the throb of life more intensely, more justly, and more nobly. and it is capable of doing this because charles lamb had a very distinguished, a very sensitive, and a very honest mind. his emotions were noble. he felt so keenly that he was obliged to find relief in imparting his emotions. and his mental processes were so sincere that he could neither exaggerate nor diminish the truth. if he had lacked any one of these three qualities, his appeal would have been narrowed and weakened, and he would not have become a classic. either his feelings would have been deficient in supreme beauty, and therefore less worthy to be imparted, or he would not have had sufficient force to impart them; or his honesty would not have been equal to the strain of imparting them accurately. in any case, he would not have set up in you that vibration which we call pleasure, and which is super-eminently caused by vitalising participation in high emotion. as lamb sat in his bachelor arm-chair, with his brother in the grave, and the faithful homicidal maniac by his side, he really did think to himself, "this is beautiful. sorrow is beautiful. disappointment is beautiful. life is beautiful. _i must tell them_. i must make them understand." because he still makes you understand he is a classic. and now i seem to hear you say, "but what about lamb's famous literary style? where does that come in?" chapter vi the question of style in discussing the value of particular books, i have heard people say--people who were timid about expressing their views of literature in the presence of literary men: "it may be bad from a literary point of view, but there are very good things in it." or: "i dare say the style is very bad, but really the book is very interesting and suggestive." or: "i'm not an expert, and so i never bother my head about good style. all i ask for is good matter. and when i have got it, critics may say what they like about the book." and many other similar remarks, all showing that in the minds of the speakers there existed a notion that style is something supplementary to, and distinguishable from, matter; a sort of notion that a writer who wanted to be classical had first to find and arrange his matter, and then dress it up elegantly in a costume of style, in order to please beings called literary critics. this is a misapprehension. style cannot be distinguished from matter. when a writer conceives an idea he conceives it in a form of words. that form of words constitutes his style, and it is absolutely governed by the idea. the idea can only exist in words, and it can only exist in one form of words. you cannot say exactly the same thing in two different ways. slightly alter the expression, and you slightly alter the idea. surely it is obvious that the expression cannot be altered without altering the thing expressed! a writer, having conceived and expressed an idea, may, and probably will, "polish it up." but what does he polish up? to say that he polishes up his style is merely to say that he is polishing up his idea, that he has discovered faults or imperfections in his idea, and is perfecting it. an idea exists in proportion as it is expressed; it exists when it is expressed, and not before. it expresses itself. a clear idea is expressed clearly, and a vague idea vaguely. you need but take your own case and your own speech. for just as science is the development of common-sense, so is literature the development of common daily speech. the difference between science and common-sense is simply one of degree; similarly with speech and literature. well, when you "know what you think," you succeed in saying what you think, in making yourself understood. when you "don't know what to think," your expressive tongue halts. and note how in daily life the characteristics of your style follow your mood; how tender it is when you are tender, how violent when you are violent. you have said to yourself in moments of emotion: "if only i could write--," etc. you were wrong. you ought to have said: "if only i could _think_--on this high plane." when you have thought clearly you have never had any difficulty in saying what you thought, though you may occasionally have had some difficulty in keeping it to yourself. and when you cannot express yourself, depend upon it that you have nothing precise to express, and that what incommodes you is not the vain desire to express, but the vain desire to _think_ more clearly. all this just to illustrate how style and matter are co-existent, and inseparable, and alike. you cannot have good matter with bad style. examine the point more closely. a man wishes to convey a fine idea to you. he employs a form of words. that form of words is his style. having read, you say: "yes, this idea is fine." the writer has therefore achieved his end. but in what imaginable circumstances can you say: "yes, this idea is fine, but the style is not fine"? the sole medium of communication between you and the author has been the form of words. the fine idea has reached you. how? in the words, by the words. hence the fineness must be in the words. you may say, superiorly: "he has expressed himself clumsily, but i can _see_ what he means." by what light? by something in the words, in the style. that something is fine. moreover, if the style is clumsy, are you sure that you can see what he means? you cannot be quite sure. and at any rate, you cannot see distinctly. the "matter" is what actually reaches you, and it must necessarily be affected by the style. still further to comprehend what style is, let me ask you to think of a writer's style exactly as you would think of the gestures and manners of an acquaintance. you know the man whose demeanour is "always calm," but whose passions are strong. how do you know that his passions are strong? because he "gives them away" by some small, but important, part of his demeanour, such as the twitching of a lip or the whitening of the knuckles caused by clenching the hand. in other words, his demeanour, fundamentally, is not calm. you know the man who is always "smoothly polite and agreeable," but who affects you unpleasantly. why does he affect you unpleasantly? because he is tedious, and therefore disagreeable, and because his politeness is not real politeness. you know the man who is awkward, shy, clumsy, but who, nevertheless, impresses you with a sense of dignity and force. why? because mingled with that awkwardness and so forth _is_ dignity. you know the blunt, rough fellow whom you instinctively guess to be affectionate--because there is "something in his tone" or "something in his eyes." in every instance the demeanour, while perhaps seeming to be contrary to the character, is really in accord with it. the demeanour never contradicts the character. it is one part of the character that contradicts another part of the character. for, after all, the blunt man _is_ blunt, and the awkward man _is_ awkward, and these characteristics are defects. the demeanour merely expresses them. the two men would be better if, while conserving their good qualities, they had the superficial attributes of smoothness and agreeableness possessed by the gentleman who is unpleasant to you. and as regards this latter, it is not his superficial attributes which are unpleasant to you; but his other qualities. in the end the character is shown in the demeanour; and the demeanour is a consequence of the character and resembles the character. so with style and matter. you may argue that the blunt, rough man's demeanour is unfair to his tenderness. i do not think so. for his churlishness is really very trying and painful, even to the man's wife, though a moment's tenderness will make her and you forget it. the man really is churlish, and much more often than he is tender. his demeanour is merely just to his character. so, when a writer annoys you for ten pages and then enchants you for ten lines, you must not explode against his style. you must not say that his style won't let his matter "come out." you must remember the churlish, tender man. the more you reflect, the more clearly you will see that faults and excellences of style are faults and excellences of matter itself. one of the most striking illustrations of this neglected truth is thomas carlyle. how often has it been said that carlyle's matter is marred by the harshness and the eccentricities of his style? but carlyle's matter is harsh and eccentric to precisely the same degree as his style is harsh and eccentric. carlyle was harsh and eccentric. his behaviour was frequently ridiculous, if it were not abominable. his judgments were often extremely bizarre. when you read one of carlyle's fierce diatribes, you say to yourself: "this is splendid. the man's enthusiasm for justice and truth is glorious." but you also say: "he is a little unjust and a little untruthful. he goes too far. he lashes too hard." these things are not the style; they are the matter. and when, as in his greatest moments, he is emotional and restrained at once, you say: "this is the real carlyle." kindly notice how perfect the style has become! no harshnesses or eccentricities now! and if that particular matter is the "real" carlyle, then that particular style is carlyle's "real" style. but when you say "real" you would more properly say "best." "this is the best carlyle." if carlyle had always been at his best he would have counted among the supreme geniuses of the world. but he was a mixture. his style is the expression of the mixture. the faults are only in the style because they are in the matter. you will find that, in classical literature, the style always follows the mood of the matter. thus, charles lamb's essay on _dream children_ begins quite simply, in a calm, narrative manner, enlivened by a certain quippishness concerning the children. the style is grave when great-grandmother field is the subject, and when the author passes to a rather elaborate impression of the picturesque old mansion it becomes as it were consciously beautiful. this beauty is intensified in the description of the still more beautiful garden. but the real dividing point of the essay occurs when lamb approaches his elder brother. he unmistakably marks the point with the phrase: "_then, in somewhat a more heightened tone_, i told how," etc. henceforward the style increases in fervour and in solemnity until the culmination of the essay is reached: "and while i stood gazing, both the children gradually grew fainter to my view, receding and still receding till nothing at last but two mournful features were seen in the uttermost distance, which, without speech, strangely impressed upon me the effects of speech...." throughout, the style is governed by the matter. "well," you say, "of course it is. it couldn't be otherwise. if it were otherwise it would be ridiculous. a man who made love as though he were preaching a sermon, or a man who preached a sermon as though he were teasing schoolboys, or a man who described a death as though he were describing a practical joke, must necessarily be either an ass or a lunatic." just so. you have put it in a nutshell. you have disposed of the problem of style so far as it can be disposed of. but what do those people mean who say: "i read such and such an author for the beauty of his style alone"? personally, i do not clearly know what they mean (and i have never been able to get them to explain), unless they mean that they read for the beauty of sound alone. when you read a book there are only three things of which you may be conscious: (1) the significance of the words, which is inseparably bound up with the thought. (2) the look of the printed words on the page--i do not suppose that anybody reads any author for the visual beauty of the words on the page. (3) the sound of the words, either actually uttered or imagined by the brain to be uttered. now it is indubitable that words differ in beauty of sound. to my mind one of the most beautiful words in the english language is "pavement." enunciate it, study its sound, and see what you think. it is also indubitable that certain combinations of words have a more beautiful sound than certain other combinations. thus tennyson held that the most beautiful line he ever wrote was: the mellow ouzel fluting in the elm. perhaps, as sound, it was. assuredly it makes a beautiful succession of sounds, and recalls the bird-sounds which it is intended to describe. but does it live in the memory as one of the rare great tennysonian lines? it does not. it has charm, but the charm is merely curious or pretty. a whole poem composed of lines with no better recommendation than that line has would remain merely curious or pretty. it would not permanently interest. it would be as insipid as a pretty woman who had nothing behind her prettiness. it would not live. one may remark in this connection how the merely verbal felicities of tennyson have lost our esteem. who will now proclaim the _idylls of the king_ as a masterpiece? of the thousands of lines written by him which please the ear, only those survive of which the matter is charged with emotion. no! as regards the man who professes to read an author "for his style alone," i am inclined to think either that he will soon get sick of that author, or that he is deceiving himself and means the author's general temperament--not the author's verbal style, but a peculiar quality which runs through all the matter written by the author. just as one may like a man for something which is always coming out of him, which one cannot define, and which is of the very essence of the man. in judging the style of an author, you must employ the same canons as you use in judging men. if you do this you will not be tempted to attach importance to trifles that are negligible. there can be no lasting friendship without respect. if an author's style is such that you cannot _respect_ it, then you may be sure that, despite any present pleasure which you may obtain from that author, there is something wrong with his matter, and that the pleasure will soon cloy. you must examine your sentiments towards an author. if when you have read an author you are pleased, without being conscious of aught but his mellifluousness, just conceive what your feelings would be after spending a month's holiday with a merely mellifluous man. if an author's style has pleased you, but done nothing except make you giggle, then reflect upon the ultimate tediousness of the man who can do nothing but jest. on the other hand, if you are impressed by what an author has said to you, but are aware of verbal clumsinesses in his work, you need worry about his "bad style" exactly as much and exactly as little as you would worry about the manners of a kindhearted, keen-brained friend who was dangerous to carpets with a tea-cup in his hand. the friend's antics in a drawing-room are somewhat regrettable, but you would not say of him that his manners were bad. again, if an author's style dazzles you instantly and blinds you to everything except its brilliant self, ask your soul, before you begin to admire his matter, what would be your final opinion of a man who at the first meeting fired his personality into you like a broadside. reflect that, as a rule, the people whom you have come to esteem communicated themselves to you gradually, that they did not begin the entertainment with fireworks. in short, look at literature as you would look at life, and you cannot fail to perceive that, essentially, the style is the man. decidedly you will never assert that you care nothing for style, that your enjoyment of an author's matter is unaffected by his style. and you will never assert, either, that style alone suffices for you. if you are undecided upon a question of style, whether leaning to the favourable or to the unfavourable, the most prudent course is to forget that literary style exists. for, indeed, as style is understood by most people who have not analysed their impressions under the influence of literature, there _is_ no such thing as literary style. you cannot divide literature into two elements and say: this is matter and that style. further, the significance and the worth of literature are to be comprehended and assessed in the same way as the significance and the worth of any other phenomenon: by the exercise of common-sense. common-sense will tell you that nobody, not even a genius, can be simultaneously vulgar and distinguished, or beautiful and ugly, or precise and vague, or tender and harsh. and common-sense will therefore tell you that to try to set up vital contradictions between matter and style is absurd. when there is a superficial contradiction, one of the two mutually-contradicting qualities is of far less importance than the other. if you refer literature to the standards of life, common-sense will at once decide which quality should count heaviest in your esteem. you will be in no danger of weighing a mere maladroitness of manner against a fine trait of character, or of letting a graceful deportment blind you to a fundamental vacuity. when in doubt, ignore style, and think of the matter as you would think of an individual. chapter vii wrestling with an author having disposed, so far as is possible and necessary, of that formidable question of style, let us now return to charles lamb, whose essay on _dream children_ was the originating cause of our inquiry into style. as we have made a beginning of lamb, it will be well to make an end of him. in the preliminary stages of literary culture, nothing is more helpful, in the way of kindling an interest and keeping it well alight, than to specialise for a time on one author, and particularly on an author so frankly and curiously "human" as lamb is. i do not mean that you should imprison yourself with lamb's complete works for three months, and read nothing else. i mean that you should regularly devote a proportion of your learned leisure to the study of lamb until you are acquainted with all that is important in his work and about his work. (you may buy the complete works in prose and verse of charles and mary lamb, edited by that unsurpassed expert mr. thomas hutchison, and published by the oxford university press, in two volumes for four shillings the pair!) there is no reason why you should not become a modest specialist in lamb. he is the very man for you; neither voluminous, nor difficult, nor uncomfortably lofty; always either amusing or touching; and--most important--himself passionately addicted to literature. you cannot like lamb without liking literature in general. and you cannot read lamb without learning about literature in general; for books were his hobby, and he was a critic of the first rank. his letters are full of literariness. you will naturally read his letters; you should not only be infinitely diverted by them (there are no better epistles), but you should receive from them much light on the works. it is a course of study that i am suggesting to you. it means a certain amount of sustained effort. it means slightly more resolution, more pertinacity, and more expenditure of brain-tissue than are required for reading a newspaper. it means, in fact, "work." perhaps you did not bargain for work when you joined me. but i do not think that the literary taste can be satisfactorily formed unless one is prepared to put one's back into the affair. and i may prophesy to you, by way of encouragement, that, in addition to the advantages of familiarity with masterpieces, of increased literary knowledge, and of a wide introduction to the true bookish atmosphere and "feel" of things, which you will derive from a comprehensive study of charles lamb, you will also be conscious of a moral advantage--the very important and very inspiring advantage of really "knowing something about something." you will have achieved a definite step; you will be proudly aware that you have put yourself in a position to judge as an expert whatever you may hear or read in the future concerning charles lamb. this legitimate pride and sense of accomplishment will stimulate you to go on further; it will generate steam. i consider that this indirect moral advantage even outweighs, for the moment, the direct literary advantages. now, i shall not shut my eyes to a possible result of your diligent intercourse with charles lamb. it is possible that you may be disappointed with him. it is--shall i say?--almost probable that you will be disappointed with him, at any rate partially. you will have expected more joy in him than you have received. i have referred in a previous chapter to the feeling of disappointment which often comes from first contacts with the classics. the neophyte is apt to find them--i may as well out with the word--dull. you may have found lamb less diverting, less interesting, than you hoped. you may have had to whip yourself up again and again to the effort of reading him. in brief, lamb has not, for you, justified his terrific reputation. if a classic is a classic because it gives _pleasure_ to succeeding generations of the people who are most keenly interested in literature, and if lamb frequently strikes you as dull, then evidently there is something wrong. the difficulty must be fairly fronted, and the fronting of it brings us to the very core of the business of actually forming the taste. if your taste were classical you would discover in lamb a continual fascination; whereas what you in fact do discover in lamb is a not unpleasant flatness, enlivened by a vague humour and an occasional pathos. you ought, according to theory, to be enthusiastic; but you are apathetic, or, at best, half-hearted. there is a gulf. how to cross it? to cross it needs time and needs trouble. the following considerations may aid. in the first place, we have to remember that, in coming into the society of the classics in general and of charles lamb in particular, we are coming into the society of a mental superior. what happens usually in such a case? we can judge by recalling what happens when we are in the society of a mental inferior. we say things of which he misses the import; we joke, and he does not smile; what makes him laugh loudly seems to us horseplay or childish; he is blind to beauties which ravish us; he is ecstatic over what strikes us as crude; and his profound truths are for us trite commonplaces. his perceptions are relatively coarse; our perceptions are relatively subtle. we try to make him understand, to make him see, and if he is aware of his inferiority we may have some success. but if he is not aware of his inferiority, we soon hold our tongues and leave him alone in his self-satisfaction, convinced that there is nothing to be done with him. every one of us has been through this experience with a mental inferior, for there is always a mental inferior handy, just as there is always a being more unhappy than we are. in approaching a classic, the true wisdom is to place ourselves in the position of the mental inferior, aware of mental inferiority, humbly stripping off all conceit, anxious to rise out of that inferiority. recollect that we always regard as quite hopeless the mental inferior who does not suspect his own inferiority. our attitude towards lamb must be: "charles lamb was a greater man than i am, cleverer, sharper, subtler, finer, intellectually more powerful, and with keener eyes for beauty. i must brace myself to follow his lead." our attitude must resemble that of one who cocks his ear and listens with all his soul for a distant sound. to catch the sound we really must listen. that is to say, we must read carefully, with our faculties on the watch. we must read slowly and perseveringly. a classic has to be wooed and is worth the wooing. further, we must disdain no assistance. i am not in favour of studying criticism of classics before the classics themselves. my notion is to study the work and the biography of a classical writer together, and then to read criticism afterwards. i think that in reprints of the classics the customary "critical introduction" ought to be put at the end, and not at the beginning, of the book. the classic should be allowed to make his own impression, however faint, on the virginal mind of the reader. but afterwards let explanatory criticism be read as much as you please. explanatory criticism is very useful; nearly as useful as pondering for oneself on what one has read! explanatory criticism may throw one single gleam that lights up the entire subject. my second consideration (in aid of crossing the gulf) touches the quality of the pleasure to be derived from a classic. it is never a violent pleasure. it is subtle, and it will wax in intensity, but the idea of violence is foreign to it. the artistic pleasures of an uncultivated mind are generally violent. they proceed from exaggeration in treatment, from a lack of balance, from attaching too great an importance to one aspect (usually superficial), while quite ignoring another. they are gross, like the joy of worcester sauce on the palate. now, if there is one point common to all classics, it is the absence of exaggeration. the balanced sanity of a great mind makes impossible exaggeration, and, therefore, distortion. the beauty of a classic is not at all apt to knock you down. it will steal over you, rather. many serious students are, i am convinced, discouraged in the early stages because they are expecting a wrong kind of pleasure. they have abandoned worcester sauce, and they miss it. they miss the coarse _tang_. they must realise that indulgence in the _tang_ means the sure and total loss of sensitiveness--sensitiveness even to the _tang_ itself. they cannot have crudeness and fineness together. they must choose, remembering that while crudeness kills pleasure, fineness ever intensifies it. chapter viii system in heading you have now definitely set sail on the sea of literature. you are afloat, and your anchor is up. i think i have given adequate warning of the dangers and disappointments which await the unwary and the sanguine. the enterprise in which you are engaged is not facile, nor is it short. i think i have sufficiently predicted that you will have your hours of woe, during which you may be inclined to send to perdition all writers, together with the inventor of printing. but if you have become really friendly with lamb; if you know lamb, or even half of him; if you have formed an image of him in your mind, and can, as it were, hear him brilliantly stuttering while you read his essays or letters, then certainly you are in a fit condition to proceed and you want to know in which direction you are to proceed. yes, i have caught your terrified and protesting whisper: "i hope to heaven he isn't going to prescribe a course of english literature, because i feel i shall never be able to do it!" i am not. if your object in life was to be a university extension lecturer in english literature, then i should prescribe something drastic and desolating. but as your object, so far as i am concerned, is simply to obtain the highest and most tonic form of artistic pleasure of which you are capable, i shall not prescribe any regular course. nay, i shall venture to dissuade you from any regular course. no man, and assuredly no beginner, can possibly pursue a historical course of literature without wasting a lot of weary time in acquiring mere knowledge which will yield neither pleasure nor advantage. in the choice of reading the individual must count; caprice must count, for caprice is often the truest index to the individuality. stand defiantly on your own feet, and do not excuse yourself to yourself. you do not exist in order to honour literature by becoming an encyclopædia of literature. literature exists for your service. wherever you happen to be, that, for you, is the centre of literature. still, for your own sake you must confine yourself for a long time to recognised classics, for reasons already explained. and though you should not follow a course, you must have a system or principle. your native sagacity will tell you that caprice, left quite unfettered, will end by being quite ridiculous. the system which i recommend is embodied in this counsel: let one thing lead to another. in the sea of literature every part communicates with every other part; there are no land-locked lakes. it was with an eye to this system that i originally recommended you to start with lamb. lamb, if you are his intimate, has already brought you into relations with a number of other prominent writers with whom you can in turn be intimate, and who will be particularly useful to you. among these are wordsworth, coleridge, southey, hazlitt, and leigh hunt. you cannot know lamb without knowing these men, and some of them are of the highest importance. from the circle of lamb's own work you may go off at a tangent at various points, according to your inclination. if, for instance, you are drawn towards poetry, you cannot, in all english literature, make a better start than with wordsworth. and wordsworth will send you backwards to a comprehension of the poets against whose influence wordsworth fought. when you have understood wordsworth's and coleridge's _lyrical ballads_, and wordsworth's defence of them, you will be in a position to judge poetry in general. if, again, your mind hankers after an earlier and more romantic literature, lamb's _specimens of english dramatic poets contemporary with shakspere_ has already, in an enchanting fashion, piloted you into a vast gulf of "the sea which is shakspere." again, in hazlitt and leigh hunt you will discover essayists inferior only to lamb himself, and critics perhaps not inferior. hazlitt is unsurpassed as a critic. his judgments are convincing and his enthusiasm of the most catching nature. having arrived at hazlitt or leigh hunt, you can branch off once more at any one of ten thousand points into still wider circles. and thus you may continue up and down the centuries as far as you like, yea, even to chaucer. if you chance to read hazlitt on _chaucer and spenser_, you will probably put your hat on instantly and go out and buy these authors; such is his communicating fire! i need not particularise further. commencing with lamb, and allowing one thing to lead to another, you cannot fail to be more and more impressed by the peculiar suitability to your needs of the lamb entourage and the lamb period. for lamb lived in a time of universal rebirth in english literature. wordsworth and coleridge were re-creating poetry; scott was re-creating the novel; lamb was re-creating the human document; and hazlitt, coleridge, leigh hunt, and others were re-creating criticism. sparks are flying all about the place, and it will be not less than a miracle if something combustible and indestructible in you does not take fire. i have only one cautionary word to utter. you may be saying to yourself: "so long as i stick to classics i cannot go wrong." you can go wrong. you can, while reading naught but very fine stuff, commit the grave error of reading too much of one kind of stuff. now there are two kinds, and only two kinds. these two kinds are not prose and poetry, nor are they divided the one from the other by any differences of form or of subject. they are the inspiring kind and the informing kind. no other genuine division exists in literature. emerson, i think, first clearly stated it. his terms were the literature of "power" and the literature of "knowledge." in nearly all great literature the two qualities are to be found in company, but one usually predominates over the other. an example of the exclusively inspiring kind is coleridge's _kubla khan_. i cannot recall any first-class example of the purely informing kind. the nearest approach to it that i can name is spencer's _first principles_, which, however, is at least once highly inspiring. an example in which the inspiring quality predominates is _ivanhoe_; and an example in which the informing quality predominates is hazlitt's essays on shakespeare's characters. you must avoid giving undue preference to the kind in which the inspiring quality predominates or to the kind in which the informing quality predominates. too much of the one is enervating; too much of the other is desiccating. if you stick exclusively to the one you may become a mere debauchee of the emotions; if you stick exclusively to the other you may cease to live in any full sense. i do not say that you should hold the balance exactly even between the two kinds. your taste will come into the scale. what i say is that neither kind must be neglected. lamb is an instance of a great writer whom anybody can understand and whom a majority of those who interest themselves in literature can more or less appreciate. he makes no excessive demand either on the intellect or on the faculty of sympathetic emotion. on both sides of lamb, however, there lie literatures more difficult, more recondite. the "knowledge" side need not detain us here; it can be mastered by concentration and perseverance. but the "power" side, which comprises the supreme productions of genius, demands special consideration. you may have arrived at the point of keenly enjoying lamb and yet be entirely unable to "see anything in" such writings as _kubla khan_ or milton's _comus_; and as for _hamlet_ you may see nothing in it but a sanguinary tale "full of quotations." nevertheless it is the supreme productions which are capable of yielding the supreme pleasures, and which _will_ yield the supreme pleasures when the pass-key to them has been acquired. this pass-key is a comprehension of the nature of poetry. chapter ix verse there is a word, a "name of fear," which rouses terror in the heart of the vast educated majority of the english-speaking race. the most valiant will fly at the mere utterance of that word. the most broad-minded will put their backs up against it. the most rash will not dare to affront it. i myself have seen it empty buildings that had been full; and i know that it will scatter a crowd more quickly than a hose-pipe, hornets, or the rumour of plague. even to murmur it is to incur solitude, probably disdain, and possibly starvation, as historical examples show. that word is "poetry." the profound objection of the average man to poetry can scarcely be exaggerated. and when i say the average man, i do not mean the "average sensual man"--any man who gets on to the top of the omnibus; i mean the average lettered man, the average man who does care a little for books and enjoys reading, and knows the classics by name and the popular writers by having read them. i am convinced that not one man in ten who reads, reads poetry--at any rate, knowingly. i am convinced, further, that not one man in ten who goes so far as knowingly to _buy_ poetry ever reads it. you will find everywhere men who read very widely in prose, but who will say quite callously, "no, i never read poetry." if the sales of modern poetry, distinctly labelled as such, were to cease entirely to-morrow not a publisher would fail; scarcely a publisher would be affected; and not a poet would die--for i do not believe that a single modern english poet is living to-day on the current proceeds of his verse. for a country which possesses the greatest poetical literature in the world this condition of affairs is at least odd. what makes it odder is that, occasionally, very occasionally, the average lettered man will have a fit of idolatry for a fine poet, buying his books in tens of thousands, and bestowing upon him immense riches. as with tennyson. and what makes it odder still is that, after all, the average lettered man does not truly dislike poetry; he only dislikes it when it takes a certain form. he will read poetry and enjoy it, provided he is not aware that it is poetry. poetry can exist authentically either in prose or in verse. give him poetry concealed in prose and there is a chance that, taken off his guard, he will appreciate it. but show him a page of verse, and he will be ready to send for a policeman. the reason of this is that, though poetry may come to pass either in prose or in verse, it does actually happen far more frequently in verse than in prose; nearly all the very greatest poetry is in verse; verse is identified with the very greatest poetry, and the very greatest poetry can only be understood and savoured by people who have put themselves through a considerable mental discipline. to others it is an exasperating weariness. hence chiefly the fearful prejudice of the average lettered man against the mere form of verse. the formation of literary taste cannot be completed until that prejudice has been conquered. my very difficult task is to suggest a method of conquering it. i address myself exclusively to the large class of people who, if they are honest, will declare that, while they enjoy novels, essays, and history, they cannot "stand" verse. the case is extremely delicate, like all nervous cases. it is useless to employ the arts of reasoning, for the matter has got beyond logic; it is instinctive. perfectly futile to assure you that verse will yield a higher percentage of pleasure than prose! you will reply: "we believe you, but that doesn't help us." therefore i shall not argue. i shall venture to prescribe a curative treatment (doctors do not argue); and i beg you to follow it exactly, keeping your nerve and your calm. loss of self-control might lead to panic, and panic would be fatal. first: forget as completely as you can all your present notions about the nature of verse and poetry. take a sponge and wipe the slate of your mind. in particular, do not harass yourself by thoughts of metre and verse forms. second: read william hazlitt's essay "on poetry in general." this essay is the first in the book entitled _lectures on the english poets_. it can be bought in various forms. i think the cheapest satisfactory edition is in routledge's "new universal library" (price 1s. net). i might have composed an essay of my own on the real harmless nature of poetry in general, but it could only have been an echo and a deterioration of hazlitt's. he has put the truth about poetry in a way as interesting, clear, and reassuring as anyone is ever likely to put it. i do not expect, however, that you will instantly gather the full message and enthusiasm of the essay. it will probably seem to you not to "hang together." still, it will leave bright bits of ideas in your mind. third: after a week's interval read the essay again. on a second perusal it will appear more persuasive to you. fourth: open the bible and read the fortieth chapter of isaiah. it is the chapter which begins, "comfort ye, comfort ye, my people," and ends, "they shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint." this chapter will doubtless be more or less familiar to you. it cannot fail (whatever your particular _ism_) to impress you, to generate in your mind sensations which you recognise to be of a lofty and unusual order, and which you will admit to be pleasurable. you will probably agree that the result of reading this chapter (even if your particular _ism_ is opposed to its authority) is finer than the result of reading a short story in a magazine or even an essay by charles lamb. now the pleasurable sensations induced by the fortieth chapter of isaiah are among the sensations usually induced by high-class poetry. the writer of it was a very great poet, and what he wrote is a very great poem. fifth: after having read it, go back to hazlitt, and see if you can find anything in hazlitt's lecture which throws light on the psychology of your own emotions upon reading isaiah. sixth: the next step is into unmistakable verse. it is to read one of wordsworth's short narrative poems, _the brothers_. there are editions of wordsworth at a shilling, but i should advise the "golden treasury" wordsworth (2s. 6d. net), because it contains the famous essay by matthew arnold, who made the selection. i want you to read this poem aloud. you will probably have to hide yourself somewhere in order to do so, for, of course, you would not, as yet, care to be overheard spouting poetry. be good enough to forget that _the brothers_ is poetry. _the brothers_ is a short story, with a plain, clear plot. read it as such. read it simply for the story. it is very important at this critical stage that you should not embarrass your mind with preoccupations as to the _form_ in which wordsworth has told his story. wordsworth's object was to tell a story as well as he could: just that. in reading aloud do not pay any more attention to the metre than you feel naturally inclined to pay. after a few lines the metre will present itself to you. do not worry as to what kind of metre it is. when you have finished the perusal, examine your sensations.... your sensations after reading this poem, and perhaps one or two other narrative poems of wordsworth, such as _michael_, will be different from the sensations produced in you by reading an ordinary, or even a very extraordinary, short story in prose. they may not be so sharp, so clear and piquant, but they will probably be, in their mysteriousness and their vagueness, more impressive. i do not say that they will be diverting. i do not go so far as to say that they will strike you as pleasing sensations. (be it remembered that i am addressing myself to an imaginary tyro in poetry.) i would qualify them as being "disturbing." well, to disturb the spirit is one of the greatest aims of art. and a disturbance of spirit is one of the finest pleasures that a highly-organised man can enjoy. but this truth can only be really learnt by the repetitions of experience. as an aid to the more exhaustive examination of your feelings under wordsworth, in order that you may better understand what he was trying to effect in you, and the means which he employed, i must direct you to wordsworth himself. wordsworth, in addition to being a poet, was unsurpassed as a critic of poetry. what hazlitt does for poetry in the way of creating enthusiasm wordsworth does in the way of philosophic explanation. and wordsworth's explanations of the theory and practice of poetry are written for the plain man. they pass the comprehension of nobody, and their direct, unassuming, and calm simplicity is extremely persuasive. wordsworth's chief essays in throwing light on himself are the "advertisement," "preface," and "appendix" to _lyrical ballads_; the letters to lady beaumont and "the friend" and the "preface" to the poems dated 1815. all this matter is strangely interesting and of immense educational value. it is the first-class expert talking at ease about his subject. the essays relating to _lyrical ballads_ will be the most useful for you. you will discover these precious documents in a volume entitled _wordsworth's literary criticism_ (published by henry frowde, 2s. 6d.), edited by that distinguished wordsworthian mr. nowell c. smith. it is essential that the student of poetry should become possessed, honestly or dishonestly, either of this volume or of the matter which it contains. there is, by the way, a volume of wordsworth's prose in the scott library (1s.). those who have not read wordsworth on poetry can have no idea of the naïve charm and the helpful radiance of his expounding. i feel that i cannot too strongly press wordsworth's criticism upon you. between wordsworth and hazlitt you will learn all that it behoves you to know of the nature, the aims, and the results of poetry. it is no part of my scheme to dot the "i's" and cross the "t's" of wordsworth and hazlitt. i best fulfil my purpose in urgently referring you to them. i have only a single point of my own to make--a psychological detail. one of the main obstacles to the cultivation of poetry in the average sensible man is an absurdly inflated notion of the ridiculous. at the bottom of that man's mind is the idea that poetry is "silly." he also finds it exaggerated and artificial; but these two accusations against poetry can be satisfactorily answered. the charge of silliness, of being ridiculous, however, cannot be refuted by argument. there is no logical answer to a guffaw. this sense of the ridiculous is merely a bad, infantile habit, in itself grotesquely ridiculous. you may see it particularly in the theatre. not the greatest dramatist, not the greatest composer, not the greatest actor can prevent an audience from laughing uproariously at a tragic moment if a cat walks across the stage. but why ruin the scene by laughter? simply because the majority of any audience is artistically childish. this sense of the ridiculous can only be crushed by the exercise of moral force. it can only be cowed. if you are inclined to laugh when a poet expresses himself more powerfully than you express yourself, when a poet talks about feelings which are not usually mentioned in daily papers, when a poet uses words and images which lie outside your vocabulary and range of thought, then you had better take yourself in hand. you have to decide whether you will be on the side of the angels or on the side of the nincompoops. there is no surer sign of imperfect development than the impulse to snigger at what is unusual, naïve, or exuberant. and if you choose to do so, you can detect the cat walking across the stage in the sublimest passages of literature. but more advanced souls will grieve for you. the study of wordsworth's criticism makes the seventh step in my course of treatment. the eighth is to return to those poems of wordsworth's which you have already perused, and read them again in the full light of the author's defence and explanation. read as much wordsworth as you find you can assimilate, but do not attempt either of his long poems. the time, however, is now come for a long poem. i began by advising narrative poetry for the neophyte, and i shall persevere with the prescription. i mean narrative poetry in the restricted sense; for epic poetry is narrative. _paradise lost_ is narrative; so is _the prelude_. i suggest neither of these great works. my choice falls on elizabeth browning's _aurora leigh_. if you once work yourself "into" this poem, interesting yourself primarily (as with wordsworth) in the events of the story, and not allowing yourself to be obsessed by the fact that what you are reading is "poetry"--if you do this, you are not likely to leave it unfinished. and before you reach the end you will have encountered _en route_ pretty nearly all the moods of poetry that exist: tragic, humorous, ironic, elegiac, lyric--everything. you will have a comprehensive acquaintance with a poet's mind. i guarantee that you will come safely through if you treat the work as a novel. for a novel it effectively is, and a better one than any written by charlotte brontë or george eliot. in reading, it would be well to mark, or take note of, the passages which give you the most pleasure, and then to compare these passages with the passages selected for praise by some authoritative critic. _aurora leigh_ can be got in the "temple classics" (1s. 6d.), or in the "canterbury poets" (1s.). the indispensable biographical information about mrs. browning can be obtained from mr. j.h. ingram's short life of her in the "eminent women" series (1s. 6d.), or from _robert browning_, by william sharp ("great writers" series, 1s.). this accomplished, you may begin to choose your poets. going back to hazlitt, you will see that he deals with, among others, chaucer, spenser, shakespeare, milton, dryden, pope, chatterton, burns, and the lake school. you might select one of these, and read under his guidance. said wordsworth: "i was impressed by the conviction that there were four english poets whom i must have continually before me as examples--chaucer, shakespeare, spenser, and milton." (a word to the wise!) wordsworth makes a fifth to these four. concurrently with the careful, enthusiastic study of one of the undisputed classics, modern verse should be read. (i beg you to accept the following statement: that if the study of classical poetry inspires you with a distaste for modern poetry, then there is something seriously wrong in the method of your development.) you may at this stage (and not before) commence an inquiry into questions of rhythm, verse-structure, and rhyme. there is, i believe, no good, concise, cheap handbook to english prosody; yet such a manual is greatly needed. the only one with which i am acquainted is tom hood the younger's _rules of rhyme: a guide to english versification_. again, the introduction to walker's _rhyming dictionary_ gives a fairly clear elementary account of the subject. ruskin also has written an excellent essay on verse-rhythms. with a manual in front of you, you can acquire in a couple of hours a knowledge of the formal principles in which the music of english verse is rooted. the business is trifling. but the business of appreciating the inmost spirit of the greatest verse is tremendous and lifelong. it is not something that can be "got up." chapter x broad counsels i have now set down what appear to me to be the necessary considerations, recommendations, exhortations, and dehortations in aid of this delicate and arduous enterprise of forming the literary taste. i have dealt with the theory of literature, with the psychology of the author, and--quite as important--with the psychology of the reader. i have tried to explain the author to the reader and the reader to himself. to go into further detail would be to exceed my original intention, with no hope of ever bringing the constantly-enlarging scheme to a logical conclusion. my aim is not to provide a map, but a compass--two very different instruments. in the way of general advice it remains for me only to put before you three counsels which apply more broadly than any i have yet offered to the business of reading. you have within yourself a touchstone by which finally you can, and you must, test every book that your brain is capable of comprehending. does the book seem to you to be sincere and true? if it does, then you need not worry about your immediate feelings, or the possible future consequences of the book. you will ultimately like the book, and you will be justified in liking it. honesty, in literature as in life, is the quality that counts first and counts last. but beware of your immediate feelings. truth is not always pleasant. the first glimpse of truth is, indeed, usually so disconcerting as to be positively unpleasant, and our impulse is to tell it to go away, for we will have no truck with it. if a book arouses your genuine contempt, you may dismiss it from your mind. take heed, however, lest you confuse contempt with anger. if a book really moves you to anger, the chances are that it is a good book. most good books have begun by causing anger which disguised itself as contempt. demanding honesty from your authors, you must see that you render it yourself. and to be honest with oneself is not so simple as it appears. one's sensations and one's sentiments must be examined with detachment. when you have violently flung down a book, listen whether you can hear a faint voice saying within you: "it's true, though!" and if you catch the whisper, better yield to it as quickly as you can. for sooner or later the voice will win. similarly, when you are hugging a book, keep your ear cocked for the secret warning: "yes, but it isn't true." for bad books, by flattering you, by caressing, by appealing to the weak or the base in you, will often persuade you what fine and splendid books they are. (of course, i use the word "true" in a wide and essential significance. i do not necessarily mean true to literal fact; i mean true to the plane of experience in which the book moves. the truthfulness of _ivanhoe_, for example, cannot be estimated by the same standards as the truthfulness of stubbs's _constitutional history_.) in reading a book, a sincere questioning of oneself, "is it true?" and a loyal abiding by the answer, will help more surely than any other process of ratiocination to form the taste. i will not assert that this question and answer are all-sufficient. a true book is not always great. but a great book is never untrue. my second counsel is: in your reading you must have in view some definite aim--some aim other than the wish to derive pleasure. i conceive that to give pleasure is the highest end of any work of art, because the pleasure procured from any art is tonic, and transforms the life into which it enters. but the maximum of pleasure can only be obtained by regular effort, and regular effort implies the organisation of that effort. open-air walking is a glorious exercise; it is the walking itself which is glorious. nevertheless, when setting out for walking exercise, the sane man generally has a subsidiary aim in view. he says to himself either that he will reach a given point, or that he will progress at a given speed for a given distance, or that he will remain on his feet for a given time. he organises his effort, partly in order that he may combine some other advantage with the advantage of walking, but principally in order to be sure that the effort shall be an adequate effort. the same with reading. your paramount aim in poring over literature is to enjoy, but you will not fully achieve that aim unless you have also a subsidiary aim which necessitates the measurement of your energy. your subsidiary aim may be æsthetic, moral, political, religious, scientific, erudite; you may devote yourself to a man, a topic, an epoch, a nation, a branch of literature, an idea--you have the widest latitude in the choice of an objective; but a definite objective you must have. in my earlier remarks as to method in reading, i advocated, without insisting on, regular hours for study. but i both advocate and insist on the fixing of a date for the accomplishment of an allotted task. as an instance, it is not enough to say: "i will inform myself completely as to the lake school." it is necessary to say: "i will inform myself completely as to the lake school before i am a year older." without this precautionary steeling of the resolution the risk of a humiliating collapse into futility is enormously magnified. my third counsel is: buy a library. it is obvious that you cannot read unless you have books. i began by urging the constant purchase of books--any books of approved quality, without reference to their immediate bearing upon your particular case. the moment has now come to inform you plainly that a bookman is, amongst other things, a man who possesses many books. a man who does not possess many books is not a bookman. for years literary authorities have been favouring the literary public with wondrously selected lists of "the best books"--the best novels, the best histories, the best poems, the best works of philosophy--or the hundred best or the fifty best of all sorts. the fatal disadvantage of such lists is that they leave out large quantities of literature which is admittedly first-class. the bookman cannot content himself with a selected library. he wants, as a minimum, a library reasonably complete in all departments. with such a basis acquired, he can afterwards wander into those special byways of book-buying which happen to suit his special predilections. every englishman who is interested in any branch of his native literature, and who respects himself, ought to own a comprehensive and inclusive library of english literature, in comely and adequate editions. you may suppose that this counsel is a counsel of perfection. it is not. mark pattison laid down a rule that he who desired the name of book-lover must spend five per cent. of his income on books. the proposal does not seem extravagant, but even on a smaller percentage than five the average reader of these pages may become the owner, in a comparatively short space of time, of a reasonably complete english library, by which i mean a library containing the complete works of the supreme geniuses, representative important works of all the first-class men in all departments, and specimen works of all the men of the second rank whose reputation is really a living reputation to-day. the scheme for a library, which i now present, begins before chaucer and ends with george gissing, and i am fairly sure that the majority of people will be startled at the total inexpensiveness of it. so far as i am aware, no such scheme has ever been printed before. chapter xi an english library: period i [for much counsel and correction in the matter of editions and prices i am indebted to my old and valued friend, charles young, head of the firm of lamley & co., booksellers, south kensington.] for the purposes of book-buying, i divide english literature, not strictly into historical epochs, but into three periods which, while scarcely arbitrary from the historical point of view, have nevertheless been calculated according to the space which they will occupy on the shelves and to the demands which they will make on the purse: i. from the beginning to john dryden, or roughly, to the end of the seventeenth century. ii. from william congreve to jane austen, or roughly, the eighteenth century. iii. from sir walter scott to the last deceased author who is recognised as a classic, or roughly, the nineteenth century. period iii. will bulk the largest and cost the most; not necessarily because it contains more absolutely great books than the other periods (though in my opinion it _does_), but because it is nearest to us, and therefore fullest of interest for us. i have not confined my choice to books of purely literary interest--that is to say, to works which are primarily works of literary art. literature is the vehicle of philosophy, science, morals, religion, and history; and a library which aspires to be complete must comprise, in addition to imaginative works, all these branches of intellectual activity. comprising all these branches, it cannot avoid comprising works of which the purely literary interest is almost nil. on the other hand, i have excluded from consideration:-i. works whose sole importance is that they form a link in the chain of development. for example, nearly all the productions of authors between chaucer and the beginning of the elizabethan period, such as gower, hoccleve, and skelton, whose works, for sufficient reason, are read only by professors and students who mean to be professors. ii. works not originally written in english, such as the works of that very great philosopher roger bacon, of whom this isle ought to be prouder than it is. to this rule, however, i have been constrained to make a few exceptions. sir thomas more's _utopia_ was written in latin, but one does not easily conceive a library to be complete without it. and could one exclude sir isaac newton's _principia_, the masterpiece of the greatest physicist that the world has ever seen? the law of gravity ought to have, and does have, a powerful sentimental interest for us. iii. translations from foreign literature into english. here, then, are the lists for the first period: prose writers £ s. d. bede, _ecclesiastical history_: temple classics. 0 1 6 sir thomas malory, _morte d'arthur_: everyman's library (4 vols.) 0 4 0 sir thomas more, _utopia_: scott library 0 1 0 george cavendish, _life of cardinal wolsey_: new universal library. 0 1 0 richard hakluyt, _voyages_: everyman's library (8 vols.) 0 8 0 richard hooker, _ecclesiastical polity_: everyman's library (2 vols.) 0 2 0 francis bacon, _works_: newnes's thinpaper classics. 0 2 0 thomas dekker, _gull's horn-book_: king's classics. 0 1 6 lord herbert of cherbury, _autobiography_: scott library. 0 1 0 john selden, _table-talk_: new universal library. 0 1 0 thomas hobbes, _leviathan_: new universal library. 0 1 0 james howell, _familiar letters_: temple classics (3 vols.) 0 4 6 sir thomas browne, _religio medici_, etc.: everyman's library. 0 1 0 jeremy taylor, _holy living and holy dying_: temple classics (3 vols.) 0 4 6 izaak walton, _compleat angler_: everyman's library. 0 1 0 john bunyan, _pilgrim's progress_: world's classics. 0 1 0 sir william temple, _essay on gardens of epicurus_: king's classics. 0 1 6 john evelyn, _diary_: everyman's library (2 vols.) 0 2 0 samuel pepys, _diary_: everyman's library (2 vols.) 0 2 0 _________ £2 1 6 the principal omission from the above list is _the paston letters_, which i should probably have included had the enterprise of publishers been sufficient to put an edition on the market at a cheap price. other omissions include the works of caxton and wyclif, and such books as camden's _britannia_, ascham's _schoolmaster_, and fuller's _worthies_, whose lack of first-rate value as literature is not adequately compensated by their historical interest. as to the bible, in the first place it is a translation, and in the second i assume that you already possess a copy. poets £ s. d. _beowulf_, routledge's london library 0 2 6 geoffrey chaucer, _works_: globe edition 0 3 6 nicolas udall, _ralph roister-doister_: temple dramatists 0 1 0 edmund spenser, _works_: globe edition 0 3 6 thomas lodge, _rosalynde_: caxton series 0 1 0 robert greene, _tragical reign of selimus_: temple dramatists 0 1 0 michael drayton, _poems_: newnes's pocket classics 0 8 6 christopher marlowe, _works_: new universal library 0 1 0 william shakespeare, _works_: globe edition 0 3 6 thomas campion, _poems_: muses' library 0 1 0 ben jonson, _plays_: canterbury poets 0 1 0 john donne, _poems_: muses' library (2 vols.) 0 2 0 john webster, cyril tourneur, _plays_: mermaid series 0 2 6 philip massinger, _plays_: cunningham edition 0 3 6 beaumont and fletcher, _plays_: a selection canterbury poets 0 1 0 john ford, _plays_: mermaid series 0 2 6 george herbert, _the temple_: everyman's library 0 1 0 robert herrick, _poems_: muses' library (2 vols.) 0 2 0 edmund waller, _poems_: muses' library (2 vols.) 0 2 0 sir john suckling, _poems_: muses' library 0 1 0 abraham cowley, _english poems_: cambridge university press 0 4 6 richard crashaw, _poems_: muses' library 0 1 0 henry vaughan, _poems_: methuen's little library 0 1 6 samuel butler, _hudibras_: cambridge university press 0 4 6 john milton, _poetical works_: oxford cheap edition 0 2 0 john milton, _select prose works_: scott library 0 1 0 andrew marvell, _poems_: methuen's little library 0 1 6 john dryden, _poetical works_: globe edition 0 3 6 [thomas percy], _reliques of ancient english poetry_: everyman's library (2 vols.) 0 2 0 arber's _"spenser" anthology_: oxford university press 0 2 0 arber's _"jonson" anthology_: oxford university press 0 2 0 arber's _"shakspere" anthology_: oxford university press 0 2 0 _________ £3 7 6 there were a number of brilliant minor writers in the seventeenth century whose best work, often trifling in bulk, either scarcely merits the acquisition of a separate volume for each author, or cannot be obtained at all in a modern edition. such authors, however, may not be utterly neglected in the formation of a library. it is to meet this difficulty that i have included the last three volumes on the above list. professor arber's anthologies are full of rare pieces, and comprise admirable specimens of the verse of samuel daniel, giles fletcher, countess of pembroke, james i., george peele, sir walter raleigh, thomas sackville, sir philip sidney, drummond of hawthornden, thomas heywood, george wither, sir henry wotton, sir william davenant, thomas randolph, frances quarles, james shirley, and other greater and lesser poets. i have included all the important elizabethan dramatists except john marston, all the editions of whose works, according to my researches, are out of print. in the elizabethan and jacobean periods talent was so extraordinarily plentiful that the standard of excellence is quite properly raised, and certain authors are thus relegated to the third, or excluded, class who in a less fertile period would have counted as at least second-class. summary of the first period. £ s. d. 19 prose authors in 36 volumes costing 2 1 6 29 poets in 36 " " 3 7 6 __ __ _________ 48 72 £5 9 0 in addition, scores of authors of genuine interest are represented in the anthologies. the prices given are gross, and in many instances there is a 25 per cent. discount to come off. all the volumes can be procured immediately at any bookseller's. chapter xii an english library: period ii after dealing with the formation of a library of authors up to john dryden, i must logically arrange next a scheme for the period covered roughly by the eighteenth century. there is, however, no reason why the student in quest of a library should follow the chronological order. indeed, i should advise him to attack the nineteenth century before the eighteenth, for the reason that, unless his taste happens to be peculiarly "augustan," he will obtain a more immediate satisfaction and profit from his acquisitions in the nineteenth century than in the eighteenth. there is in eighteenth-century literature a considerable proportion of what i may term "unattractive excellence," which one must have for the purposes of completeness, but which may await actual perusal until more pressing and more human books have been read. i have particularly in mind the philosophical authors of the century. prose writers. £ s. d. john locke, _philosophical works_: bohn's edition (2 vols.) 0 7 0 sir isaac newton, _principia_ (sections 1, 2, and 3): macmillans 0 12 0 gilbert burnet, _history of his own time_: everyman's library 0 1 0 william wycherley, _best plays_: mermaid series 0 2 6 william congreve, _best plays_: mermaid series 0 2 6 jonathan swift, _tale of a tub_: scott library 0 1 0 jonathan swift, _gulliver's travels_: temple classics 0 1 6 daniel defoe, _robinson crusoe_: world's classics 0 1 0 daniel defoe, _journal of the plague year_: everyman's library 0 1 0 joseph addison, sir richard steele, _essays_: scott library 0 1 0 william law, _serious call_: everyman's library 0 1 0 lady mary w. montagu, _letters_: everyman's library 0 1 0 george berkeley, _principles of human knowledge_: new universal library 0 1 0 samuel richardson, _clarissa_ (abridged): routledge's edition 0 2 0 john wesley, _journal_: everyman's library (4 vols.) 0 4 0 henry fielding, _tom jones_: routledge's edition 0 2 0 henry fielding, _amelia_: routledge's edition 0 2 0 henry fielding, _joseph andrews_: routledge's edition 0 2 0 david hume, _essays_: world's classics 0 1 0 laurence sterne, _tristram shandy_: world's classics 0 1 0 laurence sterne, _sentimental journey_: new universal library 0 1 0 horace walpole, _castle of otranto_: king's classics 0 1 6 tobias smollett, _humphrey clinker_: routledge's edition 0 2 0 tobias smollett, _travels through france and italy_: world's classics 0 1 0 adam smith, _wealth of nations_: world's classics (2 vols.) 0 2 0 samuel johnson, _lives of the poets_: world's classics (2 vols.) 0 2 0 samuel johnson, _rasselas_: new universal library 0 1 0 james boswell, _life of johnson_: everyman's library (2 vols.) 0 2 0 oliver goldsmith, _works_: globe edition 0 3 6 henry mackenzie, _the man of feeling_: cassell's national library 0 0 6 sir joshua reynolds, _discourses on art_: scott library 0 1 0 edmund burke, _reflections on the french revolution_: scott library 0 1 0 edmund burke, _thoughts on the present discontents_: new universal library 0 1 0 edward gibbon, _decline and fall of the roman empire_: world's classics (7 vols.) 0 7 0 thomas paine, _rights of man_: watts and co.'s edition 0 1 0 richard brinsley sheridan, _plays_: world's classics 0 1 0 fanny burney, _evelina_: everyman's library 0 1 0 gilbert white, _natural history of selborne_: everyman's library 0 1 0 arthur young, _travels in france_: york library 0 2 0 mungo park, _travels_: everyman's library 0 1 0 jeremy bentham, _introduction to the principles of morals_: clarendon press 0 6 6 thomas robert malthus, _essay on the principle of population_: ward, lock's edition 0 3 0 william godwin, _caleb williams_: newnes's edition 0 1 0 maria edgeworth, _helen_: macmillan's illustrated edition 0 2 6 jane austen, _novels_: nelson's new century library (2 vols.) 0 4 0 james morier, _hadji baba_: macmillan's illustrated novels 0 2 6 __________ £5 1 0 the principal omissions here are jeremy collier, whose outcry against the immorality of the stage is his slender title to remembrance; richard bentley, whose scholarship principally died with him, and whose chief works are no longer current; and "junius," who would have been deservedly forgotten long ago had there been a contemporaneous sherlock holmes to ferret out his identity. poets. £ s. d. thomas otway, _venice preserved_: temple dramatists 0 1 0 matthew prior, _poems on several occasions_: cambridge english classics 0 4 6 john gay, _poems_: muses' library (2 vols.) 0 2 0 alexander pope, _works_: globe edition 0 3 0 isaac watts, _hymns_: any hymn-book 0 1 0 james thomson, _the seasons_: muses' library 0 1 0 charles wesley, _hymns_: any hymn-book 0 1 0 thomas gray, samuel johnson, william collins, _poems_: muses' library 0 1 0 james macpherson (ossian), _poems_: canterbury poets 0 1 0 thomas chatterton, _poems_: muses' library (2 vols.) 0 2 0 william cowper, _poems_: canterbury poets 0 1 0 william cowper, _letters_: world's classics 0 1 0 george crabbe, _poems_: methuen's little library 0 1 6 william blake, _poems_: muses' library 0 1 0 william lisle bowles, hartley coleridge, _poems_: canterbury poets 0 1 0 robert burns, _works_: globe edition 0 3 6 __________ £1 7 0 summary of the period. 39 prose writers in 60 volumes, costing £5 1 0 18 poets " 18 " " 1 7 0 __ __ __________ 57 78 £6 8 0 chapter xiii an english library: period iii the catalogue of necessary authors of this third and last period being so long, it is convenient to divide the prose writers into imaginative and non-imaginative. in the latter half of the period the question of copyright affects our scheme to a certain extent, because it affects prices. fortunately it is the fact that no single book of recognised first-rate general importance is conspicuously dear. nevertheless, i have encountered difficulties in the second rank; i have dealt with them in a spirit of compromise. i think i may say that, though i should have included a few more authors had their books been obtainable at a reasonable price, i have omitted none that i consider indispensable to a thoroughly representative collection. no living author is included. where i do not specify the edition of a book the original copyright edition is meant. prose writers: imaginative. £ s. d. sir walter scott, _waverley, heart of midlothian, quentin durward, red-gauntlet, ivanhoe_: everyman's library (5 vols.) 0 5 0 sir walter scott, _marmion_, etc.: canterbury poets 0 1 0 charles lamb, _works in prose and verse_: clarendon press (2 vols.) 0 4 0 charles lamb, _letters_: newnes's thin paper classics 0 2 0 walter savage landor, _imaginary conversations_: scott library 0 1 0 walter savage landor, _poems_: canterbury poets 0 1 0 leigh hunt, _essays and sketches_: world's classics 0 1 0 thomas love peacock, _principal novels_: new universal library (2 vols.) 0 2 0 mary russell mitford, _our village_: scott library 0 1 0 michael scott, _tom cringle's log_: macmillan's illustrated novels 0 2 6 frederick marryat, _mr. midshipman easy_: everyman's library 0 1 0 john galt, _annals of the parish_: everyman's library 0 1 0 susan ferrier, _marriage_: routledge's edition 0 2 0 douglas jerrold, _mrs. caudle's curtain lectures_: world's classics 0 1 0 lord lytton, _last days of pompeii_: everyman's library 0 1 0 william carleton, _stories_: scott library 0 1 0 charles james lever, _harry lorrequer_: everyman's library 0 1 0 harrison ainsworth, _the tower of london_: new universal library 0 1 0 george henry borrow, _bible in spain, lavengro_: new universal library (2 vols.) 0 2 0 lord beaconsfield, _sybil, coningsby_: lane's new pocket library (2 vols.) 0 2 0 w.m. thackeray, _vanity fair, esmond_: everyman's library (2 vols.) 0 2 0 w.m. thackeray, _barry lyndon_, and _roundabout papers_, etc.: nelson's new century library 0 2 0 charles dickens, _works_: everyman's library (18 vols.) 0 18 0 charles reade, _the cloister and the hearth_: everyman's library 0 1 0 anthony trollope, _barchester towers, framley parsonage_: lane's new pocket library (2 vols.) 0 2 0 charles kingsley, _westward ho!_: everyman's library 0 1 0 henry kingsley, _ravenshoe_: everyman's library 0 1 0 charlotte brontë, _jane eyre, shirley, villette, professor, and poems_: world's classics (4 vols.) 0 4 0 emily brontë, _wuthering heights_: world's classics 0 1 0 elizabeth gaskell, _cranford_: world's classics 0 1 0 elizabeth gaskell, _life of charlotte brontë_ 0 2 6 george eliot, _adam bede, silas marner, the mill on the floss_: everyman's library (3 vols.) 0 3 0 g.j. whyte-melville, _the gladiators_: new universal library 0 1 0 alexander smith, _dreamthorpe_: new universal library 0 1 0 george macdonald, _malcolm_ 0 1 6 walter pater, _imaginary portraits_ 0 6 0 wilkie collins, _the woman in white_ 0 1 0 r.d. blackmore, _lorna doone_: everyman's library 0 1 0 samuel butler, _erewhon_: fifield's edition 0 2 6 laurence oliphant, _altiora peto_ 0 3 6 margaret oliphant, _salem chapel_: everyman's library 0 1 0 richard jefferies, _story of my heart_ 0 2 0 lewis carroll, _alice in wonderland_: macmillan's cheap edition 0 1 0 john henry shorthouse, _john inglesant_: macmillan's pocket classics 0 2 0 r.l. stevenson, _master of ballantrae, virginibus puerisque_: pocket edition (2 vols.) 0 4 0 george gissing, _the odd women_: popular edition (bound) 0 0 7 __________ £5 0 1 names such as those of charlotte yonge and dinah craik are omitted intentionally. prose writers: non-imaginative. £ s. d. william hazlitt, _spirit of the age_: world's classics 0 1 0 william hazlitt, _english poets and comic writers_: bohn's library 0 3 6 francis jeffrey, _essays from edinburgh review_: new universal library 0 1 0 thomas de quincey, _confessions of an english opium-eater_, etc.: scott library 0 1 0 sydney smith, _selected papers_: scott library 0 1 0 george finlay, _byzantine empire_: everyman's library 0 1 0 john g. lockhart, _life of scott_: everyman's library 0 1 0 agnes strickland, _life of queen elizabeth_: everyman's library 0 1 0 hugh miller, _old red sandstone_: everyman's library 0 1 0 j.h. newman, _apologia pro vita sua_: new universal library 0 1 0 lord macaulay, _history of england_, (3), _essays_ (2): everyman's library (5 vols.) 0 5 0 a.p. stanley, _memorials of canterbury_: everyman's library 0 1 0 thomas carlyle, _french revolution_ (2), _cromwell_ (3), _sartor resartus and heroes and hero-worship_ (1): everyman's library (6 vols.) 0 6 0 thomas carlyle, _latter-day pamphlets_: chapman and hall's edition 0 1 0 charles darwin, _origin of species_: murray's edition 0 1 0 charles darwin, _voyage of the beagle_: everyman's library 0 1 0 a.w. kinglake, _eothen_: new universal library 0 1 0 john stuart mill, _auguste comte and positivism_: new universal library 0 1 0 john brown, _horæ subsecivæ_: world's classics 0 1 0 john brown, _rab and his friends_: everyman's library 0 1 0 sir arthur helps, _friends in council_: new universal library 0 1 0 mark pattison, _life of milton_: english men of letters series 0 1 0 f.w. robertson, _on religion and life_: everyman's library 0 1 0 benjamin jowett, _interpretation of scripture_: routledge's london library 0 2 6 george henry lewes, _principles of success in literature_: scott library 0 1 0 alexander bain, _mind and body_ 0 4 0 james anthony froude, _dissolution of the monasteries_, etc.: new universal library 0 1 0 mary wollstonecraft, _vindication of the rights of women_: scott library 0 1 0 john tyndall, _glaciers of the alps_: everyman's library 0 1 0 sir henry maine, _ancient law_: new universal library 0 1 0 john ruskin, _seven lamps_ (1), _sesame and lilies_ (1), _stones of venice_ (3): george allen's cheap edition (5 vols.) 0 5 0 herbert spencer, _first principles_ (2 vols.) 0 2 0 herbert spencer, _education_ 0 1 0 sir richard burton, _narrative of a pilgrimage to mecca_: bohn's edition (2 vols.) 0 7 0 j.s. speke, _sources of the nile_: everyman's library 0 1 0 thomas henry huxley, _essays_: everyman's library 0 1 0 e.a. freeman, _europe_: macmillan's primers 0 1 0 william stubbs, _early plantagenets_ 0 2 0 walter bagehot, _lombard street_ 0 3 6 richard holt hutton, _cardinal newman_ 0 3 6 sir john seeley, _ecce homo_: new universal library 0 1 0 david masson, _thomas de quincey_: english men of letters series 0 1 0 john richard green, _short history of the english people_ 0 8 6 sir leslie stephen, _pope_: english men of letters series 0 1 0 lord acton, _on the study of history_ 0 2 6 mandell creighton, _the age of elizabeth_ 0 2 6 f.w.h. myers, _wordsworth_: english men of letters series 0 1 0 __________ £4 10 6 the following authors are omitted, i think justifiably:--hallam, whewell, grote, faraday, herschell, hamilton, john wilson, richard owen, stirling maxwell, buckle, oscar wilde, p.g. hamerton, f.d. maurice, henry sidgwick, and richard jebb. lastly, here is the list of poets. in the matter of price per volume it is the most expensive of all the lists. this is due to the fact that it contains a larger proportion of copyright works. where i do not specify the edition of a book, the original copyright edition is meant: poets. £ s. d. william wordsworth, _poetical works_: oxford edition 0 3 6 william wordsworth, _literary criticism_: nowell smith's edition 0 2 6 robert southey, _poems_: canterbury poets 0 1 0 robert southey, _life of nelson_: everyman's library 0 1 0 s.t. coleridge, _poetical works_: newnes's thin paper classics 0 2 0 s.t. coleridge, _biographia literaria_: everyman's library 0 1 0 s.t. coleridge, _lectures on shakspere_: everyman's library 0 1 0 john keats, _poetical works_: oxford edition 0 3 6 percy bysshe shelley, _poetical works_: oxford edition 0 3 6 lord byron, _poems_: e. hartley coleridge's edition 0 6 0 lord byron, _letters_: scott library 0 1 0 thomas hood, _poems_: world's classics 0 1 0 james and horace smith, _rejected addresses_: new universal library 0 1 0 john keble, _the christian year_: canterbury poets 0 1 0 george darley, _poems_: muses' library 0 1 0 t.l. beddoes, _poems_: muses' library 0 1 0 thomas moore, _selected poems_: canterbury poets 0 1 0 james clarence mangan, _poems_: d.j. o'donoghue's edition 0 3 6 w. mackworth praed, _poems_: canterbury poets 0 1 0 r.s. hawker, _cornish ballads_: c.e. byles's edition 0 5 0 edward fitzgerald, _omar khayyam_: golden treasury series 0 2 6 p.j. bailey, _festus_: routledge's edition 0 3 6 arthur hugh clough, _poems_: muses' library 0 1 0 lord tennyson, _poetical works_: globe edition 0 3 6 robert browning, _poetical works_: world's classics (2 vols.) 0 2 0 elizabeth browning, _aurora leigh_: temple classics 0 1 6 elizabeth browning, _shorter poems_: canterbury poets 0 1 0 p.b. marston, _song-tide_: canterbury poets 0 1 0 aubrey de vere, _legends of st. patrick_: cassell's national library 0 0 6 matthew arnold, _poems_: golden treasury series 0 2 6 matthew arnold, _essays_: everyman's library 0 1 0 coventry patmore, _poems_: muses' library 0 1 0 sydney dobell, _poems_: canterbury poets 0 1 0 eric mackay, _love-letters of a violinist_: canterbury poets 0 1 0 t.e. brown, _poems_ 0 7 6 c.s. calverley, _verses and translations_ 0 1 6 d.g. rossetti, _poetical works_ 0 3 6 christina rossetti, _selected poems_: golden treasury series 0 2 6 james thomson, _city of dreadful night_ 0 3 6 jean ingelow, _poems_: red letter library 0 1 6 william morris, _the earthly paradise_ 0 6 0 william morris, _early romances_: everyman's library 0 1 0 augusta webster, _selected poems_ 0 4 6 w.e. henley, _poetical works_ 0 6 0 francis thompson, _selected poems_ 0 5 0 __________ £5 7 0 poets whom i have omitted after hesitation are: ebenezer elliott, thomas woolner, william barnes, gerald massey, and charles jeremiah wells. on the other hand, i have had no hesitation about omitting david moir, felicia hemans, aytoun, sir edwin arnold, and sir lewis morris. i have included john keble in deference to much enlightened opinion, but against my inclination. there are two names in the list which may be somewhat unfamiliar to many readers. james clarence mangan is the author of _my dark rosaleen_, an acknowledged masterpiece, which every library must contain. t.e. brown is a great poet, recognised as such by a few hundred people, and assuredly destined to a far wider fame. i have included fitzgerald because _omar khayyam_ is much less a translation than an original work. summary of the nineteenth century. 83 prose-writers, in 141 volumes, costing £9 10 7 38 poets " 46 " " 5 7 0 __ ___ __________ 121 187 £14 17 7 grand summary of complete library. authors. volumes. price. 1. to dryden 48 72 £5 9 0 2. eighteenth century 57 78 6 8 0 3. nineteenth century 121 187 14 17 7 ___ ___ ________ 226 337 £26 14 7 i think it will be agreed that the total cost of this library is surprisingly small. by laying out the sum of sixpence a day for three years you may become the possessor of a collection of books which, for range and completeness in all branches of literature, will bear comparison with libraries far more imposing, more numerous, and more expensive. i have mentioned the question of discount. the discount which you will obtain (even from a bookseller in a small town) will be more than sufficient to pay for chambers's _cyclopædia of english literature_, three volumes, price 30s. net. this work is indispensable to a bookman. personally, i owe it much. when you have read, wholly or in part, a majority of these three hundred and thirty-five volumes, _with enjoyment_, you may begin to whisper to yourself that your literary taste is formed; and you may pronounce judgment on modern works which come before the bar of your opinion in the calm assurance that, though to err is human, you do at any rate know what you are talking about. chapter xiv mental stocktaking great books do not spring from something accidental in the great men who wrote them. they are the effluence of their very core, the expression of the life itself of the authors. and literature cannot be said to have served its true purpose until it has been translated into the actual life of him who reads. it does not succeed until it becomes the vehicle of the vital. progress is the gradual result of the unending battle between human reason and human instinct, in which the former slowly but surely wins. the most powerful engine in this battle is literature. it is the vast reservoir of true ideas and high emotions--and life is constituted of ideas and emotions. in a world deprived of literature, the intellectual and emotional activity of all but a few exceptionally gifted men would quickly sink and retract to a narrow circle. the broad, the noble, the generous would tend to disappear for want of accessible storage. and life would be correspondingly degraded, because the fallacious idea and the petty emotion would never feel the upward pull of the ideas and emotions of genius. only by conceiving a society without literature can it be clearly realised that the function of literature is to raise the plain towards the top level of the peaks. literature exists so that where one man has lived finely ten thousand may afterwards live finely. it is a means of life; it concerns the living essence. of course, literature has a minor function, that of passing the time in an agreeable and harmless fashion, by giving momentary faint pleasure. vast multitudes of people (among whom may be numbered not a few habitual readers) utilise only this minor function of literature; by implication they class it with golf, bridge, or soporifics. literary genius, however, had no intention of competing with these devices for fleeting the empty hours; and all such use of literature may be left out of account. you, o serious student of many volumes, believe that you have a sincere passion for reading. you hold literature in honour, and your last wish would be to debase it to a paltry end. you are not of those who read because the clock has just struck nine and one can't go to bed till eleven. you are animated by a real desire to get out of literature all that literature will give. and in that aim you keep on reading, year after year, and the grey hairs come. but amid all this steady tapping of the reservoir, do you ever take stock of what you have acquired? do you ever pause to make a valuation, in terms of your own life, of that which you are daily absorbing, or imagine you are absorbing? do you ever satisfy yourself by proof that you are absorbing anything at all, that the living waters, instead of vitalising you, are not running off you as though you were a duck in a storm? because, if you omit this mere business precaution, it may well be that you, too, without knowing it, are little by little joining the triflers who read only because eternity is so long. it may well be that even your alleged sacred passion is, after all, simply a sort of drug-habit. the suggestion disturbs and worries you. you dismiss it impatiently; but it returns. how (you ask, unwillingly) can a man perform a mental stocktaking? how can he put a value on what he gets from books? how can he effectively test, in cold blood, whether he is receiving from literature all that literature has to give him? the test is not so vague, nor so difficult, as might appear. if a man is not thrilled by intimate contact with nature: with the sun, with the earth, which is his origin and the arouser of his acutest emotions-if he is not troubled by the sight of beauty in many forms-if he is devoid of curiosity concerning his fellow-men and his fellow-animals-if he does not have glimpses of the nuity of all things in an orderly progress-if he is chronically "querulous, dejected, and envious"-if he is pessimistic-if he is of those who talk about "this age of shams," "this age without ideals," "this hysterical age," and this heaven-knows-what-age-then that man, though he reads undisputed classics for twenty hours a day, though he has a memory of steel, though he rivals porson in scholarship and sainte beuve in judgment, is not receiving from literature what literature has to give. indeed, he is chiefly wasting his time. unless he can read differently, it were better for him if he sold all his books, gave to the poor, and played croquet. he fails because he has not assimilated into his existence the vital essences which genius put into the books that have merely passed before his eyes; because genius has offered him faith, courage, vision, noble passion, curiosity, love, a thirst for beauty, and he has not taken the gift; because genius has offered him the chance of living fully, and he is only half alive, for it is only in the stress of fine ideas and emotions that a man may be truly said to live. this is not a moral invention, but a simple fact, which will be attested by all who know what that stress is. what! you talk learnedly about shakespeare's sonnets! have you heard shakespeare's terrific shout: full many a glorious morning have i seen flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye, kissing with golden face the meadows green, gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy. and yet, can you see the sun over the viaduct at loughborough junction of a morning, and catch its rays in the thames off dewar's whisky monument, and not shake with the joy of life? if so, you and shakespeare are not yet in communication. what! you pride yourself on your beautiful edition of casaubon's translation of _marcus aurelius_, and you savour the cadences of the famous: this day i shall have to do with an idle, curious man, with an unthankful man, a railer, a crafty, false, or an envious man. all these ill qualities have happened unto him, through ignorance of that which is truly good and truly bad. but i that understand the nature of that which is good, that it only is to be desired, and of that which is bad, that it only is truly odious and shameful: who know, moreover, that this transgressor, whosoever he be, is my kinsman, not by the same blood and seed, but by participation of the same reason and of the same divine particle--how can i be hurt?... and with these cadences in your ears you go and quarrel with a cabman! you would be ashamed of your literary self to be caught in ignorance of whitman, who wrote: now understand me well--it is provided in the essence of things that from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth something to make a greater struggle necessary. and yet, having achieved a motor-car, you lose your temper when it breaks down half-way up a hill! you know your wordsworth, who has been trying to teach you about: the upholder of the tranquil soul that tolerates the indignities of time and, from the centre of eternity all finite motions over-ruling, lives in glory immutable. but you are capable of being seriously unhappy when your suburban train selects a tunnel for its repose! and the a.v. of the bible, which you now read, not as your forefathers read it, but with an æsthetic delight, especially in the apocrypha! you remember: whatsoever is brought upon thee, take cheerfully, and be patient when thou art changed to a low estate. for gold is tried in the fire and acceptable men in the furnace of adversity. and yet you are ready to lie down and die because a woman has scorned you! go to! you think some of my instances approach the ludicrous? they do. they are meant to do so. but they are no more ludicrous than life itself. and they illustrate in the most workaday fashion how you can test whether your literature fulfils its function of informing and transforming your existence. i say that if daily events and scenes do not constantly recall and utilise the ideas and emotions contained in the books which you have read or are reading; if the memory of these books does not quicken the perception of beauty, wherever you happen to be, does not help you to correlate the particular trifle with the universal, does not smooth out irritation and give dignity to sorrow--then you are, consciously or not, unworthy of your high vocation as a bookman. you may say that i am preaching a sermon. the fact is, i am. my mood is a severely moral mood. for when i reflect upon the difference between what books have to offer and what even relatively earnest readers take the trouble to accept from them, i am appalled (or should be appalled, did i not know that the world is moving) by the sheer inefficiency, the bland, complacent failure of the earnest reader. i am like yourself, the spectacle of inefficiency rouses my holy ire. before you begin upon another masterpiece, set out in a row the masterpieces which you are proud of having read during the past year. take the first on the list, that book which you perused in all the zeal of your new year resolutions for systematic study. examine the compartments of your mind. search for the ideas and emotions which you have garnered from that book. think, and recollect when last something from that book recurred to your memory apropos of your own daily commerce with humanity. is it history--when did it throw a light for you on modern politics? is it science--when did it show you order in apparent disorder, and help you to put two and two together into an inseparable four? is it ethics--when did it influence your conduct in a twopenny-halfpenny affair between man and man? is it a novel--when did it help you to "understand all and forgive all"? is it poetry--when was it a magnifying glass to disclose beauty to you, or a fire to warm your cooling faith? if you can answer these questions satisfactorily, your stocktaking as regards the fruit of your traffic with that book may be reckoned satisfactory. if you cannot answer them satisfactorily, then either you chose the book badly or your impression that you _read_ it is a mistaken one. when the result of this stocktaking forces you to the conclusion that your riches are not so vast as you thought them to be, it is necessary to look about for the causes of the misfortune. the causes may be several. you may have been reading worthless books. this, however, i should say at once, is extremely unlikely. habitual and confirmed readers, unless they happen to be reviewers, seldom read worthless books. in the first place, they are so busy with books of proved value that they have only a small margin of leisure left for very modern works, and generally, before they can catch up with the age, time or the critic has definitely threshed for them the wheat from the chaff. no! mediocrity has not much chance of hood-winking the serious student. it is less improbable that the serious student has been choosing his books badly. he may do this in two ways--absolutely and relatively. every reader of long standing has been through the singular experience of suddenly _seeing_ a book with which his eyes have been familiar for years. he reads a book with a reputation and thinks: "yes, this is a good book. this book gives me pleasure." and then after an interval, perhaps after half a lifetime, something mysterious happens to his mental sight. he picks up the book again, and sees a new and profound significance in every sentence, and he says: "i was perfectly blind to this book before." yet he is no cleverer than he used to be. only something has happened to him. let a gold watch be discovered by a supposititious man who has never heard of watches. he has a sense of beauty. he admires the watch, and takes pleasure in it. he says: "this is a beautiful piece of bric-à-brac; i fully appreciate this delightful trinket." then imagine his feelings when someone comes along with the key; imagine the light flooding his brain. similar incidents occur in the eventful life of the constant reader. he has no key, and never suspects that there exists such a thing as a key. that is what i call a choice absolutely bad. the choice is relatively bad when, spreading over a number of books, it pursues no order, and thus results in a muddle of faint impressions each blurring the rest. books must be allowed to help one another; they must be skilfully called in to each other's aid. and that this may be accomplished some guiding principle is necessary. "and what," you demand, "should that guiding principle be?" how do i know? nobody, fortunately, can make your principles for you. you have to make them for yourself. but i will venture upon this general observation: that in the mental world what counts is not numbers but co-ordination. as regards facts and ideas, the great mistake made by the average well-intentioned reader is that he is content with the names of things instead of occupying himself with the causes of things. he seeks answers to the question what? instead of to the question why? he studies history, and never guesses that all history is caused by the facts of geography. he is a botanical expert, and can take you to where the _sibthorpia europæa_ grows, and never troubles to wonder what the earth would be without its cloak of plants. he wanders forth of starlit evenings and will name you with unction all the constellations from andromeda to the scorpion; but if you ask him why venus can never be seen at midnight, he will tell you that he has not bothered with the scientific details. he has not learned that names are nothing, and the satisfaction of the lust of the eye a trifle compared to the imaginative vision of which scientific "details" are the indispensable basis. most reading, i am convinced, is unphilosophical; that is to say, it lacks the element which more than anything else quickens the poetry of life. unless and until a man has formed a scheme of knowledge, be it a mere skeleton, his reading must necessarily be unphilosophical. he must have attained to some notion of the inter-relations of the various branches of knowledge before he can properly comprehend the branch in which he specialises. if he has not drawn an outline map upon which he can fill in whatever knowledge comes to him, as it comes, and on which he can trace the affinity of every part with every other part, he is assuredly frittering away a large percentage of his efforts. there are certain philosophical works which, once they are mastered, seem to have performed an operation for cataract, so that he who was blind, having read them, henceforward sees cause and effect working in and out everywhere. to use another figure, they leave stamped on the brain a chart of the entire province of knowledge. such a work is spencer's _first principles_. i know that it is nearly useless to advise people to read _first principles_. they are intimidated by the sound of it; and it costs as much as a dress-circle seat at the theatre. but if they would, what brilliant stocktakings there might be in a few years! why, if they would only read such detached essays as that on "manners and fashion," or "the genesis of science" (in a sixpenny volume of spencer's _essays_, published by watts and co.), the magic illumination, the necessary power of "synthetising" things, might be vouch-safed to them. in any case, the lack of some such disciplinary, co-ordinating measure will amply explain many disastrous stocktakings. the manner in which one single ray of light, one single precious hint, will clarify and energise the whole mental life of him who receives it, is among the most wonderful and heavenly of intellectual phenomena. some men search for that light and never find it. but most men never search for it. the superlative cause of disastrous stocktakings remains, and it is much more simple than the one with which i have just dealt. it consists in the absence of meditation. people read, and read, and read, blandly unconscious of their effrontery in assuming that they can assimilate without any further effort the vital essence which the author has breathed into them. they cannot. and the proof that they do not is shown all the time in their lives. i say that if a man does not spend at least as much time in actively and definitely thinking about what he has read as he has spent in reading, he is simply insulting his author. if he does not submit himself to intellectual and emotional fatigue in classifying the communicated ideas, and in emphasising on his spirit the imprint of the communicated emotions--then reading with him is a pleasant pastime and nothing else. this is a distressing fact. but it is a fact. it is distressing, for the reason that meditation is not a popular exercise. if a friend asks you what you did last night, you may answer, "i was reading," and he will be impressed and you will be proud. but if you answer, "i was meditating," he will have a tendency to smile and you will have a tendency to blush. i know this. i feel it myself. (i cannot offer any explanation.) but it does not shake my conviction that the absence of meditation is the main origin of disappointing stocktakings. by the same author novels a man from the north anna of the five towns leonora a great man sacred and profane love whom god hath joined buried alive the old wives' tale the glimpse helen with the high hand clayhanger the card fantasias the grand babylon hotel the gates of wrath teresa of watling street the loot of cities hugo the ghost the city of pleasure short stories tales of the five towns the grim smile of the five towns belles-lettres journalism for women fame and fiction how to become an author the truth about an author the reasonable life how to live on twenty-four hours a day the human machine literary taste mental efficiency drama polite farces cupid and commonsense what the public wants (in collaboration with eden phillpotts) the sinews of war: a romance the statue: a romance generously made available by the posner memorial collection (http://posner.library.cmu.edu/posner/)) the committee on publications of the grolier club certifies that this copy of "one hundred books famous in english literature" is one of three hundred and five copies printed on hand-made paper, and that all were printed during the year nineteen hundred and two. one hundred books famous in english literature one hundred books famous in english literature with facsimiles of the title-pages and an introduction by george e. woodberry the grolier club of the city of new york m cm ii copyright, 1902, by the grolier club of the city of new york facsimile titles title author date page first page of the canterbury tales chaucer 1478 3 first page of the confessio amantis gower 1483 5 first page of the morte arthure malory 1485 7 the booke of common praier 1549 9 the vision of pierce plowman langland 1550 11 chronicles of england, scotlande, and ireland holinshed 1577 13 a myrrour for magistrates 1563 15 songes and sonettes surrey 1567 17 the tragidie of ferrex and porrex sackville 1570 19 euphues. the anatomy of wit lylie 1579 21 the countesse of pembrokes arcadia sidney 1590 23 the faerie queene spenser 1590 25 essaies bacon 1598 27 the principal navigations, voiages, traffiques and discoveries of the english nation hakluyt 1598 29 the whole works of homer chapman 1611 31 the holy bible king james's 1611 33 version the workes of benjamin jonson jonson 1616 35 the anatomy of melancholy burton 1621 37 mr. william shakespeares comedies, histories, & tragedies shakespeare 1623 39 the tragedy of the dutchesse of malfy webster 1623 41 a new way to pay old debts massinger 1633 43 the broken heart ford 1633 45 the famous tragedy of the rich jew of malta marlowe 1633 47 the temple herbert 1633 49 poems donne 1633 51 religio medici browne 1642 53 the workes of edmond waller esquire 1645 55 comedies and tragedies beaumont 1647 57 and fletcher hesperides herrick 1648 59 the rule and exercises of holy living taylor 1650 61 the compleat angler walton 1653 63 hudibras butler 1663 65 paradise lost milton 1667 67 the pilgrims progress bunyan 1678 69 absalom and achitophel dryden 1681 71 an essay concerning humane understanding locke 1690 73 the way of the world congreve 1700 75 the history of the rebellion and civil wars in england clarendon 1702 77 the lucubrations of isaac bickerstaff steele 1710 79 esq. the spectator addison 1711 81 the life and strange surprizing adventures of robinson crusoe defoe 1719 83 travels into several remote nations of the world swift 1726 85 an essay on man pope 1733 87 the analogy of religion butler 1736 89 reliques of ancient english poetry percy 1765 91 odes on several descriptive and allegoric subjects collins 1747 93 clarissa richardson 1748 95 the history of tom jones fielding 1749 97 an elegy wrote in a country church yard gray 1751 99 a dictionary of the english language johnson 1755 101 poor richard's almanack franklin 1758 103 commentaries on the laws of england blackstone 1765 105 the vicar of wakefield goldsmith 1766 107 a sentimental journey sterne 1768 109 the federalist 1788 111 the expedition of humphry clinker smollett 16[7]71 113 an inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations smith 1776 115 the history of the decline and fall of the roman empire gibbon 1776 117 the school for scandal sheridan 1777 119 the task cowper 1785 121 poems, chiefly in the scottish dialect burns 1786 123 the natural history and antiquities of selborne white 1789 125 reflections on the revolution in france burke 1790 127 rights of man paine 1791 129 the life of samuel johnson boswell 1791 131 lyrical ballads wordsworth 1798 133 a history of new york, from the beginning of the world to the end of the dutch dynasty irving 1809 135 childe harold's pilgrimage byron 1812 137 pride and prejudice austen 1813 139 christabel coleridge 1816 141 ivanhoe scott 1820 143 lamia, isabella, the eve of st. agnes, and other poems keats 1820 145 adonais shelley 1821 147 elia lamb 1823 149 memoirs of samuel pepys, esq. f.r.s. pepys 1825 151 the last of the mohicans cooper 1826 153 pericles and aspasia landor 1836 155 the pickwick papers dickens 1837 157 sartor resartus carlyle 1834 159 nature emerson 1836 161 history of the conquest of peru prescott 1847 163 the raven and other poems poe 1845 165 jane eyre brontë 1847 167 evangeline longfellow 1847 169 sonnets mrs. browning 1847 171 the biglow papers lowell 1848 173 vanity fair thackeray 1848 175 the history of england macaulay 1849 177 in memoriam tennyson 1850 179 the scarlet letter hawthorne 1850 181 uncle tom's cabin mrs. stowe 1852 183 the stones of venice ruskin 1851 185 men and women browning 1855 187 the rise of the dutch republic motley 1856 189 adam bede george eliot 1859 191 on the origin of species by means of natural selection darwin 1859 193 rubáiyát of omar khayyám fitzgerald 1859 195 apologia pro vita sua newman 1864 197 essays in criticism arnold 1865 199 snow-bound whittier 1866 201 * * * * * except where noted, all facsimiles of title-pages are of the size of those in the original editions. [illustration] introduction a book is judged by its peers. in the presence of the greater works of authors there is no room for personal criticism; they constitute in themselves the perpetual mind of the race, and dispense with any private view. the eye rests on these hundred titles of books famous in english literature, as it reads a physical map by peak, river and coast, and sees in miniature the intellectual conformation of a nation. a different selection would only mean another point of view; some minor features might be replaced by others of similar subordination; but the mass of imagination and learning, the mind-achievement of the english race, is as unchangeable as a mountain landscape. perspective thrusts its unconscious judgment upon the organs of sight, also; if gower is thin with distance and the clump of the elizabethans shows crowded with low spurs, the eye is not therefore deceived by the large pettiness of the foreground with its more numerous and distinct details. the mass governs. darwin appeals to milton; shelley is judged by pope, and hawthorne by congreve. these books must of necessity be national books; for fame, which is essentially the highest gift of which man has the giving, cannot be conferred except by a public voice. fame dwells upon the lips of men. it is not that memorable books must all be people's books, though the greatest are such--the book of common prayer, the bible, shakespeare; but those which embody some rare intellectual power, or illuminate some seldom visited tract of the spirit, or merely display some peculiar taste in learning or pastime, must yet have something racial in them, something public, to secure their hold against the detaching power of time; they must be english books, not in tongue only, but body and soul. they are not less the books of a nation because they are remote, superfine, uncommon. such are the books of the poets--the faërie queene; books of the nobles--arcadia; books of the scholar--the anatomy of melancholy. these books open the national genius as truly, kind by kind, as books of knowledge exhibit the nation's advancement in learning, stage by stage, when new sciences are brought to the birth. the wealth of nations, locke's essay, blackstone's commentaries, are not merely the product of private minds. they are landmarks of english intellect; and more, since they pass insensibly into the power of civilization in the land, feeding the general mind. the limited appeal that many classics made in their age, and still make, indicates lack of development in particular persons; but however numerous such individuals may be, in whatever majorities they may mass, the mind of the race, once having flowered, has flowered with the vigor of the stock. the compleat angler finds a rustic breast under much staid cloth; pepys was never at a loss for a gossip since his seals were broken, and donne evokes his fellow-eccentric whose hermitage is the scholar's bosom; but whether the charm work on few or on many is indifferent, for whom they affect, they affect through consanguinity. the books of a nation are those which are appropriate to its genius and embody its variations amid the changes of time; even its sports, like euphues, are itself; and the works which denote the evolution of its civilized life in fructifying progress, whose increasing diversities are yet held in the higher harmony of one race, one temperament, one destiny, are without metaphor its sibylline books, and true oracles of empire. it is a sign of race in literature that a book can spare what is private to its author, and comes at last to forgo his earth-life altogether. this is obvious of works of knowledge, since positive truth gains nothing from personality, but feels it as an alloy; and a wise analysis will affirm the same of all long-lived books. works of science are charters of nature, and submit to no human caprice; and, in a similar way, works of imagination, which are to the inward world of the spirit what works of science are to the natural universe, are charters of the soul, and borrow nothing from the hand that wrote them. how deciduous such books are of the private life needs only to be stated to be allowed. they cast biography from them like the cloak of the ascending prophet. an author is not rightly to be reckoned among immortals until he has been forgotten as a man, and become a shade in human memory, the myth of his own work. the anecdote lingering in the mermaid tavern is cocoon-stuff, and left for waste; time spiritualizes the soul it released in shakespeare, and the speedier the change, so much the purer is the warrant of a life above death in the minds of men. the loneliness of antique names is the austerity of fame, and only therewith do milton, spenser, chaucer, seem nobly clad and among equals; the nude figure of shelley at oxford is symbolical and prophetic of this disencumberment of mortality, the freed soul of the poet,--like bion, a divine form. not to speak of those greatest works, the prayer book, the bible, which seem so impersonal in origin as to be the creation of the english tongue itself and the genius of language adoring god; nor of hakluyt or clarendon, whose books are all men's actions; how little do the most isolated and seclusive authors, surrey, collins, keats, perpetuate except the pure poet! in these hundred famous books there are few valued for aught more than they contain in themselves, or which require any other light to read them by than what they bring with them; they are rather hampered than helped by the recollection of their authors' careers. sidney adds lustre to the arcadia; an exception among men, in this as in all other ways, by virtue of that something supereminent in him which dazzled his own age. but who else of famous authors is greater in his life than in his book? it is the book that gives significance to the man, not the man to the book. these authors would gain by oblivion of themselves, and that in proportion to their greatness, thereby being at once removed into the impersonal region of man's permanent spirit and of art. the exceptions are only seemingly such; it is johnson's thought and the style of a great mind that preserve boswell, not his human grossness; and in pepys it is the mundane and every-day immortality of human nature, this permanently curious and impertinent world, not his own scandal and peepings, that yield him allowance in libraries. in all books to which a nation stands heir, it is man that survives,--the aspect of an epoch, the phase of a religion, the mood of a generation, the taste, sentiment, thought, pursuit, entertainment, of a historic and diversified people. there is nothing accidental in the fact that of these hundred books forty-six bear no author's name upon the title-page; nor is this due merely to the eldest style of printing, as with chaucer, gower, malory, langland; nor to the inclusion of works by several hands--the book of common prayer, the mirror for magistrates, the tatler, the spectator, the reliques, the federalist; nor to the use of initials, as in the case of donne and mrs. browning. the characteristic is constant. it is interesting to note the names thus self-suppressed: sackville, spenser, bacon, burton, browne, walton, butler, dryden, locke, defoe, swift, pope, richardson, gray, franklin, goldsmith, sterne, smollett, sheridan, white, wordsworth, irving, austen, scott, lamb, cooper, carlyle, emerson, brontë, lowell, tennyson, george eliot, fitzgerald. the broad and various nationality of english literature is a condition precedent to greatness, and underlies its mighty fortune. its chief glory is its continuity, by which it exceeds the moderns, and must, with ages, surpass antiquity. literary genius has been so unfailing in the english race that men of this blood live in the error that literature, like light and air, is a common element in the life of populations. literature is really the work of selected nations, and with them is not a constant product. many nations have no literature, and in fertile nations there are barren centuries. the splendid perpetuity of greek literature, which covered two thousand years, was yet broken by lean ages, by periods of desert dearth. in the english, beginning from chaucer (as is just, since he is our homer, whatever ages went before troy or canterbury), there have been reigns without a poet; and greek example might prepare the mind for alexandrian and byzantine periods in the future, were it not for the grand combinations of world-colonies and world-contacts which open new perspectives of time for which the mind, as part of its faith in life, requires destinies as large. the gaps, however, were greatest at the beginning, and grow less. one soil, one government, one evenly unfolded civilization--long life in the settled and peaceful land--contribute to this continuity of literature in the english; but its explanation lies in the integrity of english nurture, and this is essentially the same in all persons of english blood. homer was not more truly the school of greece than the bible has been the school of the english. it has overcome all external change in form, rule and institution, fused conventicle and cathedral, and in dissolving separate and narrow bonds of union has proved the greatest bond of all, and become like a tie of blood. english piety is of one stock, and through every book of holy living where its treasures are laid up, there blows the breath of one spirit. herbert and bunyan are peers of a faith undivided in the hearts of their countrymen. it does not change, but is the same yesterday, to-day and forever. on the secular side, also, english nurture has been of the like simple strain. the instinct of adventure, english derring-do, has never failed. holinshed and hakluyt were its chroniclers of old; and from the morte d'arthur to sidney, from the red-cross knight to ivanhoe, from shakespeare's henry to tennyson's grenville, genius has not ceased to stream upon it, a broad river of light. the word of god fed english piety; english daring was fed upon the deeds of men. hear shakespeare's henry: "plutarch always delights me with a fresh novelty. to love him is to love me; for he has been long time the instructor of my youth. my good mother, to whom i owe all, and who would not wish, she said, to see her son an illustrious dunce, put this book into my hands almost when i was a child at the breast. it has been like my conscience, and has whispered in my ear many good suggestions and maxims for my conduct and the government of my affairs." the english plutarch is written on the earth's face. its battles have named the lands and seas of all the world; but, as was said of english piety, from harold to cromwell, from the first conqueror to wellington, from the black prince to gordon, english daring--the strength of the yeoman, the breath of the noble--is of one stock. race lasts; those who are born in the eyrie find eagles' food. this has planted iron resolution and all-hazarding courage in epic-drama and battle-ode, and, as in the old riddle, feeds on what it fed. english literature is brave, martial, and brings forth men-children. it has the clarion strength of empire; like taillefer at hastings, drayton and tennyson still lead the charge at agincourt and balaclava. as shakespeare's henry was nourished, so was the english spirit in all ages bred. this integrity of english nurture, seen in these two great modes of life turned toward god in the soul and toward the world in action, is as plainly to be discerned in details as in these generalities; and to state only one other broad aspect of the facts governing the continuity of literary genius in the english, but one that goes to the foundations, the condition that both vivifies and controls that genius in law, metaphysics, science, in all political writing, whether history, theory, or discussion, as well as in the creative and artistic modes of its development, is freedom. the freedom of england, which is the parent of its greatness in all ways, is as old in the race as fear of god and love of peril; and, through its manifold and primary operation in english nurture, is the true continuer of its literature. a second grand trait of english literature that is writ large on these title-pages, is its enormous assimilative power. so great is this that he who would know english must be a scholar in all literatures, and that with no shallow learning. the old figure of the torch handed down from nation to nation, as the type of man's higher life, gives up its full meaning only to the student, and to him it may come to seem that the torch is all and the hand that bears it dust and ashes; often he finds in its light only the color of his own studies, and names it greek, semitic, hindu, and looks on english, french and latin as mere carriers of the flame. in so old a symbol there must be profound truth, and it conveys the sense of antiquity in life, of the deathlessness of civilization, and something also of its superhuman origin--the divine gift of fire transmitted from above; but civilization is more than an inheritance, it is a power; and truth is always more than it was; and wherever the torch is lit, its light is the burning of a living race of men. the dependence of the present on the past, of a younger on an older people, of one nation on another, is often misinterpreted and misleads; life cannot be given, but only knowledge, example, direction--influence, but not essence; and the impact of one literature upon another, or of an old historic culture upon a new and ungrown people, is more external than is commonly represented. the genius of a nation born to greatness is irresistible, it remains itself, it does not become another. the greeks conquered rome, men say, through the mind; and rome conquered the barbarians through the mind; but in gibbon who finds greece? and the mind of europe does not bear the ruling stamp of either byzantine or italian rome. in the narrowly temporal and personal view, even under the overwhelming might of greece, virgil remained, what tennyson calls him, "roman virgil"; and in the other capital instance of apparently all-conquering literary power, under the truth that went forth from judea into all lands, dante remained italian and milton english. yet in these three poets, whose names are synonyms of their countries, the assimilated element is so great that their minds might be said to have been educated abroad. what is true of milton is true of the young english mind, from chaucer and earlier. in the beginning english literature was a part of european literature, and held a position in it analogous to that which the literature of america occupies in all english speech; it was not so much colonial as a part of the same world. the first works were european books written on english soil; chaucer, gower and malory used the matter of europe, but they retained the tang of english, as emerson keeps the tang of america. the name applied to gower, "the moral gower," speaks him english; and arthur, "the flower of kings," remains forever arthur of britain; and the canterbury pilgrimage, whatever the source of the world-wandering tales, gives the first crowded scene of english life. in langland, whose form was mediæval, lay as in the seed the religious and social history of a protestant, democratic, and labor-honoring nation. in the next age, with the intellectual sovereignty of humanism, surrey, sackville, lyly, sidney and spenser put all the new realms of letters under tribute, and made capture with a royal hand of whatever they would have for their own of the world's finer wealth; the dramatists gathered again the tales of all nations; and, period following period, italy, spain and france in turn, and the hebrew, greek and latin unceasingly, brought their treasures, light or precious, to each generation of authors, until the last great burst of the age now closing, itself indebted most universally to all the past and all the world. yet each new wave that washed empire to the land retreated, leaving the genius of english unimpaired and richer only in its own strength. notwithstanding the _concettisti_, the heroic drama, the celtic mist, which passed like shadows from the kingdom, the instinct of the authors held to the massive sense of latin and the pure form of greek and italian, and constituted these the enduring humane culture of english letters and their academic tradition. the permanence of this tradition in literary education has been of vast importance, and is to the literary class, in so far as they are separate by training, what the integrity of english nurture at large has been to the nation. the poets, especially, have been learned in this culture; and, so far from being self-sprung from the soil, were moulded into power by every finer touch of time. chaucer, spenser, milton, gray, shelley, tennyson are the capital names that illustrate the toil of the scholar, and approve the mastery of that classical culture which has ever been the most fruitful in the choicest minds. as on the broad scale english literature is distinguished by its general assimilative power, being hospitable to all knowledge, it is most deeply and intimately, because continuously, indebted to humane studies, in the strictest sense, and has derived from them not, as in many other cases, transitory matter and the fashion of an hour, but the form and discipline of art itself. in assimilating this to english nature, literary genius incurred its greatest obligation, and in thereby discovering artistic freedom found its greatest good. this academic tradition has created english culture, which is perhaps best described as an instinctive standard of judgment, and is the necessary complement to that openness of mind that has characterized english literature from the first. nor is this last word a paradox, but the simple truth, as is plain from the assimilative power here dwelt upon. the english genius is always itself; no element of greatness could inhere in it otherwise; but, in literature, it has had the most open mind of any nation. a third trait of high distinction in english literature, of which this list is a reminder, and one not unconnected with its continuity and receptivity, is its copiousness. this is not a matter of mere number, of voluminousness; there is an abundance of kinds. in the literature of knowledge, what branch is unfruitful, and in the literature of power, what fountainhead is unstruck by the rod? only the italian genius in its prime shows such supreme equality in diversity. how many human interests are exemplified, and how many amply illustrated, exhibiting in a true sense and not by hyperbole myriad-minded man! in the english genius there seems something correspondent to this marvellous efficacy of faculty and expression; it has largeness of power. the trait most commonly thought of in connection with aristotle as an individual--"master of those who know"--and in connection with mediæval schoolmen as a class, is not less characteristic of the english, though it appears less. the voracity of chaucer for all literary knowledge, which makes him encyclopædic of a period, is matched at the end of these centuries by newman, whose capaciousness of intellect was inclusive of all he cared to know. bacon, in saying, "i take all knowledge to be my province," did not so much make a personal boast as utter a national motto. the great example is, of course, shakespeare, on whose universality later genius has exhausted metaphor; but for everything that he knew in little, english can show a large literature, and exceeds his comprehensiveness. the fact is best illustrated by adverting to what this list spares. english is rich in translations, and in this sort of exchange the balance of trade is always in favor of the importer. homer alone is included here,--to except the bible, which has been so inbred in england as to have become an english book to an eye that clings to the truth through all appearances; but how rich in great national books is a literature that can omit so noble a work, though translated, and one so historic in english, as north's plutarch! in the literature of knowledge, greek could hardly have passed over euclid; but newton's principia is here not required. sir thomas more is one of the noblest english names, and his utopia is a memorable book; but it drops from the list. nor is it names and books only that disappear; but, as these last instances suggest, kinds of literature go out with them. platonism falls into silence with the pure tones of vaughan, in whom light seems almost audible; and the mystic italian fervor of the passional spirit fades with crashaw. the books of politeness, though descended from castiglione, depart with chesterfield, perhaps from some pettiness that had turned courtesy into etiquette; and parody retires with buckingham. latin literature was almost rewritten in english during the eighteenth century; but the traces of it here are few. of inadequate representation, how slight is burlesque in butler, and the presence of chevy chase hardly compensates for the absence of the war-ballad in drayton and campbell. so it is with a hundred instances. in another way of illustration, it is to be borne in mind that each author appears by only one title; and while it may be true that commonly each finer spirit stores up his immortality in some one book that is a more perfect vessel of time, yet fecundity is rightly reckoned as a sign of greatness and measure of it in the most, and the production of many books makes a name bulk larger. mass counts, when in addition to quality; and the greatest have been plentiful writers. no praise can make gray seem more than a remnant of genius, and no qualification of the verdict can deprive dryden and jonson of largeness. it belongs to genius to tire not in creation, thereby imitating the excess of nature flowing from unhusbanded sources. yet among these hundred books, as in scientific classification, one example must stand for all, except when some folio, like an ark, comes to the rescue of a beaumont and fletcher. this is cutting the diamond with itself. but within these limits, narrowing circle within circle, what a universe of man remains! culture after culture, epoch by epoch, are laid bare as in geologic strata,--mediæval tale and history, humanistic form, the shakespearian age, puritan, cavalier, man scientific, reforming, reborn into a new natural, political, artistic world, man modern; and in every layer of imagination and learning lies, whole and entire, a buried english age. it is by virtue of its copiousness that english literature is so representative, both of man's individual spirit in its restless forms of apprehension and embodiment, and of its historic formulation in english progress as national power. the realization of this long-lived, far-gathering, abounding english literature, in these external phases, leaves untouched its original force. whence is its germinating power,--what is this genius of the english? it is the same in literature as in all its other manifold manifestations, for man is forever unitary and of one piece. curiosity, which is the distinction of progressive peoples, is perhaps its initial and moving source. the trait which has sent the english broadcast over the world and mingled their history with the annals of all nations is the same that has so blended their literature with the history of all tongues. the acquisitive power which has created the empire of the english, with dominion on dominion, is parallel with the faculty that assimilates past literatures with the body of their literary speech. but curiosity is only half the word. it is singular that the first quality which occurs to the mind in connection with the english is, almost universally and often exclusively, their practicality. they are really the most romantic of all nations; romanticism is the other half of their genius, and supplements that positive element of knowledge-hunting or truth-seeking which is indicated by their endless curiosity. possibly the elizabethan age is generally thought of as a romantic period, as if it were exceptional; and the romantic vigor of the late georgian period, though everywhere acknowledged, is primarily regarded as more strictly a literary and not a national characteristic in its time; but, like all interesting history, english history was continuously romantic. the days of the crusaders, the wars of the roses and the french wars were of the same strain in action and character, in adventurous travel, in personal fate, in contacts, as were the times of shakespeare's world or of the world of waterloo. what a reinforcement of character in the english has india been, how restorative of greatness in the blood! it must be that romanticism should characterize a great race, and, when appealing to a positive genius, the greatest race; for in it are all the invitations of destiny. futurity broods and brings forth in its nest. romanticism is the lift of life in a people that does not merely continue, but grows, spreads and overcomes. the sphere of the word is not to be too narrowly confined, as only a bookish phrase of polite letters. in the world of knowledge the pursuit of truth is romantic. the scientific inquirer lives in a realm of strangeness and in the presence of the unknown, in a place so haunted with profound feeling, so electric with the emotions that feed great minds, that whether awe of the unsolved or of the solved be the stronger sentiment he cannot tell; and the appeal made to him--to the explorer in every bodily peril, to the experimenter in the den of untamed forces, to the thinker in his solitude--is often a romantic appeal. the moments of great discoveries are romantic moments, as is seen in keats's sonnet, lifting cortez and the star-gazer on equal heights with the reader of the iliad. the epic of science is a columbiad without end. nor is this less true of those branches of knowledge esteemed most dry and prosaic. locke, adam smith, darwin were all similarly placed with pythagoras, aristotle and copernicus; the mind, society and nature, severally, were their americas. even in this age of the mechanical application of forces, which by virtue of the large part of these inventions in daily and world-wide life seems superficially, and is called, a materialistic age, romanticism is paramount and will finally be seen so. are not these things in our time what drake and spanish gold and virginia, what clive and the indies, were to other centuries? it is true that the element of commercial gain blends with other phases of our inventions, and seems a debasement, an avarice; but so it was in all ages. nor are the applications of scientific discovery for the material ends of wealth other or relatively greater now than the applications of geographical discovery, for example, to the same ends were in elizabeth's reign and later. in the first ages commercial gain was in league with the waves from which rose the odyssey,--a part of that early trading, coasting world, as it was always a part of the artistic world of athens. gain in any of its material forms, whether wealth, power or rank, does not debase the knowledge, the courage of heart, the skill of hand and brain, from which it flows, for it is their natural and proper fruit; nor does it by itself materialize either the man or the nation, else civilization were doomed from the start, and the pursuit of truth would end in humiliation and ignominy. it is rather the attitude of mind toward this new world of knowledge and this spectacle of man now imperializing through nature's forces, as formerly through discovery of the earth's lands and seas, that makes the character of our age. romanticism, being the enveloping mood in whose atmosphere the spirit of man beholds life, and, as it were, the light on things, changes its aspect in the process of the ages with the emergence of each new world of man's era; and as it once inhered in english loyalty and the piety of christ's sepulchre, and in english voyaging over-seas and colonizing of the lands, it now inheres in the conquest of natural force for the arts of peace. the present age exceeds its predecessors in marvel in proportion as the victories of the intellect are in a world of finer secrecy than any horizon veils, and build an empire of greater breadth and endurance than any monarch or sovereign people or domineering race selfishly achieves; its victories are in the unseen of force and thought, and it brings among men the undecaying empire of knowledge, as inexpugnable as the mind in man and as inappropriable as light and air. here, as elsewhere, it is the sensual eye that sees the sensual thing, but the spiritual eye spiritually discerns. it is romance that adds this "precious seeing" to the eye. openness to the call, capability of the passion, and character, so sensitized and moulded in individuals and made hereditary in a civilization and a race and idealized in conscience, constitute the motor-genius of a nation, which is its finding faculty; and the appreciation of results and putting them to the use of men make its conserving and positive power. these two, indistinguishably married and blended, are the english genius. a positive genius following a romantic lead, a romantic genius yielding a positive good, equally describe it from opposed points of view; yet in the finer spirits and in the long age the romantic temperament is felt to be the fertilizing element, to be character as opposed to performance. greatness lies always in the unaccomplished deed, as in the lonely anecdote of newton: "i do not know what i may appear to the world, but to myself i seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble, or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me." so tennyson with his "wages of going on," and sir john franklin and gordon in their lives. this spiritual breath of the nation in all its activities through centuries is the breath of its literature, there embodied in its finer being and applied to the highest uses for the civilization and culture of the nation by truth and art. in english literary history, and in its men of genius taken individually, the positive or the romantic may predominate, each in its own moment; but the conspectus of the whole assigns to each its true levels. romanticism condensed in character, which is the creation of the highest poetic genius, the rarest work of man, has its illustrative example in shakespeare, the first of all writers; he followed it through all its modes, and perhaps its simplest types are henry iv for action, romeo for passion, and hamlet, which is the romance of thought. before shakespeare, spenser closed the earliest age, which had been shaped by a diffused romantic tradition, inherited from mediævalism, though in its later career masked under renaissance forms; and since shakespeare, a similar diffused romantic prescience, in the region of the common life and of revolutionary causes most significantly, brought in our age that has now passed its first flower, but has yet long to run. these are the three great ages of english poetry. in the interval between the second and the third, the magnificently accomplished school of the eighteenth century gave to english an age of cultivated repose, in which pope, its best example, lived on the incomes of the past, and, together with the younger and the elder men he knew, exhibited in literature that conserving and positive power which is the economy of national genius; but even in that great century, wherever the future woke, there was a budding romanticism, in collins, gray, walpole, thomson, cowper, blake. such was the history of english poetry, and the same general statement will be found applicable to english prose, though in a lower tone, due to the nature of prose. taken in the large, important as the positive element in it is, the english literary genius is, like the race, temperamentally romantic, to the nerve and bone. this view becomes increasingly apparent on examination of the service of this literature to civilization and the individual soul of man, which is the great function of literature, and of its place in the world of art. "how shall the world be served?" was chaucer's question; and it has never been absent from any great mind of the english stock. the literature of a nation, however, including, as here, books of knowledge, is so nearly synonymous with the mind in all its operations in the national life, as to be coextensive with civilization, and hardly separable from it. civilization is cast in the mould of thought, and retains the brute necessity of nature only as mass, but not as surface; it is the flowering of human forces in the formal aspect of life, and of these literature is one mode, reflecting in its many phases all the rest in their manifestations, and inwardly feeding them in their vital principle. the universality of its touch on life is indicated by the fact that it has made the english a lettered people, the alphabet as common as numbers, and the ability to read almost as wide-spread in the race as the ability to count. its service, therefore, cannot be summarized any more than the dictionary of its words. it is possible to bring within the compass of a paragraph only hints and guide-marks of its work; and naturally these would be gathered from its most comprehensive influences in the higher spheres of intellect and morals, in the world of ideas, and in the person of those writers who were either the founders or restorers of knowledge. such a cardinal service was the baconian method, to take a single great instance, which may almost be said to have reversed the logical habit of the mind of europe, and to have summoned nature to a new bar. it is enough to name this. of books powerful in intellectual results, locke's essay is, perhaps, thought of as metaphysical and remote, yet it was of immeasurable influence at home and abroad, so subtly penetrating as to resemble in scale and intimacy the silent forces of nature. it was great as a representative of the spirit of rationalism, which it supported and spread with incalculable results on the temper of educated europe; and great also as a product and embodiment of that cold, intellectual habit, distinctive of a certain kind of english mind, and usually regarded as radical in the race. it was great by the variety as well as the range of its influence, and was felt in all regions of abstract thought and those practical arts, education, government and the like, then most affected by such thought; it permanently modified the cast of men's minds. in opposition to it new philosophical movements found their mainspring. a similar honor belongs to adam smith's wealth of nations in another century. it is customary to eulogize the pioneer, and to credit the first openers of californias with the wealth of all the mines worked by later comers; and, in this sense, the words of buckle, that have been placed opposite the title-page, are, perhaps, to be taken: "adam smith contributed more, by the publication of this single work, towards the happiness of men than has been effected by the united abilities of all the statesmen and legislators of whom history has preserved an authentic account." but the excess of the statement is a proof of the largeness of the truth it contains, and like-minded praise is not from buckle alone, but may be found in half a score of thoughtful and temperate authors. in the last age, darwin, by his origin of species, most arrested the attention of the scientific mind, and stimulated the highly educated world with surprise. he was classed with copernicus, as having brought man's pretension to be the first of created things, and their lord from the beginning, under the destroying criticism of scientific time and its order, in the same way that copernicus brought the pretension of the earth to be the centre of the universe under a like criticism of scientific space and its order; and in these proud statements there is some measure of truth. the ideas of darwin compel a readjustment of man's thoughts with regard to his temporal and natural relation to the universe in which he finds himself; and the vast generalities of all evolutionary thought received from darwin immense stimulus, its method greater scope, and its results a firmer hold on the general mind, with an influence still unfathomable upon man's highest beliefs with regard to his origin and destiny. there are epochs in the intellectual history of the race as marked as those of the globe; and such works as these, in the literature of knowledge, show the times of the opening of the seals. in addition to the service so done in the advancement of civilization by the discovery of new truth, as great benefaction is accomplished by the continual agitation and exercise of men's minds in the ideas that are not new but the ever-living inheritance from the past, whose permanence through all epochs shows their deep grounding in the race they nourish. in english such ideas are, especially, in the view of the whole world, ideas of civil and religious liberty in the widest sense and particularly as worked out in legal and political history. the common law of england in blackstone is a mighty legacy. on the large public scale, and as involved in the constitutional making of a great nation, the federalist is a document invaluable as setting forth essentials of free government under a particular application; and for comment on social liberty, burke, on the conservative, and paine, on the radical side, exhibit the scope, the weight and fire of english thought. of still greater significance, for the mass and variety of teaching, is that commentary on man's freedom which is contained in the operation of liberty and its increase as presented in the long story of england's greatness recorded in the works of her historians from holinshed to macaulay, with what the last prolific generation has added. they are exceeded in the dignity of their labors by gibbon, whose work on rome, which mommsen called the greatest of all histories and is often likened to a mighty bridge spanning the gulf between the ancient and the modern world, was a contribution to european learning; but the historians of english liberty have more profitably served mankind. at yet another remove, the ideas of liberty--and the mind acquainted with english books is dazzled by the vast comprehensiveness of such a phrase--are again poured through the nation's life-blood by all her poets, and well-nigh all her writers in prose, in one or another mode of the promethean fire. these ideas are never silent, never quiescent; they work in the substance, they shape the form and feature, of english thought; they are the necessary element of its being; they constitute the race of freemen, and are known in every language as english ideas. they give sublimity to the figure of milton; they are the feeding flame of shelley's mind; they alone lift tennyson to an eagle-flight of song. in the unceasing celebration of ideal liberty, and its practical life in english character and events, the literature of england has, perhaps, done a greater service than in the positive advancement of knowledge, for it is more fundamental in the national life. touching the subject almost at random, such are a few of the points of contact between english books and the civilization of men. it is still more difficult to state briefly the action of literature on the individual for what is more distinctly his private gain, in the enlargement of his life, the direction of his thoughts, and bringing him into harmony with the world. as, in regard to civilization, the emphasis lay rather on the literature of knowledge, here it lies on the literature of power,--on imaginative and reflective works. its initial office is educative; it feeds the imagination and the powers of sympathy, and trains not only the affections but all feeling; and in these fields it is the only instrument of education outside of real experience. it is this that gives it such primacy as to make acquaintance with humane letters almost synonymous with culture. no actual world is large enough for a man to live in; at the lowest, there is some tradition of the past, some expectation of the future; and, though training in the senses is an important part of early life, yet the greater part of education consists in putting the young in possession of an unseen world. the biograph is a marvellous toy of the time, but literature in its lower forms of information, of history, travel and description, has been a biograph for the mind's eye from the beginning; and in its higher forms of art it performs a greater service by bringing into mental vision what it is above the power of nature to produce. to expand the mind to the compass of space and time, and to people these with the thoughts of mankind, to revive the past and penetrate the reality of the present, is the joint work of all literature; and as a preparation for individual life, in unfolding the faculties and the feelings, humane letters achieve their most essential task. literature furnishes the gymnasia for all youth, in that part of their nature in which the highest power of humanity lies. but this is only, as was said, its initial office. throughout life it acts in the same way on old and young alike. the dependence of all men on thought, and of thought on speech, is a profound matter, though as little considered as gravitation that keeps the world entire; and the speech on which such a strain of life lies is the speech of books. how has longfellow consoled middle life in its human trials, how has carlyle roused manhood, and emerson illumined life for his readers at every stage! scott is a benefactor of millions by virtue of the entertainment he has given to english homes and the lonely hours of his fellow-men, now for three generations, to an extent hardly measurable in thought; and so in hardly a less degree is dickens, and, though diminishing in inclusive power, are thackeray, austen, brontë, cooper, hawthorne, george eliot, to name only novelists. each century has had its own story-telling from chaucer down, though masked in the elizabethan period as drama, and in each much hearty and refined pleasure has been afforded by the spectacle of life in books; but in the last age the benefit so conferred is to be reckoned among the greater blessings of civilization. it is singular that humor, so prime and constant a factor in english, should have so few books altogether its own, and these not of the greater class; but the spirit which yields burlesque in butler and irving, and comedy in massinger, congreve and sheridan, pervades the body of english literature and characterizes it among national literatures. the highest mind is incomplete without humor, for a perfect idealism includes laughter at the real; and it is natural, for, the principle of humor being incongruity to the intellect, it is properly most keen in those in whom the idea of order, which is the mother-idea of the intellect, is most omnipresent and controlling; but as humor is thus auxiliary in character, it is found to be subordinate also in english literature as a whole. the constancy of its presence, however, is a sign of the general health of the english genius, which has turned to morbidity far less than that of other nations ancient or modern. it is a cognate fact, here, that great books are never frivolous; they leave the reader wiser and better, as well through laughter as through tears, or they sustain imaginative and sympathetic power already acquired. they open the world of humanity to the heart, and they open the heart to itself. in another region, not primarily of entertainment, the value of literature lies in its function to inspire. in individual life, each finer spirit of the past touches with an electric force those of his own kindred as they are born into the world of letters, and often for life. the later poets have most personal power in this way. burns, wordsworth, byron, shelley have been the inspiration of lives, like carlyle and emerson in prose. the most intense example of national inspiration in a book is uncle tom's cabin; but in quieter ways scotland feels the pulse of burns, and england the many-mingled throbbing of the poets in her blood. on the large scale, in the impact of literature on the individual soul and through that on the national belief, aspiration and resolve, the great sphere of influence lies necessarily in the religious life, because that is universal and constant from birth to death and spreads among the secret springs and sources of man's essential nature. it is a commonplace, it has sometimes been made a reproach, that english literature is predominantly moral and religious, and the fact is plainly so. the strain that began with piers plowman flourished more mightily in the pilgrim's progress. the psalm-note that was a tone of character in surrey, wyatt and sidney gave perfect song in milton, both poet and man. from butler to newman the intellect, applied to religion, did not fail in strenuous power. taylor's holy living is a saint's book. if religious poets, of one pure strain of sabbath melody, have been rare, yet herbert, vaughan, cowper, keble, whittier are to the memory christian names, with the humility and breathing peace of sacred song. the portion of english literature expressly religious is enlarged by the works of authors, both in prose and verse, in which religion was an occasional theme and often greatly dealt with; and the religious and moral influence of the body of literature as a whole on the english race is immensely increased by those writers into whom the christian spirit entered as a master-light of reason and imagination, such as spenser in the faërie queene and wordsworth in his works generally, or gray in the solemn thought of the elegy. to particularize is an endless task; for the sense of duty toward man and god is of the bone and flesh of english books in every age, being planted in the english nature. this vast mass of experience and counsel, of praise and prayer, of insight and leading, variously responding to every phase of the religious consciousness of the historic people, has been, like the general harvest, the daily food of the nation in its spiritual life. if shakespeare is the greatest of our writers, the english bible is the greatest of our books; and the whole matter is summarized in saying that the bible, together with the book of common prayer, is the most widely distributed, the most universally influential, the most generally valued and best-read book of the english people, and this has been true since the diffusion of printing. it may seem only the felicity of time that the english language best adorns its best book; but it is by a higher blessing that english character centres in this book, that english thinkers see by it, that english poets feel by it, that the english people live by it; for it has passed into the blood of all english veins. it is natural to inquire, after dwelling so much on the practical power of english literature in society and life, what is its value in the world of art, in that sphere where questions of perfection in the form, of permanence in the matter, and the like, arise. if the standards of an academic classicism be applied, english literature will fall below both latin and greek, and the italian and french, and take a lower place with german and spanish, to which it is most akin. but such standards are pseudo-classical at best, and under modern criticism find less ground in the ancients. the genius of the english is romantic, and originated romantic forms proper to itself, and by these it should be judged. the time is, perhaps, not wholly gone by when the formlessness of shakespeare may be found spoken of as a matter of course, as the formlessness of shelley is still generally alleged; but if neither of these has form in the pseudo-classic, the italian and french, sense of convention, decorum and limit, they were creators of that romantic form in which english, together with spanish, marks the furthest original modern advance. the subject is too large, and too much a matter of detail, for this place; but it is the less necessary to expand it, for it is as superfluous to establish the right of shakespeare in the realm of the most perfect art as to examine the title-deeds of alexander's conquests. he condensed romanticism in character, as was said above; and in the power with which he did this, in the wisdom, beauty and splendor of his achievement, excelled all others, both for substance and art. the instinct of fame may be safely followed in assigning a like primacy to milton. the moment which milton occupied, in the climax of a literary movement, is, perhaps, not commonly observed with accuracy. the drama developed out of allegorical and abstract, and through historical, into entirely human and ideal forms; and in shakespeare this process is completed. the same movement, on the religious as opposed to the secular line, took place more slowly. spenser, like sackville, works by impersonation of moral qualities, viewed abstractly; the fletchers, who carried on his tradition, employ the same method, which gives a remote and often fantastic character to their work; nor was moral and religious poetic narrative truly humanized, and given ideal power in character and event, until milton carried it to its proper artistic culmination in paradise lost. milton stands to the evolution of this branch of poetic literature, springing from the miracle-plays, precisely as shakespeare does to the branch of ideal drama; and thus, although he fell outside of the great age, and was sixty years later than shakespeare in completing the work, the singularity of his literary greatness, his loneliness as a lofty genius in his time, becomes somewhat less inexplicable. the paradise lost occupies this moment of climax, to repeat the phrase, in literary history, and, like nearly all works in such circumstances, it has a greatness all its own. but, beyond that, it lies in a region of art where no other english work companions it, as an epic of the romantic spirit such as italy most boasts of, but superior in breadth, in ethical power, in human interest, to ariosto or tasso, and comparing with them as pindar with the alexandrians; it realized hell and eden, and the world of heavenly war and the temptation, to the vision of men, with tremendous imaginative power, stamping them into the race-mind as permanent imagery; and the literary kinship which the workmanship bears to what is most excellent and shining in the great works of greece, rome and italy, as well as to hebraic grandeur, helps to place the poem in that remoter air which is an association of the mind with all art. no other english poem has a similar brilliancy, aloofness and perfection, as of something existing in another element, except the adonais. in it personal lyricism achieved the most impersonal of elegies, and mingled the fairest dreams of changeful imaginative grief with the soul's intellectual passion for immortality full-voiced. it is detached from time and place; the hunger of the soul for eternity, which is its substance, human nature can never lay off; its literary kinship is with what is most lovely in the idyllic melody of the antique; and, owing to its small scale and the simple unity of its mood, it gives forth the perpetual charm of literary form in great purity. these two poems stand alone with shakespeare's plays, and are for epic and lyric what his work is for drama, the height of english performance in the cultivation of romance. other poets must be judged to have attained excellence in romantic art in proportion as they reveal the qualities of shakespeare, milton and shelley; for these three are the masters of romantic form, which, being the spirit of life proceeding from within outward, is the vital structure of english poetic genius. this internal power is also a principle of classic art in its antique examples; but academic criticism developed from them a hardened formalism to which romantic art is related as the spirit of life to the death-mask of the past. such pallor has from time to time crossed the features of english letters in a man or an age, and has brought a marble dignity, as to landor, or the shadow of an augustan elegance, as in the era of pope; but it has faded and passed away under the flush of new life. even in prose, in which so-called classic qualities are still sought by academic taste, the genius of english has shown a native obstinacy. the novel is so protean in form as to seem amorphous, but essentially repeats the drama, and submits in its masters to shakespearian parallelism; in substance and manner it has been overwhelmingly of a romantic cast; and in the other forms of prose, style, though of all varieties, has, perhaps, proved most preservative when highly colored, individualized, and touched with imaginative greatness, as in browne, taylor, milton, bunyan, burke, carlyle, macaulay; but the inferiority of their matter, it should be observed, affects the endurance of the eighteenth-century prose masters--steele, addison, swift and johnson, to name the foremost. commonly, it must be allowed, english, both prose and poetry, notwithstanding its triumphs, is valued for substance and not for form, whether this be due to a natural incapacity, or to a retardation in development which may hereafter be overcome, or to the fact that the richness of the substance renders the fineness of the form less eminent. in conclusion, the thought rises of itself, will this continuity, assimilative power, and copiousness, this original genius, this serviceableness to civilization and the private life, this supreme romantic art, be maintained, now that the english and their speech are spread through the world, or is the history of the intellectual expansion of athens and rome, the moral expansion of jerusalem, to be repeated? the saying of shelley, "the mind in creation is a fading coal," seems to be true of nations. great literatures, or periods in them, have usually marked the culmination of national power; and if they "look before and after," as virgil in the æneid, they gather their wisdom, as he too did, by a gaze reverted to the past. the paradox of progress, in that the _laudator temporis acti_ is always found among the best and noblest of the elders, while yet the whole world of man ever moves on to greater knowledge, power and good, continues like the riddle of the sphinx; but time seems unalterably in favor of mankind through all dark prophecies. the mystery of genius is unsolved; and the messianic hope that a child may be born unto the people always remains; but the greatness of a nation dies only with that genius which is not a form of human greatness in individuals, but is shared by all of the blood, and constitutes them fellow-countrymen. the genius of the english shows no sign of decay; age has followed age, each more gloriously, and whether the period that is now closing be really an end or only the initial movement of a vaster arc of time, corresponding to the greater english destiny, world-wide, world-peopling, world-freeing, the arc of the movement of democracy through the next ages,--is immaterial; so long as the genius of the people, its piety and daring, its finding faculty for truth, its creative shaping in art, be still integral and vital, so long as its spiritual passion be fed from those human and divine ideas whose abundance is not lessened, and on those heroic tasks which a world still half discovered and partially subdued opens through the whole range of action and of the intellectual and moral life,--so long as these things endure, english speech must still be fruitful in great ages of literature, as in the past these have been its fountainheads. but if no more were to be written on the page of english, yet what is written there, contained and handed down in famous books and made the spiritual food of the vast multitude whose children's children shall use and read the english tongue through coming centuries under every sky, will constitute a moral dominion to which virgil's line may proudly apply- his ego nec metas rerum nec tempora pono: imperium sine fine dedi. one hundred books famous in english literature dan chaucer, the first warbler, whose sweet breath preluded those melodious bursts that fill the spacious times of great elizabeth with sounds that echo still. tennyson whan that apprill with his shouris sote and the droughte of marche hath pa'd [.y] rote and badid euery veyne in suche licour of whiche vertu engendrid is the flour whanne zepherus eke with his sote breth enspirid hath in euery holte and heth the tendir croppis and the yong sonne hath in the ram half his cours y conne and smale foulis make melodie that slepyn al nyght with opyn ye so prikith hem nature in her corage than longyng folk to gon on pilgremage and palmers to seche straunge londis to serue halowis couthe in sondry londis and specially fro euery shiris ende of yngelond to cauntirbury thy wende the holy blisful martir for to seke that them hath holpyn when they were seke and fil in that seson on a day in suthwerk atte tabard as i lay redy to wende on my pilgremage to cauntirbury with deuout corage that nyght was come in to that hosterye wel nyne & twenty in a companye of sondry folk be auenture y falle in feleship as pilgrymys were they alle that toward cauntirbury wolden ryde the chambris and the stablis were wyde and wel were they esid atte beste reduced leaf in original, 7 × 10 inches o moral gower chaucer this book is intituled confessio amantis / that is to saye in englysshe the confessyon of the louer maad and compyled by johan gower squyer borne in walys in the tyme of kyng richard the second which book treteth how he was confessyd to genyus preest of venus vpon the causes of loue in his fyue wyttes and seuen dedely synnes / as in thys sayd book al alonge appyereth / and by cause there been comprysed therin dyuers hystoryes and fables towchyng euery matere / i haue ordeyned a table here folowyng of al suche hystoryes and fables where and in what book and leef they stande in as here after foloweth ¶ fyrst the prologue how johan gower in the xvi yere of kyng rychard the second began to make thys book and dyrected to harry of lancastre thenne erle of derby folio ¶ ii of thestate of the royames temporally the sayd yere folio ¶ iii of thestate of the clergye the tyme of robert gylbonensis namyng hym self clemente thenne antipope folio ¶ iv of the estate of the comyn people folio ¶ v how he treteth of the ymage that nabugodonosor sawe in his sleep hauyng an heed of golde / a breste of syluer / a bely of brasse / legges of yron / and feet haffe yron & halfe erthe folio vi of thenterpretacion of the dreme / and how the world was fyrst of golde / & after alwey werse & werse folio vii ¶ thus endeth the prologue ¶ here begynneth the book and fyrst the auctor nameth thys book confessio amantis / that is to say the shryfte of the louer / wheron alle thys book shal shewe not onely the loue humayn / but also of alle lyuyng beestys naturally folio ¶ ix how cupydo smote johan gower with a fyry arowe and wounded hym so that venus commysed to hym genyus hyr preest for to here hys confessyon folio ¶ x how genyus beyng sette / the louer knelyng tofore hym prayeth the sayd confessor to appose hym in his confessyon folio ¶ xi the confessyon of the amant of two of the pryncipallist of his fyue wyttes folio ¶ xi how atheon for lokyng vpon deane was turned in to an herte folio ¶ xi of phorceus and hys thre doughters whiche had but one eye / & how phorceus slewe them folio ¶ xii how the serpente that bereth the charbuncle stoppeth his one ere wyth hys tayle and that other wyth the erthe whan he is enchaunted folio ¶ xii how vlyxes escaped fro the marmaydys by stoppyng of hys eerys folio ¶ xii here foloweth that there ben vii dedely synnes / of whome the fyrste is reduced leaf in original, 8.68 × 12.75 inches. flos regum arthurus john of exeter after that i had accomplysshed and fynysshed dyuers hystoryes as wel of contemplacyon as of other hystoryal and worldly actes of grete conquerours & prynces / and also certeyn bookes of ensaumples and doctryne / many noble and dyuers gentylmen of thys royame of englond camen and demaunded me many and oftymes / wherfore that j haue not do made & enprynte the noble hystorye of the saynt greal / and of the moost renomed crysten kyng / fyrst and chyef of the thre best crysten and worthy / kyng arthur / whyche ought moost to be remembred emonge vs englysshe men tofore al other crysten kynges / for it is notoyrly knowen thorugh the vnyuersal world / that there been ix worthy & the best that euer were / that is to wete thre paynyms / thre jewes and thre crysten men / as for the paynyms they were tofore the jncarnacyon of cryst / whiche were named / the fyrst hector of troye / of whome thystorye is comen bothe in balade and in prose / the second alysaunder the grete / & the thyrd julyus cezar emperour of rome of whome thystoryes ben wel kno and had / and as for the thre jewes whyche also were tofore thyncarnacyon of our lord of whome the fyrst was duc josue whyche brought the chyldren of israhel in to the londe of byheste / the second dauyd kyng of jherusalem / & the thyrd judas machabeus of these thre the byble reherceth al theyr noble hystoryes & actes / and sythe the sayd jncarnacyon haue ben thre noble crysten men stalled and admytted thorugh the vnyuersal world in to the nombre of the ix beste & worthy / of whome was fyrst the noble arthur / whos noble actes j purpose to wryte in thys present book here folowyng / the second was charlemayn or charles the grete / of whome thystorye is had in many places bothe in frensshe and englysshe / and the thyrd and last was godefray of boloyn / of whos actes & lyf j made a book vnto thexcellent prynce and kyng of noble memorye kyng edward the fourth / the sayd noble jentylmen jnstantly requyred me temprynte thystorye of the sayd noble kyng and conquerour kyng arthur / and of his knyghtes wyth thystorye of the saynt greal / and of the deth and endyng of the sayd arthur / affermyng that j ouzt rather tenprynte his actes and noble feates / than of godefroye of boloyne / or reduced leaf in original, 7.87 × 11.25 inches. so judiciously contrived that the wisest may exercise at once their knowledge and devotion; its ceremonies few and innocent; its language significant and perspicuous; most of the words and phrases being taken out of the holy scriptures and the rest are the expressions of the first and purest ages. comber the booke of the common praier and administracion of the sacramentes, and other rites and ceremonies of the churche: after the vse of the churche of englande. londini, _in officina richardi graftoni, regij impressoris_. _cum priuilegio ad imprimendum solum._ _anno domini._ m.d.xlix. _mense martij._ reduced leaf in original 7 × 10.5 inches. the author of piers ploughman, no doubt, embodied in a poetic dress just what millions felt. his poem as truly expressed the popular sentiment on the subjects it discussed as did the american declaration of independence the national thought and feeling on the relations between the colonies and great britain. its dialect, its tone and its poetic dress alike conspired to secure to the vision a wide circulation among the commonalty of the realm, and by formulating--to use a favorite word of the day--sentiments almost universally felt, though but dimly apprehended, it brought them into distinct consciousness, and thus prepared the english people for the reception of the seed which the labors of wycliffe and his converts were already sowing among them. marsh the vision of pierce plowman, now fyrste imprynted by roberte crowley, dwellyng in ely tentes in holburne. anno domini. 1550. cum priuilegio ad imprimend[=u] solum. by far the most important of our historical records, in print, during the time of queen elizabeth. dibdin 1577. the firste volume of the _chronicles of england, scotlande_, and irelande. conteyning, the description and chronicles of england, from the first inhabiting vnto the conquest the description and chronicles of scotland, from the first originall of the scottes nation, till the yeare of our lorde. 1571. the description and chronicles of yrelande, likewise from the firste originall of that nation, vntill the yeare. 1547. _faithfully gathered and set forth, by_ raphaell holinshed. at london, imprinted for george bishop. god saue the queene. reduced leaf in original, 7.75 11.12 inches our historic plays are allowed to have been founded on the heroic narratives in the mirror for magistrates; to that plan, and to the boldness of lord buckhurst's new scenes, perhaps we owe shakespeare. walpole ¶_a myrrovr for_ magistrates. wherein maye be seen by example of other, with howe greuous plages vices are punished: and howe frayle and vnstable werldly prosperity is founde, even of those whom fortune seemeth most highly to fauour. _fælix quem faciunt aliena pericula cautum._ _anno._ 1563. ¶_imprinted at london in fletestrete nere to saynct dunstans churche by thomas marshe._ two chieftaines who having travailed into italie, and there tasted the sweete and stately measures and stile of italian poesie, as novices newly crept out of the schooles of dante, arioste, and petrarch, they greatly pollished our rude and homely maner of vulgar poesie, from that it had bene before, and for that cause may justly be sayd the first reformers of our english meetre and stile. puttenham ¶_songes and sonettes written by the right honorable lord henry haward late earle of surrey, and others._ _apud richardum tottell._ 1567. _cumpriuilegio._ it is full of stately speeches, and well-sounding phrases, clyming to the height of seneca his stile, and as full of notable moralitie, which it doth most delightfully teach, and so obtayne the very end of poesie. sidney ¶the tragidie of ferrex and porrex, set forth without addition or alteration but altogether as the same was shewed on stage before the queenes maiestie, about nine yeares past, _vz._ the xviij. day of ianuarie. 1561. by the gentlemen of the inner temple. =seen and allowed, &c.= imprinted at london by iohn daye, dwelling ouer aldersgate. these papers of his lay like dead lawrels in a churchyard; but i have gathered the scattered branches up, and by a charme, gotten from apollo, made them greene againe and set them up as epitaphes to his memory. a sinne it were to suffer these rare monuments of wit to lye covered in dust and a shame such conceipted comedies should be acted by none but wormes. oblivion shall not so trample on a sonne of the muses; and such a sonne as they called their darling. our nation are in his debt for a new english which he taught them. "euphues and his england" began first that language: all our ladyes were then his scollers; and that beautie in court, which could not parley eupheueisme was as little regarded as shee which now there speakes not french. blount evphves. the anatomy _of wit_. verie pleasant for all _gentlemen to reade_, and most necessary to remember. _wherein are contayned the_ delightes that wit followeth in _his youth, by the pleasantnesse of loue_, and the happinesse he reapeth in age, by the perfectnes of wisedome. _by_ iohn lylie, _maister of art_. corrected and augmented. _at london_ printed for gabriell cawood, dwelling in paules church-yard. the noble and vertuous gentleman most worthy of all titles both of learning and chevalrie m. philip sidney. spenser the covntesse of pembrokes arcadia, written by sir philippe sidnei. london printed for william ponsonbie. _anno domini_, 1590. our sage and serious poet spenser (whom i dare be known to think a better teacher than scotus or aquinas). milton the faerie qveene. disposed into twelue books, _fashioning_ xii. morall vertues. vbique floret (in printer's mark) london printed for william ponsonbie. 1590. who is there that upon hearing the name of lord bacon does not instantly recognize everything of literature the most extensive, everything of discovery the most penetrating, everything of observation of human life the most distinguished and refined? burke essaies. religious meditations. places of perswasion and disswasion. seene and allowed. london printed for humfrey hooper and are to bee solde at the blacke beare in chauncery lane. 1598. they contain the heroic tales of the exploits of the great men in whom the new era was inaugurated; not mythic like the iliads and the eddas, but plain, broad narratives of substantial facts, which rival legend in interest and grandeur. what the old epics were to the royally or nobly born, this modern epic is to the common people. we have no longer kings or princes for chief actors to whom the heroism, like the dominion of the world, had in time past been confined. but, as it was in the days of the apostles, when a few poor fishermen from an obscure lake in palestine assumed, under the divine mission, the spiritual authority over mankind, so, in the days of our own elizabeth, the seamen from the banks of the thames and the avon, the plym and the dart, self-taught and self-directed, with no impulse but what was beating in their own royal hearts, went out across the unknown seas, fighting, discovering, colonizing, and graved out the channels, paving them at last with their bones, through which the commerce and enterprise of england has flowed out over all the world. froude the principal navigations, voiages, traffiqves and discoueries of the english nation, made by sea or ouer-land, to the remote and farthest distant quarters of the earth, at any time within the compasse of these 1500. yeeres: deuided into three seuerall volumes, according to the positions of the regions, whereonto they were directed. this first volume containing the woorthy discoueries, &c. of the english toward the north and northeast by sea, as of _lapland_, _scriksinia_, _corelia_, the baie of s. _nicholas_, the isles of _colgoieue_, _vaigatz_, and _noua zembla_, toward the great riuer _ob_, with the mighty empire of _russia_, the _caspian_ sea, _georgia_, _armenia_, _media_, _persia_, _boghar_ in _bactria_, and diuers kingdoms of _tartaria_: together with many notable monuments and testimonies of the ancient forren trades, and of the warrelike and other shipping of this realme of _england_ in former ages. _whereunto is annexed also a briefe commentarie of the true_ state of _island_, and of the northren seas and lands situate that way. _and lastly, the memorable defeate of the spanish huge armada, anno_ 1588. and the famous victorie atchieued at the citie of _cadiz_, 1596. are described. _by_ richard hacklvyt _master of_ artes, and sometime student of christ-church in oxford. [illustration] imprinted at london by george bishop, ralph newberie and robert barker. 1598. reduced leaf in original, 7 × 10.87 inches. much have i travell'd in the realms of gold and many goodly states and kingdoms seen; round many western islands have i been which bards in fealty to apollo hold. oft of one wide expanse had i been told that deep-brow'd homer ruled as his demesne; yet did i never breathe its pure serene till i heard chapman speak out loud and bold: then felt i like some watcher of the skies when a new planet swims into his ken; or like stout cortez, when with eagle eyes he stared at the pacific--and all his men look'd at each other with a wild surmise- silent, upon a peak in darien. keats _mulciber in troiam, pro troia stabat apollo._ homer the whole works of homer; prince of poetts in his iliads, and odysses. _translated according to the greeke, by geo: chapman._ de ili: et odiss: _omnia ab his: et in his sunt omnia: siue beati_ _te decor eloquij, seu rer[=u] pondera tangunt. angel pol:_ * * * * * _at london printed for nathaniell butter. william hole sculp:_ qui nil molitur ineptè achilles hector reduced leaf in original, 7.06 x 10.93 inches. within that awful volume lies the mystery of mysteries! happiest they of human race, to whom god has granted grace to read, to fear, to hope, to pray, to lift the latch, and force the way; and better had they ne'er been born who read to doubt, or read to scorn. scott the holy bible, conteyning the old testament, and the new: ¶_newly translated out of_ the originall tongues: and with the former translations diligently compared and reuised by his maiesties speciall commandement, ¶_appointed to be read in churches._ * * * * * ¶imprinted at london by _robert barker_, printer to the kings most excellent maiestie. * * * * * anno dom. 1611. reduced leaf in original 9.37 x 13.25 inches o rare ben jonson epitaph theatrvm gvl locvm teneant s cen the workes of _beniamin jonson_ --_neque, me vt miretur turba laboro: contentus paucis lectoribus._ _imprinted at london, by will stansby_ plavstrvm visorivm _an. d._ 1616. guhel _hole fecit_ reduced leaf in original, 5 × 7.62 inches. scarce any book of philology in our land hath in so short a time passed so many impressions. fuller _the_ anatomy of melancholy, _what it is_. with all the kindes, cavses, symptomes, prog_nostickes, and severall cvres of it_. in three maine partitions with their seuerall sections, members, and svbsections. _philosophically, medicinally, historically, opened and cvt vp._ by democritvs _iunior_. with a satyricall preface, conducing to _the following discourse_. macrob. omne meum, nihil meum. _at oxford_, printed by iohn lichfield and iames short, for henry cripps. _anno dom._ 1621. he was not of an age, but for all time! jonson m^r. william shakespeares comedies, histories, & tragedies. published according to the true originall copies. [illustration] _martin droahout sculpsit london_ london printed by isaac jaggard, and ed. blount. 1623. reduced leaf in original 8.56 x 13.25 inches this most tragic of all tragedies save king lear. swinburne the tragedy of the dutchesse of malfy. _as it was presented priuatly, at the black-friers; and publiquely at the globe, by the_ kings maiesties seruants. the perfect and exact coppy, with diuerse _things printed, that the length of the play would_ not beare in the presentment. written by _john webster._ hora.----_si quid--- ----candidus imperti si non bis vtere mecum._ * * * * * _london:_ printed by nicholas okes, for iohn waterson, and are to be sold at the signe of the crowne, in _paules_ church-yard, 1623. to me massinger is one of the most interesting as well as one of the most delightful of the old dramatists, not so much for his passion or power, though at times he reaches both, as for the love he shows for those things that are lovely and of good report in human nature, for his sympathy with what is generous and high-minded and honorable and for his equable flow of a good every-day kind of poetry, with few rapids or cataracts, but singularly soothing and companionable. lowell a new way to pay old debts a comoedie _as it hath beene often acted at the phoenix in drury-lane, by the queenes maiesties seruants._ the author. philip massinger. noli altvm sapere (in printer's mark) london, printed by _e. p._ for _henry seyle_, dwelling in _s. pauls_ church-yard, at the signe of the tygers head. anno. m. dc. xxxiii. ford was of the first order of poets. he sought for sublimity, not by parcels in metaphors or visible images, but directly where she has her full residence in the heart of man; in the actions and sufferings of the greatest minds. there is a grandeur of the soul above mountains, seas, and the elements. even in the poor perverted reason of giovanni and annabella we discover traces of that fiery particle, which in the irregular starting from out of the road of beaten action, discovers something of a right line even in obliquity, and shows hints of an improvable greatness in the lowest descents and degradation of our nature. lamb the broken heart. a tragedy. _acted_ by the kings majesties seruants at the priuate house in the black-friers. _fide honor._ [illustration] _london:_ printed by _i. b._ for hvgh beeston, and are to be sold at his shop, neere the _castle_ in _corne-hill_. 1 6 3 3. next marlow, bathed in the thespian springs, had in him those brave sublunary things that the first poets had; his raptures were all air and fire which made his verses clear; for that fine madness still he did retain, which rightly should possess a poet's brain. drayton _the famous_ tragedy of the rich jew of _malta_. as it was playd before the king and qveene, in his majesties theatre at _white-hall_, by her majesties servants at the _cock-pit_. _written by_ christopher marlo. [illustration] _london_, printed by _i. b._ for _nicholas vavasour_, and are to be sold at his shop in the inner-temple, neere the church. 1 6 3 3. sir, i pray deliver this little book to my dear brother farrar, and tell him he shall find in it a picture of the many spiritual conflicts that have passed betwixt god and my soul, before i would subject mine to the will of jesus, my master, in whose service i have now found perfect freedom. desire him to read it; and then, if he can think it may turn to the advantage of any dejected poor soul, let it be made public; if not, let him burn it; for i and it are less than the least of god's mercies. herbert the temple. sacred poems and private ejaculations. by m^r. george herbert. psal. 29. _in his temple doth every man speak of his honour._ [illustration] cambridge printed by _thom._ _buck_, and _roger daniel_, printers to the universitie. 1 6 3 3. did his youth scatter poetry wherein lay love's philosophy? was every sin pictured in his sharp satires, made so foul, that some have fear'd sin's shapes, and kept their soul safer by reading verse: did he give days, past marble monuments, to those whose praise he would perpetuate? did he--i fear envy will doubt--these at his twentieth year? but, more matured, did his rich soul conceive and in harmonious holy numbers weave a crown of sacred sonnets, fit to adorn a dying martyr's brow, or to be worn on that blest head of mary magdalen, after she wiped christ's feet, but not till then; did he--fit for such penitents as she and he to use--leave us a litany which all devout men love, and doubtless shall, as times grow better, grow more classical? did he write hymns, for piety and wit, equal to those great grave prudentius writ? walton poems, _by_ j. d. with elegies on the authors death. london. printed by _m. f._ for iohn marriot, and are to be sold at his shop in s^t _dunstans_ church-yard in _fleet-street_. 1633. it is not on the praises of others, but on his own writings that he is to depend for the esteem of posterity; of which he will not easily be deprived while learning shall have any reverence among men; for there is no science in which he does not discover some skill; and scarce any kind of knowledge, profane or sacred, abstruse or elegant, which he does not appear to have cultivated with success. johnson à coelo salus religio, medici. _printed for andrew crooke. 1642. will marshatt. scu._ waller was smooth. pope the workes of edmond waller esquire, lately a member of the honourable house of commons, in this present parliament. _imprimatur_ na. brent. _decem. 30. 1644._ london, printed for _thomas walkley_. 1645. o volume, worthy, leaf by leaf and cover, to be with juice of cedar washed all over! here's words with lines, and lines with scenes consent to raise an act to full astonishment; here melting numbers, words of power to move young men to swoon, and maids to die for love: _love lies a-bleeding_ here; evadne there swells with brave rage, yet comely everywhere; here's _a mad lover_; there that high design of _king and no king_, and the rare plot thine. so that where'er we circumvolve our eyes, such rich, such fresh, such sweet varieties ravish our spirits, that entranc'd we see, none writes love's passion in the world like thee. herrick comedies and tragedies {francis beavmont} written by { and } gentlemen. {iohn fletcher } never printed before, and now published by the authours originall copies. * * * * * _si quid habent veri vatum præsagia, vivam._ * * * * * _london_, printed for _humphrey robinson_, at the three _pidgeons_, and for _humphrey moseley_ at the _princes armes_ in _s^t pauls church-yard_. 1647. reduced leaf in original, 8.37 x 13.12 inches what mighty epics have been wrecked by time since herrick launched his cockle-shell of rhyme! aldrich _hesperides_: or, the works both humane & divine of robert herrick _esq._ * * * * * ovid. _effugient avidos carmina nostra rogos._ * * * * * [illustration] * * * * * _london_ printed for _john williams_, and _francis eglesfield_, and are to be sold at the crown and marygold in saint _pauls_ church-yard. 1648. taylor, the shakespeare of divines. emerson _the rule and exercises of holy living_ _by jer. taylor d:d._ _non magna loquimur sed vivimus_ _london printed for r. royston in ivye lane. 1650._ _ro: vaughan sculp._ that is a book you should read: such sweet religion in it, next to woolman's, though the subject be bait, and hooks, and worms, and fishes. lamb _the compleat angler or the contemplative man's recreation_ being a discourse of fish and fishing, not unworthy the perusal of most _anglers_. * * * * * simon peter said, _i go a_ fishing: _and they said, we also wil go with thee_. john 21. 3. * * * * * _london_, printed by _t. maxey_ for rich. marriot, in s. _dunstans_ church-yard fleetstreet, 1653. yet he, consummate master, knew when to recede and when pursue. his noble negligences teach what others' toils despair to reach. he, perfect dancer, climbs the rope, and balances your fear and hope; if, after some distinguished leap, he drops his pole, and seems to slip, straight gathering all his active strength, he rises higher half his length. with wonder you approve his slight, and owe your pleasure to your fright. prior hudibras * * * * * the first part. * * * * * _written in the time of the late wars._ * * * * * _london._ printed by _j. g._ for _richard marriot_, under saint _dunstan_'s church in _fleetstreet_. 1663. the third among the sons of light. shelley paradise lost. a poem written in ten books by _john milton._ * * * * * licensed and entred according to order. * * * * * _l o n d o n_ printed, and are to be sold by _peter parker_ under _creed_ church neer _aldgate_; and by _robert boulter_ at the _turks head_ in _bishopsgate-street_; and _matthias walker_, under st. _dunstons_ church in _fleet-street_, 1667. ingenious dreamer! in whose well-told tale sweet fiction and sweet truth alike prevail; whose humorous vein, strong sense, and simple style, may teach the gayest, make the gravest smile; witty and well-employed, and, like thy lord, speaking in parables his slighted word:- i name thee not, lest so despised a name should move a sneer at thy deserved fame. cowper the pilgrim's progress from this world, to that which is to come: delivered under the similitude of a dream wherein is discovered, the manner of his setting out, his dangerous journey; and safe arrival at the desired countrey. * * * * * _i have used similitudes_, _hos._ 12. 10. * * * * * by _john bunyan._ * * * * * licensed and entred according to order. * * * * * l o n d o n, printed for _nath. ponder_ at the _peacock_ in the _poultrey_ near _cornhil_, 1678. behold where dryden's less presumptuous car wide o'er the fields of glory bear two coursers of ethereal race, with necks in thunder clothed, and long-resounding pace. gray absalom and achitophel. * * * * * a poem. * * * * * ----_si propiùs stes te capiet magis_--- * * * * * l o n d o n, printed for _j. t._ and are to be sold by _w. davis_ in _amen-corner_, 1681. reduced leaf in original, 7.75 × 12.56 inches. few books in the literature of philosophy have so widely represented the spirit of the age and country in which they appeared, or have so influenced opinion afterwards as locke's _essay concerning human understanding_. the art of education, political thought, theology and philosophy, especially in britain, france and america, long bore the stamp of the _essay_, or of reaction against it. fraser an e s s a y concerning =humane understanding=. * * * * * in four books. * * * * * _quam bellum est velle confiteri potius nescire quod nescias, quam ista effutientem nauseare, atque ipsum sibi displicere!_ =cic. de natur. deor.= _l._ 1. * * * * * _l o n d o n:_ printed by _eliz. holt_, for =thomas basset=, at the _george_ in _fleetstreet_, near st. _dunstan_'s church. mdcxc. reduced leaf in original, 7.18 × 12.62 inches oh! that your brows my laurel had sustained, well had i been deposed if you had reigned! the father had descended for the son; for only you are lineal to the throne. * * * * * yet i this prophesy: thou shalt be seen, (though with some short parenthesis between,) high on the throne of wit; and, seated there, not mine (that's little) but thy laurel wear. thy first attempt an early promise made, that early promise this has more than paid; so bold, yet so judiciously you dare, that your least praise is to be regular. * * * * * already i am worn with cares and age, and just abandoning the ungrateful stage; unprofitably kept at heaven's expense, i live a rent-charge on his providence. but you, whom every muse and grace adorn, whom i foresee to better fortune born, be kind to my remains; and, oh defend, against your judgment, your departed friend! let not the insulting foe my fame pursue, but shield those laurels which descend to you: and take for tribute what these lines express: you merit more, but could my love do less. dryden the way of the world, a comedy. as it is acted at the theatre in _lincoln's-inn-fields_, by his majesty's servants. * * * * * written by mr. _congreve_. * * * * * _audire est operæ pretium, procedere recte qui mæchis non vultis----_ hor. sat. 2. l. 1. _----metuat doti deprensa.----_ ibid. * * * * * l o n d o n: printed for _jacob tonson_, within _gray's-inn-gate_ next _gray's-inn-lane_. 1700. reduced leaf in original, 6.5 × 8.5 inches. for an englishman there is no single historical work with which it can be so necessary for him to be well and thoroughly acquainted as with clarendon. southey the history of the rebellion and civil wars in england, begun in the year 1641. with the precedent passages, and actions, that contributed thereunto, and the happy end, and conclusion thereof by the king's blessed restoration, and return upon the 29^{th} of _may_, in the year 1660. written by the right honourable edward earl of clarendon, late lord high chancellour of _england_, privy counsellour in the reigns of king charles the first and the second. * * * * * [greek: ktêma es aei.] thucyd. _ne quid falsi dicere audeat, ne quid veri non audeat._ cicero. * * * * * volume the first. * * * * * [illustration] _o x f o r d_, printed at the theater, _an. dom._ mdccii. reduced leaf in original, 11 × 17.5 inches. it is incredible to conceive the effect his writings have had upon the town; how many thousand follies they have either quite banished or given a very great check to! how much countenance they have added to virtue and religion! how many people they have rendered happy, by showing them it was their own fault if they were not so! and lastly how entirely they have convinced our young fops and young fellows of the value and advantages of learning! he has indeed rescued it out of the hands of pedants, and fools, and discovered the true method of making it amiable and lovely to all mankind. in the dress he gives it, it is a most welcome guest at tea-tables and assemblies, and is relished and caressed by the merchants on the change. accordingly, there is not a lady at court, nor a broker in lombard street, who is not easily persuaded that captain _steele_ is the greatest scholar and casuist of any man in england. gay the lucubrations of isaac bickerstaff esq; * * * * * vol. i. * * * * * [greek: ou chrê pannychion heudein boulêphoron andra.] homer. * * * * * [illustration] * * * * * _l o n d o n_, printed: and sold by _john morphew_, near _stationers-hall_. mdccx. _note_, the bookbinder is desired to place the index after [_tosler, n^o. 114_] which ends the _first volume_ in folio. reduced leaf in original, 9.50 × 14.37 inches whoever wishes to attain an english style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of addison. johnson numb. 1 the spectator. * * * * * _non fumum ex fulgore, sed ex fumo dare lucem cogitat; ut speciosa dehinc miracula promat._ hor. * * * * * to be continued every day. * * * * * _thursday, march 1. 1711._ i have observed, that a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure 'till he knows whether the writer of it be a black or a fair man, of a mild or cholerick disposition, married or a batchelor, with other particulars of the like nature, that conduce very much to the right understanding of an author. to gratify this curiosity, which is so natural to a reader, i design this paper, and my next, as prefatory discourses to my following writings, and shall give some account in them of the several persons that are engaged in this work. as the chief trouble of compiling, digesting and correcting will fall to my share, i must do my self the justice to open the work with my own history. i was born to a small hereditary estate, which i find, by the writings of the family, was bounded by the same hedges and ditches in _william_ the conqueror's time that it is at present, and has been delivered down from father to son whole and entire, without the loss or acquisition of a single field or meadow, during the space of six hundred years. there goes a story in the family, that when my mother was gone with child of me about three months, she dreamt that she was brought to bed of a judge: whether this might proceed from a law-suit which was then depending in the family, or my father's being a justice of the peace, i cannot determine; for i am not so vain as to think it presaged any dignity that i should arrive at in my future life, though that was the interpretation which the neighbourhood put upon it. the gravity of my behaviour at my very first appearance in the world, and all the time that i sucked, seemed to favour my mother's dream: for, as she has often told me, i threw away my rattle before i was two months old, and would not make use of my coral 'till they had taken away the bells from it. as for the rest of my infancy, there being nothing in it remarkable, i shall pass it over in silence. i find that, during my nonage, i had the reputation of a very sullen youth, but was always a favourite of my school-master, who used to say, _that my parts were solid and would wear well_. i had not been long at the university, before i distinguished my self by a most profound silence: for, during the space of eight years, excepting in the publick exercises of the college, i scarce uttered the quantity of an hundred words; and indeed do not remember that i ever spoke three sentences together in my whole life. whilst i was in this learned body i applied my self with so much diligence to my studies, that there are very few celebrated books, either in the learned or the modern tongues, which i am not acquainted with. upon the death of my father i was resolved to travel into foreign countries, and therefore left the university, with the character of an odd unaccountable fellow, that had a great deal of learning, if i would but show it. an insatiable thirst after knowledge carried me into all the countries of _europe_, where there was any thing new or strange to be seen; nay, to such a degree was my curiosity raised, that having read the controversies of some great men concerning the antiquities of _egypt_, i made a voyage to _grand cairo_, on purpose to take the measure of a pyramid; and as soon as i had set my self right in that particular, returned to my native country with great satisfaction. i have passed my latter years in this city, where i am frequently seen in most publick places, tho' there are not above half a dozen of my select friends that know me; of whom my next paper shall give a more particular account. there is no place of publick resort, wherein i do not often make my appearance; sometimes i am seen thrusting my head into a round of politicians at _will_'s, and listning with great attention to the narratives that are made in those little circular audiences. sometimes i smoak a pipe at _child_'s; and whilst i seem attentive to nothing but the _post-man_, over-hear the conversation of every table in the room. i appear on _sunday nights_ at _st. james's coffee_-house, and sometimes join the little committee of politicks in the inner-room, as one who comes there to hear and improve. my face is likewise very well known at the _grecian_, the _cocoa-tree_, and in the theaters both of _drury-lane_, and the _hay-market_. i have been taken for a merchant reduced leaf in original, 8.12 × 13.12 inches. it breathes throughout a spirit of piety and benevolence; it sets in a very striking light the importance of the mechanic arts, which they who know not what it is to be without them are apt to undervalue. it fixes in the mind a lively idea of the horrors of solitude, and, consequently, of the sweets of social life, and of the blessings we derive from conversation and mutual aid; and it shows how by labouring with one's own hands, one may secure independence, and open for one's self many sources of health and amusement. i agree, therefore, with rousseau, that this is one of the best books that can be put into the hands of children. beattie the life and strange surprizing adventures of _robinson crusoe_, of _york_, mariner: who lived eight and twenty years, all alone in an un-inhabited island on the coast of america, near the mouth of the great river of oroonoque; having been cast on shore by shipwreck, wherein all the men perished but himself. with an account how he was at last as strangely deliver'd by pyrates. * * * * * _written by himself._ * * * * * _l o n d o n:_ printed for w. taylor at the _ship_ in _pater-noster-row_. mdccxix. anima rabelasii habitans in sicco coleridge travels into several remote nations of the world. * * * * * in four parts. * * * * * by _lemuel gulliver_, first a surgeon, and then a captain of several ships. * * * * * vol. i. * * * * * _l o n d o n:_ _printed for_ benj. motte, _at the middle_ temple-gate _in_ fleet-street. mdccxxvi. i think no english poet ever brought so much sense into the same number of lines with equal smoothness, ease, and poetical beauty. let him who doubts of this peruse the _essay on man_ with attention. shenstone an essay on man address'd to a friend. * * * * * part i. * * * * * [illustration] * * * * * _l o n d o n:_ printed for _j. wilford_, at the _three flower-de-luces_, behind the _chapter-house_, st. _pauls_. [price one shilling.] _1733_ reduced leaf in original, 8.5 × 12.62 inches. it was about this date, i suppose, that i read bishop butler's _analogy_; the study of which has been to so many, as it was to me, an era in their religious opinions. its inculcation of a visible church, the oracle of truth and a pattern of sanctity, of the duties of external religion, and of the historical character of revelation, are characteristics of this great work which strike the reader at once; for myself, if i may attempt to determine what i most gained from it, it lay in two points which i shall have an opportunity of dwelling on in the sequel: they are the underlying principles of a great portion of my teaching. newman the analogy of religion, natural and revealed, to the constitution and course of nature. to which are added two brief dissertations: i. of personal identity. ii. of the nature of virtue. by joseph butler, l l. d. rector of stanhope, in the bishoprick of durham. _ejus_ (analogiæ) _hæc vis est, ut id quod dubium est, ad aliquid simile de quo non quæritur, referat; ut incerta certis probet._ quint. inst. orat. l. i. c. vi. l o n d o n: printed for james, john and paul knapton, at the crown in ludgate street. mdccxxxvi. reduced leaf in original, 7.87 × 10.18 inches. i never heard the olde song of percy and duglas that i found not my heart mooved more than with a trumpet. sidney reliques of ancient english poetry: consisting of old heroic ballads, songs, and other pieces of our earlier poets, (chiefly of the lyric kind.) together with some few of later date. volume the first. [illustration: durat opus vatum] l o n d o n: printed for j. dodsley in pall-mall. m dcc lxv. from dewy pastures, uplands sweet with thyme, a virgin breeze freshened the jaded day. it wafted collins' lonely vesper chime, it breathed abroad the frugal note of gray. watson odes on several _descriptive_ and _allegoric_ subjects. * * * * * by william collins. * * * * * ----[greek: eiên heurêsiepês, anageisthai prosphoros en moisan diphrô; tolma de kai amphilaphês dynamis espoito,--- pindar. olymp. th.] [illustration] _l o n d o n:_ printed for a. millar, in the _strand_. m.dcc.xlvii. (price one shilling.) the first book in the world for the knowledge it displays of the human heart. johnson clarissa. or, the history of a young lady: comprehending _the most_ important concerns _of_ private life. and particularly shewing, the distresses that may attend the misconduct both of parents and children, in relation to marriage. * * * * * _published by the_ editor _of_ pamela. * * * * * vol. i. * * * * * [illustration] * * * * * _l o n d o n:_ printed for s. richardson: and sold by a. millar, over-against _catharine-street_ in the _strand_: j. and ja. rivington, in _st. paul's church-yard_: john osborn, in _pater-noster row_; and by j. leake, at _bath_. m.dcc.xlviii. upon my word i think the _oedipus tyrannus_, the _alchymist_, and _tom jones_ the three most perfect plots ever planned. coleridge the history of _tom jones_, a foundling. * * * * * in six volumes. * * * * * by henry fielding, esq. * * * * * ----_mores hominum multorum vidit_--- * * * * * _l o n d o n:_ printed for a. millar, over-against _catharine-street_ in the _strand_. mdccxlix. now, gentlemen, i would rather be the author of that poem than take quebec. wolfe an elegy wrote in a country church yard. * * * * * _london:_ printed for r. dodsley in _pall-mall_; and sold by m. cooper in _pater-noster-row_. 1751. [price six-pence.] reduced leaf in original, 7.37 × 9.81 inches i have devoted this book, the labour of years, to the honour of my country, that we may no longer yield the palm of philology without a contest to the nations of the continent. johnson a dictionary of the english language: in which the words are deduced from their originals, and illustrated in their different significations by examples from the best writers. to which are prefixed, a history of the language, and an english grammar. by samuel johnson, a. m. in two volumes vol. i. cum tabulis animum censoris sumet honesti: audebit quæcunque parum splendoris habebunt, et sine pondere erunt, et honore indigna serentur. verba movere loco; quamvis invita recedant, et versentur adhuc intra penetralia vestæ: obscurata diu populo bonus eruet, atque proferet in lucem speciosa vocabula rerum, quæ priscis memorata catonibus atque cethegis, nunc situs informis premit et deserta vetustas. hor. l o n d o n, printed by w. strahan, for j. and p. knapton; t. and t. longman; c. hitch and l. hawes; a. millar; and r. and j. dodsley. mdcclv. reduced leaf in original, 10 × 16.18 inches. eripuit coelo fulmen sceptrumque tyrannis turgot poor richard improved: * * * * * being an almanack and _ephemeris_ of the motions of the sun and moon; the true places and aspects of the planets; the _rising_ and _setting_ of the _sun_; and the rising, setting _and_ southing _of the_ moon, for the year of our lord 1758: being the second after leap-year. containing also, the lunations, conjunctions, eclipses, judgment of the weather, rising and setting of the planets, length of days and nights, fairs, courts, roads, &c. together with useful tables, chronological observations, and entertaining remarks. * * * * * fitted to the latitude of forty degrees, and a meridian of near five hours west from _london_; but may, without feasible error, serve all the northern colonies. * * * * * by _richard saunders_, philom. * * * * * _philadelpeia:_ printed and sold by b. franklin, and d. hall. there your son will find analytical reasoning diffused in a pleasing and perspicuous style. there he may imbibe, imperceptibly, the first principles on which our excellent laws are founded; and there he may become acquainted with an uncouth crabbed author, coke upon lytleton, who has disappointed and disheartened many a tyro, but who cannot fail to please in a modern dress. mansfield commentaries on the laws of england. book the first. by william blackstone, esq. vinerian professor of law, and solicitor general to her majesty. o x f o r d, printed at the clarendon press. m. dcc. lxv. reduced leaf in original, 8.37 × 13.37 inches. i received one morning a message from poor goldsmith that he was in great distress, and, as it was not in his power to come to me, begging that i would come to him as soon as possible. i sent him a guinea, and promised to come to him directly. i accordingly went as soon as i was dressed, and found that his landlady had arrested him for his rent, at which he was in a violent passion. i perceived that he had already changed my guinea, and had got a bottle of madeira and a glass before him. i put the cork into the bottle, desired he would be calm, and began to talk to him of the means by which he might be extricated. he then told me he had a novel (_the vicar of wakefield_) ready for the press, which he produced to me. i looked into it, and saw its merit; told the landlady i should soon return; and, having gone to a bookseller, sold it for sixty pounds. i brought goldsmith the money, and he discharged his rent, not without rating his landlady in a high tone for having used him so ill. johnson the v i c a r of wakefield: a t a l e. supposed to be written by himself. * * * * * _sperate miseri, cavete fælices._ * * * * * vol. i. * * * * * salisbury: printed by b. collins, for f. newbery, in pater-noster-row, london. mdcclxvi. his exquisite sensibility is ever counteracted by his perception of the ludicrous and his ambition after the strange. talfourd a sentimental journey through france and italy. by mr. yorick. * * * * * vol. i. * * * * * l o n d o n: printed for t. becket and p. a. de hondt, in the strand. mdcclxviii. i know not indeed of any work on the principles of free government that is to be compared, in instruction, and intrinsic value, to this small and unpretending volume of _the federalist_, not even if we resort to aristotle, cicero, machiavel, montesquieu, milton, locke, or burke. it is equally admirable in the depth of its wisdom, the comprehensiveness of its views, the sagacity of its reflections, and the fearlessness, patriotism, candor, simplicity, and elegance with which its truths are uttered and recommended. chancellor kent t h e federalist: a collection of e s s a y s, written in favour of the new constitution, as agreed upon by the federal convention, september 17, 1787. in two volumes vol. i. new-york: printed and sold by j. and a. m'lean, no. 41, hanover-square, m,dcc,lxxxviii. the novel of _humphrey clinker_ is, i do think, the most laughable story that has ever been written since the goodly art of novel-writing began. winifred jenkins and tabitha bramble must keep englishmen on the grin for ages to come; and in their letters and the story of their loves there is a perpetual fount of sparkling laughter, as inexhaustible as bladud's well. thackeray the expedition of humphry clinker. by the author of roderick random. * * * * * in three volumes. v o l. i. * * * * * ----quorsum hæc tam putida tendunt, furcifer? ad te, inquam--- hor. * * * * * l o n d o n, printed for w. johnston, in ludgate-street; and b. collins, in salisbury. mdclxxi. adam smith contributed more by the publication of this single work towards the happiness of men than has been effected by the united abilities of all the statesmen and legislators of whom history has preserved an authentic account. buckle an i n q u i r y into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. by adam smith, ll. d. and f. r. s. formerly professor of moral philosophy in the university of glasgow. in two volumes vol. i. * * * * * london: printed for w. strahan; and t. cadell, in the strand. mdcclxxvi. reduced leaf in original, 8.62 × 10.87 inches. sapping a solemn creed with solemn sneer; the lord of irony- byron the history of the decline and fall of the roman empire, by edward gibbon, esq; volume the first. jam provideo animo, velut qui, proximis littori vadis inducti, mare pedibus ingrediuntur, quicquid progredior, in vastiorem me altitudinem, ac velut profundum invehi; et crescere pene opus, quod prima quæque perficiendo minui videbatur. * * * * * l o n d o n: printed for w. strahan; and t. cadell, in the strand. mdcclxxvi. reduced leaf in original, 8.25-10.31 inches whatever sheridan has done, or chosen to do, has been _par excellence_ always the best of its kind. he has written the best comedy (_school for scandal_), the best drama (in my mind far beyond that st. giles lampoon, the _beggar's opera_), the best farce (the _critic_,--and it is only too good for a farce), and the best address (_monologue on garrick_), and, to crown all, delivered the very best oration (the famous begum speech) ever conceived or heard in this country. byron the _school_ for _scandal._ a comedy. * * * * * satire has always shone among the rest, and is the boldest way, if not the best, to tell men freely of their foulest faults, to laugh at their vain deeds, and vainer thoughts. in satire, too, the wise took diff'rent ways, to each deserving its peculiar praise. dryden. * * * * * _dublin:_ printed for j. ewling. of all the verses that have been ever devoted to the subject of domestic happiness, those in his winter evening, at the opening of the fourth book of the _task_, are perhaps the most beautiful. campbell the task, a poem, in six books. by william cowper, of the inner temple, esq. fit surculus arbor. anonym. to which are added, by the same author, an epistle to joseph hill, esq. tirocinium, or a review of schools, and the history of john gilpin. * * * * * london: printed for j. johnson, n^o 72, st. paul's church-yard. 1785. through busiest street and loneliest glen are felt the flashes of his pen: he rules 'mid winter snows, and when bees fill their hives: deep in the general heart of men his power survives. wordsworth p o e m s, chiefly in the scottish dialect, by robert burns. * * * * * the simple bard, unbroke by rules of art, he pours the wild effusions of the heart: and if inspir'd, 'tis nature's pow'rs inspire; her's all the melting thrill, and her's the kindling fire. anonymous. * * * * * kilmarnock: printed by john wilson. m,dcc,lxxxvi. open the book where you will, it takes you out-of-doors. in simplicity of taste and natural refinement he reminds you of walton; in tenderness toward what he would have called the brute creation, of cowper. he seems to have lived before the fall. his volumes are the journal of adam in paradise. lowell the natural history and antiquities of selborne, in the county of southampton: with engravings, and an appendix. * * * * * ---"ego apis matinæ "more modoque grata carpentis ---per laborem plurimum," ----- hor. "omnia benè describere, quæ in hoc mundo, a deo facta, aut naturæ creatæ viribus elaborata fuerunt, opus est non unius hominis, nec unius ævi. hinc _faunæ & floræ_ utilissimæ; hine _monographi_ præstantissimi." scopoli ann. hist. nat. * * * * * l o n d o n: printed by t. bensley; for b. white and son, at horace's head, fleet street. m,dcc,lxxxix, reduced leaf in original, 7.43 × 9.5 inches. he is without parallel in any age or country, except perhaps lord bacon or cicero; and his works contain an ampler store of political and moral wisdom than can be found in any other writer whatever. mackintosh reflections on the revolution in france, and on the proceedings in certain societies in london relative to that event. in a letter intended to have been sent to a gentleman _in paris._ by the right honourable _edmund burke._ * * * * * l o n d o n: printed for j. dodsley, in pall-mall. m.dcc.xc. the great commoner of mankind conway _rights of man:_ being an answer to mr. burke's attack on the _french revolution._ by thomas paine, secretary for foreign affairs to congress in the american war, and author of the work intitled _common sense_. * * * * * l o n d o n: printed for j. johnson, st paul's church-yard. mdccxci. homer is not more decidedly the first of heroic poets, shakespeare is not more decidedly the first of the dramatists, demosthenes is not more sensibly the first of orators, than boswell is the first of biographers. macaulay the life of samuel johnson, ll.d. comprehending an account of his studies and numerous works, in chronological order; a series of his epistolary correspondence and conversations with many eminent persons; and various original pieces of his composition, never before published. the whole exhibiting a view of literature and literary men in great-britain, for near half a century, during which he flourished. in two volumes. by james boswell, esq. ----_quò fit ut_ omnis _votiva pateat veluti descripta tabella_ vita senis.--- horat. * * * * * volume the first. * * * * * _l o n d o n:_ printed by henry baldwin, for charles dilly, in the poultry. m dcc xci. reduced leaf in original, 8.18 × 10.68 inches. he laid us as we lay at birth on the cool flowery lap of earth; smiles broke from us and we had ease, the hills were round us, and the breeze went o'er the sun-lit fields again; our foreheads felt the wind and rain. our youth return'd; for there was shed on spirits that had long been dead, spirits dried up and closely furl'd, the freshness of the early world. arnold lyrical ballads, with _a few other poems_. london: printed for j. & a. arch, gracechurch-street. 1798. the history was hailed with delight as the most witty and original production from any american pen. the first foreign critic was scott, who read it aloud in his family till their sides were sore with laughing. warner a history of new york, from the beginning of the world to the end of the dutch dynasty. containing among many surprising and curious matters, the unutterable ponderings of walter the doubter, the disastrous projects of william the testy, and the chivalric achievments of peter the headstrong, the three dutch governors of new amsterdam; being the only authentic history of the times that ever hath been, or ever will be published. * * * * * by diedrich knickerbocker. * * * * * =de waarheid die in duister lag, die komt met klaarheid aan den dag.= * * * * * in two volumes. vol. i. * * * * * published by inskeep & bradford, new york; bradford & inskeep, philadelphia; wm. m'ilhenney, boston; coale & thomas, baltimore; and morford, willington, & co. charleston. * * * * * 1809. the pilgrim of eternity whose fame over his living head like heaven is bent. shelley =childe harold's pilgrimage.= romaunt. by lord byron. * * * * * l'univers est une espèce de livre, dont on n'a lu que la première page quand on n'a vu que son pays. j'en ai feuilleté un assez grand nombre, que j'ai trouvé également mauvaises. cet examen ne m'a point été infructueux. je haïssais ma patrie. toutes les impertinences des peuples divers, parmi lesquels j'ai vécu, m'ont réconcilié avec elle. quand je n'aurais tiré d'autre bénéfice de mes voyages que celui-là, je n'en regretterais ni les frais, ni les fatigues. le cosmopolite. * * * * * _london:_ printed for john murray, 32, fleet-street; william blackwood, edinburgh; and john cumming, dublin. _by thomas davison, white-friars._ 1812. reduced leaf in original, 7.93 × 10.18 inches. i read again, and for the third time, miss austen's very finely written novel of _pride and prejudice_. that young lady had a talent for describing the involvements, feelings, and characters of ordinary life, which is to me the most wonderful i have ever met with. the big bow-wow i can do myself like any one going; but the exquisite touch, which renders commonplace things and characters interesting from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied me. what a pity so gifted a creature died so early! scott pride and prejudice: a novel. _in three volumes._ * * * * * by the author of "sense and sensibility." * * * * * vol. i. * * * * * =london:= printed for t. egerton, military library, whitehall. 1813. a subtle-souled psychologist shelley christabel: * * * * * kubla khan, a vision; * * * * * the pains of sleep. * * * * * by s. t. coleridge, esq. * * * * * london: printed for john murray, albemarle-street, by william bulmer and co. cleveland-row, st. james's. 1816. o great and gallant scott, true gentleman, heart, blood, and bone, i would it had been my lot to have seen thee, and heard thee, and known. tennyson ivanhoe; a romance. by "the author of waverley," &c. * * * * * now fitted the halter, now traversed the cart, and often took leave,--but seem'd loth to depart! prior. * * * * * in three volumes. vol. i. * * * * * edinburgh: printed for archibald constable and co. edinburgh. and hurst, robinson, and co. 90, cheapside, london. 1820. he is made one with nature: there is heard his voice in all her music, from the moan of thunder to the song of night's sweet bird; he is a presence to be felt and known in darkness and in light, from herb and stone, spreading itself where'er that power may move which has withdrawn his being to its own; which wields the world with never-wearied love, sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above. shelley lamia, isabella, the eve of st. agnes, and other poems. * * * * * by john keats, author of endymion. * * * * * london: printed for taylor and hessey, fleet-street. 1820. cor cordium epitaph adonais * * * * * an elegy on the death of john keats, author of endymion, hyperion etc. by percy. b. shelley [greek: astêr prin men elampes eni zôoisin heôos. nun de thanôn, lampeis hesperos en phthimenois.] plato. pisa with the types of didot mdcccxxi. reduced leaf in original, 7.43 × 10.06 inches. and the more we walk around his image, and the closer we look, the more nearly we arrive at this conclusion, that the _elia_ on our shelves is all but the same being as the pleasant charles who was so loved by his friends, who ransomed from the stalls, to use old richard of bury's phrase, his thomas browne and the "dear silly old angel" fuller, and who stammered out such quaint jests and puns--"saint charles," as thackeray once called him, while looking at one of his half-mad letters, and remembering his devotion to that quite mad sister. fitzgerald elia. essays which have appeared under that signature in the london magazine. * * * * * london: printed for taylor and hessey, fleet-street. 1823. the most confiding of diarists, the most harmless of turncoats, the most wondering of _quidnuncs_, the fondest and most penitential of faithless husbands, the most admiring, yet grieving, of the beholders of the ladies of charles ii, the sancho panza of the most insipid of quixotes, james ii, who did bestow on him (in naval matters) the government of a certain "island," which, to say the truth, he administered to the surprise and edification of all who bantered him. many official patriots have, doubtless, existed since his time, and thousands, nay millions of respectable men of all sorts gone to their long account, more or less grave in public, and frail to their consciences; but when shall we meet with such another as he was? hunt memoirs of samuel pepys, esq. f.r.s. secretary to the admiralty in the reigns of charles ii. and james ii. comprising h i s d i a r y from 1659 to 1669, deciphered by the rev. john smith, a. b. of st. john's college, cambridge, from the original short-hand ms. in the pepysian library, and a selection from his p r i v a t e c o r r e s p o n d e n c e. [illustration] edited by richard, lord braybrooke. * * * * * in two volumes. vol. i. * * * * * london: henry colburn, new burlington street. mdcccxxv. reduced leaf in original, 9.25 × 11.87 inches. while the love of country continues to prevail, his memory will exist in the hearts of the people. webster the last of the mohicans; a narrative of 1757. by the author of "the pioneers." * * * * * "mislike me not, for my complexion, the shadowed livery of the burnished sun." * * * * * in two volumes. vol. i. * * * * * philadelphia: h. c. carey & i. lea--chesnut-street. * * * * * 1826. and through the trumpet of a child of rome rang the pure music of the flutes of greece. swinburne pericles and aspasia by walter savage landor, esq. in two volumes. vol. i. london saunders and otley, conduit street. 1836. thankfully i take my share of love and kindness which this generous and gentle and charitable soul has contributed to the world. i take and enjoy my share and say a benediction for the meal. thackeray the pickwick papers. by charles dickens. [illustration: phiz. feat.] london chapman and hall 186 strand mdcccxxxvii. carlyle alone with his wide humanity has, since coleridge, kept to us the promises of england. his provokes rather than informs. he blows down narrow walls, and struggles, in a lurid light, like the jótuns, to throw the old woman time; in his work there is too much of the anvil and the forge, not enough hay-making under the sun. he makes us act rather than think; he does not say, know thyself, which is impossible, but know thy work. he has no pillars of hercules, no clear goal, but an endless atlantis horizon. he exaggerates. yes: but he makes the hour great, the future bright, the reverence and admiration strong: while mere precise fact is a coil of lead. thoreau sartor resartus. in three books. * * * * * =reprinted for friends from fraser's magazine.= * * * * * _mein vermächtniss, wie herrlich weit und breit!_ _die zeit ist mein vermächtniss, mein acker ist die zeit._ * * * * * london: james fraser, 215 regent street. * * * * * m.dccc.xxxiv. it was good to meet him in the wood-paths with that pure intellectual gleam diffused about his presence, like the garment of a shining one; and he so quiet, so simple, so without pretension, encountering each man as if expecting to receive more than he could impart. hawthorne nature. * * * * * "nature is but an image or imitation of wisdom, the last thing of the soul; nature being a thing which doth only do, but not know." plotinus. * * * * * boston: james munroe and company. m dccc xxxvi. the result of all his labors of research, thought and composition was a history possessing the unity, variety and interest of a magnificent poem. whipple history of the conquest of peru, with a preliminary view of the civilization of the incas. * * * * * by william h. prescott, corresponding member of the french institute; of the royal academy of history at madrid, etc. * * * * * "congestæ cumulantur opes, orbisque rapinas accipit." claudian, in ruf., lib. i., v. 194. "so color de religion van a buscar plata y oro del encubierto tesoro." lope de vega, el nuevo mundo, jorn. 1. * * * * * in two volumes. volume i. * * * * * new york: harper and brothers, 82 cliff street. m dccc xlvii. when all is said, poe remains a master of fantastic and melancholy sound. some foolish old legend tells of a musician who surpassed all his rivals. his strains were unearthly sad, and ravished the ears of those who listened with a strange melancholy. yet his viol had but a single string, and the framework was fashioned out of a dead woman's breast-bone. poe's verse--the parallel is much in his own taste--resembles that player's minstrelsy. lang the raven and other poems by edgar a. poe. * * * * * new york: wiley and putnam, 161 broadway. 1845. strew with laurel the grave of the early-dying! alas, early she goes on the path to the silent country, and leaves half her laurels unwon, dying too soon!--yet green laurels she had, and a course short, but redoubled by fame. arnold jane eyre. =an autobiography.= edited by currer bell. in three volumes. vol. i. london: smith, elder, and co., cornhill. 1847. the poem already is a little classic, and will remain one, just as surely as _the vicar of wakefield_, _the deserted village_, or any other sweet and pious idyl of our english tongue. stedman evangeline, a tale of acadie. by henry wadsworth longfellow. * * * * * boston: william d. ticknor & company. 1847. the most exquisite poetry hitherto written by a woman. stedman sonnets. by e. b. b. reading: [not for publication.] 1847. what racy talks of yankee-land he had! up-country girl, up-country farmer-lad; the regnant clergy of the time of old in wig and gown:--tales not to be retold. clough _meliboeus-hipponax._ * * * * * the =biglow papers=, edited, with an introduction, notes, glossary, and copious index, by homer wilbur, a. m., pastor of this first church in jaalam, and (prospective) member of many literary, learned and scientific societies, (_for which see page v._) the ploughman's whistle, or the trivial flute, finds more respect than great apollo's lute. _quarles's emblems_, b. ii. e. 8. margaritas, munde porcine, calcâsti: en, siliquas accipe. _jac. car. fil. ad pub. leg._ §1. cambridge: published by george nichols. 1848. there is a man in our own days whose words are not framed to tickle delicate ears; who, to my thinking, comes before the great ones of society much as the son of imlah came before the throned kings of judah and israel; and who speaks truth as deep, with a power as prophet-like and as vital--a mien as dauntless and as daring. is the satirist of _vanity fair_ admired in high places?--they say he is like fielding; they talk of his wit, humour, comic powers. he resembles fielding as an eagle does a vulture: fielding could stoop on carrion, but thackeray never does. his wit is bright, his humour attractive, but both bear the same relation to his serious genius that the mere lambent sheet-lightning, playing under the edge of the summer cloud, does to the electric death-spark hid in its womb. brontë vanity fair =a novel without a hero.= _by_ william makepeace thackeray. _london_ bradbury & evans, bouverie street, _1848_ the cleverest and most fascinating of narrators. freeman the history of england from the accession of james ii. by thomas babington macaulay. volume i. london: printed for longman, brown, green, and longmans, paternoster-row. 1849. shakespeare and milton--what third blazoned name shall lips of after-ages link to these? his who, beside the wild encircling seas, was england's voice, her voice with one acclaim, for threescore years; whose word of praise was fame, whose scorn gave pause to man's iniquities. what strain was his in that crimean war? a bugle call in battle, a low breath, plaintive and sweet above the fields of death! so year by year the music rolled afar, from euxine wastes to flowery kandahar, bearing the laurel or the cypress wreath. others shall have their little space of time, their proper niche and bust, then fade away into the darkness, poets of a day; but thou, o builder of enduring rhyme, thou shalt not pass! thy fame in every clime on earth shall live where saxon speech has sway. aldrich in memoriam. london. edward moxon, dover street. 1850. new england's poet, soul reserved and deep, november nature with a name of may. lowell the scarlet letter, a romance. by nathaniel hawthorne. boston: ticknor, reed, and fields m dccc l. works of imagination written with an aim to immediate impression are commonly ephemeral; but the creative faculty of mrs. stowe, like that of cervantes in _don quixote_ and of fielding in _joseph andrews_, overpowered the narrow specialty of her design, and expanded a local and temporary theme with the cosmopolitanism of genius. lowell uncle tom's cabin; or, life among the lowly. by harriet beecher stowe. [illustration] vol. i. boston: john p. jewett & company. cleveland, ohio: jewett, proctor & worthington. 1852. a strange, unexpected and, i believe, most true and excellent _sermon_ in stones--as well as the best piece of school-mastery in architectonics. carlyle the =stones of venice.= volume the first. =the foundations.= by john ruskin, author of "the seven lamps of architecture," "modern painters," etc. etc. with illustrations drawn by the author. london: smith, elder, and co., 65. cornhill. 1851. reduced leaf in orignal 7 x 10 inches. there is delight in singing, tho' none hear besides the singer; and there is delight in praising, tho' the praiser sit alone and see the prais'd far off him, far above. shakespeare is not our poet, but the world's; therefore on him no speech! and brief for thee, browning! since chaucer was alive and hale, no man hath walkt along our roads with step so active, so inquiring eye, or tongue so varied in discovery. but warmer climes give brighter plumage, stronger wing: the breeze of alpine hights thou playest with, borne on beyond sorrento and amalfi, where the siren waits thee, singing song for song. landor men and women. by robert browning. in two volumes. vol. i. london: chapman and hall, 193, piccadilly. 1855. far from making his book a mere register of events, he has penetrated deep below the surface and explored the causes of these events. he has carefully studied the physiognomy of the times and given finished portraits of the great men who conducted the march of the revolution. prescott the rise of the dutch republic. =a history.= by john lothrop motley. in three volumes. vol i. new york: harper & brothers, 329 & 331 pearl street. 1856. the sphere which she has made specially her own is that quiet english country life which she knew in early youth. she has done for it what scott did for the scotch peasantry, or fielding for the eighteenth century englishman, or thackeray for the higher social stratum of his time. stephen adam bede by george eliot author of "scenes of clerical life" "so that ye may have clear images before your gladden'd eyes of nature's unambitious underwood and flowers that prosper in the shade. and when i speak of such among the flock as swerved or fell, those only shall be singled out upon whose lapse, or error, something more than brotherly forgiveness may attend." wordsworth. in three volumes vol. i. william blackwood and sons edinburgh and london mdccclix _the right of translation is reserved._ the most potent instrument for the extension of the realm of natural knowledge which has come into men's hands since the publication of newton's _principia_ is darwin's _origin of species_. huxley on the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. by charles darwin, m.a., fellow of the royal, geological, linnæan, etc., societies; author of 'journal of researches during h.m.s. beagle's voyage round the world.' london: john murray, albemarle street. 1859. _the right of translation is reserved._ a planet equal to the sun which cast it, that large infidel your omar. tennyson rubáiyát of omar khayyám, the astronomer-poet of persia. =translated into english verse.= * * * * * london: bernard quaritch, castle street, leicester square. 1859. i know of no writings which combine, as cardinal newman's do, so penetrating an insight into the realities of the human world around us in all its details, with so unwavering an inwardness of standard in estimating and judging that world; so steady a knowledge of the true vanity of human life with so steady a love for that which is not vanity or vexation of spirit. hutton apologia pro vita sua: being =a reply to a pamphlet= entitled "what, then, does dr. newman mean?" "commit thy way to the lord, and trust in him, and he will do it. and he will bring forth thy justice as the light, and thy judgment as the noon-day." by john henry newman, d.d. london: longman, green, longman, roberts, and green. 1864. in his prose writings there was discernible an intellectual _hauteur_ which contrasted with the uneasiness and moral incertitude of his versified moods, and which implied that a dogmatist stood erect under the shifting sensitiveness of the poet. a dogmatist--for mr. arnold is not merely a critic who interprets the minds of other men through his sensitiveness and his sympathies; he delivers with authority the conclusions of his intellect; he formulates ideas. dowden essays in criticism. by matthew arnold, professor of poetry in the university of oxford. =london and cambridge:= macmillan and co. 1865. the most faithful picture of our northern winter that has yet been put into poetry. burroughs snow-bound. a winter idyl. by john greenleaf whittier. boston: ticknor and fields. 1866. transcriber notes: passages in italics are indicated by _underscores_. passages in bold are indicated by =equal signs=. small caps were replaced with all caps. oe ligatures are indicated by "oe". "o" with a macron are indicated by "[=o]". "u" with a macron are indicated by "[=u]". a single superscripted letter is represented by that single letter preceded by a caret. more than one superscripted letters are represented by the letters enclosed by curly brackets. throughout the document there were many instances where there was no hyphens where one would expect hyphens to be. the text below images is an attempt to capture what was written in the images. in some cases, this was difficult because the nature of the alphabet has changed dramatically since the book was printed, and because some characters are somewhat illegible. in the text below images, text within printer marks are identified by "(in printer's mark)". such text is often illegible, but the best efforts are made to read that text. errors in punctuation and inconsistent hyphenation were not corrected. [illustration] the book-lover's library. edited by henry b. wheatley, f.s.a. how to form a library by h.b. wheatley, f.s.a. _second edition._ new york a.c. armstrong & son, broadway. london: elliot stock. 1886 _preface._ _it will be generally allowed that a handy guide to the formation of libraries is required, but it may be that the difficulty of doing justice to so large a subject has prevented those who felt the want from attempting to fill it. i hope therefore that it will not be considered that i have shown temerity by stepping into the vacant place. i cannot hope to have done full justice to so important a theme in the small space at my disposal, but i think i can say that this little volume contains much information which the librarian and the book lover require and cannot easily obtain elsewhere. they are probably acquainted with most of this information, but the memory will fail us at times and it is then convenient to have a record at hand._ _a book of this character is peculiarly open to criticism, but i hope the critics will give me credit for knowing more than i have set down. in making a list of books of reference, i have had to make a selection, and works have been before me that i have decided to omit, although some would think them as important as many of those i have included._ _i need not extend this preface with any lengthy explanation of the objects of the book, as these are stated in the introduction, but before concluding i may perhaps be allowed to allude to one personal circumstance. i had hoped to dedicate this first volume of the book lover's library to henry bradshaw, one of the most original and most learned bibliographers that ever lived, but before it was finished the spirit of that great man had passed away to the inexpressible grief of all who knew him. it is with no desire to shield myself under the shelter of a great name, but with a reverent wish to express my own sense of our irreparable loss that i dedicate this book (though all unworthy of the honour) to his memory._ contents. page introduction 1 chapter i. how men have formed libraries 23 ii. how to buy 57 iii. public libraries 73 iv. private libraries 89 v. general bibliographies 141 vi. special bibliographies 160 vii. publishing societies 184 viii. child's library 217 ix. one hundred books 227 how to form a library. introduction. although there can be little difference of opinion among book lovers as to the need of a handbook which shall answer satisfactorily the question--"how to form a library"--it does not follow that there will be a like agreement as to the best shape in which to put the answer. on the one side a string of generalities can be of no use to any one, and on the other a too great particularity of instruction may be resented by those who only require hints on a few points, and feel that they know their own business better than any author can tell them. one of the most important attempts to direct the would-be founder of a library in his way was made as long ago as 1824 by dr. dibdin, and the result was entitled _the library companion_.[1] the book could never have been a safe guide, and now it is hopelessly out of date. tastes change, and many books upon the necessity of possessing which dibdin enlarges are now little valued. dr. hill burton writes of this book as follows in his _book-hunter_: "this, it will be observed, is not intended as a manual of rare or curious, or in any way peculiar books, but as the instruction of a nestor on the best books for study and use in all departments of literature. yet one will look in vain there for such names as montaigne, shaftesbury, benjamin franklin, d'alembert, turgot, adam smith, malebranche, lessing, goethe, schiller, fénélon, burke, kant, richter, spinoza, flechier, and many others. characteristically enough, if you turn up rousseau in the index, you will find jean baptiste, but not jean jacques. you will search in vain for dr. thomas reid the metaphysician, but will readily find isaac reed the editor. if you look for molinæus, or du moulin, it is not there, but alphabetical vicinity gives you the good fortune to become acquainted with "moule, mr., his _bibliotheca heraldica_." the name of hooker will be found, not to guide the reader to the _ecclesiastical polity_, but to dr. jackson hooker's _tour in iceland_. lastly, if any one shall search for hartley _on man_, he will find in the place it might occupy, or has reference to, the editorial services of 'hazlewood, mr. joseph.'" although this criticism is to a great extent true, it does not do justice to dibdin's book, which contains much interesting and valuable matter, for if the _library companion_ is used not as a guide to be followed, but as a book for reference, it will be found of considerable use. william goodhugh's _english gentleman's library manual, or a guide to the formation of a library of select literature_, was published in 1827. it contains classified lists of library books, but these are not now of much value, except for the notes which accompany the titles, and make this work eminently readable. there are some literary anecdotes not to be found elsewhere. a most valuable work of reference is mr. edward edwards's report on the formation of the manchester free library, which was printed in 1851. it is entitled, "_librarian's first report to the books sub-committee on the formation of the library, june 30, 1851, with lists of books suggested for purchase_." the lists are arranged in the following order:- 1. works--collective and miscellaneous--of standard british authors; with a selection of those of the standard authors of america. 2. works relative to the history, topography, and biography of the united kingdom, and of the united states of america. 3. works relative to political economy, finance, trade, commerce, agriculture, mining, manufactures, inland communication, and public works. 4. works relating to physics, mathematics, mechanics, practical engineering, arts, and trades, etc. 5. voyages and travels. 6. works on zoology, botany, mineralogy, and geology. 7. periodical publications and transactions of learned societies (not included in lists 2, 3, or 6), collections, encyclopædias, gazetteers, atlases, dictionaries, bibliographies, indexes, etc. these draft lists include 4582 distinct works, extending to about 12,438 volumes, including pamphlets, but exclusive of 553 parliamentary papers and reports, or _blue books_. such a practically useful collection of lists of books will not easily be found elsewhere. mr. edwards gives some rules for the formation of libraries in the second volume of his _memoirs of libraries_ (p. 629), where he writes, "no task is more likely to strip a man of self-conceit than that of having to frame, and to carry out in detail a plan for the formation of a large library. when he has once got beyond those departments of knowledge in which his own pursuits and tastes have specially interested him, the duty becomes a difficult one, and the certainty, that with his best efforts, it will be very imperfectly performed is embarrassing and painful. if, on the other hand, the task be imposed upon a 'committee,' there ensues almost the certainty that its execution will depend at least as much on chance as on plan: that responsibility will be so attenuated as to pass off in vapour; and that the collection so brought together will consist of parts bearing but a chaotic sort of relation to the whole." mr. henry stevens printed in 1853 his pretty little book entitled _catalogue of my english library_, which contains a very useful selection of standard books. in his introduction the author writes, "it was my intention in the outset not to exceed 4000 volumes, but little by little the list has increased to 5751 volumes. i have been considerably puzzled to know what titles to strike out in my next impression, being well aware that what is trash to one person is by no means such to another; also that many books of more merit than those admitted have been omitted. you may not think it difficult to strike out twenty authors, and to add twenty better ones in their place, but let me relate to you a parable. i requested twenty men, whose opinions on the literary exchange are as good as those of the barings or the rothschilds on the royal, each to expunge twenty authors and to insert twenty others of better standing in their places, promising to exclude in my next impression any author who should receive more than five votes. the result was, as may be supposed, not a single expulsion or addition." in 1855 mons. hector bossange produced a companion volume, entitled _ma bibliothèque française_. it contains a select list of about 7000 volumes, and is completed with indexes of subjects, authors, and persons. for helpful bibliographical guides we often have to look to the united states, and we do not look in vain. a most useful handbook, entitled _the best reading_, was published in 1872 by george p. putman, and the work edited by f.b. perkins is now in its fourth edition.[2] the books are arranged in an alphabet of subjects, and the titles are short, usually being well within a single line. a very useful system of appraisement of the value of the books is adopted. thus: _a_, means that the book so marked is considered _the_ book, or as good as any, _at a moderate cost_; _b_ means, in like manner, the best of the more elaborate or costly books on the subject. in the department of fiction, a more precise classification has been attempted, in which a general idea of the relative importance of the _authors_ is indicated by the use of the letters _a_, _b_, and _c_, and of the relative value of their several works by the asterisks * and **." having noted a few of the guides which are now at hand for the use of the founders of a library, we may be allowed to go back somewhat in time, and consider how our predecessors treated this same subject, and we can then conclude the present introduction with a consideration of the less ambitious attempts to instruct the book collector which may be found in papers and articles. one of the earliest works on the formation of a library was written by bishop cardona, and published at tarragona in 1587, in a thin volume entitled _de regia s. laurentii bibliothecâ. de pontificia vaticana_ [etc.]. justus lipsius wrote his _de bibliothecis syntagma_ at the end of the sixteenth century, and next in importance we come to gabriel naudé, who published one of the most famous of bibliographical essays. the first edition was published at paris in 1627, and the second edition in 1644. this was reprinted in paris by j. liseux in 1876--"_advis pour dresser une bibliothèque, présenté à monseigneur le président de mesme_, par g. naudé p. paris, chez françois farga, 1627." this essay was translated by john evelyn, and dedicated to lord chancellor clarendon. "_instructions concerning erecting of a library_; presented to my lord the president de mesme. by gabriel naudeus p., and now interpreted by jo. evelyn, esquire, london, 1661." naudé enlarges on the value of catalogues, and recommends the book-buyer to make known his desires, so that others may help him in the search, or supply his wants. he specially mentions two modes of forming a library; one is to buy libraries entire, and the other is to hunt at book-stalls. he advised the book-buyer not to spend too much upon bindings. naudé appears to have been a born librarian, for at the early age of twenty the president de mesme appointed him to take charge of his library. he left his employer in 1626, in order to finish his medical studies. cardinal bagni took him to rome, and when bagni died, naudé became librarian to cardinal barberini. richelieu recalled him to paris in 1642, to act as his librarian, but the minister dying soon afterwards, naudé took the same office under mazarin. during the troubles of the fronde, the librarian had the mortification of seeing the library which he had collected dispersed; and in consequence he accepted the offer of queen christina, to become her librarian at stockholm. naudé was not happy abroad, and when mazarin appealed to him to reform his scattered library, he returned at once, but died on the journey home at abbeville, july 29, 1653. the mazarin library consisted of more than 40,000 volumes, arranged in seven rooms filled from top to bottom. it was rich in all classes, but more particularly in law and physic. naudé described it with enthusiasm as "the most beautiful and best furnished of any library now in the world, or that is likely (if affection does not much deceive me) ever to be hereafter." such should be a library in the formation of which the kings and princes and ambassadors of europe were all helpers. naudé in another place called it "the work of my hands and the miracle of my life." great therefore was his dejection when the library was dispersed. of this he said, "beleeve, if you please, that the ruine of this library will be more carefully marked in all histories and calendars, than the taking and sacking of constantinople." naudé's letter on the destruction of the mazarin library was published in london in 1652, and the pamphlet was reprinted in the _harleian miscellany_. "_news from france, or a description of the library of cardinall mazarini, before it was utterly ruined._ sent in a letter from g. naudæus, keeper of the publick library. london, printed for timothy garthwait, 1652." 4to. 4 leaves. in 1650 was published at london, by samuel hartlib, a little book entitled, "_the reformed librarie keeper, with a supplement to the reformed school, as subordinate to colleges in universities._ by john durie. london, william du-gard, 1650."[3] john durie's ideas on the educational value of libraries and the high function of the librarian are similar to those enunciated by carlyle, when he wrote, "the true university of these days is a collection of books." of this point, as elaborated in the proposal to establish professorships of bibliography, we shall have something more to say further on. it is always interesting to see the views of great men exemplified in the selection of books for a library, and we may with advantage study the lists prepared by george iii. and dr. johnson. the king was a collector of the first rank, as is evidenced by his fine library, now in the british museum, and he knew his books well. when he was about to visit weymouth, he wrote to his bookseller for the following books to be supplied to him to form a closet library at that watering place. the list was written from memory, and it was printed by dibdin in his _library companion_, from the original document in the king's own handwriting: the holy bible. 2 vols. 8vo. cambridge. new whole duty of man. 8vo. the annual register. 25 vols. 8vo. the history of england, by rapin. 21 vols. 8vo. 1757. elémens de l'histoire de france, par millot. 3 vols. 12mo. 1770. siècle de louis xiv., par voltaire, 12mo. siècle de louis xv., par voltaire, 12mo. commentaries on the laws of england, by sir william blackstone. 4 vols. 8vo. newest edition. the justice of the peace and parish officer, by r. burn. 4 vols. 8vo. an abridgement of samuel johnson's dictionary. 2 vols. 8vo. dictionnaire françois et anglois, par m.a. boyer. 8vo. the works of the english poets, by sam. johnson. 68 vols. 12mo. a collection of poems, by dodsley, pearch, and mendez. 11 vols. 12mo. a select collection of poems, by j. nichols. 8 vols. 12mo. shakespeare's plays, by steevens. oeuvres de destouches. 5 vols. 12mo. the works of sir william temple. 4 vols. 8vo. the works of jonathan swift. 24 vols. 12mo. dr. johnson recommended the following list of books to the rev. mr. astle, of ashbourne, derbyshire, as a good working collection:- rollin's ancient history. universal history (ancient). puffendorf's introduction to history. vertot's history of the knights of malta. vertot's revolutions of portugal. vertot's revolutions of sweden. carte's history of england. present state of england. geographical grammar. prideaux's connection. nelson's feasts and fasts. duty of man. gentleman's religion. clarendon's history. watts's improvement of the mind. watts's logick. nature displayed. lowth's english grammar. blackwall on the classicks. sherlock's sermons. burnet's life of hale. dupin's history of the church. shuckford's connection. law's serious call. walton's complete angler. sandys's travels. sprat's history of the royal society. england's gazetteer. goldsmith's roman history. some commentaries on the bible. it is curious to notice in both these lists how many of the books are now quite superseded. in another place boswell tells us what were johnson's views on book collecting. "when i mentioned that i had seen in the king's library sixty-three editions of my favourite _thomas à kempis_, amongst which it was in eight languages, latin, german, french, italian, spanish, english, arabick, and armenian, he said he thought it unnecessary to collect many editions of a book, which were all the same, except as to the paper and print; he would have the original, and all the translations, and all the editions which had any variations in the text. he approved of the famous collection of editions of horace by douglas, mentioned by pope, who is said to have had a closet filled with them; and he said every man should try to collect one book in that manner, and present it to a publick library." dr. johnson's notion as to the collection of editions which are alike except in the point of paper is scarcely sound, but it has been held by a librarian of the present day, as i know to my cost. on one occasion i was anxious to see several copies of the first folio of shakespeare (1623), and i visited a certain library which possessed more than one. the librarian expressed the opinion that one was quite sufficient for me to see, as "they were all alike." the possessor of a private library can act as a _censor morum_ and keep out of his collection any books which offend against good morals, but this _role_ is one which is unfit for the librarian of a public library. he may put difficulties in the way of the ordinary reader seeing such books, but nevertheless they should be in his library for the use of the student. a most amusing instance of misapplied zeal occurred at the advocates' library on the 27th june, 1754. the minutes tell the tale in a way that speaks for itself and requires no comment. "mr. james burnet [afterwards lord monboddo], and sir david dalrymple [afterwards lord hailes], curators of the library, having gone through some accounts of books lately bought, and finding therein the three following french books: _les contes de la fontaine_, _l'histoire amoureuse des gaules_ and _l'ecumoire_, they ordain that the said books be struck out of the catalogue of the library, and removed from the shelves, as indecent books, unworthy of a place in a learned library." at a conference of representatives of institutions in union with the society of arts held in july, 1855, the question of the compilation of a catalogue of books fitted for the libraries of institutions was raised, and shortly afterwards was published, under the sanction of the council, "_a handbook of mechanics' institutions, with priced catalogue of books suitable for libraries, and periodicals for reading rooms_, by w.h.j. traice." a second edition of this book was published in 1863. the list, however, is not now of much use, as many of the books have been superseded. theology and politics are not included in the classification. in 1868 mr. mullins read a paper before a meeting of the social science association at birmingham, on the management of free libraries, and, in its reprinted form, this has become a handbook on the subject: "_free libraries and news-rooms, their formation and management._ by j.d. mullins, chief librarian, birmingham free libraries. third edition. london, sotheran and co., 1879." an appendix contains copies of the free libraries acts and amendments, and a "short list of books for a free lending library, ranging in price from 1_s._ to 7_s._ 6_d._ per volume." mr. axon read a paper on the formation of small libraries intended for the co-operative congress in 1869, which was reprinted as a pamphlet of eight pages: "_hints on the formation of small libraries intended for public use._ by wm. e.a. axon. london, n. trübner and co." mr. a.r. spofford has given a valuable list of books and articles in periodicals, on the subject of libraries in chapter 36 (library bibliography), of the _report on public libraries in the u.s._ (1876). the volume of _transactions and proceedings of the conference of librarians_, london, 1877, contains two papers on the selection of books, one by mr. robert harrison, librarian of the london library, and the other by the late mr. james m. anderson, assistant librarian of the university of st. andrews. mr. harrison gives the following as the three guiding principles of selection in forming a library: 1. policy; 2. utility; 3. special or local appropriateness; and he deals with each successively. mr. anderson writes that "the selection of books should invariably be made (1) in relation to the library itself, and (2) in relation to those using it." we have chiefly to do with the formation of libraries, and therefore the use made of them when they are formed cannot well be enlarged upon here, but a passing note may be made on the proposal which has been much discussed of late years, viz. that for professorships of books and reading. the united states report on public libraries contains a chapter on this subject by f.b. perkins and william matthews (pp. 230-251), and mr. axon also contributed a paper at the first annual meeting of the library association. the value of such chairs, if well filled, is self-evident, for it takes a man a long time (without teaching) to learn how best to use books, but very special men would be required as professors. america has done much to show what the duties of such a professor should be, and harvard college is specially fortunate in possessing an officer in mr. justin winsor who is both a model librarian and a practical teacher of the art of how best to use the books under his charge. footnotes: [1] "_the library companion, or the young man's guide and the old man's comfort in the choice of a library._ by the rev. t.f. dibdin, f.r.s., a.s., london, 1824." [2] _the best reading_: hints on the selection of books; on the formation of libraries, public and private; on courses of reading, etc., with a classified bibliography for every reference. fourth revised and enlarged edition, continued to august, 1876, with the addition of select lists of the best french, german, spanish, and italian literature. edited by frederic beecher perkins; new york, g.p. putnam's sons, 1881. second series, 1876 to 1882, by lynds e. jones. [3] dr. richard garnett read an interesting paper on this book under the title of _librarianship in the seventeenth century_, before the library association. see _library chronicle_, vol. i. p. 1 (1884). chapter i. how men have formed libraries. as long as books have existed there have been book collectors. it is easy now to collect, for books of interest are to be found on all sides; but in old times this was not so, and we must therefore admire the more those men who formed their libraries under the greatest difficulties. in a book devoted to the formation of libraries it seems but fair to devote some space to doing honour to those who have formed libraries, and perhaps some practical lessons may be learned from a few historical facts. englishmen may well be proud of richard aungerville de bury, a man occupying a busy and exalted station, who not only collected books with ardour united with judgment, but has left for the benefit of later ages a manual which specially endears his memory to all book lovers. he collected books, and often took them in place of corn for tithes and dues, but he also produced books, for he kept copyists in his house. many of these books were carefully preserved in his palace at durham, but it is also pleasant to think of some of them being carefully preserved in the noble mansion belonging to his see which stood by the side of the thames, and on the site of the present adelphi. petrarch was a book-loving poet, and he is said to have met the book-loving ecclesiastic richard de bury at rome. he gave his library to the church of st. mark at venice in 1362; but the guardians allowed the books to decay, and few were rescued. boccaccio bequeathed his library to the augustinians at florence, but one cannot imagine the books of the accomplished author of the _decameron_ as very well suited for the needs of a religious society, and it was probably weeded before boccaccio's death. the remains of the library are still shown to visitors in the laurentian library, the famous building due to the genius of michael angelo. cardinal john bessarion gave his fine collection (which included about 600 greek mss.) to st. mark's in 1468, and in the letter to the doge which accompanied his gift, he tells some interesting particulars of his early life as a collector. he writes, "from my youth i have bestowed my pains and exertion in the collection of books on various sciences. in former days i copied many with my own hands, and i have employed on the purchase of others such small means as a frugal and thrifty life permitted me to devote to the purpose." the rev. joseph hunter printed in 1831 a valuable catalogue of the library of the priory of bretton in yorkshire, and added to it some notices of the libraries belonging to other religious houses, in which he gives us a good idea of the contents of these libraries. he writes, "on comparing the bretton catalogue with that of other religious communities, we find the libraries of the english monasteries composed of very similar materials. they consisted of- 1. the scriptures; and these always in an english or the latin version. a greek or hebrew manuscript of the scriptures is not found in leland's notes, or, i believe, in any of the catalogues. in wetstein's catalogue of mss. of the new testament, only one (codex 59) is traced into the hands of an english community of religious. 2. the commentators. 3. the fathers. 4. services and rituals of the church. 5. writers in the theological controversies of the middle ages. 6. moral and devotional writings. 7. canon law. 8. the schoolmen. 9. grammatical writers. 10. writers in mathematics and physics. 11. medical writers. 12. collections of epistles. 13. the middle age poets and romance-writers. 14. the latin classics. 15. the chronicles. 16. the historical writings of doubtful authority, commonly called legends. most of the manuscripts which composed the monastic libraries were destroyed at the reformation." humphry plantagenet duke of gloucester, whose fame has been so lasting as the 'good duke humphry,' was also a book-collector of renown; but most of the old libraries we read about have left but little record of their existence: thus the common library at guildhall, founded by dick whittington in 1420, and added to by john carpenter, the town clerk of london, has been entirely destroyed, the books having, in the first instance, been carried away by edward seymour duke of somerset. although, as we have seen from mr. hunter's remarks, there was a considerable amount of variety in the subjects of these manuscript collections, we must still bear in mind that in a large number of instances the contents of the libraries consisted of little more than breviaries and service books. it has been pointed out that this fact is illustrated by the union of the offices of precentor and armarius in one person, who had charge of the library (armarium) and its great feeder, the writing-room (scriptorium), as well as the duty of leading the singing in the church. many lists of old libraries have been preserved, and these have been printed in various bibliographical works, thus giving us a valuable insight into the reading of our forefathers. when we come to consider libraries of printed books in place of manuscripts, we naturally find a greater variety of subjects collected by the famous men who have formed collections. montaigne, the friend of all literary men, could not have been the man we know him to have been if he had not lived among his books. like many a later book-lover, he decorated his library with mottoes, and burnt-in his inscriptions letter by letter with his own hands. grotius made his love of books do him a special service, for he escaped from prison in a box which went backwards and forwards with an exchange of books for his entertainment and instruction. grolier and de thou stand so pre-eminent among book collectors, and from the beauty of the copies they possessed the relics of their libraries are so frequently seen, that it seems merely necessary here to mention their names. but as frenchmen may well boast of these men, so englishmen can take pride in the possession of the living memory of archbishop parker, who enriched cambridge, and of sir thomas bodley, who made the library at oxford one of the chief glories of our land. old lists of books are always of interest to us as telling what our forefathers cared to have about them, but it is seldom that a list is so tantalising as one described by mr. edward edwards in his _libraries and founders of libraries_. anne of denmark presented her son charles with a splendid series of volumes, bound in crimson and purple velvet. abraham van der dort, who was keeper of charles's cabinet, made an inventory of this cabinet; and having no notion of how to make a catalogue of books, he has managed to leave out all the information we wish for. the inventory is among the harleian mss. (4718), and the following are specimens of the entries:- "im'pris 19 books in crimson velvet, whereof 18 are bound 4to. and y^e 19th in folio, adorn'd with some silver guilt plate, and y^e 2 claspes wanting. given to y^e king by queen ann of famous memory. item, more 15 books, 13 thereof being in long 4to. and y^e 2 lesser cover'd over also with purple velvet. given also to y^e king by y^e said queen ann." most of the famous private libraries of days gone by have left little record of their existence, but evelyn's collection is still carefully preserved at wotton, the house of the diarist's later years, and pepys's books continue at cambridge in the cases he had made for them, and in the order he fixed for them. in a long letter to pepys, dated from sayes court, 12th august, 1689, evelyn gives an account of such private libraries as he knew of in england, and in london more particularly. he first mentions lord chancellor clarendon, to whom he dedicated his translation of naudé's advice, and who "furnished a very ample library." evelyn observes that england was peculiarly defective in good libraries: "paris alone, i am persuaded, being able to show more than all the three nations of great britain." he describes dr. stillingfleet's, at twickenham, as the very best library.[4] he did not think much either of the earl of bristol's or of sir kenelm digby's books, but he says lord maitland's "was certainly the noblest, most substantial and accomplished library that ever passed under the spear." in a useful little volume published at london in 1739, and entitled, _a critical and historical account of all the celebrated libraries in foreign countries, as well ancient as modern_, which is stated to be written by "a gentleman of the temple," are some "general reflections upon the choice of books and the method of furnishing libraries and cabinets." as these reflections are interesting in themselves, and curious as the views of a writer of the middle of the eighteenth century on this important subject, i will transfer them bodily to these pages. "nothing can be more laudable than forming libraries, when the founders have no other view than to improve themselves and men of letters: but it will be necessary, in the first place, to give some directions, which will be of great importance towards effecting the design, as well with regard to the choice of books as the manner of placing to advantage: nor is it sufficient in this case, to be learned, since he who would have a collection worthy of the name of a library must of all things have a thorough knowledge of books, that he may distinguish such as are valuable from the trifling. he must likewise understand the price of books, otherwise he may purchase some at too high a rate, and undervalue others: all which requires no small judgment and experience. "let us suppose, then, the founder possessed of all those qualifications, three things fall next under consideration. "first, the number of books; secondly, their quality; and, lastly, the order in which they ought to be ranged. "as to the quantity, regard must be had, as well to places as to persons; for should a man of moderate fortune propose to have a library for his own use only, it would be imprudent in him to embarrass his affairs in order to effect it. under such circumstances he must rather consider the usefulness than the number of books, for which we have the authority of seneca, who tells us that a multitude of books is more burthensome than instructive to the understanding. "but if a private person has riches enough for founding a library, as well for his own use as for the public, he ought to furnish it with the most useful volumes in all arts and sciences, and procure such as are scarcest and most valuable, from all parts, that the learned, of whom there are many classes, may instruct themselves in what may be useful to them, and may gratify their enquiries. but as the condition and abilities of such as would form libraries are to be distinguished, so regard must likewise be had to places, for it is very difficult to procure, or collect books in some countries, without incredible expense; a design of that kind would be impracticable in america, africa, and some parts of asia; so that nothing can be determined as to the number of books, that depending entirely upon a variety of circumstances, and the means of procuring them, as has been observ'd before. "as to the second topic, special care must be taken in the choice of books, for upon that alone depends the value of a library. we must not form a judgment of books either by their bulk or numbers, but by their intrinsic merit and usefulness. alexander severus's library consisted of no more than four volumes, that is the works of plato, cicero, virgil, and horace. melanchthon seems to have imitated that prince, for his collection amounted to four books only, plato, pliny, plutarch, and ptolemy. "there is another necessary lesson for those who form designs of making libraries, that is, that they must disengage themselves from all prejudices with regard either to ancient or modern books, for such a wrong step often precipitates the judgment, without scrutiny or examination, as if truth and knowledge were confined to any particular times or places. the ancients and moderns should be placed in collections, indifferently, provided they have those characters we hinted before. "let us now proceed to the third head, the manner of placing books in such order, as that they may be resorted to upon any emergency, without difficulty, otherwise they can produce but little advantage either to the owners or others. "the natural method of placing books and manuscripts is to range them in separate classes or apartments, according to the science, art, or subject, of which they treat. "here it will be necessary to observe, that as several authors have treated of various subjects, it may be difficult to place them under any particular class; plutarch, for instance, who was an historian, a political writer, and a philosopher. the most advisable method then is to range them under the head of miscellaneous authors, with proper references to each subject, but this will be more intelligible by an example. "suppose, then, we would know the names of the celebrated historians of the ancients; nothing more is necessary than to inspect the class under which the historians are placed, and so of other faculties. by this management, one set of miscellaneous authors will be sufficient, and may be resorted to with as much ease and expedition as those who have confined themselves to one subject. in choice of books regard must be had to the edition, character, paper and binding. as to the price, it is difficult to give any positive directions; that of ordinary works is easily known, but as to such as are very scarce and curious, we can only observe that their price is as uncertain as that of medals and other monuments of antiquity, and often depends more on the caprice of the buyer than the intrinsic merit of the work, some piquing themselves upon the possession of things from no other consideration than their exorbitant price." dr. byrom's quaint library is still preserved at manchester in its entirety. bishop moore's fine collection finds a resting place in the university library at cambridge, and the relics of the library of harley, earl of oxford, a mine of manuscript treasure, still remain one of the chief glories of the british museum. how much cause for regret is there that the library itself, which osborne bought and johnson described, did not also find a settled home, instead of being dispersed over the land. it is greatly to the credit of the rich and busy man to spend his time and riches in the collection of a fine library, but still greater honour is due to the poor man who does not allow himself to be pulled down by his sordid surroundings. the once-famous small-coalman, thomas britton, furnishes a most remarkable instance of true greatness in a humble station, and one, moreover, which was fully recognized in his own day. he lived next door to st. john's gate, clerkenwell, and although he gained his living by selling coals from door to door, many persons of the highest station were in the habit of attending the musical meetings held at his house. he was an excellent chemist as well as a good musician, and thomas hearne tells us that he left behind him "a valuable collection of musick mostly pricked by himself, which was sold upon his death for near an hundred pounds," "a considerable collection of musical instruments which was sold for fourscore pounds," "not to mention the excellent collection of printed books that he also left behind him, both of chemistry and musick. besides these books that he left, he had some years before his death (1714) sold by auction a noble collection of books, most of them in the rosicrucian faculty (of which he was a great admirer), whereof there is a printed catalogue extant, as there is of those that were sold after his death, which catalogue i have by me (by the gift of my very good friend mr. bagford), and have often looked over with no small surprize and wonder, and particularly for the great number of mss. in the before-mentioned faculties that are specified in it."[5] dr. johnson, although a great reader, was not a collector of books. he was forced to possess many volumes while he was compiling his dictionary, but when that great labour was completed, he no longer felt the want of them. goldsmith, on the other hand, died possessed of a considerable number of books which he required, or had at some time required, for his studies. "the select collection of scarce, curious, and valuable books, in english, latin, greek, french, italian, and other languages, late the library of dr. goldsmith, deceased," was sold on tuesday, the 12th of july, 1774, and the catalogue will be found in the appendix to forster's life. there were 30 lots in folio, 26 in quarto, and 106 in octavo and smaller sizes. among the books of interest in this list are chaucer's works, 1602; davenant's works, 1673; camoens, by fanshawe, 1655; cowley's works, 1674; shelton's don quixote; raleigh's history of the world, 1614; bulwer's artificial changeling, 1653; verstegan's antiquities, 1634; hartlib's legacie, 1651; sir k. digby on the nature of bodies, 1645; warton's history of english poetry, 1774; encyclopédie, 25 vols., 1770; fielding's works, 12 vols., 1766; bysshe's art of poetry; hawkins's origin of the english drama, 3 vols., 1773; percy's reliques, 3 vols., dublin, 1766; sir william temple's works; and de bure, bibliographie instructive. a catalogue such as this, made within a few weeks of the death of the owner, cannot but have great interest for us. the library could not have been a very choice one, for there is little notice of bindings and much mention of odd volumes. it was evidently a working collection, containing the works of the poets goldsmith loved, and of the naturalists from whom he stole his knowledge. gibbon was a true collector, who loved his books, and he must have needed them greatly, working as he did at lausanne away from public libraries. after his death the library was purchased by 'vathek' beckford, but he kept it buried, and it was of no use to any one. eventually it was sold by auction, a portion being bought for the canton, and another portion going to america. there was little in the man gibbon to be enthusiastic about, but it is impossible for any true book lover not to delight in the thoroughness of the author of one of the noblest books ever written. the fine old house where the _decline and fall_ was written and the noble library was stored still stands, and the traveller may stroll in the garden so beautifully described by gibbon when he walked to the historical _berceau_ and felt that his herculean labour was completed. his heart must be preternaturally dull which does not beat quicker as he walks on that ground. the thought of a visit some years ago forms one of the most vivid of the author's pleasures of memory. charles burney, the greek scholar, is said to have expended nearly £25,000 on his library, which consisted of more than 13,000 printed volumes and a fine collection of mss. the library was purchased for the british museum for the sum of £13,500. charles burney probably inherited his love of collecting from his father, for dr. burney possessed some twenty thousand volumes. these were rather an incumbrance to the doctor, and when he moved to chelsea hospital, he was in some difficulty respecting them. mrs. chapone, when she heard of these troubles, proved herself no bibliophile, for she exclaimed, "twenty thousand volumes! bless me! why, how can he so encumber himself? why does he not burn half? for how much must be to spare that never can be worth his looking at from such a store! and can he want to keep them all?" the love of books will often form a tie of connection between very divergent characters, and in dealing with men who have formed libraries we can bring together the names of those who had but little sympathy with each other during life. george iii. was a true book collector, and the magnificent library now preserved in the british museum owes its origin to his own judgment and enthusiastic love for the pursuit. louis xvi. cared but little for books until his troubles came thick upon him, and then he sought solace from their pages. during that life in the temple we all know so well from the sad reading of its incidents, books were not denied to the persecuted royal family. there was a small library in the "little tower," and the king drew up a list of books to be supplied to him from the library at the tuileries. the list included the works of virgil, horace, ovid, and terence; of tacitus, livy, cæsar, marcus aurelius, eutropius, cornelius nepos, florus, justin, quintus curtius, sallust, suetonius and velleius paterculus; the _vies des saints_, the _fables de la fontaine_, _télèmaque_, and rollin's _traité des etudes_.[6] the more we know of napoleon, and anecdotes of him are continually being published in the ever-lengthening series of french memoirs, the less heroic appears his figure, but he could not have been entirely bad, for he truly loved books. he began life as an author, and would always have books about him. he complained if the printing was bad or the binding poor, and said, "i will have fine editions and handsome binding. i am rich enough for that."[7] thus spoke the true bibliophile. mr. edwards has collected much interesting information respecting napoleon and his libraries, and of his labours i here freely avail myself. bourrienne affirms that the authors who chiefly attracted napoleon in his school days were polybius, plutarch, and arrian. "shortly before he left france for egypt, napoleon drew up, with his own hand, the scheme of a travelling library, the charge of collecting which was given to john baptist say, the economist. it comprised about three hundred and twenty volumes, more than half of which are historical, and nearly all, as it seems, in french. the ancient historians comprised in the list are thucydides, plutarch, polybius, arrian, tacitus, livy, and justin. the poets are homer, virgil, tasso, ariosto, the _télèmaque_ of fénélon, the _henriade_ of voltaire, with ossian and la fontaine. among the works of prose fiction are the english novelists in forty volumes, of course in translations, and the indispensable _sorrows of werter_, which, as he himself told goethe, napoleon had read through seven times prior to october, 1808. in this list the bible, together with the _koran_ and the _vedas_, are whimsically, but significantly, entered under the heading politics and ethics (politique et morale).[8] napoleon was not, however, satisfied with the camp libraries which were provided for him; the good editions were too bulky and the small editions too mean: so he arranged the plan of a library to be expressly printed for him in a thousand duodecimo volumes without margins, bound in thin covers and with loose backs. "in this new plan 'religion' took its place as the first class. the bible was to be there in its best translation, with a selection of the most important works of the fathers of the church, and a series of the best dissertations on those leading religious sects--their doctrines and their history--which have powerfully influenced the world. this section was limited to forty volumes. the koran was to be included, together with a good book or two on mythology. one hundred and forty volumes were allotted to poetry. the epics were to embrace homer, lucan, tasso, _telemachus_, and the _henriade_. in the dramatic portion corneille and racine were of course to be included, but of corneille, said napoleon, you shall print for me 'only what is vital' (ce qui est resté), and from racine you shall omit '_les frères ennemis_, the _alexandre_, and _les plaideurs_. of crébillon, he would have only _rhadamiste_ and _atrée et thyeste_. voltaire was to be subject to the same limitation as corneille.'"[9] in prose fiction napoleon specifies the _nouvelle héloise_ and rousseau's _confessions_, the masterpieces of fielding, richardson and le sage, and voltaire's tales. soon after this napoleon proposed a much larger scheme for a camp library, in which history alone would occupy three thousand volumes. history was to be divided into these sections--i. chronology and universal history. ii. ancient history (_a._ by ancient writers, _b._ by modern writers). iii. history of the lower empire (in like subdivisions). iv. history, both general and particular. v. the modern history of the different states of europe. the celebrated bibliographer barbier drew up, according to the emperor's orders, a detailed catalogue of the works which should form such a library. "he calculated that by employing a hundred and twenty compositors and twenty-five editors, the three thousand volumes could be produced, in satisfactory shape, and within six years, at a total cost of £163,200, supposing fifty copies of each book to be printed."[10] the printing was begun, but little was actually done, and in six years napoleon was in st. helena. in his last island home napoleon had a library, and he read largely, often aloud, with good effect. it is an interesting fact that among napoleon's papers were found some notes on geography written when a boy, and these close with the words--"_sainte-hélène--petite ile_."[11] in recapitulating here the names of a few of the famous men who have formed libraries it will be necessary to divide them into two classes, 1, those whose fame arises from their habit of collecting, and 2, those authors in whose lives we are so much interested that the names of the books they possessed are welcomed by us as indications of their characters. what can be said of the libraries of the duke of roxburghe, earl spencer, thomas grenville, and richard heber that has not been said often before? two of these have been dispersed over the world, and two remain, one the glory of a noble family, and the other of the nation, or perhaps it would be more proper to say both are the glory of the nation, for every englishman must be proud that the spencer library still remains intact. heber left behind him over 100,000 volumes, in eight houses, four in england and four on the continent, and no record remains of this immense library but the volumes of the sale catalogues. such wholesale collection appears to be allied to madness, but heber was no selfish collector, and his practice was as liberal as grolier's motto. his name is enshrined in lasting verse by scott:- "thy volumes, open as thy heart, delight, amusement, science, art, to every ear and eye impart; yet who of all that thus employ them, can like the owner's self enjoy them?- but hark! i hear the distant drum: the day of flodden field is come- adieu, dear heber! life and health, and store of literary wealth." --marmion, _introduction to the sixth canto_. the duke of sussex was a worthy successor of his father, george iii., in the ranks of book-collectors, and his library is kept in memory by pettigrew's fine catalogue. douce and malone the critics, and gough the antiquary, left their libraries to the bodleian, and thus many valuable books are available to students in that much-loved resort of his at oxford. anthony morris storer, who is said to have excelled in everything he set his heart on and hand to, collected a beautiful library, which he bequeathed to eton college, where it still remains, a joy to look at from the elegance of the bindings. his friend lord carlisle wrote of him- "whether i storer sing in hours of joy, when every look bespeaks the inward boy; or when no more mirth wantons in his breast, and all the man in him appears confest; in mirth, in sadness, sing him how i will, sense and good nature must attend him still." jacob bryant the antiquary left his library to king's college, cambridge. at one time he intended to have followed storer's example, and have left it to eton college, but the provost offended him, and he changed the object of his bequest. it is said that when he was discussing the matter, the provost asked whether he would not arrange for the payment of the carriage of the books from his house to eton. he thought this grasping, and king's gained the benefit of his change of mind. among great authors two of the chief collectors were scott and southey. scott's library still remains at abbotsford, and no one who has ever entered that embodiment of the great man's soul can ever forget it. the library, with the entire contents of the house, were restored to scott in 1830 by his trustees and creditors, "as the best means the creditors have of expressing their very high sense of his most honourable conduct, and in grateful acknowledgment of the unparalleled and most successful exertions he has made, and continues to make for them." the library is rich in the subjects which the great author loved, such as demonology and witchcraft. in a volume of a collection of ballads and chapbooks is this note written by scott in 1810: "this little collection of stall tracts and ballads was formed by me, when a boy, from the baskets of the travelling pedlars. until put into its present decent binding, it had such charms for the servants, that it was repeatedly, and with difficulty, recovered from their clutches. it contains most of the pieces that were popular about thirty years since, and i dare say many that could not now be procured for any price." it is odd to contrast the book-loving tastes of celebrated authors. southey cared for his books, but coleridge would cut the leaves of a book with a butter knife, and de quincey's extraordinary treatment of books is well described by mr. burton in the _book hunter_. charles lamb's loving appreciation of his books is known to all readers of the delightful elia. southey collected more than 14,000 volumes, which sold in 1844 for nearly £3000. he began collecting as a boy, for his father had but few books. mr. edwards enumerates these as follows: the _spectator_, three or four volumes of the _oxford magazine_, one volume of the _freeholder's magazine_, and one of the _town and country magazine_, pomfret's _poems_, the _death of abel_, nine plays (including _julius cæsar_, _the indian queen_, and a translation of _merope_), and a pamphlet.[12] southey was probably one of the most representative of literary men. his feelings in his library are those of all book-lovers, although he could express these feelings in language which few of them have at command:- my days among the dead are passed; around me i behold, where'er these casual eyes are cast, the mighty minds of old: my never-failing friends are they, with whom i converse day by day. with them i take delight in weal, and seek relief in woe; and while i understand and feel how much to them i owe, my cheeks have often been bedewed with tears of thoughtful gratitude. my thoughts are with the dead; with them i live in long-past years; their virtues love, their faults condemn, partake their hopes and fears, and from their lessons seek and find instruction with a humble mind. my hopes are with the dead; anon my place with them will be and i with them shall travel on through all futurity; yet leaving here a name, i trust, that will not perish in the dust. mr. henry stevens read a paper or rather delivered an address at the meeting of the library association held at liverpool in 1883, containing his recollections of mr. james lenox, the great american book collector. i had the pleasure of listening to that address, but i have read it in its finished form with even greater delight. it is not often that he who pleases you as a speaker also pleases you as writer, but mr. stevens succeeds in both. if more bibliographers could write their reminiscences with the same spirit that he does, we should hear less of the dullness of bibliography. i strongly recommend my readers to take an early opportunity of perusing this paper in the liverpool volume of the transactions of the library association. mr. stevens, among his anecdotes of mr. lenox, records that he "often bought duplicates for immediate use, or to lend, rather than grope for the copies he knew to be in the stocks in some of his store rooms or chambers, notably stirling's _artists of spain_, a high-priced book." this is a common trouble to large book collectors, who cannot find the books they know they possess. the late mr. crossley had his books stacked away in heaps, and he was often unable to lay his hands upon books of which he had several copies. footnotes: [4] narcissus marsh, archbishop of armagh, is said to have given £2500 for bishop stillingfleet's library. [5] _reliquiæ hearnianæ_, by bliss, 2nd edition, 1869, vol. ii. p. 14. [6] edwards, _libraries and founders of libraries_, p. 115. [7] edwards, _libraries and founders_, p. 136. [8] _correspondance de napoleon i^er_, iv. pp. 37, 38, quoted by edwards, _libraries and founders_, p. 130. [9] edwards, _libraries and founders_, p. 133. [10] edwards, _libraries and founders_, p. 135. [11] edwards, _libraries and founders_, p. 142. [12] _libraries and founders of libraries_, p. 95. chapter ii. how to buy. a discussion has arisen lately in bibliographical journals as to how best to supply libraries with their books, the main principle agreed upon being that it is the duty of the librarian to buy his books as cheaply as possible. some of these views are stated by mr. h.r. tedder in a letter printed in the _library chronicle_ for july, 1884 (vol. i. p. 120). it appears that professor dziatzko contends that the books should always be bought as cheaply as possible, but that dr. julius petzholdt holds the opinion that the chief object of the librarian should be to get his books as early as possible and not to wait until they can be had at second-hand. mr. tedder thinks that the two plans of rapidity of supply and cheapness of cost can in some respect be united. of course there can be no difference of opinion in respect to the duty of the librarian to get as much for his money as he can, but there are other points which require to be considered besides those brought forward before a satisfactory answer to the question--how to buy? can be obtained. there are three points which seem to have been very much overlooked in the discussion, which may be stated here. 1. is the librarian's valuable time well occupied by looking after cheap copies of books? 2. will not the proposed action on the part of librarians go far to abolish the intelligent second-hand bookseller in the same way as the new bookseller has been well-nigh abolished in consequence of large discounts? 3. will not such action prevent the publication of excellent books on subjects little likely to be popular? 1. most librarians find their time pretty well occupied by the ordinary duties of buying, arranging, cataloguing, and finding the books under their charge, and it will be generally allowed that the librarian's first duty is to be in his library, ready to attend to those who wish to consult him. now the value of his time can be roughly estimated for this purpose in money, and the value of the time spent in doing work which could be as well or better done by a bookseller should fairly be added to the cost of the books. 2. it has hitherto been thought advisable to have one or more second-hand booksellers attached to an important library, from whom the librarian may naturally expect to obtain such books as he requires. of course a man of knowledge and experience must be paid for the exercise of these qualities, but the price of books is so variable that it is quite possible that the bookseller, from his knowledge, may buy the required books cheaper than the librarian himself would pay for them. as far as it is possible to judge from the information given us respecting the collection of libraries, bookbuyers have little to complain of as to the price paid by them to such respectable booksellers as have acted as their agents. perhaps too little stress has been laid upon that characteristic which is happily so common among honest men, viz. that the agent is as pleased to get wares cheap for a good customer as for himself. mr. tedder says in his letter, "for rarer books i still consider it safer and cheaper in the long run to cultivate business relations with one or more second-hand booksellers, and pay them for their knowledge and experience." but is this quite fair, and is it not likely that the rarer books will be supplied cheaper if the bookseller is allowed to pay himself partly out of the sale of the commoner books, which it is now proposed the librarian shall buy himself? my contention is that it is for the advantage of libraries that intelligent booksellers, ready to place their knowledge at the service of the librarians, should exist, and it is unwise and uneconomic to do that which may cause this class to cease to exist. sellers of books must always exist, but it is possible to drive out of the trade those who do it the most honour. we see what has occurred in the new book trade, and there can be little doubt that the book-buyer loses much more than he gains by the present system of discount. when the bookseller could obtain sufficient profit by the sale of new books to keep his shop open, it was worth his while to take some trouble in finding the book required; but now that the customer expects to buy a book at trade price, he cannot be surprised if he does not give full particulars as to the publisher of the book he requires if it is reported to him as "not known." those only who, by taking a large quantity of copies, obtain an extra discount, can make new bookselling pay. 3. there are a large number of books which, although real additions to literature, can only be expected to obtain a small number of readers and buyers. some of these are not taken by the circulating libraries, and publishers, in making their calculations, naturally count upon supplying some of the chief libraries of the country. if these libraries wait till the book is second-hand, the number of sales is likely to be so much reduced that it is not worth while to publish the book at all, to the evident damage of the cause of learning. it has been often suggested that an arrangement should be made by libraries in close proximity, so that the same expensive book should not be bought by more than one of the libraries. no doubt this is advantageous in certain circumstances, but in the case of books with a limited sale it would have the same consequence as stated above, and the book would not be published at all, or be published at a loss. selden wrote in his _table talk_: "the giving a bookseller his price for his books has this advantage; he that will do so, shall have the refusal of whatsoever comes to his hand, and so by that means get many things which otherwise he never should have seen." and the dictum is as true now as it was in his time. many special points arise for consideration when we deal with the question--how to buy at sales? and mr. edward edwards gives the following four rules for the guidance of the young book-buyer (_memoirs of libraries_, vol. ii. p. 645): 1. the examination of books before the sale, not during it. 2. a steady unintermittent bidding up to his predetermined limit, for all the books which he wants, from the first lot to the last; and--if there be any signs of a "combination"--for a few others which he may _not_ want. 3. careful avoidance of all interruptions and conversation; with especial watchfulness of the hammer immediately after the disposal of those especially seductive lots, which may have excited a keen and spirited competition. (there is usually on such occasions a sort of "lull," very favourable to the acquisition of good bargains.) 4. the uniform preservation and storing up of priced catalogues of all important sales for future reference. a case of conscience arises as to whether it is fit and proper for two buyers to agree not to oppose each other at a public sale. mr. edwards says, "at the sales lord spencer was a liberal opponent as well as a liberal bidder. when mason's books were sold, for example, in 1798, lord spencer agreed with the duke of roxburghe that they would not oppose each other, in bidding for some books of excessive rarity, but when both were very earnest in their longings, "toss up, after the book was bought, to see who should win it." thus it was that the duke obtained his unique, but imperfect, copy of caxton's _historye of kynge blanchardyn and prince eglantyne_, which, however, came safely to althorp fourteen years later, at a cost of two hundred and fifteen pounds; the duke having given but twenty guineas."[13] it is easy to understand the inducement which made these two giants agree not to oppose each other, but the agreement was dangerously like a "knock-out." mr. henry stevens (in his _recollections of mr. james lenox_) boldly deals with this question, and condemns any such agreement. he writes, "shortly after, in 1850, there occurred for sale at the same auction rooms a copy of '_aratus, phaenomena_,' paris, 1559, in 4^o, with a few manuscript notes, and this autograph signature on the title, 'jo. milton, pre. 2_s._ 6_d._ 1631.' this i thought would be a desirable acquisition for mr. lenox, and accordingly i ventured to bid for it as far as £40, against my late opponent for the drake map, but he secured it at £40 10_s._, remarking that 'mr. panizzi will not thank you for, thus running the british museum.' 'that remark,' i replied, 'is apparently one of your gratuities. mr. panizzi is, i think, too much a man of the world to grumble at a fair fight. he has won this time, though at considerable cost, and i am sure mr. lenox will be the first to congratulate him on securing such a prize for the british museum.' 'i did not know you were bidding for mr. lenox.' 'it was not necessary that you should.' 'perhaps at another time,' said he, 'we may arrange the matter beforehand, so as not to oppose each other.' 'very well,' i replied, 'if you will bring me a note from mr. panizzi something to this effect: 'mr. stevens, please have a knock-out with the bearer, the agent of the british museum, on lot **, and greatly oblige mr. john bull and your obdt. servant, a.p.,' i will consider the proposition, and if mr. lenox, or any other of my interested correspondents, is not unwilling to combine or conspire to rob or cheat the proprietors, the 'thing' may possibly be done. meanwhile, until this arrangement is concluded, let us hold our tongues and pursue an honest course.' that man never again suggested to me to join him in a 'knock-out.'" in another place mr. stevens relates his own experience as to holding two commissions, and the necessity of buying the book above the amount of the lowest of the two. the circumstance relates to a copy of the small octavo latin edition of the _columbus letter_, in eight leaves, at the first libri sale, feb. 19, 1849. mr. stevens writes, "mr. brown ordered this lot with a limit of 25 guineas, and mr. lenox of £25. now as my chief correspondents had been indulged with a good deal of liberty, scarcely ever considering their orders completely executed till they had received the books and decided whether or not they would keep them, i grew into the habit of considering all purchases my own until accepted and paid for. consequently when positive orders were given, which was very seldom, i grew likewise into the habit of buying the lot as cheaply as possible, and then awarding it to the correspondent who gave the highest limit. this is not always quite fair to the owner; but in my case it would have been unfair to myself to make my clients compete, as not unfrequently the awarded lot was declined and had to go to another. well, in the case of this columbus letter, though i had five or six orders, i purchased it for £16 10_s._, and, accordingly, as had been done many times before within the last five or six years without a grumble, i awarded it to the highest limit, and sent the little book to mr. john carter brown. hitherto, in cases of importance, mr. lenox had generally been successful, because he usually gave the highest limit. but in this case he rebelled. he wrote that the book had gone under his commission of £25, that he knew nobody else in the transaction, and that he insisted on having it, or he should at once transfer his orders to some one else. i endeavoured to vindicate my conduct by stating our long-continued practice, with which he was perfectly well acquainted, but without success. he grew more and more peremptory, insisting on having the book solely on the ground that it went under his limit. at length, after some months of negotiation, mr. brown, on being made acquainted with the whole correspondence, very kindly, to relieve me of the dilemma, sent the book to mr. lenox without a word of comment or explanation, except that, though it went also below his higher limit, he yielded it to mr. lenox for peace.... from that time i resorted, in cases of duplicate orders from them, to the expedient of always putting the lot in at one bid above the lower limit, which, after all, i believe is the fairer way in the case of positive orders. this sometimes cost one of them a good deal more money, but it abated the chafing and generally gave satisfaction. both thought the old method the fairest when they got the prize. but i was obliged, on the new system of bidding, to insist on the purchaser keeping the book without the option of returning it." there can be no doubt that the latter plan was the most satisfactory. some persons appear to be under the impression that whatever a book fetches at a public sale must be its true value, and that, as the encounter is open and public, too much is not likely to be paid by the buyer; but this is a great mistake, and prices are often realized at a good sale which are greatly in advance of those at which the same books are standing unsold in second-hand booksellers' shops. much knowledge is required by those who wish to buy with success at sales. books vary greatly in price at different periods, and it is a mistake to suppose, from the high prices realized at celebrated sales, which are quoted in all the papers, that books are constantly advancing in price. although many have gone up, many others have gone down, and at no time probably were good and useful books to be bought so cheap as now. if we look at old sale catalogues we shall find early printed books, specimens of old english poetry and the drama, fetching merely a fraction of what would have to be given for them now; but, on the other hand, we shall find pounds then given for standard books which would not now realize the same number of shillings; this is specially the case with classics. the following passage from hearne's _diaries_ on the fluctuations in prices is of interest in this connection:--"the editions of classicks of the first print (commonly called _editones principes_) that used to go at prodigious prices are now strangely lowered; occasioned in good measure by mr. thomas rawlinson, my friend, being forced to sell many of his books, in whose auction these books went cheap, tho' english history and antiquities went dear: and yet this gentleman was the chief man that raised many curious and classical books so high, by his generous and courageous way of bidding."[14] these first editions, however, realize large prices at the present time, as has been seen at the sale of the sunderland library. it is experience only that will give the necessary knowledge to the book buyer, and no rules laid down in books can be of any real practical value in this case. persons who know nothing of books are too apt to suppose that what they are inclined to consider exorbitant prices are matters of caprice, but this is not so. there is generally a very good reason for the high price. we must remember that year by year old and curious books become scarcer, and the number of libraries where they are locked up increase; thus while the demand is greater, the supply diminishes, and the price naturally becomes higher. a unique first edition of a great author is surely a possession to be proud of, and it is no ignoble ambition to wish to obtain it. footnotes: [13] _libraries and founders of libraries_, 1864, p. 404. [14] _reliquiæ hearnianæ_, 1869, vol. ii. p. 158. chapter iii. public libraries. libraries may broadly be divided into public and private, and as private libraries will vary according to the special idiosyncrasies of their owners, so still more will public libraries vary in character according to the public they are intended for. the answer therefore to the question--how to form a public library?--must depend upon the character of the library which it is proposed to form. up to the period when free town libraries were first formed, collections of books were usually intended for students; but when the public libraries' acts were passed, a great change took place, and libraries being formed for general readers, and largely with the object of fostering the habit of reading, an entirely new idea of libraries came into existence. the old idea of a library was that of a place where books that were wanted could be found, but the new idea is that of an educational establishment, where persons who know little or nothing of books can go to learn what to read. the new idea has naturally caused a number of points to be discussed which were never thought of before. but even in town libraries there will be great differences. thus in such places as birmingham, liverpool, and manchester, the free libraries should be smaller british museums, and in this spirit their founders have worked; but in smaller and less important towns a more modest object has to be kept in view, and the wants of readers, more than those of consulters of books, have to be considered. mr. beriah botfield has given a very full account of the contents of the libraries spread about the country and associated with the different cathedrals in his _notes on the cathedral libraries of england_, 1849. these libraries have mostly been formed upon the same plan, and consist very largely of the works of the fathers, and of old divinity. some contain also old editions of the classics, and others fine early editions of english authors. in former times these libraries were much neglected, and many of the books were lost; but the worst instance of injury to a library occurred at lincoln at the beginning of the present century, when a large number of caxtons, pynsons, wynkyn de wordes, etc., were sold to dr. dibdin, and modern books purchased for the library with the proceeds. dibdin printed a list of his treasures under the title of "the lincolne nosegay." mr. botfield has reprinted this catalogue in his book. the first chapter of the _united states report on public libraries_ is devoted to public libraries a hundred years ago. mr. h.e. scudder there describes some american libraries which were founded in the last century. one of these was the loganian library of philadelphia. here is an extract from the will of james logan, the founder-"in my library, which i have left to the city of philadelphia for the advancement and facilitating of classical learning, are above one hundred volumes of authors, in folio, all in greek, with mostly their versions. all the roman classics without exception. all the greek mathematicians, viz. archimedes, euclid, ptolemy, both his geography and almagest, which i had in greek (with theon's commentary, in folio, above 700 pages) from my learned friend fabricius, who published fourteen volumes of his _bibliothèque grecque_, in quarto, in which, after he had finished his account of ptolemy, on my inquiring of him at hamburgh, how i should find it, having long sought for it in vain in england, he sent it to me out of his own library, telling me it was so scarce that neither prayers nor price could purchase it; besides, there are many of the most valuable latin authors, and a great number of modern mathematicians, with all the three editions of newton, dr. watts, halley, etc." the inscription on the house of the philadelphia library is well worthy of repetition here. it was prepared by franklin, with the exception of the reference to himself, which was inserted by the committee. be it remembered, in honor of the philadelphia youth (then chiefly artificers), that in mdccxxxi they cheerfully, at the instance of benjamin franklin, one of their number, instituted the philadelphia library, which, though small at first, is become highly valuable and extensively useful, and which the walls of this edifice are now destined to contain and preserve: the first stone of whose foundation was here placed the thirty-first day of august, 1789. mr. f.b. perkins, of the boston public library, contributed to the _report on public libraries in the united states_ a useful chapter on "how to make town libraries successful" (pp. 419-430). the two chief points upon which he lays particular stress, and which may be said to form the texts for his practical remarks, are: (1) that a public library for popular use must be managed not only as a literary institution, but also as a business concern; and (2) that it is a mistake to choose books of too thoughtful or solid a character. he says, "it is vain to go on the principle of collecting books that people ought to read, and afterwards trying to coax them to read them. the only practical method is to begin by supplying books that people already want to read, and afterwards to do whatever shall be found possible to elevate their reading tastes and habits." a series of articles on "how to start libraries in small towns" was published in the _library journal_ (vol. i. pp. 161, 213, 249, 313, 355, 421), and mr. axon's _hints on the formation of small libraries_ has already been mentioned. we must not be too rigid in the use of the term public libraries, and we should certainly include under this description those institutional libraries which, although primarily intended for the use of the members of the societies to which they belong, can usually be consulted by students who are properly introduced. of public libraries first in order come the great libraries of a nation, such as the british museum. these are supplied by means of the copyright law, but the librarians are not from this cause exonerated from the troubles attendant on the formation of a library. there are old books and privately printed and foreign books to be bought, and it is necessary that the most catholic spirit should be displayed by the librarians. the same may be said in a lesser degree of the great libraries of the more important towns. in england the universities have noble libraries, more especially those of oxford and cambridge, but although some colleges possess fine collections of books, college libraries are not as a rule kept up to a very high standard. the united states report contains a full account of the college libraries in america (pp. 60-126). the libraries of societies are to a large extent special ones, and my brother, the late mr. b.r. wheatley, in a paper read before the conference of librarians, 1877, entitled "hints on library management, so far as relates to the circulation of books," particularly alluded to this fact. he wrote, "our library is really a medical and surgical section of a great public library. taking the five great classes of literature, i suppose medicine and its allied sciences may be considered as forming a thirtieth of the whole, and, as our books number 30,000, we are, as it were, a complete section of a public library of nearly a million volumes in extent." the united states report contains several chapters on special libraries, thus chapter 2 is devoted to those of schools and asylums; 4, to theological libraries; 5, to law; 6, to medical; and 7, to scientific libraries. for the formation of special libraries, special bibliographies will be required, and for information on this subject reference should be made to chapter vi. of the present work. when we come to deal with the free public libraries, several ethical questions arise, which do not occur in respect to other libraries. one of the most pressing of these questions refers to the amount of fiction read by the ordinary frequenters of these libraries. this point is alluded to in the united states report on public libraries. mr. j.p. quincy, in the chapter on free libraries (p. 389), writes, "surely a state which lays heavy taxes upon the citizen in order that children may be taught to read is bound to take some interest in what they read; and its representatives may well take cognizance of the fact that an increased facility for obtaining works of sensational fiction is not the special need of our country at the close of the first century of its independence." he mentions a free library in germanstown, pa., sustained by the liberality of a religious body, and frequented by artisans and working people of both sexes. it had been in existence six years in 1876, and then contained 7000 volumes. no novels are admitted into the library. the following is a passage from the librarian's report of 1874: "in watching the use of our library as it is more and more resorted to by the younger readers of our community, i have been much interested in its influence in weaning them from a desire for works of fiction. on first joining the library, the new comers often ask for such books, but failing to procure them, and having their attention turned to works of interest and instruction, in almost every instance they settle down to good reading and cease asking for novels. i am persuaded that much of this vitiated taste is cultivated by the purveyors to the reading classes, and that they are responsible for an appetite they often profess to deplore, but continue to cater to, under the plausible excuse that the public will have such works." mr. justin winsor in chapter 20 (reading in popular libraries) expresses a somewhat different view. he writes, "every year many young readers begin their experiences with the library. they find all the instructive reading they ought to have in their school books, and frequent the library for story books. these swell the issues of fiction, but they prevent the statistics of that better reading into which you have allured the older ones, from telling as they should in the average." at the london conference of librarians (1877), mr. p. cowell, librarian of the liverpool public library, read a paper on the admission of fiction in free public libraries, where he discussed the subject in a very fair manner, and deplored the high percentage of novel reading in these libraries. at the second annual meeting of the library association (1879) mr. j. taylor kay, librarian of owens college, manchester, in his paper on the provision of novels in rate-supported libraries, more completely condemned this provision. he concluded his paper with these words: "clearly a hard and fast line must be drawn. a distinct refusal by the library committees to purchase a single novel or tale would be appreciated by the rate-payers. the suggestion of a sub-committee to read this literature would not be tolerated, and no man whose time is of value would undergo the infliction. the libraries would attain their true position, and the donations would certainly be of a higher class, if the aims of the committees were known to be higher. manchester has already curtailed its issues of novels. it has been in the vanguard on the education question: and let us hope it will be true to its traditions, to its noble impulses, and lead the van in directing the educational influence of the free libraries, and striking out altogether any expenditure in the dissemination of this literature." this question probably would not have come to the front if it were not that the educational value of free libraries, as the complement of board schools, has been very properly put forward by their promoters. with this aim in view, it does startle one somewhat to see the completely disproportionate supply of novels in the free libraries. this often rises to 75 per cent. of the total supply, and in some libraries even a higher percentage has been reached. there are, however, exceptions. at the baltimore peabody institute fiction did not rise to more than one-tenth of the total reading. the following are some figures of subjects circulated at that library above 1000:- belles lettres 4598 fiction 3999 biography 2003 greek and latin classics 1265 history (american) 1137 law 1051 natural history 1738 theology 1168 periodicals (literary) 4728 periodicals (scientific) 1466 mr. cowell says that during the year ending 31st august, 1877, 453,585 volumes were issued at the reference library alone (liverpool free public library); of these 170,531 were strictly novels. the high-percentage of novel reading is not confined to free public libraries, for we find that in the odd fellows' library of san francisco, in 1874, 64,509 volumes of prose fiction were lent out of a total of 78,219. the other high figures being essays, 2280; history, 1823; biography and travels, 1664. in the college of the city of new york, of the books taken out by students between nov. 1876, and nov. 1877, 1043 volumes were novels, the next highest numbers were science, 153; poetry, 133; history, 130.[15] in considering this question one naturally asks if the masterpieces of our great authors, which every one should read, are to be mixed up with the worthless novels constantly being published in the condemnation of fiction; but, to some extent, both mr. cowell and mr. kay answer this. the first of these gentlemen writes: "as to the better class novels, which are so graphic in their description of places, costumes, pageantry, men, and events, i regret to say that they are not the most popular with those who stand in need of their instructive descriptions. i could generally find upon the library shelves 'harold,' 'the last of the barons,' 'westward ho!' 'hypatia,' 'ivanhoe,' 'waverley,' 'lorna doone,' etc., when not a copy of the least popular of the works of mrs. henry wood, 'ouida,' miss braddon, or rhoda broughton were to be had." mr. kay corroborates this opinion in his paper. most of us recognize the value of honest fiction for children and the overwrought brains of busy men, but the reading of novels of any kind can only be justified as a relaxation, and it is a sad fact that there is a large class of persons who will read nothing but novels and who call all other books dry reading. upon the minds of this class fiction has a most enervating effect, and it is not to be expected that ratepayers will desire to increase this class by the indiscriminate supply of novels to the free libraries. some persons are so sanguine as to believe that readers will be gradually led from the lower species of reading to the higher; but there is little confirmation of this hope to be found in the case of the confirmed novel readers we see around us. the librarian who, with ample funds for the purpose, has the duty before him of forming a public library, sets forward on a pleasant task. he has the catalogues of all kinds of libraries to guide him, and he will be able to purchase the groundwork of his library at a very cheap rate, for probably at no time could sets of standard books be bought at so low a price as now. many books that are not wanted by private persons are indispensable for a public library, and there being little demand for them they can be obtained cheap. when the groundwork has been carefully laid, then come some of the difficulties of collecting. books specially required will not easily be obtained, and when they are found, the price will probably be a high one. books of reference will be expensive, and as these soon get out of date, they will frequently need renewal. footnotes: [15] _library journal_, vol. ii. p. 70. chapter iv. private libraries. treating of private libraries, it will be necessary to consider their constitution under two heads, according as they are required in town or country. in london, for instance, where libraries of all kinds are easily accessible, a man need only possess books on his own particular hobby, and a good collection of books of reference; but in the country, away from public libraries, a well-selected collection of standard books will be necessary. 1. _town._ every one who loves books will be sure to have some favourite authors on special subjects of study respecting which he needs no instruction farther than that which is ready to his hand. books on these subjects he will need, both in town and country, if he possesses two houses. some collectors make their town house a sort of gathering-place for the accessions to their country libraries. here a class is completed, bound, and put in order, and then sent to the country to find its proper place in the family library. this is an age of books of reference, and as knowledge increases, and the books which impart it to readers become unwieldy from their multitude, there are sure to be forthcoming those who will reduce the facts into a handy form. i have gathered in the following pages the titles of some of the best books of reference which are to be obtained. many, if not all of these, are to be found in that magnificent library of reference--the reading room of the british museum. in some cases where the books are constantly being reprinted, dates have been omitted. there are, doubtless, many valuable works which i have overlooked, and some text-books i have had to leave out owing to the exigencies of space, but i trust that the present list will be found useful. _abbreviations._--dictionnaire des abréviations latines et françaises usitées dans les inscriptions lapidaires et métalliques, les manuscrits et les chartes du moyen age. par l. alph. chassant. quatrième édition. paris, 1876. sm. 8vo. _anthropology._--notes and queries on anthropology, for the use of travellers and residents in uncivilized lands. drawn up by a committee appointed by the british association. london, 1874. sm. 8vo. _antiquities._--dictionary of greek and roman antiquities. edited by dr. william smith. roy. 8vo. ---dictionnaire des antiquités grecques et romaines d'après les textes et les monuments ... ouvrage rédigé ... sous la direction de ch. daremberg et edm. saglio. paris, 1873. 4to. ---the life of the greeks and romans described from antique monuments, by e. guhl and w. koner, translated from the third german edition by f. hueffer. london, 1875. 8vo. ---gallus or roman scenes of the time of augustus. by w.a. becker, translated by f. metcalfe. london. ---charicles: illustrations of the private life of the ancient greeks. by w.a. becker, translated by f. metcalfe. london. _antiquities._--archæological index to remains of antiquity of the celtic, romano-british and anglo-saxon periods. by john yonge akerman. london, 1847. 8vo. ---introduction to english antiquities. by james eccleston. london, 1847. 8vo. ---the english archæologist's handbook. by henry godwin. oxford, 1867. 8vo. _architecture._--a dictionary of the architecture and archæology of the middle ages.... by john britton. london, 1838. ---history of architecture in all countries, from the earliest times to the present day. by james fergusson. london, 1865-76. 4 vols. 8vo. ---nicholson's dictionary of the science and practice of architecture, building, carpentry, etc. new edition, edited by edward lomax and thomas gunyon. london. 2 vols. 4to. ---an encyclopædia of architecture, historical, theoretical, and practical. by joseph gwilt, revised by wyatt papworth. new edition. london, 1876. 8vo. ---the dictionary of architecture, issued by the architectural publication society. a to oz. 4 vols. roy. 4to. (in progress.) ---a glossary of terms used in grecian, roman, italian, and gothic architecture. fifth edition, enlarged. oxford, 1850. 3 vols. 8vo. ---an encyclopædia of cottage, farm, and villa architecture and furniture.... by j.c. loudon. london, 1833. 8vo. _arts, manufactures_, etc.--ure's dictionary of arts, manufactures, and mines, containing a clear exposition of their principles and practice. by robert hunt, assisted by f.w. rudler. seventh edition. london, 1875. 3 vols. 8vo. ---spons' encyclopædia of the industrial arts, manufactures, and commercial products. london, 1879. 8 vols. roy. 8vo. ---history of physical astronomy. by robert grant. london [1852]. a most valuable book, but now out of print and scarce. ---an historical survey of the astronomy of the ancients. by g. cornewall lewis. london, 1862. 8vo. _bible._--dictionary of the bible, comprising its antiquities, biography, mythology, and geography. by dr. william smith. roy. 8vo. ---a biblical cyclopædia or dictionary of eastern antiquities, geography, natural history, sacred annals and biography, theology and biblical literature, illustrative of the old and new testaments. edited by john eadie, d.d., ll.d. twelfth edition. london, 1870. 8vo. ---the bible atlas of maps and plans to illustrate the geography and topography of the old and new testaments and the apocrypha, with explanatory notes by samuel clark, m.a. also a complete index of the geographical names ... by george grove. london, 1868. 4to. _bible._ see _concordances_. _bibliography._--see chapters v. and vi. _biography._--mr. chancellor christie contributed a very interesting article to the _quarterly review_ (april, 1884) on biographical dictionaries, in which he details the history of the struggle between the publishers of the _biographie universelle_ and messrs. didot, whose dictionary was eventually entitled _nouvelle biographie générale_. the new edition of the _biographie universelle_ (45 vols. imp. 8vo. paris, 1854) is an invaluable work. chalmers's biographical dictionary (32 vols. 8vo. 1812-17) is a mine of literary wealth, from which compilers have freely dug. rose's (12 vols. 8vo. 1848) was commenced upon a very comprehensive plan, but the lives were considerably contracted before the work was completed. it is, however, a very useful work. l.b. phillips's "dictionary of biographical reference" contains 100,000 names, and gives the dates of birth and death, which in many instances is all the information the consulter requires, and should more be required, he is referred to the authority. this book is quite indispensable for every library. there are several national biographical dictionaries, and at last a thoroughly satisfactory biographia britannica is in course of publication by messrs. smith & elder. the "dictionary of national biography, edited by leslie stephen," has reached the fifth volume, and extends to bottisham. ---robert chambers's biographical dictionary of eminent scotsmen (glasgow, 1835-56. 5 vols. 8vo.) will be found useful. _biography._--dr. william allen's "american biographical dictionary" was published at boston in 1857. ---biographie nouvelle des contemporains ... par a.v. arnault [etc.]. paris, 1820-25. 20 vols. 8vo. mr. edward smith points this book out to me as specially valuable for information respecting actors in the french revolution. ---handbook of contemporary biography. by frederick martin. london, 1870. sm. 8vo. ---men of the time: a dictionary of contemporaries. eleventh edition. revised by thompson cooper. london, 1884. sm. 8vo. a volume of 1168 pages should contain a fair representation of the men of the day, and yet it is ludicrously incomplete. the literary side is as much overdone as the scientific side is neglected. this is not the place to make a list of shortcomings, but it will probably astonish most of our readers to learn that such eminent men of the time as sir frederick abel, sir frederick bramwell, and the late dr. w.b. carpenter are not mentioned. as this book has as a high reputation, the editor should thoroughly revise it for a new edition. ---men of the reign. a biographical dictionary of eminent characters of both sexes, who have died during the reign of queen victoria. edited by t. humphry ward. (uniform with "men of the time.") london, 1885. _biography._--dictionnaire universel des contemporains.... par g. vapereau. cinquième edition. paris, 1880. 8vo. ---supplément. oct. 1881. ---biographie nationale des contemporains, redigée par une société de gens de lettres sous la direction de m. ernest glaeser. paris, 1878. royal 8vo. ---dictionnaire général de biographie contemporaine française et etrangère. par ad. bitard. paris, 1878. 8vo. ---to this list of contemporary biography may be added the indexes of obituary notices published by the index society. (_bishops._)--fasti ecclesiæ anglicanæ, or a calendar of the principal ecclesiastical dignitaries in england and wales, and of the chief officers in the universities of oxford and cambridge, from the earliest time to the year 1715. compiled by john le neve. corrected and continued from 1715 to the present time by t. duffus hardy. oxford, 1854. 3 vols. 8vo. ---fasti ecclesiæ hibernicæ. the succession of the prelates and members of cathedral bodies in ireland. by henry cotton, d.c.l. dublin, 1847-60. 5 vols. 8vo. (_lawyers._)--lives of the chief justices of england. by john lord campbell. second edition. london, 1858. 3 vols. 8vo. ---lives of the lord chancellors and keepers of the great seal of england. by john lord campbell. fourth edition. london, 1856. 10 vols. sm. 8vo. (_scientific men._)--poggendorff (j.c.). biographisch-literarisches handwörterbuch zur geschichte der exacten wissenschaften, enthaltend nachweisungen über lebensverhältnisse und leistungen von mathematikern, astronomen, physikern, chemikern, mineralogen, geologen u.s.w. aller völker und zeiten. leipzig, 1863. roy. 8vo. * * * * * (_cambridge._)--athenæ cantabrigienses. by charles henry cooper, f.s.a., and thompson cooper. cambridge, 1858-61. vol. i. 1500-1585. vol. ii. 1586-1609. 8vo. ---graduati cantabrigienses, 1760-1856. cura josephi romilly, a.m. cantabrigiæ, 1856. ---graduati cantabrigienses, 1800-1884. cura henrici richardo luard, s.t.p. cantabrigiæ, 1884. (_oxford._)--athenæ and fasti oxonienses. by ant. à wood. new edition, with notes, additions, and continuation by the rev. dr. p. bliss. 4 vols. 4to. 1813-20. ---catalogue of all graduates in the university of oxford, 1659-1850. oxford, 1851. 8vo. (_dublin._)--a catalogue of graduates who have proceeded to degrees in the university of dublin from the earliest recorded commencements to july, 1866, with supplement to december 16, 1868. dublin, 1869. 8vo. vol. ii. 1868-1883. dublin, 1884. 8vo. (_eton._)--alumni etonenses, or a catalogue of the provosts and fellows of eton college and king's college, cambridge, from the foundation in 1443 to the year 1797. by thomas harwood. birmingham, 1797. 4to. (_westminster._)--the list of the queen's scholars of st. peter's college, westminster, admitted on that foundation since 1663, and of such as have been thence elected to christ church, oxford, and trinity college, cambridge, from the foundation by queen elizabeth, 1561, to the present time. collected by joseph welch. a new edition ... by an old king's scholar. london, 1852. roy. 8vo. * * * * * _botany._--an encyclopædia of trees and shrubs; being the arboretum et fruticetum britannicum abridged.... by j.c. loudon. london, 1842. 8vo. ---loudon's encyclopædia of plants ... new edition corrected to the present time. edited by mrs. loudon. london, 1855. 8vo. ---the vegetable kingdom; or the structure, classification and uses of plants, illustrated upon the natural system. by john lindley, ph.d., f.r.s. third edition. london, 1853. 8vo. ---international dictionary of plants in latin, german, english and french, for botanists, and especially horticulturists, agriculturists, students of forestry and pharmaceutists, by dr. william ulrich. leipzig, 1872. 8vo. _botany._--topographical botany: being local and personal records towards shewing the distribution of british plants traced through 112 counties and vice-counties of england, wales and scotland. by hewett cottrell watson. second edition, corrected and enlarged. london, 1883. 8vo. the need of an authoritative list of botanical names must be frequently felt by a large number of writers, those who have but little knowledge of the science even more than botanists themselves. the following work will be found useful for this purpose, but there is reason to hope that a much larger and more exhaustive list will shortly be published, as mr. daydon jackson, secretary of the linnean society, is, we believe, now engaged upon such a work. "nomenclator botanicus seu synonymia plantarum universalis.... autore ernesto theoph. steudel; editio secunda, stuttgartiæ et tubingæ, 1841." royal 8vo. _cards._--facts and speculations on the origin and history of playing cards. by william andrew chatto. london, 1848. 8vo. ---a descriptive catalogue of playing and other cards in the british museum, accompanied by a concise general history of the subject, and remarks on cards of divination and of a politico-historical character. by william hughes willshire, m.d. printed by order of the trustees, 1876. royal 8vo. _chemistry._--a dictionary of chemistry and the allied branches of other sciences, founded on that of the late dr. ure. by henry watts. 1863-68. 5 vols. 8vo. supplement, 1872. second supplement, 1879. third supplement, 1879-81. 2 vols. ---handbook of modern chemistry, inorganic and organic, for the use of students. by charles meymott tidy, m.b., f.c.s. london, 1878. 8vo. ---handbook of chemistry. by l. gmelin. trans. by h. watts. london, 1848-67. 17 vols. 8vo. ---industrial chemistry, based upon the german edition of payen's "précis de chimie industrielle," edited by b.h. paul. london, 1878. ---a treatise on chemistry. by [sir] h.e. roscoe and c. schorlemmer. london. 8vo. _coins._--a numismatic manual. by john yonge akerman, f.s.a. london, 1840. 8vo. ---the silver coins of england arranged and described by e. hawkins. london, 1841. 8vo. ---the gold coins of england arranged and described, being a sequel to mr. hawkins's silver coins of england, by his grandson, robert lloyd kenyon. london, 1880. 8vo. _commerce._--a dictionary, practical, theoretical, and historical, of commerce and commercial navigation. by the late j.r. mcculloch. latest edition by a.j. wilson. london, 1882. 8vo. ---history of british commerce, 1763-1870. by leone levi. london, 1872. 8vo. _concordances._ _aristophanes._--a complete concordance to the comedies and fragments of aristophanes. by henry dunbar, m.d. oxford, 1883. 4to. _bible._--a complete concordance to the holy scriptures of the old and new testaments. by alexander cruden, m.a. london, 1737. 4to. second edition 1761, third edition 1769; this is the last corrected by the author. most of the concordances published since are founded upon cruden. ---an analytical concordance to the holy scriptures, or the bible presented under distinct and classified heads of topics. edited by john eadie, d.d., ll.d. london and glasgow, 1856. 8vo. _homer._--a complete concordance to the iliad of homer. by guy lushington prendergast. london, 1875. 4to. ---a complete concordance to the odyssey and hymns of homer, to which is added a concordance to the parallel passages in the iliad, odyssey and hymns. by henry dunbar, m.d. oxford, 1880. 4to. _milton._--a complete concordance to the poetical works of milton. by guy lushington prendergast, madras civil service. madras, 1857. 4to. originally published in 12 parts. ---a complete concordance to the poetical works of john milton. by charles dexter cleveland, ll.d. london, 1867. sm. 8vo. the rev. h.j. todd compiled a verbal index to the whole of milton's poetry, which was appended to the second edition of his life of the poet (1809). _pope._--a concordance to the works of alexander pope. by edwin abbott, with an introduction by edwin a. abbott, d.d. london, 1875. royal 8vo. _shakespeare._--the complete concordance to shakspere: being a verbal index to all the passages in the dramatic works of the poet. by mrs. cowden clarke. london, 1845. royal 8vo. ---shakespeare-lexicon: a complete dictionary of all the english words, phrases and constructions in the works of the poet. by dr. alexander schmidt. (berlin and london), 1874. 2 vols. royal 8vo. ---a concordance to shakespeare's poems: an index to every word therein contained. by mrs. horace howard furness. philadelphia, 1874. ---a handbook index to the works of shakespeare, including references to the phrases, manners, customs, proverbs, songs, particles, etc., which are used or alluded to by the great dramatist. by j.o. halliwell, esq., f.r.s. london, 1866. 8vo. only fifty copies printed. _tennyson._--a concordance of the entire works of alfred tennyson, p.l., d.c.l., f.r.s. by d. barron brightwell. london, 1869. 8vo. _tennyson._--concordance to the works of alfred tennyson, poet laureate. london, 1870. "the holy grail," etc., is indexed separately. ---an index to "in memoriam." london, 1862. * * * * * _costume._--a cyclopædia of costume or dictionary of dress, including notices of contemporaneous fashions on the continent.... by james robinson planché, somerset herald. london, 1876-79. 2 vols. 4to. vol. i. dictionary. vol. ii. general history of costume in europe. _councils._--councils and ecclesiastical documents relating to great britain and ireland. edited after spelman and wilkins, by arthur west haddan, b.d., and william stubbs, m.a. oxford, 1869. vol. ii. part i. 1873. vol. iii. 1871. 8vo. ---england's sacred synods. a constitutional history of the convocations of the clergy from the earliest records of christianity in britain to the date of the promulgation of the present book of common prayer, including a list of all councils, ecclesiastical as well as civil, held in england in which the clergy have been concerned. by james wayland joyce, m.a. london, 1855. 8vo. _dates._--see _history_. _dictionaries._ (_english._)--one of the most useful english dictionaries is the "imperial dictionary" by ogilvie, which has been edited with great care by charles annandale.[16] the vocabulary is very full, the etymology is trustworthy, and the definitions are clear and satisfactory. the engravings which are interspersed with the text are excellent, and greatly add to the utility of the dictionary. for years preparations have been made for a standard english dictionary, and at last the work has been commenced under the able editorship of dr. james a.h. murray. in 1857, on the suggestion of archbishop trench, the philological society undertook the preparation of a dictionary, "which by the completeness of its vocabulary, and by the application of the historical method to the life and use of words, might be worthy of the english language and of english scholarship." the late mr. herbert coleridge and dr. furnivall undertook the editorship, and a large number of volunteers came forward to read books and extract quotations. mr. coleridge died in the midst of his work, and upon dr. furnivall devolved the entire editorship in addition to his other onerous duties as secretary of the philological society. he projected the admirable system of sub-editing, which proved so successful. as the work proceeded several of the most energetic and most competent workers undertook to sub-edit the materials already collected, each one taking a separate letter of the alphabet. some two million quotations were amassed, but still the man was wanting who would devote his life to forming the dictionary from these materials. in course of time dr. murray came forward, and in 1878 he prepared some specimens for submission to the delegates of the clarendon press, who agreed to publish the dictionary. the first part was published in 1884, and the second in 1885.[17] it is hoped that in future it will be possible to issue a part every six months. at present the alphabet is carried down to batten. this is one of the most magnificent pieces of work that has ever been produced in any country, and it is an honour to every one concerned. to the philological society who conceived it, to dr. murray and his staff who have devoted so much labour and intellect to its production, and to the clarendon press who have published it to the world. it is, moreover, an honour to the country which now possesses a well-grounded hope of having, at no distant day, the finest historical dictionary ever produced. in this connection the _encyclopædic dictionary_, now in course of publication by messrs. cassell, should be mentioned as a valuable work. up to a few years ago it was impossible to obtain any satisfactory etymological information on english words from our dictionaries. mr. hensleigh wedgwood partly removed this reproach by the publication of his very valuable "dictionary of english etymology" in 1859,[18] but in this work mr. wedgwood only dealt with a portion of the vocabulary. professor skeat commenced the publication of his indispensable "etymological dictionary of the english language" (clarendon press) in 1879, and in 1884 he produced a second edition. in 1882 professor skeat published "a concise etymological dictionary," which is something more than an abridgment, and a book which should find a place in all libraries of reference. a glossarial index to the printed english literature of the thirteenth century. by h. coleridge. london, 1859. 8vo. this was one of the earliest publications which grew out of the preparations for the great philological society's dictionary. stratmann's dictionary of the old english language (third edition, krefeld, 1878) is an indispensable work. a new edition, prepared by mr. h. bradley, is about to be issued by the clarendon press. of single volume dictionaries, mr. hyde clarke's "new and comprehensive dictionary of the english language as spoken and written" in weale's educational series (price 3_s._ 6_d._) is one of the most valuable. i have time after time found words there which i have searched for in vain in more important looking dictionaries. mr. clarke claims that he was the first to raise the number of words registered in an english dictionary to 100,000. the rev. james stormonth's "dictionary of the english language, pronouncing, etymological, and explanatory," is a work of great value. it is so well arranged and printed that it becomes a pleasure to consult it. those who are interested in dialects will require all the special dictionaries which have been published, and these may be found in the bibliography now being compiled by the english dialect society, but those who do not make this a special study will be contented with "a dictionary of archaic and provincial words, obsolete phrases, proverbs, and ancient customs, from the fourteenth century, by j.o. halliwell" (fifth edition, london, 1865, 2 vols. 8vo.), which is well-nigh indispensable to all. nares's glossary (1822-46, new edition, by j.o. halliwell and t. wright, 2 vols. 8vo. 1859) is also required by those who make a study of old english literature. the following is a short indication of some of the most useful working dictionaries: _arabic._--lane. _greek._--liddell & scott's greek-english lexicon, both in 4to. and in abridged form in square 12mo. _latin._--the clarendon press publish a latin dictionary founded on andrews's edition of freund, and edited by c.t. lewis and c. short, which is of great value. smith's dictionary, both the large edition and the smaller one, and that of riddle are good. _french._--the dictionaries of fleming and tibbins, and spiers, keep up their character, but for idioms the international french and english dictionary of hamilton and legros is the best. for smaller dictionaries cassell's is both cheap and good. bellows's pocket dictionary has obtained considerable fame, but those who use it need a good eyesight on account of the smallness of the type. it is, however, beautifully printed. the standard french dictionaries of that language alone are the noble work of littré and the excellent dictionary of poitevin (2 vols. 4to.). for early french godefroy's elaborate work, which is now in progress, must be consulted. _german._--fluegel's german and english dictionary still holds its own, but koehler's dictionary is also excellent. hilpert's and lucas's dictionaries, both good ones, are now out of print. of standard german dictionaries grimm's great work is still in progress. sanders's dictionary is also of great value. _danish and norwegian._--the dictionary by ferrall, repp, rosing and larsen is good. _dutch._--calisch (2 vols. 8vo. 1875). _hebrew._--fuerst, gesenius. _icelandic._--vigfusson. _italian._--baretti's dictionary still keeps up its character, but millhouse's work is also good. _portuguese._--vieyra. _russian._--alexandrow. _sanscrit._--monier williams. boehtlingk and roth. _pâli._--childers. _spanish._--neumann and baretti, and also velasquez. _swedish._--oman. * * * * * _drama._--biographia dramatica; or a companion to the playhouse ... originally compiled in the year 1764 by david erskine baker, continued thence to 1782 by isaac reed, and brought down to the end of november, 1811 ... by stephen jones. london, 1812. 3 vols. 8vo. ---a dictionary of old english plays existing either in print or in manuscript, from the earliest times to the close of the seventeenth century; by james o. halliwell, esq., f.r.s. london, 1860. 8vo. _drugs._--pharmacographia: a history of the principal drugs of vegetable origin met with in great britain and british india. by friedrich a. flückiger, ph.d., and daniel hanbury, f.r.s. second edition. london, 1879. 8vo. _ecclesiology._--dictionary of doctrinal and historical theology. edited by the rev. j.h. blunt, m.a. second edition. london, 1872. imp. 8vo. ---dictionary of christian antiquities. by william smith, ll.d., and professor s. cheatham. london, 1876-80. 2 vols. royal 8vo. ---dictionary of sects, heresies, ecclesiastical parties, and schools of religious thought. edited by the rev. john henry blunt, m.a. london, 1874. imp. 8vo. ---glossary of ecclesiastical ornament and costume, compiled from ancient authorities and examples. by a. welby pugin, architect.... enlarged and revised by the rev. bernard smith, m.a. third edition. london, 1868. 4to. ---a glossary of liturgical and ecclesiastical terms. compiled and arranged by the rev. frederick george lee, d.c.l. london, 1877. sq. 8vo. ---see _ritual_. _encyclopædias._--the encyclopædia britannica, or a dictionary of arts, sciences and general literature. ninth edition. edinburgh, 1875. 4to. now in course of publication. ---encyclopædia metropolitana, or universal dictionary of knowledge.... london, 1815-41. 26 vols. 4to. ---chambers's encyclopædia. 10 vols. royal 8vo. ---dictionary of science, literature, and art. by w.t. brande. 1842. new edition, edited by the rev. j.w. cox. london, 1866-67. 3 vols. 8vo. _encyclopædias._--rees's cyclopædia (39 vols., plates 6 vols. 1820, 4to.) can be bought excessively cheap, and is well worth a place in a library where room can be found for it, as many of its articles have never been superseded. ---grand dictionnaire universel du xix^e siècle français, historique, géographique, mythologique, bibliographique, littéraire, artistique, scientifique, etc.... par pierre larousse. paris, 1866-76. 15 vols. 4to. supplément, tome 16, 1878. ---dictionnaire universel des sciences, des lettres et des arts ... redigé avec la collaboration d'auteurs spéciaux par m.n. bouillet ... douzième édition. paris, 1877. 8vo. _geography._--a general dictionary of geography, descriptive, physical, statistical, historical, forming a complete gazetteer of the world. by a. keith johnston. new edition. london, 1877. 8vo. ---the library cyclopædia of geography, descriptive, physical, political and historical, forming a new gazetteer of the world. by james bryce, m.a. and keith johnston. london, 1880. royal 8vo. ---index geographicus, being a list alphabetically arranged of the principal places on the globe, with the countries and sub-divisions of the countries in which they are situated and their latitudes and longitudes. compiled specially with reference to keith johnston's royal atlas, but applicable to all modern atlases and maps, edinburgh, 1864. roy. 8vo. _geography._--etymologisch-geographisches lexikon. separat-ausgabe des lexikalischen theils der nomina geographica von dr. j.j. egli. leipzig, 1880. royal 8vo. ---dictionary of greek and roman geography, by various writers, edited by dr. w. smith. london, 1852. 2 vols. 8vo. (_scotland._)--ordnance gazetteer of scotland. a survey of scottish topography, statistical, biographical and historical. edited by francis h. groome. edinburgh, 1884. vol. 1, roy. 8vo. (_france._)--santini. dictionnaire général ... des communes de france et des colonies. paris. 8vo. ---dictionnaire des postes de la république française. 6^e édition. rennes, 1881. roy. 8vo. (_italy._)--il libro dé comuni del regno d'italia. compilato sopra elementi officiali da achille moltedo. napoli, 1873. roy. 8vo. (_united states._)--the national gazetteer, a geographical dictionary of the united states.... by l. de colange, ll.d. london, 1884. roy. 8vo. (_india._)--cyclopædia of india and of eastern and southern asia, commercial, industrial, and scientific.... edited by edward balfour.... second edition. madras, 1871-73. 5 vols. roy. 8vo. third edition. london, 1885. 3 vols. the first edition was published in 1858, and two supplements in 1862. _geology._--a catalogue of british fossils: comprising the genera and species hitherto described, with references to their geological distribution.... by john morris, f.g.s. second edition. london, 1854. 8vo. _geology._--principles of geology. by sir charles lyell. 10th edition. london, 1867-8. 2 vols. 8vo. ---manual of elementary geology. by sir charles lyell. london, 1865. 8vo. _history._--blair's chronological and historical tables from the creation to the present times.... [edited by sir henry ellis.] imp. 8vo. london, 1844. ---atlas universel d'histoire et de géographie contenant 1^e la chronologie.... 2^e la généologie.... 3^e la géographie.... par m.n. bouillet. deuxième édition. paris, 1872. 8vo. ---dictionnaire universel d'histoire et de géographie contenant 1^e l'histoire proprement dite.... 2^e la biographie universelle.... 3^e la mythologie.... 4^e la géographie ancienne et moderne. par m.n. bouillet ... ouvrage revu et continué par a chassang. nouvelle édition (vingt-cinquième), avec un supplement. paris, 1876. 8vo. ---the map of europe by treaty, showing the various political and territorial changes which have taken place since the general peace of 1814, with numerous maps and notes. by edward hertslet, c.b. london, 1875. vol. 1, 1814-1827; vol. 2, 1828-1863; vol. 3, 1864-1875.--this work shows the changes which have taken place in the map of europe by treaty or other international arrangements. it contains a list of treaties, etc., between great britain and foreign powers for the maintenance of the peace of europe and for the settlement of european questions, 1814-75. _history._--moniteur des dates, contenant un million des renseignements biographiques, généalogiques et historiques. par edouard oettinger. dresde, 1866-68. 6 thin vols. 4to. tomes 7, 8, 9, supplément commencé par e.m. oettinger considérablement augmenté ... par dr. hugo schramm. leipzig, 1873-1882. ---haydn's dictionary of dates and universal information relating to all ages. 16th edition, by benjamin vincent. london. ---the manual of dates. a dictionary of reference of the most important facts and events in the history of the world. by george h. townsend. fifth edition entirely remodelled and edited by frederick martin. london, 1877. 8vo. ---encyclopædia of chronology, historical and biographical. by b.b. woodward, b.a., and william l.r. gates. london, 1872. 8vo. ---the dictionary of chronology, or historical and statistical register. compiled and edited by william henry overall, f.s.a. london, 1870. 8vo. ---the anniversary calendar, natal book, and universal mirror; embracing anniversaries of persons, events, institutions, and festivals, of all denominations, historical, sacred and domestic, in every period and state of the world. london, 1832. 2 vols. 8vo. _history._--an epitome of the civil and literary chronology of rome and constantinople, from the death of augustus to the death of heraclius. by henry fynes clinton, m.a. edited by the rev. c.j. fynes clinton, m.a. oxford, 1853. 8vo. ---fasti romani: the civil and literary chronology of rome and constantinople, from the death of augustus to the death of justin ii. [to the death of heraclius]. by henry fynes clinton, m.a. oxford, 1845-50. 2 vols. 4to. ---fasti hellenici: the civil and literary chronology of greece, from the earliest accounts to the death of augustus. by henry fynes clinton, m.a. oxford, 1834-51. 3 vols. 4to. ---descriptive catalogue of materials relating to the history of great britain and ireland to the end of the reign of henry vii. by thomas duffus hardy. london, 1862-71. vol. i. from the roman period to the norman invasion. vol. ii. a.d. 1066 to a.d. 1200. vol. iii. a.d. 1200 to a.d. 1327. ---the dictionary of english history. edited by sidney j. low, b.a., and f.s. pulling, m.a. london, 1884. 8vo. ---introduction to the study of english history. by samuel r. gardiner, hon. ll.d., and j. bass mullinger, m.a. london, 1881. 8vo. the second part by mr. mullinger is devoted to authorities, and is a model of what such a work should be. _history._--handy-book of rules and tables for verifying dates with the christian era ... with regnal years of english sovereigns from the norman conquest to the present time, a.d. 1066 to 1874. by john j. bond. london, 1875. sm. 8vo. ---the annals of england: an epitome of english history, from contemporary writers, the rolls of parliament and other public records. library edition. oxford and london, 1876. 8vo. contains some valuable information as to the sources of history in the appendix. ---the representative history of great britain and ireland, being a history of the house of commons and of the counties, cities, and boroughs of the united kingdom from the earliest period. by t.h.b. oldfield. london, 1816. 6 vols. 8vo. ---an index to "the times," and to the topics and events of the year 1862. [by j. giddings.] london, 1863. 8vo. ---an index to "the times," and to the topics and events of the year 1863. by j. giddings. london, 1864. 8vo. ---index to "the times" newspaper, 1864, to september, 1885. london. 410. ---annals of our time, from the accession of queen victoria, 1837, to the peace of versailles, 1871. by j. irving. london, 1871. 8vo. supplement (feb. 1871-july, 1878). london, 1879. 8vo. (_france._)--dictionnaire historique de la france.... par ludovic lalanne. paris, 1872. 8vo. * * * * * _insurance._--the insurance cyclopædia, being a dictionary of the definition of terms used in connexion with the theory and practice of insurance in all its branches; a biographical summary ... a bibliographical reportery.... by cornelius walford. london, vol. 1, 1871, to vol. 6. royal 8vo. _language._--see _dictionaries_, _philology_. _law._--the law-dictionary, explaining the rise, progress, and present state of the british law.... by sir thomas edlyne tomlins; fourth edition by thomas colpitts granger. london, 1835. 2 vols. 4to. ---wharton's law-lexicon, forming an epitome of the law of england ... seventh edition by j.m. lely, m.a. london, 1863. royal 8vo. ---a law dictionary, adapted to the constitution and laws of the united states of america and of the several states of the american union.... by john bouvier. fourteenth edition. philadelphia, 1870. ---the lawyer's reference manual of law books and citations. by charles c. soule. boston, 1883. 8vo. ---ancient law; its connection with the early history of society, and its relation to modern ideas. by h.s. maine. london, 1861. 8vo. _law._--lectures in jurisprudence. by john austin. third edition, revised and edited by r. campbell. london, 1869. 3 vols. 8vo. ---justice of the peace and parish officer. by r. burn. the 30th edition was published in 1869. the 13th edition of archbold's justice of the peace appeared in 1878. ---blackstone's commentaries on the laws of england. student's edition. _literature._ (_english._)--cyclopædia of english literature. edited by robert chambers. edinburgh, 1843. new edition by robert carruthers. edinburgh. 2 vols. royal 8vo. ---dictionary of english literature, being a comprehensive guide to english authors and their works. by davenport adams. london, n.d. sq. 8vo. ---professor henry morley's _english writers_, his _tables of english literature_, and his volumes of selections, entitled _library of english literature_, will be found of great value. (_american._)--cyclopædia of american literature: embracing personal and critical notices of authors, and selections from their writings.... by evert a. duyckinck and george l. duyckinck. edited to date by m. laird simons. philadelphia, 1877. 2 vols. imp. 8vo. ---the poets and poetry of europe, with introductions and biographical notices, by henry wadsworth longfellow. london, 1855. roy. 8vo. (_polish._)--bentkowskiego (f.). historya literatury polskiey. warszawie, 1814. 2 vols. 8vo. (_russian._)--otto (friedrich). history of russian literature, with a lexicon of russian authors. translated from the german by george cox. oxford, 1839. 8vo. (_spanish._)--ticknor (george). history of spanish literature. new york, 1849. 3 vols. 8vo. (_classical._)--a history of latin literature from ennius to boethius. by george augustus simcox, m.a. london, 1883. 2 vols. 8vo. ---a history of roman classical literature. by r.w. browne, m.a. london, 1884. 8vo. ---a history of roman literature. by w.s. teuffel, translated by wilhelm wagner, ph.d. london, 1873. 2 vols. 8vo. ---bibliographical clue to latin literature. edited after dr. e. hübner, with large additions by the rev. john e.b. mayor. london, 1875. 12mo. ---guide to the choice of classical books. by joseph b. mayor. third edition, with supplementary list. london, 1885. * * * * * _manuscripts._--guide to the historian, the biographer, the antiquary, the man of literary curiosity, and the collector of autographs, towards the verification of manuscripts, by reference to engraved facsimiles of handwriting. [by dawson turner.] yarmouth, 1848. roy. 8vo. a most valuable alphabetical index of the names of celebrated men, with references to the books where specimens of their writing can be found. _mathematics._--dictionnaire des mathématiques appliqués.... par h. sonnet. paris, 1867. roy. 8vo. _mechanics._--knight's american mechanical dictionary.... by edward h. knight. london and new york, 1874-77. 3 vols. royal 8vo. ---cyclopædia of useful arts, mechanical and chemical, manufactures, mining and engineering. edited by charles tomlinson. london, 1866. 3 vols. roy. 8vo. _medical._--the cyclopædia of anatomy and physiology. edited by robert b. todd, m.d., f.r.s. london, 1835-59. 5 vols, in 6, royal 8vo. ---a dictionary of practical medicine.... by james copland. london, 1858. 3 vols. 8vo. ---an expository lexicon of the terms, ancient and modern, in medical and general science; including a complete medico-legal vocabulary.... by r.g. mayne, m.d. london, 1860. 8vo. ---cooper's dictionary of practical surgery and encyclopædia of surgical science. new edition brought down to the present time by samuel a. lane. london, 1872. 2 vols, royal 8vo. ---medical lexicon: a dictionary of medical science ... by robley dunglison, m.d., ll.d. a new edition enlarged and thoroughly revised by richard j. dunglison, m.d. philadelphia, 1874. roy. 8vo. _monograms._--dictionnaire des monogrammes, marques figurées, lettres initiales, noms abrégés, etc., avec lesquels les peintres, dessinateurs, graveurs et sculpteurs ont designé leurs noms. par françois brulliot. nouvelle édition. munich, 1832-34. 3 parts. imp. 8vo. _music._--general history of the science and practice of music. by sir john hawkins. london, 1776. 5 vols. 4to. ---history of music from the earliest ages to the present period. by charles burney. london, 1776-89. 4 vols. 4to. ---biographie universelle des musiciens et bibliographie générale de la musique. par f.j. fétis. deuxième édition. paris, 1860-65. 8 vols. roy. 8vo. ---supplément et complément, publiés sous la direction de m. arthur pougin. paris, 1878-80. 2 vols. roy. 8vo. ---dictionary of music and musicians. edited by [sir] g. grove. london, 1878. 8vo. in progress. _mythology._--dictionary of greek and roman biography and mythology, edited by dr. w. smith. 1845-48. 3 vols. 8vo. _natural history._--dictionary of natural history terms, with their derivations, including the various orders, genera, and species. by david h. mcnicoll, m.d. london, 1863. sm. 8vo. _natural history._--see _botany_, _zoology_. _painters._--a general dictionary of painters.... by matthew pilkington, a.m. a new edition, corrected and revised by r. a. davenport. london, 1852. 8vo. ---a catalague raisonné of the works of the most eminent dutch, flemish, and french painters, ... to which is added a brief notice of the scholars and imitators of the great masters of the above schools. by john smith. london, 1829-42. 9 parts. roy. 8vo. ---the picture collector's manual, adapted to the professional man and the amateur; being a dictionary of painters ... together with an alphabetical arrangement of the scholars, imitators, and copyists of the various masters, and a classification of subjects. by james r. hobbes. london, 1849. 2 vols. 8vo. _peerage._--courthope's "historical peerage," founded on sir nicholas harris nicolas's "synopsis of the peerage," is an indispensable work, but it only refers to english titles. mr. solly's "index of hereditary titles of honour" contains the peerage and baronetage of england, scotland, and ireland. ---the official baronage of england, 1066 to 1885, by james e. doyle (vols. 1-3. 4to.), has just appeared. _peerage._--of the current peerages, burke's, dod's, debrett's, and foster's, all have their points of merit. _periodicals._--catalogue of scientific serials of all countries, including the transactions of learned societies in the natural, physical and mathematical sciences, 1633-1876. by samuel h. scudder. library of harvard university, 1879. 8vo.--in this valuable list of periodicals, which is arranged geographically according to countries with an alphabet under each country, transactions and journals are joined together in the same arrangement. at the end there are an index of towns, an index of titles, and an index of minor subjects. ---an index to periodical literature. by wm. fred. poole. new york. roy. 8vo. 1st ed. 1843; 2nd ed. 1848; 3rd ed. 1882. ---catalogue of scientific papers (1800-1863). compiled and published by the royal society of london. london, 1867-72. 6 vols. 4to. (1864-73.) vol. 7, 1877; vol. 8, 1879.--vol. 1, a-clu; vol. 2, coa-gra; vol. 3, gre-lez; vol. 4, lhe-poz; vol. 5, pra-tiz; vol. 6, tka-zyl; vol. 7, a-hyr; vol. 8, i-zwi. ---the celebrated dr. thomas young published in the second volume of his _course of lectures on natural philosophy and the mechanical arts_ (1807) a most valuable catalogue of books and papers relating to the subject of his lectures, which is classified minutely, and occupies 514 quarto pages in double columns. in kelland's new edition (1845) the references are abridged and inserted after the several lectures to which they refer. _philology._--max müller's "lectures on the science of language"; marsh's "lectures" and "origin and history of the english language"; abp. trench's "english. past and present"; "select glossary." _physics._--elementary treatise on natural philosophy. by a. p. deschanel. 8vo. ---elementary treatise on physics. by a. ganot, edited by e. atkinson. sm. 8vo. _plate._--old english plate, ecclesiastical, decorative, and domestic, its makers and marks. by wilfred joseph cripps, m.a., f.s.a. second edition. london, 1881. 8vo. _plays._--see _drama_. _pottery._--marks and monograms on pottery and porcelain of the renaissance and modern periods, with historical notices of each manufactory.... by william chaffers. fourth edition. london, 1874. roy. 8vo. _prices._--history of prices from 1793 to 1856. by thomas tooke and william newmarch. london, 1838-57. 6 vols. 8vo. _prints._--an introduction to the study and collection of ancient prints. by william hughes willshire, m.d. edin. second edition, revised and enlarged. london, 1877. 2 vols. 8vo. ---the print collector, an introduction to the knowledge necessary for forming a collection of ancient prints. by j. maberly, ... edited with notes, an account of contemporary etching and etchers, and a bibliography of engraving. by robert hoe, jun. new york, 1880. sq. 8vo. ---etching and etchers. by p.g. hamerton. new edition. london, 1876. 8vo. _printing._--typographia or the printers' instructor: including an account of the origin of printing.... by j. johnson, printer. london, 1824. 2 vols. 8vo. ---a dictionary of the art of printing. by william savage. london, 1841. 8vo. _proverbs._--a hand-book of proverbs, comprising an entire republication of ray's collection of english proverbs ... and a complete alphabetical index ... in which are introduced large additions collected by henry g. bohn, 1857. london, 1872. ---a polyglot of foreign proverbs, comprising french, italian, german, dutch, spanish, portuguese, and danish, with english translations and a general index. by henry g. bohn. london, 1867. ---english proverbs and proverbial phrases collected from the most authentic sources, alphabetically arranged and annotated. by w. carew hazlitt. london, 1869. 8vo. second edition. london, 1882. sm. 8vo. _quotations._--many thoughts of many minds: being a treasury of references, consisting of selections from the writings of the most celebrated authors. compiled and analytically arranged by henry southgate. third edition. london, 1862. 8vo. second series. london, 1871. 8vo. _quotations._--noble thoughts in noble language: a collection of wise and virtuous utterances in prose and verse, from the writings of the known good and the great unknown. edited by henry southgate. london. 8vo. ---prose quotations from socrates to macaulay, with indexes. by s. austin allibone. philadelphia, 1876. roy. 8vo. ---poetical quotations from chaucer to tennyson, with copious indexes. by s. austin allibone. philadelphia, 1875. roy. 8vo. ---a dictionary of quotations from the english poets. by henry g. bohn. london, 1867. sq. 8vo. second edition. london. sm. 8vo. ---an index to familiar quotations, selected principally from british authors, with parallel passages from various writers, ancient and modern. by j.c. grocott. liverpool, 1863. sm. 8vo. ---familiar quotations: being an attempt to trace to their source passages and phrases in common use. by john bartlett. author's edition. london, sm. 8vo. ---words, facts and phrases, a dictionary of curious, quaint, and out-of-the-way matters. by eliezer edwards. london, 1882. sm. 8vo. _quotations._--the reader's handbook of allusions, references, plots and stories, with their appendices. by the rev. e. brewer, ll.d.... third edition. london, 1882. sm. 8vo. ---dictionary of phrase and fable.... by the rev. e. cobham brewer, ll.d. twelfth edition. london, no date. ---a dictionary of latin and greek quotations, proverbs, maxims and mottos, classical and mediæval, including law terms and phrases. edited by h.t. riley, b.a. london, 1880. sm. 8vo. _receipts._--cooley's cyclopædia of practical receipts and collateral information in the arts, manufactures, professions and trades ... designed as a comprehensive supplement to the pharmacopoeia.... sixth edition, revised and greatly enlarged by richard v. tuson. london, 1880. 2 vols. 8vo. _records._--handbook of the public record office. by f.s. thomas, secretary of the public record office. london, 1853. roy. 8vo. ---index to the printed reports of sir francis palgrave, k.h., the deputy-keeper of the public records, 1840-1861. london, 1865. by john edwards and edward james tabrum. in one alphabet. _ritual._--hierurgia; or, transubstantiation, invocation of saints, relics and purgatory, besides those other articles of doctrine set forth in the holy sacrifice of the mass expounded; and the use of holy water, incense, and images [etc.] illustrated. by d. rock, d.d. second edition. london, 1851. 8vo. _ritual._--hierurgia anglicana; or, documents and extracts illustrative of the ritual of the church in england after the reformation. edited by members of the ecclesiological, late cambridge camden society. london, 1848. 8vo. _sports._--an encyclopædia of rural sports, or complete account (historical, practical, and descriptive) of hunting, shooting, fishing, racing, etc., etc. by delabere p. blaine. a new edition. london, 1840. 8vo. _taxes._--a sketch of the history of taxes in england from the earliest times to the present day. by stephen dowell. london, 1876. 8vo. vol. 1 to the civil war 1642. _theology._--see _ecclesiology_. _topography._--a topographical dictionary of england.... by samuel lewis. seventh edition. london, 1849. ---a topographical dictionary of wales.... by samuel lewis. fourth edition. london, 1849. 2 vols. 4to. ---a topographical dictionary of ireland.... by samuel lewis. second edition. london, 1842. 2 vols. 4to. ---see _geography_. _wills._--an index to wills proved in the court of the chancellor of the university of oxford, and to such of the records and other instruments and papers of that court as relate to matters or causes testamentary. by the rev. john griffiths, m.a., keeper of the archives. oxford, 1862. roy. 8vo. in one alphabet, with a chronological list appended. _zoology._--nomenclator zoologicus, continens nomina systematica generum animalium tam viventium quam fossilium, secundum ordinem alphabeticum disposita, adjectis auctoribus, libris in quibus reperiuntur, anno editionis, etymologia et familiis, ad quas pertinent, in singulis classibus. auctore l. agassiz.... soliduri, 1842-46. 4to. ---nomenclator zoologicus, continens nomina systematica generum animalium tam viventium quam fossilium, secundum ordinem alphabeticum disposita sub auspicis et sumptibus c.r. societatis zoologico-botanicæ conscriptus a comite augusto de marschall [1846-1868]. vindobonæ, 1873. 8vo. 2. _country._ a library in a large country house should contain a representative collection of english literature, and also a selection of books of reference from the previous list. standard authors, in their best editions, county histories, books of travel, books on art, and a representative collection of good novels, will of course find a place upon the shelves. a book such as stevens's _my english library_ will be a good guide to the foundation of the library, but each collector will have his special tastes, and he will need guidance from the more particular bibliographies which are ready to his hand, and a note of which will be found in chapter v. room will also be found for sets of magazines, such as the _gentleman's_, the _edinburgh_, and the _quarterly_, and for the transactions of such societies as the owner may be member of. the issues of publishing societies form quite a library of themselves, and an account of these will be found in chapter vii. we have seen on a previous page how napoleon wished to form a convenient travelling library, in which everything necessary could be presented in a comparatively small number of handy volumes. few men are like napoleon in the wish to carry such a library about with them; but where space is scarce there are many who find it necessary to exercise a wise spirit of selection. this, however, each man must do for himself, as tastes differ so widely. auguste comte succeeded in selecting a library in which all that it is necessary for a positivist to know is included in 150 volumes, but this result is obtained by putting two or more books together to form one volume. positivist library for the 19th century. 150 volumes. i. _poetry._ (thirty volumes.) the iliad and the odyssey, in 1 vol. without notes. æschylus, the king oedipus of sophocles, and aristophanes, in 1 vol. without notes. pindar and theocritus, with daphnis and chloe, in 1 vol. without notes. plautus and terence, in 1 vol. without notes. virgil complete, selections from horace, and lucan, in 1 vol. without notes. ovid, tibullus, juvenal, in 1 vol. without notes. fabliaux du moyen age, recueillies par legrand d'aussy. dante, ariosto, tasso, and petrarch, in 1 vol. in italian. select plays of metastasio and alfieri, also in italian. i promessi sposi, by manzoni, in 1 vol. in italian. don quixote, and the exemplary novels of cervantes, in spanish, in 1 vol. select spanish dramas, a collection edited by don josé segundo florez, in 1 vol. in spanish. the romancero espagnol, a selection, with the poem of the cid, 1 vol. in spanish. select plays of p. corneille. molière, complete. select plays of racine and voltaire, in 1 vol. la fontaine's fables, with some from lamotte and florian. gil blas, by lesage. the princess of cleves, paul and virginia, and the last of the abencerrages, to be collected in 1 vol. les martyres, par chateaubriand. select plays of shakespeare. paradise lost and lyrical poems of milton. robinson crusoe and the vicar of wakefield, in 1 vol. tom jones, by fielding, in english, or translated by chéron. the seven masterpieces of walter scott--ivanhoe, waverley, the fair maid of perth, quentin durward, woodstock (les puritains), the heart of midlothian, the antiquary. select works of byron, don juan in particular to be suppressed. select works of goethe. the arabian nights. ii. _science._ (thirty volumes.) arithmetic of condorcet, algebra, and geometry of clairaut, the trigonometry of lacroix or legendre, to form 1 vol. analytical geometry of auguste comte, preceded by the geometry of descartes. statics, by poinsot, with all his memoirs on mechanics. course of analysis given by navier at the ecole polytechnique, preceded by the reflections on the infinitesimal calculus by carnot. course of mechanics given by navier at the ecole polytechnique, followed by the essay of carnot on equilibrum and motion. theory of functions, by lagrange. popular astronomy of auguste comte, followed by the plurality of worlds of fontenelle. mechanical physics of fischer, translated and annotated by biot. alphabetical manual of practical philosophy, by john carr. the chemistry of lavoisier. chemical statics, by berthollet. elements of chemistry, by james graham. manual of anatomy, by meckel. general anatomy of bichat, preceded by his treatise on life and death. the first volume of blainville on the organization of animals. physiology of richerand, with notes by bérard. systematic essay on biology, by segond, and his treatise on general anatomy. nouveaux eléments de la science de l'homme, par barthez (2nd édition, 1806). la philosophie zoologique, par lamarck. duméril's natural history. the treatise of guglielmini on the nature of rivers (in italian). discourses on the nature of animals, by buffon. the art of prolonging human life, by hufeland, preceded by hippocrates on air, water, and situation, and followed by cornaro's book on a sober and temperate life, to form 1 vol. l'histoire des phlegmasies chroniques, par broussais, preceded by his propositions de médecine, and the aphorisms of hippocrates (in latin), without commentary. les eloges des savans, par fontenelle et condorcet. iii. _history._ (sixty volumes.) l'abrégé de géographie universelle, par malte brun. geographical dictionary of rienzi. cook's voyages, and those of chardin. history of the french revolution, by mignet. manual of modern history, by heeren. le siècle de louis xiv., par voltaire. memoirs of madame de motteville. the political testament of richelieu, and the life of cromwell, to form 1 vol. history of the civil wars of france, by davila (in italian). memoirs of benvenuto cellini (in italian). memoirs of commines. l'abrégé de l'histoire de france, par bossuet. the revolutions of italy, by denina. the history of spain, by ascargorta. history of charles v., by robertson. history of england, by hume. europe in the middle ages, by hallam. ecclesiastical history, by fleury. decline and fall of the roman empire, by gibbon. manual of ancient history, by heeren. tacitus (complete), the translation of dureau de la malle. herodotus and thucydides, in 1 vol. plutarch's lives, translation of dacier. cæsar's commentaries, and arrian's alexander, in 1 vol. voyage of anacharsis, by barthelemy. history of art among the ancients, by winckelmann. treatise on painting, by leonardo da vinci (in italian). memoirs on music, by grétry. iv. _synthesis._ (thirty volumes.) aristotle's politics and ethics, in 1 vol. the bible. the koran. the city of god, by st. augustine. the confessions of st. augustine, followed by st. bernard on the love of god. the imitation of jesus christ, the original, and the translation into verse, by corneille. the catechism of montpellier, preceded by the exposition of catholic doctrine, by bossuet, and followed by st. augustine's commentary on the sermon on the mount. l'histoire des variations protestantes, par bossuet. discourse on method, by descartes, preceded by the novum organum of bacon, and followed by the interpretation of nature, by diderot. selected thoughts of cicero, epictetus, marcus aurelius, pascal, and vauvenargues, followed by conseils d'une mère, by madame de lambert, and considérations sur les moeurs, par duclos. discourse on universal history, by bossuet, followed by the esquisse historique, by condorcet. treatise on the pope, by de maistre, preceded by the politique sacrée, by bousset. hume's philosophical essays, preceded by the two dissertations on the deaf, and the blind, by diderot, and followed by adam smith's essay on the history of astronomy. theory of the beautiful, by barthez, preceded by the essay on the beautiful, by diderot. les rapports du physique et du moral de l'homme, par cabanis. treatise on the functions of the brain, by gall, preceded by letters on animals, by georges leroy. le traité sur l'irritation et la folie, par broussais (first edition). the positive philosophy of auguste comte (condensed by miss martineau), his positive politics, his positivist catechism, and his subjective synthesis. paris, 3 dante 66 (tuesday, 18th july, 1854). auguste comte, (10 rue monsieur le prince). this is an interesting list as having been compiled with special thought by a celebrated man, but in many of its details it is little likely to find acceptance with the general reader. it seems rather odd to an englishman to find the _princess of cleves_ included, while shakespeare is only to be found in a selection of his plays. it is not comte's fault that science has not stood still since 1854, and that his selection of books is rather out of date. a list of a hundred good novels is likely to be useful to many, but few lists would be open to more criticism, for readers differ more as to what constitutes a good novel than upon any other branch of literature. the following list was contributed by mr. f.b. perkins to the _library journal_ (vol. i. p. 166). the titles are very short, and they are put down in no particular order. most of us will miss some favourite book, but two people, mr. perkins says, have agreed on this list within four or five items. he says he was tempted to add a few alternatives, as amadis de gaul, morte d'arthur, paul and virginia, frankenstein, rasselas, etc. don quixote. gil blas. pilgrim's progress. tale of a tub. gulliver. vicar of wakefield. robinson crusoe. arabian nights. decameron. wilhelm meister. vathek. corinne. minister's wooing. undine. sintram. thisdolf. peter schlemihl. sense and sensibility. pride and prejudice. anastasius. amber witch. mary powell. household of sir t. more. cruise of the midge. guy mannering. antiquary. bride of lammermoor. legend of montrose. rob roy. woodstock. ivanhoe. talisman. fortunes of nigel. old mortality. quentin durward. heart of midlothian. kenilworth. fair maid of perth. vanity fair. pendennis. newcomes. esmond. adam bede. mill on the floss. romola. middlemarch. pickwick. chuzzlewit. nickleby. copperfield. tale of two cities. dombey. oliver twist. tom cringle's log. japhet in search of a father. peter simple. midshipman easy. scarlet letter. house with the seven gables. wandering jew. mysteries of paris. humphry clinker. eugénie grandet. knickerbocker's new york. charles o'malley. harry lorrequer. handy andy. elsie venner. challenge of barletta. betrothed (manzoni's). jane eyre. counterparts. charles auchester. tom brown's schooldays. tom brown at oxford. lady lee's widowhood. horseshoe robinson. pilot. spy. last of the mohicans. my novel. on the heights. bleak house. tom jones. three guardsmen. monte christo. les miserables. notre dame. consuelo. fadette (fanchon). uncle tom's cabin. woman in white. love me little love me long. two years ago. yeast. coningsby. young duke. hyperion. kavanagh. bachelor of the albany. footnotes: [16] the imperial dictionary of the english language: a complete encyclopædic lexicon, literary, scientific, and technological. by john ogilvie, ll.d. new edition. carefully revised and greatly augmented, edited by charles annandale, m.a. london, 1882-83. 4 vols. imp. 8vo. [17] a new english dictionary on historical principles, founded mainly on the materials collected by the philological society. edited by james a.h. murray, ll.d., with the assistance of many scholars and men of science. oxford, clarendon press. royal 4to. [18] a second edition appeared in 1871-72. chapter v. general bibliographies. a good collection of bibliographies is indispensable for a public library, and will also be of great use in a private library when its possessor is a true lover of books. one of the most valuable catalogues of this class of books is the "hand-list of bibliographies, classified catalogues, and indexes placed in the reading room of the british museum for reference" (1881). it is not intended to give in this chapter anything like a complete account of these books, as a separate volume would be required to do justice to them. here it will be sufficient to indicate some of the foremost works in the class. the catalogues of some of our chief libraries are amongst the most valuable of bibliographies for reference. the catalogue of the library of the london institution is one of the handsomest ever produced.[19] unfortunately the cost of production was too great for the funds of the institution, and the elaborate catalogue of tracts was discontinued after the letter f. the london library being a specially well-selected one, the catalogue (which is a good example of a short-titled catalogue) is particularly useful for ready reference.[20] the royal institution library is very rich in british topography, and the catalogue forms a convenient handbook.[21] the catalogue of the patent office library is by no means a model, but the second volume forms a good book of reference.[22] many other catalogues might be mentioned, but these will be sufficient for our present purpose. there is great want of a good handbook of literature, with the prices of the different books. until this want is supplied good booksellers' catalogues will be found the most trustworthy guides. pre-eminent among these are the catalogues of mr. quaritch, and the "catalogue of upwards of fifty thousand volumes of ancient and modern books," published by messrs. willis and sotheran in 1862. mr. quaritch's catalogues are classified with an index of subjects and authors.[23] a previous general catalogue was issued in 1874, and a supplement 1875-77 (pp. iv. 1672). now mr. quaritch is issuing in sections a new catalogue on a still larger scale, which is of the greatest value. for the study of early printed books, hain,[24] panzer,[25] and maittaire's[26] books are indispensable. for general literature brunet's manual[27] stands pre-eminent in its popularity. it has held its own since 1810, when it was first published in three volumes, demy octavo. graesse's trésor[28] is less known out of germany, but it also is a work of very great value. ebert's work[29] is somewhat out of date now, but it still has its use. watt's bibliotheca[30] is one of the most valuable bibliographies ever published, chiefly on account of the index of subjects which gives information that cannot be found elsewhere. the titles were largely taken from second-hand sources, and are in many instances marred by misprints. every one who uses it must wish that it was brought down to date, but it is scarcely likely that any one will sacrifice a life to such labour as would be necessary. moreover, the popular feeling is somewhat adverse to universal bibliographies, and it is thought that the literature of his own country is sufficiently large a subject for the bibliographer to devote his time to. english literature has not been neglected by english bibliographers, although a full bibliography of our authors is still a crying want. complete lists of the works of some of our greatest authors have still to be made, and it is to be hoped that all those who have the cause of bibliography at heart will join to remedy the great evil. it would be quite possible to compile a really national work by a system of co-operation such as was found workable in the case of the philological society's dictionary of the english language. sub-editors of the different letters might be appointed, and to them all titles could be sent. when the question of printing arose, it would be well to commence with the chief authors. these bibliographies might be circulated, by which means many additions would be made to them, and then they could be incorporated in the general alphabet. in such a bibliography books in manuscript ought to be included, as well as printed books. although there is little doubt that many books still remain unregistered, we are well supplied with catalogues of books made for trade purposes. maunsell[31] was the first to publish such a list, and in 1631 was published a catalogue of books issued between 1626 and 1631.[32] william london[33] published his catalogue in 1658, and clavell's his in 1696.[34] bent's catalogue, published in 1786, went back to 1700,[35] and this was continued annually as the london catalogue. the british and english catalogues[36] followed, and the latter is also published annually.[37] for early printed books, ames and herbert's great work[38] is of much value, but information respecting our old literature has increased so much of late that a new history of typographical antiquities is sadly needed. mr. blades has done the necessary work for caxton, but the first english printer's successors require similar treatment. william thomas lowndes, the son of an eminent bookseller and publisher, and himself a bookseller, published in 1834 his _bibliographer's manual_[39] which has remained the great authority for english literature. it had become very scarce when henry bohn, in 1857, brought out a new edition with additions in a series of handy volumes, which is an indispensable book of reference, although it is far from being the complete work that is required. allibone's _dictionary_[40] contains much that is omitted in lowndes's manual, but it is more literary than bibliographical in its scope. the well-selected criticisms appended to the titles of the several books are of considerable interest and value to the reader. mr. w.c. hazlitt's handbooks[41] are exceedingly valuable as containing information respecting a class of books which has been much neglected in bibliographical works. the compiler has been indefatigable for some years past in registering the titles of rare books as they occurred at public sales. mr. collier's account of rare books,[42] founded on his bridgewater catalogue (1837), is of great use for information respecting out-of-the-way literature, as also is mr. corser's descriptive catalogue of old english poetry.[43] accounts of books published in gaelic,[44] in welsh,[45] and in irish,[46] have been published. the works of american authors are included in allibone's _dictionary_, referred to under english literature, but special books have also been prepared, such as trübner's guide,[47] stevens's american books in the british museum,[48] and leypoldt's great book, the american catalogue.[49] catalogues of books on america, such as those of obadiah rich, have also been compiled, but these are more properly special bibliographies. france has always stood in a foremost position in respect to bibliography, and she alone has a national work on her literature, which stands in the very first rank--this is due to the enthusiastic bibliographer querard.[50] a better model as to what a national bibliography should be could not well be found. the catalogue of current literature, which bears the name of o. lorenz, is also an excellent work.[51] german literature has been, and is, well registered. heyse,[52] maltzahn,[53] heinsius,[54] and kayser,[55] have all produced valuable works. heinsius published his original lexicon in 1812, and kayser his in 1834, and supplements to both of these have been published about every ten years. a more condensed work was commenced by a. kirchhoff in 1856, containing the catalogue of works published from 1851 to 1855; a second volume of the next five years appeared in 1861, and since kirchhoff's death hinrichs has published a volume every five years. the leipzig book-fairs have had their catalogues ever since 1594, and the half-yearly volumes now bearing the name of hinrichs,[56] which have been published regularly since 1798, and to which the fair catalogues succumbed in 1855, may be considered as their legitimate successors. the literature of holland is well recorded by campbell[57] and abkoude,[58] and for belgium there is the _bibliographie de belgique_.[59] italy can boast of a gamba[60] and a bertocci,[61] and a public office publishes the _bibliografia italiana_.[62] spain is fortunate in possessing a splendid piece of bibliography in the great works of antonio.[63] some years ago, when i was occupied in cataloguing one of the chief collections of spanish books in this country, i was in the daily habit of consulting these _bibliothecas_, and while comparing the books themselves with the printed titles, i seldom found a mistake. hidalgo's[64] work and the boletin[65] show that at the present time bibliography is not neglected in that country. the works of barbosa machado[66] and silva[67] show that portugal is not behind the sister kingdom in the love for bibliography. bibliographies of other countries might be mentioned here, but space will not permit. there is one branch of general bibliography to which special attention has been paid for a long period of years. o. placcius published his _theatrum anonymorum et pseudonymorum_ at hamburgh in 1674 (2nd ed. 1708). villani continued the record of pseudonymous literature by publishing at parma, in 1689, a small volume entitled _la visiera alzata_. j.c. mylius published his _bibliotheca anonymorum et pseudonymorum_ at hamburgh in 1740. barbier's great work on the anonymous in french literature was first published in 1806-8, the second edition appeared in 1822-27, and the third in 1872-78, as a continuation to the second edition of querard's _les supercheries littéraires_. querard's work is more curious than useful, because the author has entered into minute questions of authorship which do not really belong to the domain of bibliography. manne's volume (1834) is not of much value. lancetti published an octavo volume on pseudonyms in italian (1836), but barbier's work was not worthily imitated in any other country until mr. paterson commenced the publication of the very valuable work of the late mr. halkett.[68] footnotes: [19] a catalogue of the library of the london institution, systematically classed. [london] 1835. 5 vols. royal 8vo. vol. 1 (1835), general library; vol. 2 (1840), tracts and pamphlets arranged in alphabetical order as far as the letter f. (never completed); vol. 3 (1843), general library, additions; vol. 4 (1852), additions from 1843 to 1852. [20] catalogue of the london library, 12, st. james's square, s.w. with preface, laws and regulations, list of members and classified index of subjects. by robert harrison. fourth edition. sold at the library, 1875, royal 8vo. pp. 1022. ---supplemental volume, 1875-1880, sold at the library, 1881, royal 8vo. pp. 219. [21] a new classified catalogue of the library of the royal institution of great britain with indexes of authors and subjects, and a list of historical pamphlets, chronologically arranged. by benjamin vincent. london. sold at the royal institution. 1857, 8vo. pp. xvii.-928. ---vol. ii., including the additions from 1857 to 1882. london. sold at the royal institution. 1882. 8vo. pp. xvii.-388. [22] catalogue of the library of the patent office, arranged alphabetically. in two volumes: vol. 1, authors; vol. 2, subjects. london. published and sold at the commissioners of patents sale department. 1881-83. royal 8vo. [23] a general catalogue of books, offered for sale to the public at the affixed prices. by bernard quaritch london, 15, piccadilly, 1880. 8vo. pp. x.-2395. [24] 1457-1500. hain (l.). repertorium bibliographicum in quo libri omnes ab arte typographica inventa usque ad annum md typis expressi, ordine alphabetico vel simpliciter enumerantur vel adcuratius recensentur. stuttgartiæ, 1826-38. 2 vols. 8vo. [25] 1457-1536. panzer (g.w.). annales typographici ab artis inventæ origine ad annum 1536. norimbergæ, 1793-1803. 11 vols. 4to. [26] 1457-1664. maittaire (m.). annales typographici ab artis inventæ origine ad annum 1664, cum supplemento michaelis denisii. hag. com. et viennæ, 1719-89. 7 vols in 11 parts. [27] brunet (j.c.). manuel du libraire, cinquième édition. paris, 1860-65. 6 vols. 8vo. supplément par p. deschamps et g. brunet. paris, 1878-80, 2 vols. royal 8vo. [28] graesse (j.g.t.). trésor de livres rares et précieux ou nouveau dictionnaire bibliographique. dresde, 1859-69. 7 vols. 4to. [29] ebert (f.a.). allgemeines bibliographisches lexikon. leipzig, 1821-30. 2 vols. 4to. ---a general bibliographical dictionary, from the german [by a. brown]. oxford, 1837. 4 vols. 8vo. [30] watt (r.). bibliotheca britannica: a general index to british and foreign literature. in two parts, authors and subjects. edinburgh, 1824. 4 vols. 4to. [31] before 1595. maunsell (a.). catalogue of english printed books. london, 1595. 4to. part 1, divinitie. part 2, sciences mathematicall. [32] 1626-1631. a catalogue of certaine bookes which have been published and (by authoritie) printed in england both in latine and english, since the year 1626 until november, 1631. london, 1631. 4to. [33] before 1658. london (william). a catalogue of the most vendible books in england, orderly and alphabetically digested. with a supplement. 1658-60. 4to. [34] 1666-1695. clavell (r.). general catalogue of books printed in england since the dreadful fire of london, 1666. fourth edition. london, 1696. folio. [35] 1700-1786. a general catalogue of books in all languages, arts, and sciences, printed in great britain and published in london. london (w. bent), 1786. 8vo. 1811. london catalogue of books. london (w. bent), 1811. 8vo. 1810-1831. london catalogue of books. london (w. bent), 1831. 8vo. 1816-1851. london catalogue of books. london (hodgson), 1851. 8vo. classified index. london (hodgson), 1853. 1831-1855. london catalogue of books. london (hodgson), 1855. [36] 1837-52. the british catalogue. sampson low, 1853. and index. 2 vols. 8vo. [37] 1835-1880. the english catalogue of books. sampson low. and indexes. 8vo. _continued annually._ [38] 1471-1600. ames (joseph). typographical antiquities: being an historical account of printing in england, with some memoirs of our antient printers, and a register of the books printed by them ... with an appendix concerning printing in scotland, ireland to the same time. london, 1749. 4to. 1 vol. considerably augmented by w. herbert. london, 1785-90. 3 vols. 4to. enlarged by t.f. dibdin. london, 1810-19. 4 vols. 4to. [39] lowndes (w.t.), the bibliographer's manual of english literature. london, 1834. 4 vols. 8vo. new edition, by h.g. bohn. london, 1857-64. 6 vols. sm. 8vo. [40] allibone (s.a.). dictionary of english literature, and british and american authors. philadelphia, 1859-71. 3 vols. royal 8vo. [41] hazlitt (w. carew). handbook to the popular, poetical, and dramatic literature of great britain, from the invention of printing to the restoration. london (j. russell smith), 1867. 8vo. ---collections and notes, 1867-1876. london (reeves & turner), 1876. 8vo. ---second series of bibliographical collections and notes on early english literature, 1474-1700. london (bernard quaritch), 1882. [42] collier (j.p.). a bibliographical and critical account of the rarest books in the english language, alphabetically arranged. london, 1865. 2 vols. 8vo. [43] corser (t.). collectanea anglo-poetica; or a bibliographical and descriptive catalogue of a portion of a collection of early english poetry. manchester (chetham society), 1860-79. 9 vols. sm. 4to. [44] _gaelic._ bibliotheca scoto-celtica; or, an account of all the books which have been published in the gaelic language. by john reid. glasgow, 1832. 8vo. [45] _welsh._ cambrian bibliography: containing an account of the books printed in the welsh language; or relating to wales, from the year 1546 to the end of the 18th century. by w. rowlands. llanidloes, 1869. 8vo. [46] _irish._ transactions of the iberno-celtic society for 1820. containing a chronological account of nearly four hundred irish writers ... carried down to the year 1750, with a descriptive catalogue of such of their works as are still extant. by e. o'reilly. dublin, 1820. 4to. [47] trübner's bibliographical guide to american literature: a classed list of books published in the united states of america during the last forty years. london, 1859. 8vo. [48] catalogue of the american books in the library of the british museum. christmas, 1856. by h. stevens. london, 1866. 8vo. [49] the american catalogue under the direction of f. leypoldt. new york, 1880. 2 vols. 4to. suppl. 1876-84. compiled under the editorial direction of r.r. bowker by miss appleton. new york, 1885. [50] querard (j.m.). la france littéraire, ou dictionnaire bibliographique des savants qui ont écrit en français, plus particulièrement pendant les xviii^e et xix^e siècles. paris, 1827-64. 12 vols. 8vo. ---littérature française contemporaine (1826-49). continuation de la france littéraire. paris, 1842-57. 6 vols. 8vo. [51] lorenz (o.). catalogue de la librairie française 1840-1865. 4 vols. 1866-1875. 2 vols. 8vo. the catalogue of books from 1876 to 1885 is in preparation. ---tables des matières, 1840-1875. paris, 1879-80. 2 vols. 8vo. [52] [heyse (c.w.).] bücherschatz der deutschen national-litteratur des xvi und xvii jahrhunderts. systematisch geordnetes verzeichniss einer reichhaltigen sammlung deutschen büchen. berlin, 1854. 8vo. [53] maltzahn (w. von). deutschen bücherschatz des sechszehnten, siebenzehnten und achtzehnten bis um die mitte des neunzehnten jahrhunderts. jena, 1875. 8vo. [54] heinsius (w.). allgemeines bücher lexicon, 1700-1815. leipzig, 1812-56. 14 vols. 4to. 7th supplement. [55] kayser (c.g.). index librorum. vollständiges bücher-lexicon, enthaltend alle von 1750 bis zu ende des jahres (-1876) in deutschland ... gedruckten bücher. leipzig, 1834-77. 4to. [56] hinrichs (j.c.). verzeichniss der bücher ... welche in deutschland vom januar, 1877, bis zum (december, 1885) neu erschienen oder neu aufgelegt worden sind. leipzig, 1876-80. 12mo. _in progress._ ---repertorium über die nach den ... verzeichnissen, 1871-75, erschienenen bücher. von e. baldamus. (1876-80.) leipzig, 1877-82. 12mo. [57] campbell (m.f.a.g.). annales de la typographie néerlandaise au xv^e siècle. la haye, 1874. 8vo. ---1^{er} supplément. la haye, 1878. 8vo. [58] abkoude (j. van). naamregister van de bekendste ... nederduitsche boeken ... 1600 tot 1761. nu overzien en tot het jaar 1787 vermeerderd door r. arrenberg. rotterdam, 1788. 4to. ---alphabetische naamlijst van boeken 1790 tot 1832, amsterdam, 1835. 4to. 1833-1875. amsterdam, 1858-78. 3 vols. 4to. ---wetenschappelijk register behoorende bij brinkman's alphabetische naamlijsten van boeken ... 1850-75 ... bewerkt door r. van der meulen. amsterdam, 1878. 4to. [59] bibliographie de belgique. journal officiel de la librairie. année 1. bruxelles, 1876. 8vo. [60] gamba (b.). serie dei testi di lingua italiana e di altri opere importanti nella italiana letteratura del secolo xv al xix. quarta edizione. venezia, 1839. 8vo. [61] bertocci (d.g.). repertorio bibliografico delle opere stampate in italia nel secolo xix. vol. i. roma, 1876. 8vo. [62] bibliografia italiana: giornale compilato sui documenti communicati dal ministero dell'istruzione pubblica. anno 1-14. 1867-80. firenze, 1868-81. 8vo. in progress. [63] antonio (n.). bibliotheca hispana vetus sive hispani scriptores ... ad annum christi 1500 floruerunt. matriti, 1788. 2 vols. folia. ---bibliotheca hispana nova sive hispanorum scriptorum qui ab anno 1500 ad 1684 floruere notitia. matriti, 1783-1788. 2 vols. folio. [64] hidalgo (d.). diccionario general de bibliografia española. madrid, 1862-79. 6 vols. 8vo. [65] boletin de la libreria. año 1. 1873. madrid, 1874. 8vo. in progress. [66] barbosa machado (d.). bibliotheca lusitana, historica, critica e cronologica. na qual se comprehende a noticia dos authores portuguezes, e das obras que compuserão. lisboa, 1741-59. 4 vols. folio. [67] silva (j.f. da). diccionario bibliographico portuguez. lisboa, 1858-70. tom. 1-9. 8vo. [68] a dictionary of the anonymous and pseudonymous literature of great britain, including the works of foreigners written in or translated into the english language. by the late samuel halkett, and the late rev. john laing. edinburgh (william paterson), 1882-85. vols. 1, 2, 3 (to 'tis). chapter vi. special bibliographies. bibliographies of special subjects are more useful than any other books in the formation of a library. the articles in the new edition of the _encyclopædia britannica_ will be found valuable for this purpose, but those who wish for fuller information must refer to dr. julius petzholdt's elaborate _bibliotheca bibliographica_ (leipzig, 1866), or to the _bibliographie des bibliographies_ of m. léon vallée (paris, 1885). the late mr. cornelius walford contributed a paper "on special collections of books" to the transactions of the conference of librarians, 1877 (pp. 45-49), in which he specially referred to the subject of insurance. in the present chapter i propose to refer to some of the most useful bibliographies, but to save space the full titles will not be given, and this is the less necessary as they can mostly be found in the above books or in that useful little volume we owe to the authorities of the british museum--"hand-list of bibliographies, classified catalogues, and indexes placed in the reading-room," 1881. _agriculture._--weston's tracts on practical agriculture and gardening (1773), contains a chronological catalogue of english authors, and donaldson's agricultural biography (1854) brings the subject down to a later date. victor donatien de musset-pathay published a _bibliographie agronomique_ in 1810, and loudon's _encyclopædia of agriculture_ contains the literature and bibliography of agriculture, british, french, german, and american. _ana._--in peignot's _repertoire de bibliographies spéciales_ (1810) will be found at pp. 211-268, a list of books of ana, and gabriel antoine joseph hécart published at valenciennes, 1821, under the name of j.g. phitakaer, a bibliography entitled "anagrapheana." namur's _bibliographie des ouvrages publiés sous le nom d'ana_ was published at bruxelles in 1839. the late sir william stirling maxwell made a collection of books of ana, a privately printed catalogue of which he issued in 1860. _angling._--sir henry ellis printed privately in 1811 a small octavo pamphlet of 21 pages which he entitled "a catalogue of books on angling, with some brief notices of several of their authors," which was an extract from the _british bibliographer_. in 1836, pickering printed a _bibliotheca piscatoria_, which was formed upon sir henry ellis's corrected copy of the above catalogue. mr. j. russell smith published in 1856 "a bibliographical catalogue of english writers on angling and ichthyology," which was soon superceded by the following work by mr. t. westwood. "a new bibliotheca piscatoria, or a general catalogue of angling and fishing literature." london, 1861 (another edition, edited conjointly with t. satchell, 1883). mr. r. blakey published in 1855, "angling literature of all nations." london, 1855. 12mo. mr. j.j. manley, m.a., published in 1883, "literature of sea and river fishing," as one of the handbooks of the international fisheries exhibition. _architecture._--lacroix (e.). bibliographie des ingénieurs, des architectes, des chefs d'usines industrielles, des elèves des ecoles polytechniques et professionnelles et des agriculteurs. première (--troisième) série. paris, 1864-67. 4to. _assurance_ (_life_).--lewis pocock published "a chronological list of books and single papers" relating to this subject in 1836, a second edition of which was published in 1842. _astronomy._--lalande published his valuable "bibliographie astronomique" at paris, 1803. otto struve's catalogue of the library of the pulkova observatory, published at st. petersburg in 1860, is highly esteemed by astronomers. the first part of the catalogue of the united states naval observatory at washington, by prof. e.s. holden, is devoted to astronomical bibliography. ---houzeau (j.c.) and lancaster (a.), bibliographie générale de l'astronomie. bruxelles, 1880. 8vo. in progress. ---mr. e.b. knobel, secretary of the royal astronomical society, printed in the _monthly notices_ of that society for november, 1876 (pp. 365-392), a very useful short reference catalogue of astronomical papers and researches, referring more especially to (1) double stars; (2) variable stars; (3) red stars; (4) nebulæ and clusters; (5) proper motions of stars; (6) parallax and distance of stars; (7) star spectra. mr. e.s. holden's "index catalogue of books and memoirs relating to nebulæ and clusters of stars" was printed in the _smithsonian miscellaneous collections_ in 1877. _bible._--the famous le long published at paris, in 1713, his "discours historiques sur les principales éditions des bibles polyglottes," and in 1723, in two volumes, folio, his great work "bibliotheca sacra." this was edited and continued by a.g. masch, and published at halæ magd. in five volumes, quarto. 1774-97. t. llewelyn published in 1768 "historical account of the british or welsh versions and editions of the bible." a privately printed "list of various editions of the bible" was issued in 1778, which has been attributed to dr. ducarel. john lewis's "complete history of the several translations of the holy bible and new testament into english" was published in 1818, and dr. henry cotton's "list of editions" (oxford, 1821, 2nd edition, 1852) was intended as an appendix to that work. orme's _bibliotheca biblica_ was published at edinburgh in 1824, and hartwell horne's _manual of biblical bibliography_ at london in 1839. bagster's _bible in every land_ (1848), although not strictly bibliographical, must be mentioned here, because it gives under each language a notice of all versions published in that language. lowndes' british librarian or book collector's guide. class i. religion and its history. london, 1839. 8vo. parts 1, 2, 3 are devoted to holy scriptures, biblical commentaries, biblical disquisitions, scripture biography, scripture geography, etc. the work itself was left incomplete dr. h. cotton published at oxford, in 1855, a work entitled "rhemes and doway. an attempt to show what has been done by roman catholics for the diffusion of the holy scriptures in english." in 1859 j.g. shea published at new york a "bibliographical account of catholic bibles, testaments, and other portions of scripture translated from the latin vulgate, and printed in the united states," and in 1861 e.b. o'callaghan published at albany a "list of editions of the holy scriptures and parts thereof, printed in america previous to 1860." e. reuss published at brunswick, in 1872, a bibliography of the greek new testament. dr. isaac hall printed a critical bibliography of american greek testaments at philadelphia in 1883. mr. henry stevens, the eminent bibliographer, is a special authority on bibles, and his work, entitled "the bibles in the caxton exhibition, 1877, or a bibliographical description of nearly one thousand representative bibles in various languages, chronologically arranged" (london, 1878), contains some of the information he possesses. _biography._--oettinger's _bibliographie biographique universelle_ (1854) is a most useful work, although it is now unfortunately somewhat out of date. _book-keeping._--b.f. foster's _origin and progress of book-keeping_ (1852) contains an account of books published on this subject from 1543 to 1852. _botany._--pritzel's _thesaurus literaturæ botanicæ_ (1851, another edition 1872-77) is _the_ bibliography of the subject, and this work is supplemented by mr. daydon jackson's index of botany, published by the index society. trimen's botanical bibliography of the british counties, london, 1874. 8vo. _chemistry._--r. ruprecht, bibliotheca chemica et pharmaceutica, 1858-70. _göttingen_, 1872. _classics._--dr. edward harwood published his "view of the various editions of the greek and roman classics" in 1790. he was followed in 1802 by thomas frognall dibdin, whose work was much enlarged, and reappeared in several editions; the fourth and best being published in 1827 (2 vols. 8vo.). j.w. moss published his "manual of classical bibliography" in 1825, 2 vols. 8vo. henry g. bohn's general catalogue, part ii. section i. 1850, contains a valuable list of greek and latin classics. engelmann's bibliotheca scriptorum classicorum et græcorum et latinorum (1858) is an elaborate work on the subject, and professor john e.b. mayor's translation and adaptation of dr. hübner's bibliographical clue to latin literature will be found to be a very useful handbook. _commerce._--see _trade_. _dialects._--mr. j. russell smith published, in 1839, a useful "bibliographical list of the works that have been published towards illustrating the provincial dialects of england" (24 pages). when the rev. professor skeat started the english dialect society, he at once laid the foundation of an extensive bibliographical list to include mss. as well as printed works. this bibliography is being published by the society in parts. _dictionaries._--william marsden printed privately, in 1796, a valuable "catalogue of dictionaries, vocabularies, grammars, and alphabets." _dictionaries._--trübner's catalogue of dictionaries and grammars (1872, second edition 1882) is a very useful work. h.b. wheatley's account of english dictionaries was published in the transactions of the philological society for 1865. _drama._--a notice of some books in the english drama will be found in chapter iv. the _bibliothèque dramatique de mons. de soleinne_ (1843-44, 5 vols.), with its continuation to 1861, is a splendid catalogue, in which the books are fully described, with valuable notes and preface. _earthquakes._--mr. robert mallet's bibliography of earthquakes will be found in the british association report for 1858, and mons. alexis perrey's bibliographie seismique in the dijon _memoires_ for 1855, 1856, and 1861. _electricity._--sir francis ronalds' catalogue of books and papers relating to electricity, magnetism, and the electric telegraph (1880) contains a large number of titles. o. salle's bibliography of electricity and magnetism, 1860 to 1883, was published in 1884. _entomology._--dr. hagen's bibliotheca entomologica (leipzig, 1862-63) is a carefully compiled and useful book. _epigrams._--there is a list of books connected with epigrammatic literature appended to _the epigrammatists_, by the rev. philip dodd. 8vo. london, 1870. _fine art._--the first proofs of the universal catalogue of books in art, compiled for the use of the national art library and the schools of art in the united kingdom. london, 1870. 2 vols. sm. 4to. supplement. london, 1877. ---essai d'une bibliographie de l'histoire spéciale de la peinture et de la gravure en hollande et en belgique (1500-1875), par j.f. van someren, amsterdam, 1882. 8vo. _freemasonry._--gowans (w.). catalogue of books on freemasonry and kindred subjects. new york, 1858. 8vo. ---hemsworth (h.w.). catalogue of books in the library at freemasons' hall, london. privately printed. there is a list of books on freemasonry in petzholdt's bibliotheca bibliographica, pp. 468-474. mr. folkard printed privately a catalogue of works on freemasonry in the wigan free library in 1882, and in the annals of the grand lodge of iowa, vol. ix. part i. (1883) is a catalogue of works on this subject in the library of the grand lodge of iowa. _future life._--catalogue of works relating to the nature, origin, and destiny of the soul, by ezra abbot. appended to w.r. alger's critical history of the doctrine of a future life. philadelphia, 1864. 8vo. reprinted, new york, 1871. _geography._--see _voyages and travels_. _health._--catalogue of the international health exhibition library. division i. health. division ii. education. london, 1884. 8vo. _heraldry._--thomas moule's valuable _bibliotheca heraldica magnæ britanniæ_ was published in 1822. there is a "list of the principal english and foreign text-books on heraldry" at the end of _the handbook of heraldry_, by j.e. cussans, london, 1869. _history_ (_general_).--brunet (j.c.). table méthodique en forme de catalogue raisonné, histoire. paris, 1865. 8vo. ---oettinger (e.m.). historisches archiv. archives historiques, contenant une classification de 17,000 ouvrages pour servir à l'étude de l'histoire de tous les siècles et de toutes les nations. carlsruhe, 1841. 4to. (_great britain and ireland._)--bishop nicholson's english, scotch, and irish historical libraries, 1776, will still be found useful. mr. mullinger's portion of the introduction to the study of english history (1881) gives the latest information on the subject. sir duffus hardy's "descriptive catalogue of materials relating to the history of great britain and ireland to the end of the reign of henry viii." is an invaluable book, but is unfortunately incomplete. (_france._)--lelong (j.). bibliothèque historique (1768-78, 5 vols, folio). "les sources de l'histoire de france," by a. franklin, was published in 1877. _history_ (_germany._)--bibliographical essay on the scriptores rerum germanicarum, by a. asher, was published in 1843. (_holland._)--nijhoff. bibliotheca historico-neerlandica. la haye, 1871. (_italy._)--lichtenthal (p.). manuale bibliografico del viaggiatore in italia. milano, 1844. a catalogue of sir richard colt hoare's collection of books relating to the history and topography of italy was printed in 1812. the collection was presented to the british museum by hoare in 1825. (_portugal._)--figaniere. bibliographia historica portugueza. lisboa, 1850. (_spain._)--munoz y romero. diccionario bibliografico-historico ... de espana. madrid, 1858. _language._--see _dictionaries_, _philology_. _law._--mr. stephen r. griswold contributed an article on law libraries to the u.s. report on libraries (pp. 161-170). he writes, "law books may be classified generally as follows: reports, treatises, statute law. the practice of reporting the decisions of the judges began in the reign of edward i., and from that time we have a series of judicial reports of those decisions. in the time of lord bacon, these reports extended to fifty or sixty volumes. during the two hundred and fifty years that have passed since then, nothing has been done by way of revision or expurgation; but these publications have been constantly increasing, so that at the close of the year 1874 the published volumes of reports were as follows: english, 1350 volumes; irish, 175 volumes; scotch, 225 volumes; canadian, 135 volumes; american, 2400 volumes. with respect to treatises (including law periodicals and digests), and without including more than one edition of the same work, it is safe to say that a fair collection would embrace at least 2000 volumes. the statute law of the united states, if confined to the general or revised statutes and codes, may be brought within 100 volumes. if, however, the sessional acts be included, the collection would amount to over 1500 volumes. it is thus seen that a fairly complete law library would embrace more than 7000 volumes, which could not be placed upon its shelves for less than $50,000." _law._--there is a useful list of legal bibliographies in the "hand-list of bibliographies in the reading-room of the british museum" (pp. 40-44). clarke's _bibliotheca legum_, which was compiled by hartwell horne (1819), is a valuable work. marvin's _legal bibliography_, which was published at philadelphia in 1847, contains 800 pages. the catalogue of the law library in the new york state library (1856), forms a useful guide to the subject, and herbert g. sweet's "complete catalogue of modern law books" is one of the latest catalogues of authority. _mathematics._--a really good bibliography of mathematics is still wanting. the following books, however, all from germany, are useful. _mathematics._--murhard (f.w.a.). bibliotheca mathematica. lipsiæ, 1797-1804. 4 vols. ---rogg (j.). handbuch der mathematischen literatur. tübingen, 1830. ---sohncke (l.a.). bibliotheca mathematica. 1830-54. leipsic, 1854. ---erlecke (a.). bibliotheca mathematica. halle-a.-s., 1873. ---professor de morgan's arithmetical books (1847) is a model of what a good bibliography ought to be. _medical._--dr. billings contributed a chapter on "medical libraries in the united states" to the u.s. report on public libraries (pp. 171-182), in which he wrote--"the record of the researches, experiences, and speculations relating to medical science during the last four hundred years is contained in between two and three hundred thousand volumes and pamphlets; and while the immense majority of these have little or nothing of what we call 'practical value,' yet there is no one of them which would not be called for by some inquirer if he knew of its existence." the writer added a list of works of reference which should be in every medical library. there have been a specially large number of medical bibliographies, from haller's works downwards. james atkinson's medical bibliography (1834, a and b only), is an amusing book, but of little or no utility. the most useful books are dr. billings's index catalogue of the library of the surgeon-general's office (washington, 1880) and the catalogue of the library of the royal medical and chirurgical society (3 vols. 1879), by b.r. wheatley. neale's medical digest (1877) forms a convenient guide to the medical periodicals. the two great french dictionaries--raige-delorme and a. dechambre, dictionnaire encyclopédique des sciences médicales (4 series, commenced in 1854, and still in progress); jaccoud, nouveau dictionnaire de médecine et de chirurgie pratiques (1864, and still in progress)--contain very valuable references to the literature of the various subjects. of special subjects may be mentioned h. haeser's bibliotheca epidemiographica (1843), john s. billings's bibliography of cholera in the report of the cholera epidemic of 1873 in the united states (1875, pp. 707-1025), beer's bibliotheca ophthalmica (1799), dr. e.j. waring's bibliotheca therapeutica (1878-79, 2 vols. 8vo.), and bibliography of embryology, in balfour's embryology, vol. ii. _meteorology._--a full bibliography of books and papers upon meteorology is being prepared at the united states signal office, and it is reported that 48,000 titles are now in the office. there have been several articles on this subject in _symons's meteorological magazine_, the last being in the number for december, 1885. _mineralogy._--dana (j.d.). bibliography of mineralogy. 1881. 8vo. _mining._--wigan free public library index catalogue of books and papers relating to mining, metallurgy, and manufactures. by henry tennyson folkard, librarian. southport, 1880. roy. 8vo. _motion (perpetual)._--perpetuum mobile; or, search for self-motive power during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, illustrated from various authentic sources in papers, essays, letters, paragraphs, and numerous patent specifications, with an introductory essay. by henry dircks, c.e. london, 1861. sm. 8vo. second series. london, 1870. sm. 8vo. _music._--engel (c.). the literature of national music. london, 1879. 8vo. ---catalogue of the library of the sacred harmonic society. a new edition [by w.h. husk]. london, 1872. 8vo. ---rimbault (f.). bibliotheca madrigaliana, a bibliographical account of the musical and poetical works published in england during the 16th and 17th centuries, under the titles of madrigals, ballets, ayres, canzonets, etc. london, 1847. 8vo. there are bibliographies of the subject in f.l. kilter's history of music, london, 1876, and f. clement, histoire générale de la musique religieuse. paris, 1861. _natural history._--dryander's catalogue of sir joseph banks's library, now in the british museum, is the most famous bibliography of this subject, although made so many years ago. it consists of 5 vols. 8vo. (1798-1800). vol. 1, general writers; vol. 2, zoology; vol. 3, botany; vol. 4, mineralogy; vol. 5, supplement. _natural history._--engelmann (w.). bibliotheca historico-naturalis. leipzig, 1846. ---zuckold (e.a.). bibliotheca historico-naturalis, physico-chemica et mathematica. göttingen, 1852. ---see _zoology_. _philology._--marsden (w.) bibliotheca marsdenia, philologica et orientalis. london, 1827. 4to. ---engelmann (w.). bibliotheca philologica. leipzig, 1853. ---see _dictionaries_. _political economy._--mcculloch (j.r.) the literature of political economy, london, 1845.--this is a very valuable work up to the date of publication, but a good bibliography of the subject is still a desideratum. the late professor stanley jevons proposed to draw up a handy book of the literature for the index society, but, to the great loss of bibliography, was prevented by other work from undertaking it. he contributed a list of selected books in political economy to the _monthly notes_ of the library association (vol. 3, no. 7). _poor._--a catalogue of publications in the english language on subjects relative to the poor will be found in eden's _state of the poor_, vol. iii. pp. ccclxvii--ccclxxxvi. _printing._--bigmore (e.c.), and wyman (c.w.h.). a bibliography of printing, with notes and illustrations. london, 1880. 4to. ---the literature of printing. a catalogue of the library illustrative of the history and art of typography, chalcography, and lithography, by r.m. hoe. london, 1877. 8vo. the following is a list of some of the bibliographies of the productions of the chief printers: _aldus._--annales de l'imprimerie des alde ou histoire des trois manuce et de leurs éditions. par ant. aug. renouard. paris, an xii. seconde édition. paris, 1825. 8vo. 3 vols. _caxton._--the life and typography of william caxton, england's first printer, with evidence of his typographical connection with colard mansion, the printer at bruges. compiled from original sources by william blades. london, 1861-63. 2 vols. 4to. a condensed edition was published under the following title: the biography and typography of william caxton, england's first printer. by william blades. second edition. london, 1882. 8vo. _elzevirs._--willems (a.). les elzevier. histoire et annales typographiques. bruxelles, 1880. 8vo. ---c. pieters. annales de l'imprimerie des elsevier. gand, 1858. 8vo. _plantin._--la maison plantin à anvers. par l. degeorge. deuxième édition, augmentée d'une liste chronologique des ouvrages imprimés par plantin à anvers de 1555 à 1589. bruxelles, 1878. 8vo. _stephens._--annales de l'imprimerie des estienne, ou histoire de la famille, des estienne et de ses éditions. par a.a. renouard. paris, 1837-38. 8vo. 2 parts. _privately printed books._--the second edition of john martin's bibliographical catalogue of privately printed books was published in 1854, and a newer work on this important subject is much required. mr. w.p. courtney has been engaged in the production of such a work for some years, and the labour could not be in better hands. _proverbs._--the _bibliographie parémiologique_ of pierre alexandre gratet-duplessis (1847), is one of the most elaborate and carefully compiled bibliographies ever published. sir william stirling maxwell printed privately a catalogue of his collection of books of proverbs, in which were specially marked those unknown to duplessis, or those published since the issue of his catalogue. _science._--an article on the scientific libraries in the united states was contributed by dr. theodore gill to the u.s. report on public libraries (pp. 183-217). it contains an account of the various periodical records of work in the various departments of science. _shorthand._--thomas anderson's history of shorthand, london (1882), contains lists of writers on shorthand in different languages. _theology._--there is an article on theological libraries in the united states, in the u.s. report on public libraries (pp. 127-160). the following extract contains some particulars respecting these.--"there are reported twenty-four libraries, which contain from 10,000 to 34,000 volumes; and these twenty-four libraries belong to ten different denominations. three baptist, two catholic, two congregational, three episcopal, one lutheran, two methodist, seven presbyterian, one reformed (dutch), one reformed (german), and two unitarian. and, if we include those libraries which contain less than 10,000 volumes, the list of different denominations to which they belong is extended to fifteen or sixteen." a considerable number of bibliographies of theology will be found in the british museum hand-list. darling's cyclopædia bibliographica (1854-59), malcom's theological index (boston, 1868), and zuchold's bibliotheca theologica (göttingen, 1864), may be specially mentioned. _topography._--gough's british topography (2 vols. 4to. 1780) is an interesting and useful book, and upcott's bibliographical account of the principal works relating to british topography, 3 vols. 8vo. (1818), forms one of the best specimens of english bibliography extant. _topography._--mr. j.p. anderson's book of british topography (1881) is an indispensable book. mr. robert harrison has prepared for the index society an index of books on topography, arranged in one alphabet of places, which has not yet been published. mr. w.h.k. wright contributed a paper on "special collections of local books in provincial libraries" to the transactions of the first annual meeting of the library association, 1878 (pp. 44-50). another paper on the same subject, by mr. j.h. nodal, appears in the transactions of the second annual meeting of the library association, 1879 (pp. 54-60), entitled "special collections of books in lancashire and cheshire," and in the appendix (pp. 139-148) is a full account of these collections in public libraries and private hands. an indication of some of the chief bibliographies of particular counties and places is here added- cornwall: boase & courtney, 1874-82. 3 vols. a model bibliography. devonshire: j. davidson, 1852. " plymouth (three towns' bibliotheca), r.n. worth, 1872-73. dorsetshire: c.h. mayo, privately printed, 1885. gloucestershire: bibliotheca gloucestrensis, j. washbourn, 1823-25. gloucestershire: collectanea glocestriensia, j.d. phelps, 1842. hampshire: bibliotheca hantoniensis, h.m. gilbert, 1872? " list of books, sir w.h. cope, 1879. herefordshire: j. allen, jun., 1821. kent: j. russell smith, 1837. lancashire: h. fishwick, 1875. man (isle of): w. harrison, 1876. norfolk: s. woodward and w.c. ewing, 1842. nottinghamshire: s.f. creswell, 1863. sussex: g.s. butler, 1866. yorkshire: rt. hon. john smythe, pontefract, 1809. " e. hailstone, 1858. " w. boyne, 1869. _trade and finance._--catalogue of books, comprising the library of william paterson, founder of the bank of england, in vol. iii. of the collection of his "writings, edited by saxe bannister," (3 vols. 8vo. london, 1859). ---enslin und engelmann. bibliothek der handlungswissenschaft 1750-1845. leipzig, 1856. _trials._--the catalogue of the library of the philosophical institution of edinburgh (1857) contains (pp. 297-319) a very useful list of trials in an alphabet of the persons tried. the table is arranged under name, charge, date of trial, and reference. _voyages and travels._--locke's catalogue and character of most books of voyages and travels is interesting on account of locke's notes. (locke's works, 1812, 10 vols. 8vo., vol. x. pp. 513-564.) there are catalogues of books of travels in pinkerton's collection (1814), and kerr's collection (1822). ---boucher de la richaderie, bibliothèque universelle des voyages, paris, 1808. 6 vols. 8vo. ---engelmann (w.). bibliotheca geographica. leipzig, 1858. _zoology._--agassiz's bibliographia zoologicæ et geologicæ, published by the ray society, 1848-54, was a useful book in its day, but it is of no value bibliographically, and the titles being mostly taken at second-hand, the work is full of blunders. ---carus and engelmann's bibliotheca zoologica, leipzig 1861, forms a supplement to the bibliotheca historico-naturalis of engelmann. * * * * * a large number of bibliographies of particular authors have been published in this country and abroad, and it may be useful here to make a note of some of these. ariosto, orlando furioso: ulisse guidi, _bologna_, 1861, 1868. g.j. ferrazzi, _bassano_, 1881. boccaccio: m. landau, _napoli_, 1881. burns: j. mackie, _kilmar_, 1866. calderon: e. dorer, _leipzig_, 1881. camoens: adamson's life of camoens, vol. 2, 1820. cervantes: e. dorer, _leipzig_, 1881. corneille: e. picot, _paris_, 1876. dante: bibliografia dantesca, _prato_, 1845-46. c.u.j. chevalier, 1877. g.a. scartazzini, dante in germania, 1881. j. petzholdt, _dresden_, 1880. goethe: s. hirzel, 1878. luther: e.g. vogel, _halle_, 1851. j. edmands, _philadelphia_, 1883. manzoni: a. vosmara, _milano_, 1875. molière: p. lacroix, _paris_, 1875. montaigne: j.f. payer, _paris_, 1837. persius: j. tarlier, _bruxelles_, 1848. petrarch: marsand, _milano_, 1826. " a. hortis, _trieste_, 1874. " g.j. ferrazzi, _bassano_, 1877. c.u.j. chevalier, montpéliard, 1880. rabelais: j.c. brunet, _paris_, 1852. schiller: l. unflad, _münchen_, 1878. tasso: g.j. ferrazzi, _bassano_, 1880. voltaire: g. bengesco, _paris_, 1882. * * * * * browning: f.j. furnivall, browning society, 1881-2. carlyle: r.h. shepherd, 1882. defoe: m. stace, 1829; wilson, 1830; lee, 1862. dickens: r.h. shepherd, 1881. " j. cook, paisley, 1879. hazlitt, leigh hunt, charles lamb: a. ireland, 1868. ruskin: r.h. shepherd, 1882. shakespeare: j. wilson, 1827; j.o. halliwell, 1841; moulin, 1845; sillig and ulrici, 1854; h.g. bohn, 1864; f. thimm, 1865-72; k. knortz, 1876; unflad, 1880; justin winsor (poems); birmingham memorial library catalogue (j.d. mullens). shelley: h.b. forman, 1886. tennyson: r.h. shepherd, 1879. thackeray: r.h. shepherd, 1881. wycliffe: j. edmands, 1884. dr. garnett commenced a ms. list of such special bibliographies as he came across in treatises on the different subjects. this list is added to and kept in the reading room for use by the librarians. i was allowed the privilege of referring to this very useful list. chapter vii. publishing societies. a large amount of important information is to be found in the publications of the numerous societies formed for the purpose of supplying to their subscribers valuable works which are but little likely to find publishers. these publications have in a large number of instances added to our knowledge of history and literature considerably. the societies have much increased of late years, but no record of the publications is easily to be obtained, since the full account given in bohn's supplement to lowndes's _bibliographer's manual_. the earliest of publishing societies was the _dilettanti society_, instituted in london in 1734, which issued some fine illustrated volumes of classical travel. a long period of time elapsed without any societies of a similar character being formed. _the roxburghe club_ formed in the year 1812 in commemoration of the sale of the magnificent library of john third duke of roxburghe (died march 19, 1804). it was chiefly intended as a social club, and a long list of bibliographical toasts was run through at the banquets. the publications were not at first of any great literary value, although some of them were curious and interesting. after a time competent editors were employed, and some important works produced. sir frederick madden's editions of "havelok the dane" was issued in 1828, of the romance of "william and the werwolf" in 1832, and of the old english version of "gesta romanorum" in 1838. the valuable "manners and household expenses of england in the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries," edited by t. hudson turner, was presented to the club by beriah botfield in 1841; payne collier's edition of the "household books of john duke of norfolk, and thomas earl of surrey, 1481-1490," was issued in 1844, and his "five old plays illustrative of the early progress of the english drama" in 1851; the rev. joseph stevenson's edition of "the owl and the nightingale, a poem of the twelfth century," was issued in 1838, and his edition of "the ayenbite of inwyt" in 1855; john gough nichols's edition of the "literary remains of king edward the sixth" appeared in 1857 and 1858 (2 vols.), and dr. furnivall's edition of henry lonelich's "seynt graal" in 1863-1864. several years elapsed before the second great printing club was founded. in 1823 _the bannatyne club_ was started in edinburgh, chiefly by sir walter scott, for the purpose of printing works illustrative of the history, antiquities and literature of scotland. it derives its names from george bannatyne (born feb. 22, 1545, died 1607). a long series of books have been issued by the club to its members, many of which are of great interest. the catalogue of the abbotsford library was presented in 1839 to the members "by major sir walter scott, bart., as a slight return for their liberality and kindness in agreeing to continue to that library the various valuable works printed under their superintendence." in the same year appeared sir frederick madden's edition of _sir gawayne_. bishop gawin douglas's "palace of honour" was printed in 1827, and his translation of virgil's "æneid" in 1839 (2 vols.). the club was closed in 1867. _the maitland club_, which derived its name from sir richard maitland of lethington (born in 1496, died march 20, 1586), was instituted in glasgow in 1828. a volume containing "the burgh records of the city of glasgow, 1573 to 1581," was presented to the club in 1832-34; the poems of drummond of hawthornden in 1832; robert wodrow's "collection upon the lives of the reformers and most eminent ministers of the church of scotland" in 1834-45 (2 vols.). dauncey's ancient scottish melodies in 1838. sir bevis of hamtoun in the same year, the metrical romance of lancelot du lak in 1839; wodrow's analecta, or materials for a history of remarkable providences, in 1842-3 (4 vols.). henry laing's descriptive catalogue of ancient seals, in 1850. the club was closed in 1859. _the abbotsford club_ was founded in honour of sir walter scott in 1834, by mr. w.b.d.d. turnbull. the first book (issued in 1835) was a volume of "ancient mysteries from the digby ms."; "arthur and merlin, a metrical romance," was printed in 1838; "romances of sir guy of warwick and rembrun his son," in 1840; "the legend of st. katherine of alexandra," in 1841; "sir degaree, a metrical romance of the end of the nineteenth century," in 1849. the club was closed in 1866. these printing clubs were select in their constitution, and the books being printed for the members in small numbers, they are difficult to obtain and their price is high. with the foundation of the camden society an entirely new system was adopted, and the general body of book lovers, poor as well as rich, were appealed to with great success, and valuable books were supplied to the subscribers at a price which would have been impossible without such means. the camden society is entitled to this honour on account of the general interest of its publications, but the surtees society was actually the first to inaugurate the new system. the subscription fixed was double that which the founders of the camden society adopted, but it was, perhaps, a bolder step to start a society, appealing to a somewhat restricted public with a two guinea subscription, than to appeal to the whole reading public with a subscription of one pound. before saying more of the surtees and camden societies, it will be necessary to mention some other printing clubs which preceded them. _the oriental translation fund_ was established in 1828, with the object of publishing translations from eastern mss. into the languages of europe. when the issue of books was discontinued, the stock of such books as remained was sold off, and many of these can still be obtained at a cheap rate. _the iona club_ was instituted in 1833, for the purpose of investigating the history, antiquities, and early literature of the highlands and islands of scotland, but little has been done in the way of publication. the first book was "collectanea de rebus albanicis," and the second, "transactions of the club," vol. i. in 4 parts. a second volume was announced, but never appeared. _the surtees society_ was founded at durham in 1834 for the publication of inedited manuscripts, illustrative of the moral, the intellectual, the religious, and the social condition of those parts of england and scotland included on the east, between the humber and the frith of forth, and on the west, between the mersey and the clyde, a region which constituted the ancient kingdom of northumberland. the society is named after robert surtees, of mainforth, author of the "history of the county palatine of durham." although founded more than fifty years ago, the society is still flourishing, and carried on with the same vigour as of old. the series of publications is a long one, and contains a large number of most important works. the second book issued was "wills and inventories, illustrative of the history, manners, language, statistics, etc., of the northern counties of england, from the eleventh century downwards" (part 2 was issued in 1860); the third, "the towneley mysteries or miracle plays"; the fourth, "testamenta eboracensia: wills illustrative of the history, manners, language, statistics, etc., of the province of york, from 1300" (vol. 1). the second volume of this series was issued in 1855. "anglo-saxon and early english psalter" was issued in 1843-44 (2 vols.); "the durham household book; or, the accounts of the bursar of the monastery of durham, from 1530 to 1534," in 1844. _the camden society_, instituted in 1838, has issued to its subscribers a large number of books of the greatest interest on historical and literary subjects. the set of publications is so well known that it is not necessary to enumerate titles here. among the most valuable are the several volumes devoted to the correspondence of certain old families, such as the "plumpton correspondence" (1839), "egerton papers" (1840), "rutland papers" (1842), and "savile correspondence" (1858). the romances and chronicles must also be mentioned, and the remarkable edition of the oldest english dictionary, "promptorium parvulorum," which was fully and learnedly edited by the late mr. albert way. a second series was commenced in 1871, which is still continued. the same year which saw the foundation of the camden society also gave birth to _the english historical society_. sixteen works of considerable value were issued, but the greatest of these is the grand "codex diplomaticus ævi saxonici" of the late j. mitchell kemble (1845-48). _the spalding club_, named after john spalding, commissary clerk of aberdeen, and founded at aberdeen in 1839 for the printing of the historical, ecclesiastical, genealogical, topographical, and literary remains of the north-eastern counties of scotland, was formed on the model of the exclusive clubs; but being affected by the more democratic constitution of the later printing societies, its subscription was fixed at one guinea. amongst the most interesting of the club's publications are the "sculptured stones of scotland" (1856), "barbour's brus" (1856), and the "fasti aberdonensis: selections from the records of the university and king's college of aberdeen from 1494 to 1854" (1854). the year 1840 saw the foundation of three very important societies, viz. the parker, the percy, and the shakespeare. _the parker society_ took its name from the famous archbishop of canterbury, martin parker, and its objects were (1) the reprinting, without abridgment, alteration or omission, of the best works of the fathers and early writers of the reformed english church published in the period between the accession of edward vi. and queen elizabeth; (2) the printing of such works of other writers of the sixteenth century as may appear desirable (including under both classes some of the early english translations of the foreign reformers), and (3) the printing of some mss. of the same authors hitherto unpublished. the society was an enormous success, and at one time the list contained seven thousand members; but owing to the multitude of copies printed, and the somewhat dry character of the books themselves, many of them can now be obtained at a ridiculously small sum, the price of a complete set usually averaging little more than a shilling a volume. when the series was completed, a valuable general index to the whole was compiled by mr. henry gough, 1855. _the percy society_ took its name from bishop percy, author of the "reliques of ancient english poetry" (born 1729, died 1811), and was founded for the purpose of bringing to light important but obscure specimens of ballad poetry, or works illustrative of that department of literature. the society was dissolved in 1853, but during the thirteen years of its existence it produced a singularly interesting series of publications. the number of separate works registered in bohn's appendix to lowndes's bibliographer's manual is 94, besides "quippes for upstart newfangled gentlewomen by stephen gosson," which was suppressed, and "rhyming satire on the pride and vices of women now-a-days, by charles bansley," 1540, which was reprinted in 1841, but not issued. the set is much sought after, and fetches a good price. _the shakespeare society_ was founded in 1840, to print books illustrative of shakespeare and of the literature of his time, and a very valuable collection of works was issued to the subscribers during the term of its existence. it was dissolved in 1853, and the remaining stock was made up into volumes and sold off. there was much for the society still to do; but the controversy arising out of the discovery of the forgeries connected with john payne collier's name made it difficult for the shakespearians to work together with harmony. in this same year the _musical antiquarian society_ was founded, and during the seven years of its existence it issued books of madrigals, operas, songs, anthems, etc., by early english composers. in the following year (1841), the _motett society_ was founded for the publication of ancient church music. five parts only, edited by dr. rimbault, were issued. in 1841 the _society for the publication of oriental texts_ was founded, and a series of works in syriac, arabic, sanscrit, and persian was distributed to the subscribers until 1851, when the society was dissolved. _the wodrow society_ was instituted in edinburgh in 1841, for the publication of the early writers of the reformed church of scotland, and named after the rev. robert wodrow. among its publications are, "autobiography and diary of james melvill," "correspondence of the rev. r. wodrow" (3 vols.), "history of the reformation in scotland, by john knox" (2 vols.). the society was dissolved in 1848. _the ælfric society_ was founded in 1842 for the publication of those anglo-saxon and other literary monuments, both civil and ecclesiastical, tending to illustrate the early state of england. the publications, which were not numerous, were edited by benjamin thorpe and j.m. kemble, and the society was discontinued in 1856. _the chetham society_, founded at manchester in 1843, for the publication of historical and literary remains connected with the palatine counties of lancaster and chester, was named after humphrey chetham (born 1580, died 1653). the society, which still flourishes, has now produced a very long series of important works, and the volumes, which are not often met with, keep up their price well. _the sydenham society_ for reprinting standard english works in medical literature, and for the translation of foreign authors, with notes, was founded in 1843. after printing a number of important works, the society was dissolved in 1858, and was succeeded by _the new sydenham society_. _the spottiswoode society_ was founded at edinburgh in 1843, for the revival and publication of the acknowledged works of the bishops, clergy, and laity of the episcopal church of scotland, and rare, authentic, and curious mss., pamphlets and other works illustrative of the civil and ecclesiastical state of scotland. it takes its name from john spottiswoode, the first duly consecrated scottish archbishop after the reformation (born 1566, died 1639.) the late mr. hill burton gives an amusing account of the foundation of this society in his delightful _book-hunter_. he writes: "when it was proposed to establish an institution for reprinting the works of the fathers of the episcopal church in scotland, it was naturally deemed that no more worthy or characteristic name could be attached to it than that of the venerable prelate, who by his learning and virtues had so long adorned the episcopal chair of moray and ross [robert jolly], and who had shown a special interest in the department of literature to which the institution was to be devoted. hence it came to pass that, through a perfectly natural process, the association for the purpose of reprinting the works of certain old divines was to be ushered into the world by the style and title of the jolly club. there happened to be amongst those concerned, however, certain persons so corrupted with the wisdom of this world, as to apprehend that the miscellaneous public might fail to trace this designation to its true origin, and might indeed totally mistake the nature and object of the institution, attributing to it aims neither consistent with the ascetic life of the departed prelate, nor with the pious and intellectual object of its founders. the counsels of these worldly-minded persons prevailed. the jolly club was never instituted,--at least as an association for the reprinting of old books of divinity,--though i am not prepared to say that institutions, more than one so designed may not exist for other purposes. the object, however, was not entirely abandoned. a body of gentlemen united themselves together under the name of another scottish prelate, whose fate had been more distinguished, if not more fortunate, and the spottiswoode society was established. here, it will be observed, there was a passing to the opposite extreme, and so intense seems to have been the anxiety to escape from all excuse for indecorous jokes or taint of joviality, that the word club, wisely adopted by other bodies of the same kind, was abandoned, and this one called itself a society." the publications were discontinued about 1851. _the calvin translation society_ was established at edinburgh in 1843, and its work was completed in 1855, by the publication of twenty-two commentaries, etc., of the great reformer in fifty-two volumes. _the ray society_ was founded in 1844 for the publication of works on natural history (zoology and botany), and a large number of valuable books, fully illustrated, have been produced, many of them translations from foreign works. many of the later publications are more elaborately coloured than the earlier ones. _the wernerian club_ was instituted in 1844 for the republication of standard works of scientific authors of old date. _the handel society_ was founded at london in 1844, for the purpose of printing the works of handel in full score. sixteen volumes were issued, and in 1858 the society was dissolved, the german handel society resuming the publication. _the hanserd knollys society_ was instituted in 1845 for the publication of the works of early english and other baptist writers, and one of these was an edition of bunyan's pilgrim progress from the text of the first edition. the society was dissolved about 1851. _the caxton society_ was instituted in 1845 for the publication of chronicles and other writings hitherto unpublished, illustrative of the history and miscellaneous literature of the middle ages. this society was formed on a somewhat original basis. the members were to pay no annual subscription, but they engaged to purchase one copy of all books published by the society. the expense of printing and publishing to be defrayed out of the proceeds of the sale, and the money remaining over to be paid to the editors. _the cavendish society_ was instituted in 1846 for the promotion of chemical science by the translation and publication of valuable works and papers on chemistry not likely to be undertaken by ordinary publishers. during its last years the society existed for the publication of gmelin's voluminous "handbook of chemistry," and when this work was completed, with a general index, the society ceased to exist. _the ecclesiastical history society_ was instituted in 1846, and one of its early publications was the first volume of wood's "athenæ oxoniensis," edited by dr. bliss, but this only contained the life of anthony wood himself. the society was dissolved in 1854, after publishing the book of common prayer according to a ms. in the rolls office, dublin (3 vols.), and sundry other works. _the hakluyt society_, named after richard hakluyt (born 1553, died 1616), was founded at the end of 1846 for the purpose of printing the most rare and valuable voyages, travels and geographical records, from an early period of exploratory enterprise to the circumnavigation of dampier. the first two volumes ("sir richard hawkins's voyage into the south sea, 1593," and "select letters of columbus") were issued in 1847, and the society still flourishes. between 1847 and 1885 the society has presented to its members an important series of books of travel, at the rate of about two volumes a year for an annual subscription of one guinea. _the palæontographical society_ was founded in 1847 for the purpose of figuring and describing a stratigraphical series of british fossils. the annual volumes consist of portions of works by the most eminent palæontologists, and these works are completed as soon as circumstances allow, but several of them are still incomplete. _the arundel society_ is so important an institution that it cannot be passed over in silence, although, as the publications chiefly consist of engravings, chromolithographs, etc., it scarcely comes within the scope of this chapter. the society takes its name from thomas howard earl of arundel, in the reigns of james i. and charles i., who has been styled the "father of _vertu_ in england." it was founded in 1849, and its purpose is to diffuse more widely, by means of suitable publications, a knowledge both of the history and true principles of painting, sculpture, and the higher forms of ornamental design, to call attention to such masterpieces of the arts as are unduly neglected, and to secure some transcript or memorial of those which are perishing from ill-treatment or decay. the publications of the society have been very successful, and many of them cannot now be obtained. most of the societies above described have appealed to a large public, and endeavoured to obtain a large amount of public support; but in 1853 was formed an exclusive society, with somewhat the same objects as the roxburghe club. _the philobiblon society_ was instituted chiefly through the endeavours of mr. r. monckton milnes (the late lord houghton) and the late mons. sylvain van de weyer. the number of members was at first fixed at thirty-five, but was raised in 1857 to forty, including the patron and honorary secretaries. the publications consist chiefly of a series of bibliographical and historical miscellanies, contributed by the members, which fill several volumes. besides these there are "the expedition to the isle of rhe by lord herbert of cherbury," edited and presented to the members by the earl of powis; "inventaire de tous les meubles du cardinal mazarin," edited and presented by h.r.h. the duke d'aumale; "memoires de la cour d'espagne sous la regne de charles ii., 1678-82," edited and presented by william stirling (afterwards sir william stirling maxwell); "the biography and bibliography of shakespeare," compiled and presented by henry g. bohn; "analyse des travaux de la société des philobiblon de londres," par octave delepierre. _the ossianic society_ was instituted at dublin in 1853 for the preservation and publication of manuscripts in the irish language, illustrative of the fenian period of irish history, etc., with literal translations and notes. _the warton club_ was instituted in 1854 and issued four volumes, after which it was dissolved. _the manx society_ was instituted at douglas, isle of man, in 1858, for the publication of national documents of the isle of man. all the societies mentioned above are registered in henry bohn's appendix to lowndes's bibliographer's manual, and lists of the publications up to 1864 are there given. most of them are also described in hume's "learned societies and printing clubs of the united kingdom" (1853). since, however, the publication of these two books, a considerable number of important printing societies have been formed, and of these a list is not readily obtainable, except by direct application to the respective secretaries. the newly printed general catalogue of the british museum in the reading room however contains a full list of the publications of the various societies under the heading of _academies_. the foundation of the _early english text society_ in 1864 caused a renewed interest to be taken in the publications of the printing clubs. the origin of the society was in this wise. when the philological society undertook the formation of a great english dictionary, the want of printed copies of some of the chief monuments of the language was keenly felt. mr. f.j. furnivall, with his usual energy, determined to supply the want, and induced the council of the philological society to produce some valuable texts. it was found, however, that these publications exhausted much of the funds of the society, which was required for the printing of the papers read at the ordinary meetings, so that it became necessary to discontinue them. mr. furnivall, then, in conjunction with certain members of the philological society, founded the early english text society. the society possessed the inestimable advantage of having among its founders mr. richard morris (afterwards the rev. dr. morris), who entered with fervour into the scheme, and produced a large amount of magnificent work for the society. dr. furnivall put the objects of the society forward very tersely when he said that none of us should rest "till englishmen shall be able to say of their early literature what the germans can now say with pride of theirs--'every word of it is printed, and every word of it is glossed.'" the society prospered, and in 1867 an extra series was started, in which were included books that had already been printed, but were difficult to obtain from their rarity and price. one hundred and twenty-six volumes have been issued between 1864 and 1884, eighty-two volumes of the original series and forty-four of the extra series, and there can be no doubt that the publications of the society have had an immense influence in fostering the study of the english language. the prefaces and glossaries given with each work contain an amount of valuable information not elsewhere to be obtained. these books throw light upon the growth of the language, and place within the reach of a large number of readers works of great interest in the literature of the country. the greatest work undertaken by the society is the remarkable edition of "william's vision of piers the plowman," which prof. skeat has produced with an expenditure of great labour during nearly twenty years. the last part, containing elaborate notes and glossary, was issued in 1884. the subjects treated of are very various. there is a fair sprinkling of romances, which will always be amongst the most interesting of a society's publications. manners and customs are largely illustrated in a fair proportion of the texts, as also are questions of social and political history. perhaps the least interesting to the general reader are the theological texts, which are numerous, but the writers of these were thoroughly imbued with the spirit of their times, and although they are apt to be prosy, they are pretty sure to introduce some quaint bits which compensate for a considerable amount of dulness. these books help us to form a correct idea of the beliefs of our forefathers, and to disabuse our minds of many mistaken views which we have learnt from more popular but less accurate sources. _the ballad society_ grew out of the publication, by special subscription, of bishop percy's folio manuscript, edited by f.j. furnivall and j.w. hales. this was issued in connection with the early english text society (but not as one of its texts), through the energy of mr. furnivall, who had many difficulties to overcome before he was able to get permission to print the manuscript, which had been very faithfully guarded from the eyes of critics. he had to pay for the privilege, and in the end the old volume was sold to the nation, and it now reposes among the treasures of the british museum. when this useful work was completed, mr. furnivall was anxious to follow it by a reprint of all the known collections of ballads, such as the roxburghe, bagford, rawlinson, douce, etc., and for this purpose he started the ballad society in 1868. he himself edited some particularly interesting "ballads from manuscripts," and an elaborate account of captain cox's ballads and books in a new edition of robert laneham's letter on the entertainment at kenilworth in 1575. the veteran ballad illustrator, mr. william chappell, undertook to edit the "roxburghe ballads," and produced nine parts, when the rev. j.w. ebsworth took the work off his hands. mr. ebsworth had previously reproduced the "bagford ballads," and he is now the editor-in-chief of the society. the following is a short list of the publications of the society: nos. 1, 2, 3, 10, "ballads from manuscripts"; nos. 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 12, 13, 18, 19. "the roxburghe ballads," edited by wm. chappell; no. 7, "captain cox, his ballads and books"; no. 11, "love poems and humourous ones"; nos. 14, 15, 16, 17, "the bagford ballads." no. 20, "the amanda group of bagford ballads;" nos. 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, "the roxburghe ballads," edited by the rev. j.w. ebsworth. no. 26 completes the fifth volume of the "roxburghe ballads." there are two more volumes to come, and then mr. ebsworth will undertake "the civil war and protectorate ballads." much of the work on these volumes is done, and they only await an increase in the subscription list. it is to be hoped that when the good work done by the ballad society is better known, the editor will not be kept back in his useful course by the want of funds for printing. mr. ebsworth's thorough work is too well known to need praise here, but it may be noted that his volumes contain a remarkable amount of illustration of the manners of the time not to be obtained elsewhere. the value of this is the more apparent by the system of arrangement in marked periods which the editor has adopted. _the chaucer society_ was founded in 1868 by mr. furnivall, "to do honour to chaucer, and to let the lovers and students of him see how far the best unprinted manuscripts of his works differed from the printed texts." for the canterbury tales, mr. furnivall has printed the six best unprinted mss. in two forms--(1) in large oblong parts, giving the parallel texts; (2) in octavo, each text separately. the six manuscripts chosen are--the ellesmere; the lansdowne (brit. mus.); the hengwrt; the corpus, oxford; the cambridge (university library); the petworth. dr. furnivall has now added harleian 7334 to complete the series. the society's publications are issued in two series, of which the first contains the different texts of chaucer's works, and the second such originals of and essays on these as can be procured, with other illustrative treatises and supplementary tales. _the spenser society_ was founded at manchester in 1867 for the publication of well-printed editions of old english authors in limited numbers. the chief publication issued to subscribers was a reprint, in three volumes folio, of the works of john taylor, the water-poet, from the original folio. the other publications are in small quarto, and among them are the works of john taylor not included in the folio, the works of wither, etc. _the roxburghe library_ was a subscription series, commenced by mr. w. carew hazlitt in 1868, with the same objects as a publishing society. it was discontinued in 1870. the following is a list of the publications:--"romance of paris and vienne"; "william browne's complete works," 2 vols.; "inedited tracts of the 16th and 17th centuries (1579-1618)"; "the english drama and stage under the tudor and stuart princes, 1543-1664"; "george gascoigne's complete poems," 2 vols.; "thomas carew's poems." _the harleian society_ was founded in 1869. their chief publication has been the late colonel chester's magnificently edited registers of westminster abbey. other registers published are those of st. peter's, cornhill; st. dionis backchurch; st. mary aldermary; st. thomas the apostle; st. michael, cornhill; st. antholin, budge lane; and st. john the baptist, on wallbrook. of the other publications there are visitations of bedfordshire, cheshire, cornwall, cumberland, devon, essex, leicestershire, london 1568, 1633, nottingham, oxford, rutland, somersetshire, warwickshire, and yorkshire, and le neve's catalogue of knights. _the hunterian club_ was founded at glasgow in 1871, and named after the hunterian library in the university. among the publications of the club are a series of tracts by thomas lodge and samuel rowlands; the poetical works of alexander craig; poetical works of patrick hannay; sir t. overburie's vision by richard niccols, 1616. the printing of the famous bannatyne manuscript, compiled by george bannatyne, 1568, was commenced by the society in 1873, and the seventh part, which completed this invaluable collection of scottish poetry, was issued in 1881. _the folk lore society_ was founded by the late mr. w.j. thoms (inventor of the term folk lore) in 1878, and during the seven years of its existence it has done much valuable work, chiefly through the energetic direction of mr. g.l. gomme, the hon. sec. (now director). the object of the society is stated to be "the preservation and publication of popular traditions, legendary ballads, local proverbial sayings, superstitions and old customs (british and foreign), and all subjects relating to them." the principal publication of the society, the _folk lore record_, now the _folk lore journal_, was at first issued in volumes, and afterwards in monthly numbers. it is now a quarterly. the other publications are:--henderson's folk-lore of the northern counties of england and the borders, a new edition; aubrey's remaines of gentilisme and judaisme; gregor's notes on the folk-lore of the north-east of scotland; comparetti's book of sindibad and pedroso's portuguese folk tales; black's folk medicine; callaway's religious system of the amazulu. the year 1873 saw the formation of several publishing societies. _the new shakspere society_ was founded by dr. f.j. furnivall, for the reading of papers, which have been published in a series of transactions, and also for the publication of collations of the quarto plays, and works illustrating the great dramatist's times. among the latter works are harrison's description of england, stubbes's anatomie of abuses, dr. ingleby's shakespeare's centurie of prayse, etc. _the english dialect society_ was founded at cambridge by the rev. professor skeat. its objects are stated to be (1) to bring together all those who have made a study of any of the provincial dialects of england, or who are interested in the subject of provincial english; (2) to combine the labours of collectors of provincial english words by providing a common centre to which they may be sent, so as to gather material for a general record of all such words; (3) to publish (subject to proper revision) such collections of provincial english words that exist at present only in manuscript; as well as to reprint such glossaries of provincial words as are not generally accessible, or are inserted in books of which the main part relates to other subjects; and (4) to supply references to sources of information which may be of material assistance to word-collectors, students, and all who have a general or particular interest in the subject. the publications are arranged under the following series: a, bibliographical; b, reprinted glossaries; c, original glossaries; d, miscellaneous. in 1875 the society was transferred to manchester, and mr. j.h. nodal became honorary secretary. _the palæographical society_ was formed for the purpose of reproducing specimens of manuscripts, and it has produced a series of facsimiles of ancient manuscripts, edited by e.a. bond and e.m. thompson, part 1 being issued in 1873. at the end of the year 1877 _the index society_ was founded for the purpose of producing (1) indexes of standard works; (2) subject indexes of science, literature and art; and (3) a general reference index. the publications were commenced in 1878, and the first annual meeting was held in march, 1879, the earl of carnarvon being the first president. the first publication was "what is an index?" by h.b. wheatley. among the important books issued by the society may be mentioned solly's "index of hereditary titles of honour"; daydon jackson's "guide to the literature of botany" and "literature of vegetable technology," and rye's "index of norfolk topography." the _society for the promotion of hellenic studies_ was founded in 1879 for the following objects: (1) to advance the study of the greek language, literature, and art, and to illustrate the history of the greek race in the ancient, byzantine, and neo-hellenic periods, by the publication of memoirs and inedited documents or monuments in a journal to be issued periodically. (2) to collect drawings, facsimiles, transcripts, plans, and photographs of greek inscriptions, mss., works of art, ancient sites and remains, and with this view to invite travellers to communicate to the society notes or sketches of archæological and topographical interest. (3) to organise means by which members of the society may have increased facilities for visiting ancient sites and pursuing archæological researches in countries which, at any time, have been the sites of hellenic civilization. five volumes of the _journal_ have been issued. _the topographical society of london_ was formed in 1880. the inaugural meeting was held at the mansion house, and the first annual meeting at drapers' hall on feb. 3, 1882, with the lord mayor (sir john whitaker ellis), president, in the chair. the following reproductions have been issued to subscribers:--van der wyngaerde's view of london, ab. 1550, 7 sheets; braun & hogenberg's plan of london, 1 sheet; visscher's view of london, 4 sheets. _the browning society_ was founded by dr. furnivall in 1881, and besides papers read at the meetings, the society has issued dr. furnivall's "bibliography of browning." _the wyclif society_ was founded also by dr. furnivall in 1882, for the publication of the complete works of the great reformer. _the pipe roll society_ was established in 1883, and in 1885 the first three volumes of its publications have been issued to the members. these are--vol. 1, pipe rolls, 5 hen. ii.; vol. 2, 6 hen. ii.; vol. 3, introduction. _the oxford historical society_ was formed in 1884, and four handsome volumes have been issued for that year and 1885. these are--1, "register of the university of oxford" (vol. 1, 1449-63, 1505-71), edited by the rev. c.w. boase; 2, "remarks and collections of thomas hearne" (vol. 1, july 4, 1705-march 19, 1707), edited by c.e. doble, m.a. both these volumes are supplied with temporary indexes. 3, "the early history of oxford, 727-1100," by james parker; 4, "memories of merton college," by the hon. george c. brodrick; 5, "collectanea." first series. edited by c.r.l. fletcher. _the middlesex county record society_ was formed in 1885 "for the purpose of publishing the more interesting portions of the old county records of middlesex, which have lately been arranged and calendared by order of the justices." nothing has been published as yet, but mr. cordy jeaffreson is engaged upon the first two volumes, one of which will be issued shortly. the rev. dr. a.b. grosart has himself printed by subscription more works of our old writers than many a society, and therefore it is necessary to mention his labours here, although a complete list of them cannot be given. the chief series are: "the fuller worthies library," 39 volumes; "the chertsey worthies library," 14 vols. 4to., and "the huth library." chapter viii. child's library. the idea of a child's library is to a great extent modern, and it is not altogether clear that it is a good one, except in the case of those children who have no books of their own. it is far better that each child should have his own good books, which he can read over and over again, thus thoroughly mastering their contents. it is a rather wide-spread notion that there is some sort of virtue in reading for reading's sake, although really a reading boy may be an idle boy. when a book is read, it should be well thought over before another is begun, for reading without thought generates no ideas. one advantage of a child's library should be that the reader is necessarily forced to be careful, so as to return the books uninjured. this is a very important point, for children should be taught from their earliest years to treat books well, and not to destroy them as they often do. we might go farther than this and say that children should be taught at school how to handle a book. it is really astonishing to see how few persons (not necessarily children) among those who have not grown up among books know how to handle them. it is positive torture to a man who loves books to see the way they are ordinarily treated. of course it is not necessary to mention the crimes of wetting the fingers to turn over the leaves, or turning down pages to mark the place; but those who ought to know better will turn a book over on its face at the place where they have left off reading, or will turn over pages so carelessly that they give a crease to each which will never come out. for a healthy education it is probably best that a child should have the run of a library for adults (always provided that dangerous books are carefully excluded). a boy is much more likely to enjoy and find benefit from the books he selects himself than from those selected for him. the circumstances of the child should be considered in the selection of books; thus it is scarcely fair when children are working hard at school all day that they should be made to read so-called instructive books in the evening. they have earned the right to relaxation and should be allowed good novels. to some boys books of travels and history are more acceptable than novels, but all children require some fiction, and, save in a few exceptional cases, their imaginations require to be cultivated. it will soon be seen whether children have healthy or unhealthy tastes. if healthy, they are best left to themselves; if unhealthy, they must be directed. it is easy for the seniors to neglect the children they have under them, and it is easy to direct them overmuch, but it is difficult to watch and yet let the children go their own way. we are apt, in arranging for others, to be too instructive; nothing is less acceptable to children or less likely to do them good than to be preached at. moral reflections in books are usually skipped by children, and unless somewhat out of the common, probably by grown-up persons as well. instruction should grow naturally out of the theme itself, and form an integral part of it, so that high aims and noble thoughts may naturally present themselves to the readers. one of the chapters in the united states libraries' report is on "school and asylum libraries" (pp. 38-59), in which we are informed that new york was the pioneer in founding school libraries. "in 1827 governor de witt clinton, in his message to the legislature, recommended their formation; but it was not till 1835 that the friends of free schools saw their hopes realized in the passage of a law which permitted the voters in any school district to levy a tax of $20 to begin a library, and a tax of $10 each succeeding year to provide for its increase." another chapter in the same report is on "public libraries and the young" (pp. 412-418), in which mr. wm. j. fletcher advocates the use of the library as an addition to the school course. he writes, "it only remains now to say that, as we have before intimated, the public library should be viewed as an adjunct of the public school system, and to suggest that in one or two ways the school may work together with the library in directing the reading of the young. there is the matter of themes for the writing of compositions; by selecting subjects on which information can be had at the library, the teacher can send the pupil to the library as a student, and readily put him in communication with, and excite his interest in, classes of books to which he has been a stranger and indifferent." a very interesting book on this subject is entitled "libraries and schools. papers selected by samuel s. green. new york (f. leypoldt), 1883." it contains the following subjects: "the public library and the public schools;" "the relation of the public library to the public schools"; "libraries as educational institutions"; "the public library as an auxiliary to the public schools"; "the relation of libraries to the school system"; and "a plan of systematic training in reading at school." "_books for the young, a guide for parents and children._ compiled by c. m. hewins. new york (f. leypoldt), 1882," is an extremely useful little book. it contains a valuable list of books arranged in classes. certain marks are used to indicate the character of the books, thus the letter (_c_) indicates that the book is especially suitable for children under ten, (_b_) that it is especially suitable for boys, and (_g_) that it is especially suitable for girls. prefixed are eight sensible rules as to how to teach the right use of books. perkins's "best reading" contains a good list of books for children (pp. 299-303). the children's books of the present day are so beautifully produced that the elders are naturally induced to exclaim, "we never had such books as these," but probably we enjoyed our books as well as our children do theirs. what a thrill of pleasure the middle-aged man feels when a book which amused his childhood comes in his way: this, however, is seldom, for time has laid his decaying hand upon them- "all, all are gone, the old familiar faces." the children for whom miss kate greenaway and mr. caldecott draw and mrs. gatty and mrs. ewing wrote are indeed fortunate, but we must not forget that charles and mary lamb wrote delightful books for the young, that miss edgeworth's stories are ever fresh, and that one of the most charming children's stories ever written is mrs. sherwood's _little woodman_. a short list of a child's library is quoted in the _library journal_ (vol. viii. p. 57) from the _woman's journal_. the family for whom it was chosen consisted of children from three to twelve, the two eldest being girls. the books are mostly american, and but little known in this country- snow-bound. illustrated. whittier. life of longfellow. kennedy. a summer in the azores. baker. among the isles of shoals. celia thaxter. the boys of '76. coffin. the boys of '61. coffin. story of our country. higginson. sir walter raleigh. towle. child's history of england. dickens. tales from shakespear. lamb. tales from homer. church. the wonder-book. illustrated. hawthorne. young folks' book of poetry. campbell. poetry for childhood. eliot. bits of talk about home matters. h.h. the seven little sisters. andrews. hans brinker, or the silver skates. dodge. room for one more. mary t. higginson. king arthur for boys. lanier. doings of the bodley family. scudder. mother-play and nursery-rhymes. children's robinson crusoe. the four-footed lovers. mammy tittleback and her family. h.h. the little prudy books. six volumes. the editor of the _library journal_ remarks on the list, "guest's lectures on english history is better than dickens's, and the 'prudy' children are so mischievous, so full of young americanisms, and so far from being 'wells of english undefiled,' that they are not always good companions for boys and girls. i have known a child's english spoiled by reading the prudy books." some of the old-fashioned children's books have been reprinted, and these will generally be found very acceptable to healthy-minded children, but some of the old books are not easily met with. no child's library should be without a good collection of fairy tales, a careful selection of the arabian nights, or robinson crusoe. gulliver's travels is very unsuited for children, although often treated as a child's book. berquin's _children's friend_, edgeworth's _parent's assistant_ and the aikins's _evenings at home_, will surely still amuse children, although some may think their teaching too didactic. it is only by practical experience that we can tell what children will like. _sandford and merton_ is, i believe, usually considered as hopelessly out of date, but i have found young hearers follow my reading of it with the greatest interest. _the pilgrim's progress_ will always have as great a fascination for the young as it must have for their elders; but there is much preaching in it which must be skipped, or the attention of the hearers will flag. chapter ix. one hundred books. in the fourth chapter of this volume two lists of selected books are given, viz. the comtist's library, and a list of one hundred good novels. since that chapter was written and printed, much public attention has been drawn to this branch of our subject by the publication of sir john lubbock's list of books which he recommended to the members of the working men's college, when he lectured at that place on "books." the comments by eminent men, which have appeared in the _pall mall gazette_, have also attracted attention, and it seems desirable that some note on this list should appear in these pages. the list issued by the _pall mall gazette_ is as follows: non-christian moralists. marcus aurelius, _meditations_. epictetus, _encheiridion_. confucius, _analects_. aristotle, _ethics_. mahomet, _koran_. theology and devotion. apostolic fathers, _wake's collection_. st. augustine, _confessions_. thomas à kempis, _imitation_ pascal, _pensées_. spinoza, _tractatus theologico-politicus_. butler, _analogy_. jeremy taylor, _holy living and holy dying_. keble, _christian year_. bunyan, _pilgrim's progress_. classics. aristotle, _politics_. plato, _phædo_ and _republic_. æsop, _fables_. demosthenes, _de coronâ_. lucretius. plutarch. horace. cicero, _de officiis_, _de amicitiâ_, and _de senectute_. epic poetry. homer, _iliad_ and _odyssey_. hesiod. virgil. niebelungenlied. malory, _morte d'arthur_. eastern poetry. _mahabharata_ and _ramayana_ (epitomised by talboys wheeler). firdausi, _shah-nameh_ (translated by atkinson). _she-king_ (chinese odes). greek dramatists. æschylus, _prometheus_, _the house of atreus_, trilogy, or _persæ_. sophocles, _oedipus_, trilogy. euripides, _medea_. aristophanes, _the knights_. history. herodotus. thucydides. xenophon, _anabasis_. tacitus, _germania_. gibbon, _decline and fall_. voltaire, _charles xii._ or _louis xiv._ hume, _england_. grote, _greece_. philosophy. bacon, _novum organum_. mill, _logic_ and _political economy_. darwin, _origin of species_. smith, _wealth of nations_ (selection). berkeley, _human knowledge_. descartes, _discourse sur la méthode_. locke, _conduct of the understanding_. lewes, _history of philosophy_. travels. cook, _voyages_. darwin, _naturalist in the beagle_. poetry and general literature. shakspeare. milton. dante. spenser. scott. wordsworth. pope. southey. longfellow. goldsmith, _vicar of wakefield_. swift, _gulliver's travels_. defoe, _robinson crusoe_. _the arabian nights._ _don quixote._ boswell, _johnson_. burke, _select works_. essayists--addison, hume, montaigne, macaulay, emerson. molière. sheridan. carlyle, _past and present_ and _french revolution_. goethe, _faust_ and _wilhelm meister_. marivaux, _la vie de marianne_. modern fiction. selections from--thackeray, dickens, george eliot, kingsley, scott, bulwer-lytton. it must be borne in mind by the reader that this list, although the one sent round for criticism by the editor of the _pall mall gazette_, is not really sir john lubbock's. this will be found on p. 240. sir john lubbock's address was not given in full, and the list drawn up by the _pall mall_, from the reports in the daily papers, contained in fact only about 85 books. it seems necessary to allude particularly to this imperfect list, because it is the only one upon which the critics were asked to give an opinion, and their criticisms are peculiarly interesting, as they give us an important insight into the tastes and opinions of our teachers. in itself it is almost impossible to make a list that will be practically useful, because tastes and needs differ so widely, that a course of reading suitable for one man may be quite unsuitable for another. it is also very doubtful whether a conscientious passage through a "cut-and-dried" list of books will feed the mind as a more original selection by each reader himself would do. it is probably best to start the student well on his way and then leave him to pursue it according to his own tastes. each book will help him to another, and consultation with some of the many manuals of english literature will guide him towards a good choice. this is in effect what mr. bond, principal librarian of the british museum, says in his reply, to the circular of the editor of the _pall mall gazette_. he writes "the result of several persons putting down the titles of books they considered 'best reading' would be an interesting but very imperfect bibliography of as many sections of literature;" and, again, "the beginner should be advised to read histories of the literature of his own and other countries--as hallam's 'introduction to the literature of europe,' joseph warton's 'history of english poetry,' craik's 'history of english literature,' paine's history, and others of the same class. these would give him a survey of the field, and would quicken his taste for what was naturally most congenial to him." there probably is no better course of reading than that which will naturally occur to one who makes an honest attempt to master our own noble literature. this is sufficient for the lifetime of most men without incursions into foreign literature. all cultivated persons will wish to become acquainted with the masterpieces of other nations, but this diversion will not be advisable if it takes the reader away from the study of the masterpieces of his own literature. turning to the comments on the _pall mall gazette's_ list, we may note one or two of the most important criticisms. the prince of wales very justly suggested that dryden should not be omitted from such a list. mr. chamberlain asked whether the bible was excluded by accident or design, and mr. irving suggested that the bible and shakespeare form together a very comprehensive library. mr. ruskin's reply is particularly interesting, for he adds but little, contenting himself with the work of destruction. he writes, "putting my pen lightly through the needless--and blottesquely through the rubbish and poison of sir john's list--i leave enough for a life's liberal reading--and choice for any true worker's loyal reading. i have added one quite vital and essential book--livy (the two first books), and three plays of aristophanes (_clouds_, _birds_, and _plutus_). of travels, i read myself all old ones i can get hold of; of modern, humboldt is the central model. forbes (james forbes in alps) is essential to the modern swiss tourist--of sense." mr. ruskin puts the word _all_ to plato, _everything_ to carlyle, and _every word_ to scott. pindar's name he adds in the list of the classics, and after bacon's name he writes "chiefly the _new atlantis_." the work of destruction is marked by the striking out of all the _non-christian moralists_, of all the theology and devotion, with the exception of jeremy taylor and the _pilgrim's progress_. the nibelungenlied and malory's _morte d'arthur_ (which, by the way, is in prose) go out, as do sophocles and euripides among the greek dramatists. _the knights_ is struck out to make way for the three plays of aristophanes mentioned above. gibbon, voltaire, hume, and grote all go, as do all the philosophers but bacon. cook's voyages and darwin's naturalist in the _beagle_ share a similar fate. southey, longfellow, swift, hume, macaulay, and emerson, goethe and marivaux, all are so unfortunate as to have mr. ruskin's pen driven through their names. among the novelists dickens and scott only are left. the names of thackeray, george eliot, kingsley, and bulwer-lytton are all erased. mr. ruskin sent a second letter full of wisdom till he came to his reasons for striking out grote's "history of greece," "confessions of st. augustine," john stuart mill, charles kingsley, darwin, gibbon, and voltaire. with these reasons it is to be hoped that few readers will agree. mr. swinburne makes a new list of his own which is very characteristic. no. 3 consists of "selections from the bible: comprising job, the psalms, ecclesiastes, the song of solomon, isaiah, ezekiel, joel; the gospels of st. matthew and st. luke, the gospel and the first epistle of st. john and epistle of st. james." no. 12 is villon, and nos. 45 to 49 consist of the plays of ford, dekker, tourneur, marston, and middleton; names very dear to the lover of our old drama, but i venture to think names somewhat inappropriate in a list of books for a reader who does not make the drama a speciality. lamb's selections would be sufficient for most readers. mr. william morris supplies a full list with explanations, which are of considerable interest as coming from that distinguished poet. archdeacon farrar gives, perhaps, the best test for a favourite author, that is, the selection of his works in the event of all others being destroyed. he writes, "but if all the books in the world were in a blaze, the first twelve which i should snatch out of the flames would be the bible, _imitatio christi_, homer, æschylus, thucydides, tacitus, virgil, marcus aurelius, dante, shakespeare, milton, wordsworth. of living authors i would save first the works of tennyson, browning and ruskin." another excellent test is that set up by travellers and soldiers. a book must be good when one of either of these classes decides to place it among his restricted baggage. mr. h.m. stanley writes, "you ask me what books i carried with me to take across africa. i carried a great many--three loads, or about 180 lbs. weight; but as my men lessened in numbers, stricken by famine, fighting and sickness, they were one by one reluctantly thrown away, until finally, when less than 300 miles from the atlantic, i possessed only the bible, shakespeare, carlyle's sartor resartus, norie's navigation, and nautical almanac for 1877. poor shakspeare was afterwards burned by demand of the foolish people of zinga. at bonea, carlyle and norie and nautical almanac were pitched away, and i had only the old bible left." he then proceeds to give a list of books which he allowed himself when "setting out with a tidy battalion of men." lord wolseley writes, "during the mutiny and china war i carried a testament, two volumes of shakespeare that contained his best plays, and since then, when in the field, i have always carried: book of common prayer, thomas à kempis, soldier's pocket book.... the book that i like reading at odd moments is 'the meditations of marcus aurelius.'" he then adds, for any distant expedition, a few books of history (creasy's "decisive battles," plutarch's "lives," voltaire's "charles xii.," "cæsar," by froude, and hume's "england"). his fiction is confined to macaulay's "history of england" and the "essays." mr. quaritch remarks that "sir john's 'working man' is an ideal creature. i have known many working men, but none of them could have suggested such a feast as he has prepared for them." he adds, "in my younger days i had no books whatever beyond my school books. arrived in london in 1842, i joined a literary institution, and read all their historical works. to read fiction i had no time. a friend of mine read novels all night long, and was one morning found dead in his bed." if mr. quaritch intends this as a warning, he should present the fact for the consideration of those readers who swell the numbers of novels in the statistics of the free libraries. looking at the _pall mall gazette's_ list, it naturally occurs to us that it would be a great error for an englishman to arrange his reading so that he excluded chaucer while he included confucius. among the names of modern novelists it is strange that jane austen and charlotte brontë should have been omitted. in sir john lubbock's own list it will be seen that the names of chaucer and miss austen occur. among essayists one would like to have seen at least the names of charles lamb, de quincey, and landor, and many will regret to find such delightful writers as walton and thomas fuller omitted. we ought, however, to be grateful to sir john lubbock for raising a valuable discussion which is likely to draw the attention of many readers to books which might otherwise have been most unjustly neglected by them.[69] the following is sir john lubbock's list. it will be seen that several of the books, whose absence is remarked on, do really form part of the list, and that the objections of the critics are so far met. _the bible._ * * * * * marcus aurelius, _meditations_. epictetus. confucius, _analects_. _le bouddha et sa religion_ (st.-hilaire). aristotle, _ethics_. mahomet, _koran_ (parts of). * * * * * _apostolic fathers_, wake's collection. st. augustine, _confessions_. thomas à kempis, _imitation_. pascal, _pensées_. spinoza, _tractatus theologico-politicus_. comte, _cat. of positive philosophy_ (congreve). butler, _analogy_. jeremy taylor, _holy living and holy dying_. bunyan, _pilgrim's progress_. keble, _christian year_. * * * * * aristotle, _politics_. plato's dialogues--at any rate the _phædo_ and _republic_. demosthenes, _de coronâ_. lucretius. plutarch. horace. cicero, _de officiis_, _de amicitiâ_, _de senectute_. * * * * * homer, _iliad_ and _odyssey_. hesiod. virgil. niebelungenlied. malory, _morte d'arthur_. * * * * * maha-bharata, _ramayana_, epitomized by talboys wheeler in the first two vols. of his _history of india_. firdusi, _shah-nameh_. translated by atkinson. _she-king_ (chinese odes). * * * * * æschylus, _prometheus_, _house of atreus_, trilogy, or _persæ_. sophocles, _oedipus_, trilogy. euripides, _medea_, aristophanes, _the knights_. * * * * * herodotus. xenophon, _anabasis_. thucydides. tacitus, _germania_. livy. gibbon, _decline and fall_. hume, _england_. grote, _greece_. carlyle, _french revolution_. green, _short history of england_. bacon, _novum organum_. mill, _logic_ and _political economy_. darwin, _origin of species_. smith, _wealth of nations_ (part of). berkeley, _human knowledge_. descartes, _discours sur la méthode_. locke, _conduct of the understanding_. lewes, _history of philosophy_. * * * * * cook, _voyages_. humboldt, _travels_. darwin, _naturalist in the beagle_. * * * * * shakespeare. milton, _paradise lost_, and the shorter poems. dante, _divina commedia_. spenser, _faerie queen_. dryden's poems. chaucer, morris's (or, if expurgated, clarke's or mrs. haweis's) edition. gray. burns. scott's poems. wordsworth, mr. arnold's selection. heine. pope. southey. * * * * * goldsmith, _vicar of wakefield_. swift, _gulliver's travels_. defoe, _robinson crusoe_. _the arabian nights._ cervantes, _don quixote_. boswell, _johnson_. burke, _select works_ (payne). essayists:--bacon, addison, hume, montaigne, macaulay, emerson. molière. sheridan. voltaire, _zadig_. carlyle, _past and present_. goethe, _faust_, _wilhelm meister_. white, _natural history of selborne_. smiles, _self help_. * * * * * miss austen, either _emma_ or _pride and prejudice_. thackeray, _vanity fair_ and _pendennis_. dickens, _pickwick_ and _david copperfield_. george eliot, _adam bede_. kingsley, _westward ho_! bulwer-lytton, _last days of pompeii_. scott's novels. footnotes: [69] the whole of the correspondence has been reissued as a _pall mall "extra"_ no. 24, and threepence will be well laid out by the purchaser of this very interesting pamphlet. index. abbotsford club, 187. advocates' library, edinburgh, indecent books turned out, 18. ælfric society, 195. arundel society, 200. authors, bibliographies of particular, 181. ballad society, 206. bannatyne club, 186. bibliographies (general), 141-159. ---(special), 160-183. bindings in charles i.'s cabinet, 29. book collectors, 23. books, one hundred, 227-244. booksellers, use of, 58. bossange (hector), ma bibliothèque française, 7. burton's book hunter, 2, 53, 196. buy, how to, 57-72. calvin translation society, 197. camden society, 190. catalogues of public libraries, 141. cavendish society, 199. caxton society, 198. chaucer society, 28.[tn 208] chetham society, 195. child's library, 217-226. comte's positivist library, 131. dibdin's library companion, 2. dilettanti society, 184. durie's reformed librarie keeper, 13. early english text society, 203. ecclesiastical history society, 199. edwards (edward), report on formation of manchester free library, 4. ---memoirs of libraries, 5, 63. ---libraries and founders of libraries, 29, 44. english dialect society, 212. english historical society, 191. fiction in public libraries, 81. folk lore society, 210. franklin's foundation of the philadelphia library, 77. george iii.'s list of books, 14. goodhugh's library manual, 3. hakluyt society, 200. handel society, 198. hanserd knollys society, 198. harleian society, 209. hellenic studies, society for the promotion of, 213. hunterian club, 210. index society, 213. iona club, 189. johnson's (dr.) list of books, 15. libraries, how men have formed them, 23-56. ---(cathedral), 75. ---(monastic), 25. ---(private), 89-140. ---(public), 73-88. ---united states report on, 20, 75, 220. louis xvi., his books during his captivity, 43. lubbock's (sir john), list of books, 227-244. maitland club, 187. manx society, 202. middlesex county record society, 215. motett society, 194. musical antiquarian society, 194. napoleon's libraries, 44. naudé, gilbert [tn gabriel], 9. novels, one hundred good, 138. ---in public libraries, 81. oriental texts, society for the publication of, 194. oriental translation fund, 189. ossianic society, 202. oxford historical society, 215. palæographical society, 213. palæontographical society, 200. parker society, 192. percy society, 193. perkins's best reading, 8. philobiblon society, 201. pipe roll society, 215. positivist library, 131. printers, bibliographies of celebrated, 176. ray society, 198. reference, books of, 91-129. roxburghe club, 185. roxburghe library, 209. sales, how to buy at, 63. shakespeare society, 193. shakspere (new) society, 211. societies (publishing), 184-216. spalding club, 191. spenser society, 209. spottiswoode society, 195. stevens (henry), "my english library," 6. ---his paper on mr. james lenox, 55, 64. surtees society, 189. sydenham society, 195. topographical bibliographies, 179. topographical society of london, 214. warton club, 202. wernerian club, 198. wodrow society, 194. wyclif society, 215 [illustration] transcriber's note inconsistent spelling retained. transcribed from the 1907 hodder and stoughton edition by david price, email ccx074@pglaf.org immortal memories by clement shorter hodder and stoughton london mcmvii _butler and tanner_, _the selwood printing works_, _frome_, _and london_. prefatory the following addresses were delivered at the request of various literary societies and commemorative committees. they amused me to write, and they apparently interested the audiences for which they were primarily intended. perhaps they do not bear an appearance in print. but they are not for my brother-journalists to read nor for the judicious men of letters. i prefer to think that they are intended solely for those whom hazlitt styled "sensible people." hazlitt said that "the most sensible people to be met with in society are men of business and of the world." i am hoping that these will buy my book and that some of them will like it. it is recorded by sir henry taylor of samuel rogers that when he wrote that very indifferent poem, _italy_, he said, "i will make people buy. turner shall illustrate my verse." it is of no importance that the biographer of rogers tells us that the poet first made the artist known to the world by these illustrations. taylor's story is a good one, and the moral worth taking to heart. the late lord acton, most learned and most accomplished of men, wrote out a list of the hundred best books as he considered them to be. they were printed in a popular magazine. they naturally excited much interest. i have rescued them from the pages of the _pall mall magazine_. those who will not buy my book for its seven other essays may do so on account of lord acton's list of books being here first preserved "between boards." i shall be equally well pleased. clement shorter. great missenden, bucks. i. to the immortal memory of dr. samuel johnson a toast proposed at the johnson birthday celebration held at the three crowns inn, lichfield, in september, 1906. in rising to propose this toast i cannot ignore what must be in many of your minds, the recollection that last year it was submitted by a very dear friend of my own, who, alas! has now gone to his rest, i mean dr. richard garnett. {3} many of you who heard him in this place will recall, with kindly memories, that venerable scholar. i am one of those who, in the interval have stood beside his open grave; and i know you will permit me to testify here to the fact that rarely has such brilliant scholarship been combined with so kindly a nature, and with so much generosity to other workers in the literary field. one may sigh that it is not possible to perpetuate for all time for the benefit of others the vast mass of learning which such men as dr. garnett are able to accumulate. one may lament even more that one is not able to present in some concrete form, as an example to those who follow, his fine qualities of heart and mind--his generous faculty for 'helping lame dogs over stiles.' dr. garnett had not only a splendid erudition that specially qualified him for proposing this toast, he had also what many of you may think an equally exceptional qualification--he was a native of lichfield; he was born in this fine city. as a londoner--like boswell when charged with the crime of being a scotsman i may say that i cannot help it--i suppose i should come to you with hesitating footsteps. perhaps it was rash of me to come at all, in spite of an invitation so kindly worded. yet how gladly does any lover, not only of dr. johnson, but of all good literature, come to lichfield. four cathedral cities of our land stand forth in my mind with a certain magnetic power to draw even the most humble lover of books towards them--oxford, bath, norwich, lichfield, these four and no others. oxford we all love and revere as the nourishing mother of so many famous men. here we naturally recall dr. johnson's love of it--his defence of it against all comers. the glamour of oxford and the memory of the great men who from age to age have walked its streets and quadrangles, is with us upon every visit. bath again has noble memories. upon house after house in that fine city is inscribed the fact that it was at one time the home of a famous man or woman of the past. through its streets many of our great imaginative writers have strolled, and those streets have been immortalized in the pages of several great novelists, notably of jane austen and charles dickens. for the city of norwich i have a particular affection, as for long the home in quite separate epochs of sir thomas browne and of george borrow. i recall that in the reign of one of its bishops--the father of dean stanley--there was a literary circle of striking character, that men and women of intellect met in the episcopal palace to discuss all 'obstinate questionings.' but if he were asked to choose between the golden age of bath, of norwich, or of lichfield, i am sure that any man who knew his books would give the palm to lichfield, and would recall that period in the life of lichfield when dr. seward resided in the bishop's palace, with his two daughters, and when they were there entertaining so many famous friends. i saw the other day the statement that anna seward's name was unknown to the present generation. now i have her works in nine volumes {6}; i have read them, and i doubt not but that there are many more who have done the same. sir walter scott's friendship would alone preserve her memory if every line she wrote deserved to be forgotten as is too readily assumed. scott, indeed, professed admiration for her verse, and a yet greater poet, wordsworth, wrote in praise of two fine lines at the close of one of her sonnets, that entitled 'invitation to a friend,' lines which i believe present the first appearance in english poetry of the form of blank verse immortalized by tennyson. come, that i may not hear the winds of night, nor count the heavy eave-drops as they fall. "you have well criticized the poetic powers of this lady," says wordsworth, "but, after all, her verses please me, with all their faults, better than those of mrs. barbauld, who, with much higher powers of mind, was spoiled as a poetess by being a dissenter." less, however, can be said for her poetry to-day than for her capacity as a letter writer. a letter writing faculty has immortalized more than one english author, horace walpole for example, who had this in common with anna seward, that he had the bad taste not to like dr. johnson. sooner or later there will be a reprint of a selection of anna seward's correspondence; you will find in it a picture of country life in the middle of the eighteenth century--and by that i mean lichfield life--that is quite unsurpassed. anna seward, her friends and her enemies, stand before us in very marked outline. as with walpole also, she must have written with an eye to publication. veracity was not her strong point, but her literary faculty was very marked indeed. those who have read the letters that treat of her sister's betrothal and death, for example, will not easily forget them. the accepted lover, you remember, was a mr. porter, a son of the widow whom johnson married; and sarah seward, aged only eighteen, died soon after her betrothal to him. that is but one of a thousand episodes in the world into which we are introduced in these pages. {8} the bishop's palace was the scene of brilliant symposiums. there one might have met erasmus darwin of the _botanic garden_, whose fame has been somewhat dulled by the extraordinary genius of his grandson. there also came richard edgeworth, the father of maria, whose _castle rackrent_ and _the absentee_ are still among the most delightful books that we read; and there were the two young girls, honora and elizabeth sneyd, who were destined in succession to become richard edgeworth's wives. there, above all, was thomas day, the author of _sanford and merton_, a book which delighted many of us when we were young, and which i imagine with all its priggishness will always survive as a classic for children. there, for a short time, came major andre, betrothed to honora sneyd, but destined to die so tragically in the american war of independence. it is to miss seward's malicious talent as a letter writer that we owe the exceedingly picturesque account of day's efforts to obtain a wife upon a particular pattern, his selection of sabrina sidney, whom he prepared for that high destiny by sending her to a boarding school until she was of the right age--his lessons in stoicism--his disappointment because she screamed when he fired pistols at her petticoats, and yelled when he dropped melted sealing-wax on her bare arms; it is a tragi-comic picture, and one is glad that sabrina married some other man than her exacting guardian. but we would not miss miss seward's racy stories for anything, nor ignore her many letters with their revelation of the glories of oldtime lichfield, and of those 'lunar meetings' at which the wise ones foregathered. now and again these worthies burst into sarcasm at one another's expense, as when darwin satirizes the publication of mr. seward's edition of _beaumont and fletcher_, and dr. johnson's edition of _shakspere_ from lichfield famed two giant critics come, tremble, ye poets! hear them! fe, fo, fum! by seward's arm the mangled beaumont bled, and johnson grinds poor shakspere's bones for bread. but perhaps after all, if we eliminate dr. johnson, the lover of letters gives the second place, not to miss seward and her circle, but to david garrick. lichfield contains more than one memento of that great man. the actor's art is a poor sort of thing as a rule. johnson, in his tarter moments, expresses this attitude, as when he talked of garrick as a man who exhibited himself for a shilling, when he called him 'a futile fellow,' and implied that it was very unworthy of lord campden to have made much of the actor and to have ignored so distinguished a writer as goldsmith, when thrown into the company of both. still undoubtedly johnson's last word upon garrick is the best--'his death has eclipsed the gaiety of nations and diminished the public stock of harmless pleasure.' we who live more than a hundred years later are able to recognize that garrick has been the one great actor from that age to this. as a rule the mummers are mimics and little more, and generations go on, giving them their brief but glorious hour of fame, and then leaving them as mere names in the history of the stage. garrick was preserved from this fate, not only by the circumstance that he had an army of distinguished literary friends, but by his interesting personality and by his own writings. many lines of his plays and prologues have become part of current speech. moreover his must have been a great personality, as those of us who have met sir henry irving in these latter days have realized that his was also a great personality. it is fitting, therefore, that these two great actors, the most famous of an interesting, if not always an heroic profession, should lie side by side in westminster abbey. i now come to my toast "the memory of dr. johnson." after all, johnson was the greatest of all lichfieldians, and one of the great men of his own and of all ages. we may talk about him and praise him because we shall be the better for so doing, but we shall certainly say nothing new. one or two points, however, seem to me worthy of emphasis in this company of johnsonians. i think we should resent two popular fallacies which you will not hear from literary students, but only from one whom it is convenient to call "the man in the street." the first is, that we should know nothing about johnson if it were not for boswell's famous life, and the second that johnson the author is dead, and that our great hero only lives as a brilliant conversationalist in the pages of boswell and others. boswell's _life of johnson_ is the greatest biography in the english language; we all admit that. it is crowded with incident and anecdote. neither walter scott nor rousseau, each of whom has had an equal number of pages devoted to his personality, lives so distinctly for future ages as does johnson in the pages of boswell. understanding all this, we are entitled to ask ourselves what we should have thought of dr. johnson had there been no boswell; and to this question i do not hesitate to answer that we should have loved him as much as ever, and that there would still have been a mass of material with the true boswellian flavour. he would not have made an appeal to so large a public, but some ingenious person would have drawn together all the anecdotes, all the epigrams, all the touches of that fine humanity, and given us from these various sources an amalgam of johnson, that every bookman at least would have desired to read and study. in fanny burney's _letters and diaries_ the presentation of johnson is delightful. i wonder very much that all the johnson fragments that miss burney provides have not been published separately. then mrs. thrale has chatted about johnson copiously in her "anecdotes," and these pleasant stories have been reprinted again and again for the curious. i recall many other sources of information about the great man and his wonderful talk--by miss hawkins, miss reynolds, miss hannah more for example--and many of you who have dr. birkbeck hill's _johnson miscellanies_ have these in a pleasantly acceptable form. my second point is concerned with dr. johnson's position apart from all this fund of anecdote, and this brilliant collection of unforgettable epigram in boswell and elsewhere. as a writer, many will tell you, dr. johnson is dead. the thing is absurd on the face of it. there is room for some disagreement as to his position as a poet. on that question of poetry unanimity is ever hard to seek; so many mistake rhetoric for poetry. only twice at the most, it seems to me, does dr. johnson reach anything in the shape of real inspiration in his many poems, {15} although it must be admitted that earlier generations admired them greatly. to have been praised ardently by sir walter scott, by byron, and by tennyson should seem sufficient to demonstrate that he was a poet, were it not that, as i could prove if time allowed, poets are almost invariably bad critics of poetry. sir walter scott read _the vanity of human wishes_ with "a choking sensation in the throat," and declared that he had more pleasure in reading that and johnson's other long poem, _london_, than any other poetic compositions he could mention. but then i think it was always the sentiment in verse, and not its quality, that attracted scott. byron also declared that _the vanity of human wishes_ was "a great poem." certainly these poems are quotable poems. who does not recall the line about "surveying mankind from china to peru," or think, as johnson taught us, to:- mark what ills the scholar's life assail, toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail. or remember his epitaph on one who:- left a name at which the world grew pale, to point a moral or adorn a tale. one line--"superfluous lags the veteran on the stage" has done duty again and again. i might quote a hundred such examples to show johnson, whatever his qualities as a poet, is very much alive indeed in his verse. it is, however, as a great prose writer, that i prefer to consider him. here he is certainly one of the most permanent forces in our literature. _rasselas_, for example, while never ranking with us moderns quite so high as it did with the excellent miss jenkins in _cranford_, is a never failing delight. so far from being a dead book, is there a young man or a young woman setting out in the world of to-day, aspiring to an all-round literary cultivation, who is not required to know it? it has been republished continually. what novelist of our time would not give much to have so splendid a public recognition as was provided when lord beaconsfield, then mr. disraeli, after the abyssinian expedition, pictured in the house of commons "the elephants of asia dragging the artillery of europe over the mountains of rasselas." equally in evidence are those wonderful _lives of the poets_ which johnson did not complete until he was seventy-two years of age, literary efforts which have always seemed to me to be an encouraging demonstration that we should never allow ourselves to grow old. many of these 'lives' are very beautiful. they are all suggestive. only the other day i read them again in the fine new edition that was prepared by that staunch johnsonian, dr. birkbeck hill. the greatest english critic of these latter days, mr. matthew arnold, showed his appreciation by making a selection from them for popular use. from age to age every man with the smallest profession of interest in literature will study them. of how many books can this be said? greatest of all was johnson as a writer in his least premeditated work, his _prayers and meditations_. they take rank in my mind with the very best things of their kind, _the meditations of marcus aurelius_, _the confessions of rousseau_, and similar books. they are healthier than any of their rivals. william cowper, that always fascinating poet and beautiful letter writer, more than once disparaged johnson in this connexion. cowper said that he would like to have "dusted johnson's jacket until his pension rattled in his pocket," for what he had said about milton. he read some extracts, after johnson's death, from the _meditations_, and wrote contemptuously of them. {18} but if cowper had always possessed, in addition to his fascinating other-worldliness the healthy worldliness of dr. johnson, perhaps we should all have been the happier. to me that collection of _prayers and meditations_ seems one of the most helpful books that i have ever read, and i am surprised that it is not constantly reprinted in a handy form. {19} it is a valuable inspiration to men to keep up their spirits under adverse conditions, to conquer the weaknesses of their natures; not in the stifling manner of thomas a kempis, but in a breezy, robust way. yes, i think that these three works, _rasselas_, _the lives of the poets_, and the _prayers and meditations_, make it quite clear that johnson still holds his place as one of our greatest writers, even if we were not familiar with his many delightful letters, and had not read his _rambler_--which his old enemy, miss anna seward, insisted was far better than addison's _spectator_. all this is only to say that we cannot have too much of dr. johnson. the advantage of such a gathering as this is that it helps us to keep that fact alive. moreover, i feel that it is a good thing if we can hearten those who have devoted themselves to laborious research connected with such matters. take, for example, the work of dr. birkbeck hill: his many volumes are a delight to the johnson student. i knew dr. hill very well, and i have often felt that his work did not receive half the encouragement that it deserved. we hear sometimes, at least in london, of authors who advertise themselves. i rather fancy that all such advertisement is monopolized by the novelist, and that the newspapers do not trouble themselves very much about literary men who work in other fields than that of fiction. fiction has much to be said for it, but as a rule it reaps its reward very promptly, both in finance and in fame. no such rewards come to the writer of biography, to the writer of history, to the literary editor. dr. hill's beautiful edition of boswell's _life_, with all its fascinating annotation, did not reach a second edition in his lifetime. i am afraid that the sum that he made out of it, or that his publishers made out of it, would seem a very poor reward indeed when gauged by the results in other fields of labour. within the past few weeks i have had the privilege of reading a book that continues these researches. mr. aleyn lyell reade has published a handsome tome, which he has privately printed, entitled _dr. johnson's ancestry_: _his kinsfolk and family connexions_. i am glad to hear that the johnson museum has purchased a copy, for such a work deserves every encouragement. the author must have spent hundreds of pounds, without the faintest possibility of obtaining either fame or money from the transaction. he seems to have employed copyists in every town in staffordshire, to copy wills, registers of births and deaths, and kindred records from the past. now dr. birkbeck hill could not have afforded to do this; he was by no means a rich man. mr. reade has clearly been able to spare no expense, with the result that here are many interesting facts corrective of earlier students. the whole is a valuable record of the ancestry of dr. johnson. it shows clearly that whereas dr. johnson thought very little of his ancestry, and scarcely knew anything of his grandfather on the paternal or the maternal side, he really sprang from a very remarkable stock, notably on the maternal side; and that his mother's family, the fords, had among their connexions all kinds of fairly prosperous people, clergymen, officials, professional men as well as sturdy yeomen. these ancestors of dr. johnson did not help him much to push his way in the world. of some of them he had scarcely heard. all the same it is of great interest to us to know this; it in a manner explains him. that before samuel johnson was born, one of his family had been lord mayor of london, another a sheriff, that they had been associated in various ways, not only with the city of his birth, but also with the great city which johnson came to love so much, is to let in a flood of fresh light upon our hero. my time does not permit me to do more than make a passing reference to this book, but i should like to offer here a word of thanks to its author for his marvellous industry, and a word of congratulation to him for the extraordinary success that has accrued to his researches. i mention mr. reade's book because it is full of lichfield names and lichfield associations, and it is with dr. johnson's life-long connexion with lichfield that all of us are thinking to-night. now here i may say, without any danger of being challenged by some visitor who has the misfortune not to be a citizen of lichfield--you who are will not wish to challenge me--that this city has distinguished itself in quite an unique way. i do not believe that it can be found that any other town or city of england--i will not say of scotland or of ireland--has done honour to a literary son in the same substantial measure that lichfield has done honour to samuel johnson. the peculiar glory of the deed is that it was done to the living johnson, not coming, as so many honours do, too late for a man to find pleasure in the recognition. we know that- seven wealthy towns contend for homer dead, through which the living homer begged his bread. but i doubt whether in the whole history of literature in england it can be found that any other purely literary man has received in his lifetime so substantial a mark of esteem from the city which gave him birth, as johnson did when your corporation, in 1767, "at a common-hall of the bailiffs and citizens, without any solicitation," presented him with the ninety-nine years' lease of the house in which he was born. your citizens not only did that for johnson, but they gave him other marks of their esteem. he writes from lichfield to sir joshua reynolds to express his pleasure that his portrait has been "much visited and much admired." "every man," he adds, "has a lurking desire to appear considerable in his native place." then we all remember boswell's naive confession that his pleasure at finding his hero so much beloved led him, when the pair arrived at this very hostelry, to imbibe too much of the famous lichfield ale. if boswell wished, as he says, to offer incense to the spirit of the place, how much more may we desire to do so to-night, when exactly 125 years have passed, and his hero is now more than ever recognized as a king of men. i do not suggest that we should honour johnson in quite the same way that boswell did. this is a more abstemious age. but we must drink to his memory all the same. think of it. a century and a quarter have passed since that memorable evening at the _three crowns_, when johnson and boswell thus foregathered in this very room. you recall the journey from birmingham of the two companions. "we are getting out of a state of death," the doctor said with relief, as he approached his native city, feeling all the magic and invigoration that is said to come to those who in later years return to "calf-land." then how good he was to an old schoolfellow who called upon him here. the fact that this man had failed in the battle of life while johnson had succeeded, only made the doctor the kinder. i know of no more human picture than that--"a mr. jackson," as he is called by boswell, "in his coarse grey coat," obviously very poor, and as boswell suggests, "dull and untaught." the "great cham of literature" listens patiently as the worthy jackson tells his troubles, so much more patiently than he would have listened to one of the famous men of his club in london, and the hero-worshipping boswell drinks his deep potations, but never neglects to take notes the while. of boswell one remembers further that johnson had told wilkes that he had brought him to lichfield, "my native city," "that he might see for once real civility--for you know he lives among savages in scotland, and among rakes in london." all good stories are worth hearing again and again, and so i offer an apology for recalling the picture to your mind at this time and in this place. alas! i have not the gift of the worldfamed lord verulam, who, as francis bacon, sat in the house of commons. the members, we are told, so delighted in his oratory that when he rose to speak they "were fearful lest he should make an end." i am making an end. johnson then was not only a great writer, a conversationalist so unique that his sayings have passed more into current speech than those of any other englishman, but he was also a great moralist--a superb inspiration to a better life. we should not love johnson so much were he not presented to us as a man of many weaknesses and faults akin to our own, not a saint by any means, and therefore not so far removed from us as some more ethereal characters of whom we may read. johnson striving to methodize his life, to fight against sloth and all the minor vices to which he was prone, is the johnson whom some of us prefer to keep ever in mind. "here was," i quote carlyle, "a strong and noble man, one of our great english souls." i love him best in his book called _prayers and meditations_, where we know him as we know scarcely any other englishman, for the good, upright fighter in this by no means easy battle of life. it is as such a fighter that we think of him to-night. reading the account of _his_ battles may help us to fight ours. gentlemen, i give you the toast of the evening. let us drink in solemn silence, upstanding, "the immortal memory of dr. samuel johnson." ii. to the immortal memory of william cowper an address entitled 'the sanity of cowper,' delivered at the centenary celebration at olney, bucks, on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the death of the poet william cowper, april 25, 1900. i owe some apology for coming down to olney to take part in what i believe is a purely local celebration, in which no other londoner, as far as i know, has been asked to take part. i am here not because i profess any special qualification to speak about cowper, in the town with which his name is so pleasantly associated, but because mr. mackay, {31} the son-in-law of your vicar, has written a book about the brontes, and i have done likewise, and he asked me to come. this common interest has little, you will say, to do with the poet of olney. between cowper and charlotte bronte there were, however, not a few points of likeness or at least of contrast. both were the children of country clergymen; both lived lives of singular and, indeed, unusual strenuousness; both were the very epitome of a strong protestantism; and yet both--such is the inevitable toleration of genius--were drawn in an unusual manner to attachment to friends of the roman catholic church--cowper to lady throckmorton, who copied out some of his translations from homer for him, assisted by her father-confessor, dr. gregson, and miss bronte to her professor, m. heger, the man in the whole world whom she most revered. under circumstances of peculiar depression both these great protestant writers went further on occasion than their protestant friends would have approved, cowper to contemplate--so he assures us in one of his letters--the entering a french monastery, and miss bronte actually to kneel in the confessional in a brussels church. further, let me remind you that there were moments in the lives of charlotte bronte and her sisters, when cowper's poem, _the castaway_, was their most soul-stirring reading. then, again, mary unwin's only daughter became the wife of a vicar of dewsbury, and it was at dewsbury and to the very next vicar, that mr. bronte, the father of charlotte, was curate when he first went into yorkshire. finally, let it be recalled that cowper and charlotte bronte have attracted as much attention by the pathos of their lives as by anything that they wrote. thus far, and no further, can a strained analogy carry us. the most enthusiastic admirers of the brontes can only claim for them that they permanently added certain artistic treasures to our literature. cowper did incomparably more than this. his work marked an epoch. but first let me say how interested we who are strangers naturally feel in being in olney. to every lover of literature olney is made classic ground by the fact that cowper spent some twenty years of his life in it--not always with too genial a contemplation of the place and its inhabitants. "the genius of cowper throws a halo of glory over all the surroundings of olney and weston," says dean burgon. but olney has claims apart from cowper. john newton {34} presents himself to me as an impressive personality. there was a time, indeed, of youthful impetuosity when i positively hated him, for southey, whose biography i read very early in life, certainly endeavours to assist the view that newton was largely responsible for the poet's periodical attacks of insanity. but a careful survey of the facts modifies any such impression. newton was narrow at times, he was over-concerned as to the letter, often ignoring the spirit of true piety, but the student of the two volumes of his _life and correspondence_ that we owe to josiah bull, will be compelled to look at "the old african blasphemer" as he called himself, with much of sympathy. that he had a note of tolerance, with which he is not usually credited, we learn from one of his letters, where he says: i am willing to be a debtor to the wise and to the unwise, to doctors and shoemakers, if i can get a hint from any one without respect of parties. when a house is on fire churchmen and dissenters, methodists and papists, moravians and mystics are all welcome to bring water. at such times nobody asks, "pray, friend, whom do you hear?" or "what do you think of the five points?" even my good friend canon benham, who has done so much to sustain the honourable fame of cowper, and who would have been here to-day but for a long-standing engagement, is scarcely fair to newton. {35} it is not true, as has been suggested, that cowper always changed his manner into one of painful sobriety when he wrote to newton. one of his most humorous letters--a rhyming epistle--was addressed to that divine. i have writ (he says) in a rhyming fit, what will make you dance, and as you advance, will keep you still, though against your will, dancing away, alert and gay, till you come to an end of what i have penned; which you may do ere madam and you are quite worn out with jigging about, i take my leave, and here you receive a bow profound, down to the ground, from your humble me, w. c. now, i quote this very familiar passage from the correspondence to remind you that cowper could only have written it to a man possessed of considerable healthy geniality. at any rate, alike as a divine and as the author of the _olney hymns_, newton holds an important place in the history of theology, and olney has a right to be proud of him. an even more important place is held by thomas scott, {36} and it seems to me quite a wonderful thing that olney should sometimes have held at one and the same moment three such remarkable men as cowper, newton, and scott. in my boyhood scott's name was a household word, and many a time have i thumbed the volumes of his _commentaries_, those _commentaries_ which sir james stephen declared to be "the greatest theological performance of our age and country." of scott cardinal newman in his _apologia_ said, it will be remembered, that "to him, humanly speaking, i almost owe my soul." even here our literary associations with olney and its neighbourhood are not ended, for, it was within five miles of this town--at easton maudit--that bishop percy {37} lived and prepared those _reliques_ which have inspired a century of ballad literature. here the future bishop of dromore was visited by dr. johnson and others. what a pity that with only five miles separating them cowper and johnson should never have met! would cowper have reconsidered the wish made when he read johnson's biography of milton in the _lives of the poets_: "oh! i could thresh his old jacket till i made his pension jingle in his pocket!"? but it is with cowper only that we have here to do, and when we are talking of cowper the difficulty is solely one of compression. so much has been written about him and his work. the lives of him form of themselves a most substantial library. he has been made the subject of what is surely the very worst biography in the language and of one that is among the very best. the well-meaning hayley {38a} wrote the one, in which the word "tenderness" appears at least twice on every page, and southey {38b} the other. not less fortunate has the poet been in his critics. walter bagehot, james russell lowell, mrs. oliphant, george eliot {38c}--these are but a few of the names that occur to me as having said something wise and to the point concerning the poet of olney. i somehow feel that it is safer for me to refer to the poet of olney than to speak of william cowper, because i am not quite sure how you would wish me to pronounce his name. _cooper_, he himself pronounced it, as his family are in the habit of doing. the present lord cowper is known to all the world as lord cooper. the derivation of the name and the family coat-of-arms justify that pronunciation, and it might be said that a man was, and is, entitled to settle the question of the pronunciation of his own name. and yet i plead for what i am quite willing to allow is the incorrect pronunciation. all pronunciation, even of the simplest words, is settled finally by a consensus of custom. throughout the english-speaking world the name is now constantly pronounced cowper, as if that most useful and ornamental animal the cow had given it its origin. well-read scotland is peculiarly unanimous in the custom, and well-read america follows suit. william shakspere, i doubt not, called himself shaxspere, and we decline to imitate him, and so probably many of us will with a light heart go on speaking of william cowper to the end of the chapter. at any rate shakspere and cowper, divergent as were their lives and their work--and one readily recognizes the incomparably greater position of the former--had alike a keen sense of humour, rare among poets it would seem, and hugely would they both have enjoyed such a controversy as this. this suggestion of the humour of cowper brings me to my main point. humour is so essentially a note of sanity, and it is the sanity of cowper that i desire to emphasize here. we have heard too much of the insanity of cowper, of the "maniac's tongue" to which mrs. browning referred, of the "maniacal calvinist" of whom byron wrote somewhat scornfully. only a day or two ago i read in a high-class journal that "one fears that cowper's despondency and madness are better known to-day than his poetry." that is not to know the secret of cowper. it is true that there were periods of maniacal depression, and these were not always religious ones. now, it was from sheer nervousness at the prospect of meeting his fellows, now it was from a too logical acceptance of the doctrine of eternal punishment. had it not been these, it would have been something else. it might have been politics, or a hundred things that now and again give a twist to the mind of the wisest. with cowper it was generally religion. i am not here to promote a paradox. i accept the only too well-known story of cowper's many visitations, but, looking back a century, for the purpose of asking what was cowper's contribution to the world's happiness and why we meet to speak of our love for him today, i insist that these visitations are not essential to our memory of him as a great figure in our literature--the maker of an epoch. cowper lived for some seventy years--sixty-nine, to be exact. of these years there was a period longer than the full term of byron's life, of shelley's or of keats's, of perfect sanity, and it was in this period that he gave us what is one of the sanest achievements in our literature, view it as we may. let us look backwards over the century--a century which has seen many changes of which cowper had scarcely any vision--the wonders of machinery and of electricity, of commercial enterprise, of the newspaper press, of book production. the galloping postboy is the most persistent figure in cowper's landscape. he has been replaced by the motor car. nations have arisen and fallen; a thousand writers have become popular and have ceased to be remembered. other writers have sprung up who have made themselves immortal. burns and byron, coleridge and wordsworth, scott and shelley among the poets. we ask ourselves, then, what distinctly differentiates cowper's life from that of his brothers in poetry, and i reply--his sanity. he did not indulge in vulgar amours, as did burns and byron; he did not ruin his moral fibre by opium, as did coleridge; he did not shock his best friends by an over-weening egotism, as did wordsworth; he did not spoil his life by reckless financial complications, as did scott; or by too great an enthusiasm to beat down the world's conventions, as did shelley. i do not here condemn any one or other of these later poets. their lives cannot be summed up in the mistakes they made. i only urge that, as it is not good to be at warfare with your fellows, to be burdened with debts that you have to kill yourself to pay, to alienate your friends by distressing mannerisms, to cease to be on speaking terms with your family--therefore cowper, who avoided these things, and, out of threescore years and more allotted to him, lived for some forty or fifty years at least a quiet, idyllic life, surrounded by loyal and loving friends, had chosen the saner and safer path. that, it may be granted, was very much a matter of temperament, and for it one does not need to praise him. the appeal to us of robert burns to gently scan our brother man will necessarily find a ready acceptance to-day, and a plea on behalf of kindly toleration for any great writer who has inspired his fellows is natural and honourable. but cowper does not require any such kindly toleration. his temperament led him to a placid life, where there were few temptations, and that life with its quiet walks, its occasional drives, its simple recreations, has stood for a whole century as our english ideal. it is what, amid the strain of the severest commercialism in our great cities, we look forward to for our declining years as a haven on this side of the grave. but i have undertaken to plead for cowper's sanity. i desire, therefore, to beg you to look not at this or that episode in his life, when, as we know, cowper was in the clutches of evil spirits, but at his life as a whole--a life of serene contentment in the company of his friends, his hares puss, tiny and bess, his "eight pair of tame pigeons," his correspondents; and then i ask you to turn to his work, and to note the essential sanity of that work also. first there is his poetry. when after the bastille had fallen charles james fox quoted in one of his speeches cowper's lines--written long years before--praying that that event might occur, he paid an unconscious tribute to the sanity of cowper's genius. {44} few poets who have let their convictions and aspirations find expression in verse have come so near the mark. wordsworth's verse--that which was written at the same age--is studded with prophecy of evils that never occurred. it was not because of any supermundane intelligence, such as latter-day poets have been pleased to affect and latter-day critics to assume for them, that cowper wrote in anticipation of the fall of the bastille in those thrilling lines, but because his exceedingly sane outlook upon the world showed him that france was riding fast towards revolution. we have been told that cowper's poetry lacked the true note of passion, that there was an absence of the "lyric cry." i protest that i find the note of passion in the "lines on the receipt of my mother's picture," in his two sets of verses to mrs. unwin, in his sonnet to wilberforce not less marked than i find it in other great poets. i find in _the task_ and elsewhere in cowper's works a note of enthusiasm for human brotherhood, for man's responsibility for man, for universal kinship, that had scarcely any place in literature before he wrote quietly here at olney thoughts wiser and saner than he knew. to-day we call ourselves by many names, conservatives or liberals, radicals, or socialists; we differ widely as to ways and means; but we are all practically agreed about one thing--that the art of politics is the art of making the world happier. each politician who has any aspirations beyond mere ambition desires to leave the world a little better than he found it. this is a commonplace of to-day. it was not a commonplace of cowper's day. even the greathearted, lovable dr. johnson was only concerned with the passing act of kindliness to his fellows; patriotism he declared to be the last refuge of a scoundrel; collective aspiration was mere charlatanry in his eyes, and when some one said that he had lost his appetite because of a british defeat, johnson thought him an impostor, in which johnson was probably right. there have been plenty of so-called patriots who were scoundrels, there has been plenty of affectation of sentiment which is little better than charlatanry, but we do not consider when we weigh the influence of men whether rousseau was morally far inferior to johnson. we know that he was. but rousseau, poor an instrument as he may have been, helped to break many a chain, to relieve many a weary heart, to bring to whole peoples a new era in which the horrors of the past became as a nightmare, and in which ideals were destined to reign for ever. cowper, an incomparably better man than rousseau, helped to permeate england with that collective sentiment, which, while it does not excuse us for neglecting our neighbour, is a good thing for preserving for nations a healthy natural life, a more and more difficult task with the growing complications of commercialism. cowper here, as i say, unconsciously performed his greatest service to humanity; and it was performed, be it remembered, at olney. it has been truly said that in cowper:- the poetry of human wrong begins, that long, long cry against oppression and evil done by man to man, against the political, moral, or priestly tyrant, which rings louder and louder through burns, coleridge, shelley, and byron, ever impassioned, ever longing, ever prophetic--never, in the darkest time, quite despairing. {47} and cowper achieved this without losing sight for one moment of the essential necessity for personal worth: spend all thy powers of rant and rhapsody in virtue's praise, be most sublimely good, verbosely grand, and it profiteth nothing, he said in effect. that was not his only service as a citizen. he struck the note of honest patriotism as it had not been struck before since milton, by the familiar lines commencing: england, with all thy faults, i love thee still, my country! as also in that stirring ballad "on the loss of the _royal george_:" her timbers yet are sound, and she may float again, full charged with england's thunder, and plough the distant main. there are two other great claims that might here be made for cowper did time allow, that he anticipated wordsworth alike as a lover of nature, as one who had more than a superficial affection for it--the superficial affection of thomson and gray--and that he anticipated wordsworth also as a lover of animal life. cowper's love of nature was the less effective than wordsworth's only, surely, in that he had not had wordsworth's advantage of living amid impressive scenery. his love of animal life was far less platonic than wordsworth's. to his hares and his pigeons and all dumb creatures he was genuinely devoted. perhaps it was because he had in him the blood of kings--for, curiously enough, it is no more difficult to trace the genealogical tree of both cowper and byron down to william the conqueror than it is to trace the genealogical tree of queen victoria--it was perhaps, i say, this descent from kings which led him to be more tolerant of "sport" than was wordsworth. at any rate, cowper's vigorous description of being in at the death of a fox may be contrasted with wordsworth's "heart leap well," and you will prefer cowper or wordsworth, as your tastes are for or against our old-fashioned english sports. but even then, as often, cowper in his poetry was less tolerant than in his prose, for he writes in _the task_ of: detested sport that owes its pleasures to another's pain, we may note in all this the almost entire lack of indebtedness in cowper to his predecessors. one of his most famous phrases, indeed, that on "the cup that cheers, but not inebriates," he borrowed from berkeley; but his borrowings were few, far fewer than those of any other great poet, whereas mine would be a long essay were i to produce by the medium of parallel columns all that other poets have borrowed from him. lastly, among cowper's many excellencies as a poet let me note his humour. his pathos, his humanity--many fine qualities he has in common with others; but what shall we say of his humour? if the ubiquitous scot were present, so far from his native heath--and i daresay we have one or two with us--he might claim that humour was also the prerogative of robert burns. he might claim, also, that certain other great characteristics of cowper were to be found almost simultaneously in burns. there is virtue in the _almost_. cowper was born in 1731, burns in 1759. at any rate humour has been a rare product among the greater english poets. it was entirely absent in wordsworth, in shelley, in keats. byron possessed a gift of satire and wit, but no humour, tennyson only a suspicion of it in "the northern farmer." from cowper to browning, who also had it at times, there has been little humour in the greatest english poetry, although plenty of it in the lesser poets--hood and the rest. but there was in cowper a great sense of humour, as there was also plenty of what hazlitt, almost censoriously, calls "elegant trifling." not only in the imperishable "john gilpin," but in the "case between nose and eyes," "the nightingale and glow-worm," and other pieces you have examples of humorous verse which will live as long as our language endures. cowper's claims as a poet, then, may be emphasized under four heads:-i. his enthusiasm for humanity. ii. his love of nature. iii. his love of animal life. iv. his humour. and in three of these, let it be said emphatically, he stands out as the creator of a new era. there is another claim i make for him, and with this i close--his position as a master of prose, as well as of poetry. cowper was the greatest letter-writer in a language which has produced many great letterwriters--walpole, gray, byron, scott, fitzgerald, and a long list. but nearly all these men were men of affairs, of action. given a good literary style they could hardly have been other than interesting, they had so much to say that they gained from external sources. even fitzgerald--the one recluse--had all the treasures of literature constantly passing into his study. cowper had but eighteen books altogether during many of his years in olney, and some of us who have lent our volumes in the past and are still sighing over gaps in our shelves find consolation in the fact that six of cowper's books had been returned to him after a friend had borrowed for twenty years or so. now, it is comparatively easy to write good letters with a library around you; it is marvellous that cowper could have done this with so little material, and his letters are, from this point of view, the best of all--"divine chit-chat" coleridge called them. his simple style captivates us. and here let me say--keeping to my text--that it is the _sanest_ of styles, a style with no redundancies, no rhetoric, no straining after effect. the outlook on life is sane--what could be finer than the chase for the lost hare, or the call of the parliamentary candidate, or the flogging of the thief?--and the outlook on literature is particularly sane. cowper was well-nigh the only true poet in the first rank in english literature who was at the same time a true critic. literary history affords a singular revelation of the wild and incoherent judgments of their fellows on the part of the poets. for praise or blame, there are few literary judgments of byron, of shelley, of wordsworth that will stand. coleridge was a critic first, and his poetry, though good, is small in quantity, and the same may be said of matthew arnold. tennyson discreetly kept away from prose, and his letters, be it remembered, lack distinction as do most letters of the nineteenth century. if, however, as we are really to believe, he it was who really made the first edition of palgrave's _golden treasury of lyric poetry_, he came near to cowper in his sanity of judgment, and one delights to think that in that precious volume cowper ranks third--that is, after shakspere and wordsworth--in the number of selections that are there given, and rightly given, as imperishable masterpieces of english poetry. tennyson, also, was at one with cowper in declaring that an appreciation of _lycidas_ was a touchstone of taste for poetry. to tennyson, as to cowper, milton was the one great english poet after shakspere; and here, also, we revere the saneness of view. more sane too, was cowper than any of the modern critics, in that he did not believe that mere technique was the standpoint from which all poetry must ultimately be judged. "give me," he says, "a manly rough line with a deal of meaning in it, rather than a whole poem full of musical periods, that have nothing in them, only smoothness to recommend them!" and thus he justified robert browning and many another singer. let us then dismiss from our minds the one-sided picture of cowper as a gloomy fanatic, who was always asking himself in carlylian phrase, "am i saved? am i damned?" let us remember him as staunch to the friends of his youth, sympathetic to his old schoolfellow, warren hastings, when the world would make him out too black. opposed in theory to tobacco, how he delighted to welcome his good friend mr. bull. "my greenhouse," he says, "wants only the flavour of your pipe to make it perfectly delightful!" naturally tolerant of total abstinence, he asks one friend to drink to the success of his homer, and thanks another for a present of bottle-stands. from beginning to end, save in those periods of aberration, there is no more resemblance to cowper in the picture that certain narrow-minded people have desired to portray than there is in these same people's conception of martin luther. the real luther, who loved dancing and mirth and the joy of living as much as did any of the men he so courageously opposed, was not more remote from a conception of him once current in this country than was the real cowper--the frank, genial humorist, who wrote "john gilpin," who in his youth "giggled and made giggle" with his girl-cousins, and in his maturer years "laughed and made laugh" with lady austen and lady hesketh. to all men there are periods of weariness and depression, side by side with periods of happiness and hopefulness. cowper, alas! had more than his share of the tragedy of life, but let us not forget that he had some of its joy, and that joy is reflected for us in a substantial literary achievement, which has lived, and influenced the world, while his more tragic experiences may well be buried in oblivion. this, you may have noted, is not a criticism of cowper, but an eulogy. i would wish to say, however, that the criticism of cowper by living writers has been of surpassing excellence. for the first fifty or sixty years of the century that we are recalling cowper was the most popular poet of our country, with burns and byron for rivals. he has been largely dethroned by wordsworth and shelley, and tennyson, not one of whom has been praised too much. but if cowper has sunk somewhat out of sight of late years, owing to inevitable circumstances, it is during these late years that he has secured the goodwill of the best living critics. would that mr. leslie stephen {56}--who wrote his life in the _dictionary of national biography_--would that mr. edmund gosse--who has so recently published a great biography of cowper's memorable ancestor, dr. donne--were, one or other of them, here to-day; or mr. austin dobson, who has visited olney, and described his impressions; or dr. jessopp, who lives near cowper's tomb in east dereham church. these writers are, alas! not with us, and some presentment of a poet they love has fallen to less capable hands. but not the most brilliant of speeches, not all the enthusiasm of all the critics, can ever restore cowper to his former immense popularity. we do well, however, to celebrate his centenary, because it is good at certain periods to remember our indebtedness to the great men who have helped us in literature or in life. but that is not to say that we work for the dethronement of later favourites. "each age must write its own books," says emerson, and this is particularly the case with the great body of poetry. cowper, however, will live to all time among students of literature by his longer poems; he will live to all time among the multitude by his ballads and certain of his lyrics. he will, assuredly, live by his letters, to study which will be a thousand times more helpful to the young writer than many volumes of addison, to whom we were once advised to devote our days and our nights. cowper will live, above all, as a profoundly interesting and beautiful personality, as a great and good englishman--the greatest of all the sons of this his adopted town. iii. to the immortal memory of george borrow an address delivered in norwich on the occasion of the borrow centenary, 1903. one hundred years ago there was born some two miles from the pleasant little town of east dereham, in this county, a child who was christened george henry borrow. that is why we are assembled here this evening. i count it one of the most interesting coincidences in literary history that only three years earlier there should have left the world in the same little town--a town only known perhaps to those of us who are norfolk men--a poet who has always seemed to me to be one of the greatest glories of our literature: i mean william cowper. cowper died in april, 1800, and borrow was born in july, 1803, in this same town of east dereham: and there very much it might be thought, any point of likeness or of contrast must surely end. cowper and borrow do, indeed, come into some trivial kind of kinship at one or two points. in reading cowper's beautiful letters i have come across two addressed by him to one richard phillips, a bookseller of that day, who had been in prison for publishing some of thomas paine's works. cowper had been asked by phillips to write a sympathetic poem denunciatory of the political and religious tyranny that had sent phillips to jail. cowper had at first agreed, but was afterwards advised not to have anything more to do with phillips. judging by the after career of phillips, cowper did wisely; for phillips was not a good man, although twenty years later he had become a sheriff of london and was knighted. as sir richard phillips he was visited by george borrow, then a youth at the beginning of his career. borrow came to phillips armed with an introduction from william taylor of norwich, and his reception is most dramatically recorded in the pages of _lavengro_. this is, however, to anticipate. then there is a poem by cowper to sir john fenn {62} the antiquary, the first editor of the famous _paston letters_. in it there is a reference to fenn's spouse, who, under the pseudonym of "mrs. teachwell," wrote many books for children in her day. now borrow could remember this lady--dame eleanor fenn--when he was a boy. he recalled the "lady bountiful leaning on her gold-headed cane, while the sleek old footman followed at a respectful distance behind." lady fenn was fortysix years old when cowper referred to her. she was sixty-six when the boy borrow saw her in dereham streets. at no other points do these great east dereham writers come upon common ground: cowper during the greater part of his life was a recluse. he practically fled from the world. in reading the many letters he wrote--and they are among the best letters in the english language--one is struck by the small number of his correspondents. he had few acquaintances and still fewer friends. he had never seen a hill until he was sixty, and then it was only the modest hills of sussex that seemed to him so supremely glorious. he was never on the continent. for half a lifetime he did not move out of one county, the least picturesque part of buckinghamshire, the neighbourhood of olney and of weston. there he wrote the poems that have been a delight to several generations, poems which although they may have gone out of fashion with many are still very dear to some among us; and there, as i have said, he wrote the incomparable letters that have an equally permanent place in literature. you could not conceive a more extraordinary contrast than the life of this other writer associated with east dereham, whom we have met to celebrate this evening. george borrow was the son of a soldier, who had risen from the ranks, and of a mother who had been an actress. soldier and actress both imply to all of us a restless, wandering life. the soldier was a cornishman by birth, the actress was of french origin, and so you have blended in this little norfolk boy--who is a norfolk boy in spite of it all--every kind of nomadic habit, every kind of fiery, imaginative enthusiasm, a temperament not usually characteristic of those of us who claim east anglia as the land of our birth or of our progenitors. i wish it were possible for me to reconstruct that norwich world into which young george borrow entered at thirteen years of age. that it was a norwich of great intellectual activity is indisputable. in the year of borrow's birth john gurney, who died six years later, first became a partner in the norwich bank. his more famous son, joseph john gurney--aged fifteen--left the earlham home in order to study at oxford. his sister, the still more famous elizabeth fry, was now twenty-three. so that when borrow, the thirteen year old son of the veteran soldier--who had already been in ireland picking up scraps of irish, and in scotland adding to his knowledge of gaelic--settled down for some of his most impressionable years in norwich, joseph john gurney was a young man of twenty-eight and elizabeth fry was thirty-six. dr. james martineau was eleven years of age and his sister harriet was fourteen. another equally clever woman, not then married to austin, the famous jurist, was sarah taylor, aged twenty-three. this is but to name a few of the crowd of norwich worthies of that day. would that some one could produce a picture of the literary life of norwich of this time and of a quarter of a century onward--a period that includes the famous bishop stanley's {66} occupancy of the see of norwich and the visits to this city from all parts of england of a great number of famous literary men. it is my pleasant occupation to-night to endeavour to show that borrow, the very least of these men and women in public estimation for a good portion of his life, and perhaps the least in popular judgment even since his death, was really the greatest, was really the man of all others to whom this beautiful city should do honour if it asks for a name out of its nineteenth century history to crown with local recognition. for whatever homage may have fallen to borrow during the half-century or more since his name first came upon many tongues norwich, it must be admitted, has given very little of it. no one associated with your city, i repeat, but has heard of the gurneys and the martineaus, of the stanleys and the austins, whose life stories have made so large a part of your literary and intellectual history during this very period. but i turn in vain to a number of books that i have in my library for any information concerning one who is indisputably the greatest among the intellectual children of norwich. i turn to mr. prothero's _life of dean stanley_--not one word about borrow; to that pleasant _memoir_ of sarah austin and her mother, mrs. taylor, called _three generations of a norfolk family_--again not one word. i turn to mr. braithwaite's biography of joseph john gurney, and to mr. augustus hare's book _the gurneys of earlham_--upon these worthy biographers borrow made no impression whatever, although joseph john gurney was personally helpful to him and we read in _lavengro_ of that pleasant meeting between the pair on the river bank when mr. gurney chided the boy borrow or lavengro for angling. "from that day," he says, "i became less and less a practitioner of that cruel fishing." in harriet martineau's _autobiography_, which enjoyed its hour of fame when it was published twenty-six years ago, there is a contemptuous reference to the disciple of william taylor, "this polyglot gentleman, who went through spain disseminating bibles." if miss martineau were alive now she would hear the works of "this polyglot gentleman" praised on every hand, and would find that a cult had arisen which to her would certainly be quite incomprehensible. in that large, dismal book--the _life of james martineau_, again, there is but one mention of dr. martineau's famous schoolfellow whose name has been linked with him only by a silly story. do not let it be thought that i am complaining of this neglect; the world will always treat its greatest writers in precisely this fashion. borrow did not lack for fame of a kind, but he was, as i desire to show, praised in his lifetime for the wrong thing, where he was praised at all. everyone in the fifties and sixties read _the bible in spain_, as they read a hundred other books of that period, now forgotten. many read it who were deceived by its title. they expected a tract. many read it as we to-day read the latest novel or biography of the hour. then a new book arises and the momentary favourite is forgotten. we think for a whole week that we are in contact with a well-nigh immortal work. a little later we concern ourselves not at all whether the book is immortal or not. we go on to something else. the critic is as much to blame as the reader. not one man in a hundred whose profession it is to come between the author and the public, and to guide the reader to the best in literature, has the least perception of what is good literature. it is easy when a writer has captured the suffrages of the crowd for the critic to tell the world that he is great. that happened to carlyle, to tennyson, to many a popular author whose earliest books commanded little attention: but, happily, these writers did not lose heart. they kept on writing. borrow was otherwise made. he wrote _the bible in spain_--a book of travel of surprising merit. it sold largely on its title. mr. augustine birrell has told us that he knew a boy in a very strict household who devoured the narrative on sunday afternoons, the title being thought to cover a conventional missionary journey. well, when i was a boy _the bible in spain_ had gone out of fashion and the public had not taken up with the author's greater work, _lavengro_. borrow was naturally disappointed. he abused the critics and the public. perhaps he grew somewhat soured. he did not hesitate in _the romany rye_ to talk candidly about those "ill-favoured dogs . . . the newspaper editors," and he made the gentleman's gentleman of _lavengro_ describe how he was excluded from the servants' club in park lane because his master followed a profession "so mean as literature." in fact as a reaction from the unfriendly reception accorded to the _romany rye_--now one of the most costly of his books in a first edition--he lost heart, and he grew to despise the whole literary and writing class. hence the various stories presenting him in not very sympathetic guise, the story of thackeray being snubbed on asking borrow if he had read the _snob papers_, of miss agnes strickland receiving an even more forcible rebuff when she offered to send him her _queens of england_. "for god's sake don't madame; i should not know where to put them or what to do with them." these stories are in gordon hake's _memoirs of eighty years_, but mr. francis hindes groome has shown us the other side of the picture, and others also to whom i shall refer a little later have done the same. perhaps the literary class is never the worse for a little plain speaking. the real secret of borrow is this--that he was a man of action turned into a writer by force of circumstances. the life of borrow, unlike that of most famous men of letters, has not been overwritten. his death in 1881 caused little emotion and attracted but small attention in the newspapers. _the times_, then as now so excellent in its biographies as a rule, devoted but twenty lines to him. here i may be pardoned for being autobiographical. i was last in norwich in the early eighties. i had a wild enthusiasm for literature so far as my taste had been directed--that is to say i read every book i came across and had been doing so from my earliest boyhood. but i had never heard of george borrow or of his works. in my then not infrequent visits to norwich i cannot recall that his name was ever mentioned, and in my life in london, among men who were, many of them, great readers, i never heard of borrow or of his achievement. he died in 1881, and as i do not recall hearing his name at the time of his death or until long afterwards, i must have missed certain articles in the _athenaeum_--two of them admirable "appreciations" by mr. watts-dunton--and so my state of benightedness was as i have described. it may be that those who are a year or two older than i am and those who are younger may find this extraordinary. you have always heard of borrow and of his works, but i think i am entitled to insist that when borrow sank into his grave, an old, and to many an eccentric and bitter man, he had fallen into the most curious oblivion with the public that has ever come to a man, i will not say of equal distinction, but of any distinction whatever. mr. egmont hake told the readers of the _athenaeum_ in a biography that appeared at the time of borrow's death that borrow's works were "forgotten in england" and i find in turning to the biography of borrow in _the norvicensian_, for 1882--the organ of the norwich grammar school--that the writer of this obituary notice confessed that there were none of borrow's works in the library of the school of which borrow had been the most distinguished pupil. from that time--in 1881--until 1899, a period of eighteen years, borrow had but little biographical recognition. a few introductions to his books, sundry encyclopaedia articles, and one or two magazine essays made up the sum total of information concerning the author of _lavengro_ until dr. knapp's _life_ appeared in 1899. that _life_ has been severely handled by some lovers of borrow, and lovers of borrow are now plentiful enough. dr. knapp had not the cunning of the really successful biographer. his book still remains in the huge two-volumed form in which it was first issued four years ago, and i do not anticipate that it will ever be a popular book. there is no literary art in it. there is a capacity for amassing facts, but no power of co-ordinating these facts. moreover dr. knapp did a great deal of mischief by very over-zeal. he made too great a research into all the current gossip in norfolk and suffolk concerning borrow. if you were to make special research into the life of any friend or acquaintance of the past you would hear much foolish gossip and a great many wrong motives imputed, and possibly you would not have an opportunity of checking the various statements. the whole of dr. knapp's book seems to be written upon the principle of "i would if i could" say a good many things, and, indeed, every few months there appears in the _eastern daily press_, a journal of your city that i have read every day regularly since boyhood, a letter from some one explaining that the less inquiry about this or that point in borrow's career the better for borrow. take, for example, last saturday's issue of the journal i have named, where i find the following from a correspondent:- dr. knapp, from dictates of courtesy, left it unrevealed, and as he could say nothing to borrow's credit, passed the affair over in silence, and on this point all well-wishers of borrow's reputation would be wise to take their cue from this biographer's example. now there is nothing more damnatory than a sentence of this kind. what does it amount to? what is the 'it' that is unrevealed by the courteous dr. knapp? it seems to amount to the charge that borrow is accused of gibbeting in his books the people he dislikes; this is what every great imaginative writer has been charged with to the perplexing of dull people. there are many characters in dickens's novels which are supposed to be a presentation of near relatives or friends. these he ought to have treated with more kindliness. that heroic little woman, miss bronte, gave a picture of madame heger, who kept a school at brussels, that conveyed, i doubt not, a very mistaken presentation of the subject of her satire. imaginative writers have always taken these liberties. when the worst is said it simply amounts to this, that borrow was a good hater. dr. johnson said that he loved a good hater, and he might very well have loved borrow. dante, whom we all now agree to idolize, treated people even more roughly; he placed some of his acquaintances who had illused him in the very lowest circles of hell. may i express a hope, therefore, that this type of letter to the norwich newspapers about dr. knapp's "kindness" to borrow's reputation may cease. if dr. knapp had printed the whole of the facts we should know how to deal with them; but this is one of his limitations as a biographer. he has not in the least helped to a determination of borrow's real character. had borrow possessed a biographer so skilful with her pen as mrs. gaskell in her _life of charlotte bronte_, so keen-eyed for the dramatic note as sir george trevelyan in his _life of macaulay_, he would have multiplied readers for _lavengro_. there are many people who have read the bronte novels from sheer sympathy with the writers that their biographer, mrs. gaskell, had kindled. let us not, however, be ungrateful to dr. knapp. he has furnished those of us who are sufficiently interested in the subject with a fine collection of documents. here is all the material of biography in its crude state, but presenting vividly enough the live borrow to those who have the perception to read it with care and judgment. still more grateful may we be to dr. knapp for his edition of borrow's works, particularly for those wonderful episodes in _lavengro_ which he has reproduced from the original manuscript, episodes as dramatic as any other portion of the text, and making dr. knapp's edition of _lavengro_ the only possible one to possess. but to return to the main facts of borrow's career, which every one here at least is familiar with. you know of his birth at east dereham, of his life in ireland and in scotland, of his school days at norwich, of his departure from norwich to london on his father's death, of his dire struggles in the literary whirlpool, and of his wanderings in gipsy land. you know, thanks to dr. knapp, more than you could otherwise have learned of his life at st. petersburg, whither he had been sent by the bible society, on the recommendation of mr. joseph john gurney and another patron. then he has himself told us in picturesque fashion of his life in portugal and spain. after this we hear of his marriage to mary clarke, his residence from 1840 to 1853 at oulton, in suffolk, from 1853 to 1860 at yarmouth, from 1860 to 1874 in hereford square, london, and finally from 1874 to 1881 at oulton, where he died. that is the bare skeleton of borrow's life, and for half his life, i think, we should be content with a skeleton. for the other half of it we have the best autobiography in the english language. an autobiography that ranks with goethe's _truth and poetry from my life_ and rousseau's _confessions_. in four books--in _lavengro_, _romany rye_, _the bible in spain_, and _wild wales_ we have some delightful glimpses of an interesting personality, and here we may leave the personal side of borrow. beyond this we know that he was unquestionably a devoted son, a good husband, a kind father. the literary life has its perils, so far as domesticity is concerned. sir walter scott in his life of dryden speaks of:- her who had to endure the apparently causeless fluctuation of spirits incidental to one compelled to dwell for long periods of time in the fitful realms of the imagination, and it is certain that those who dwell in the realms of the imagination are usually very irritable, very difficult to live with. literary history in its personal side is largely a dismal narrative of the uncomfortable relations of men of genius with their wives and with their families. your man of genius thinks himself bound to hang up his fiddle in his own house, however merry a fellow he may prove himself to a hundred boon companions outside. george borrow was perhaps the opposite of all this. as a companion and a neighbour he did not always shine, if the impression of many a witness is to be trusted. they tell anecdotes of his lack of cordiality, of his unsociability, and so on. they have told those anecdotes more industriously in norwich than anywhere else. he himself in an incomparable account of going to church with the gypsies in _the romany rye_ has the following: it appeared as if i had fallen asleep in the pew of the old church of pretty dereham. i had occasionally done so when a child, and had suddenly woke up. yes, surely, i had been asleep and had woke up; but no! if i had been asleep i had been waking in my sleep, struggling, striving, learning and unlearning in my sleep. years had rolled away whilst i had been asleep--ripe fruit had fallen, green fruit had come on whilst i had been asleep--how circumstances had altered, and above all myself whilst i had been asleep. no, i had not been asleep in the old church! i was in a pew, it is true, but not the pew of black leather, in which i sometimes fell asleep in days of yore, but in a strange pew; and then my companions, they were no longer those of days of yore. i was no longer with my respectable father and mother, and my dear brother, but with the gypsy cral and his wife, and the gigantic tawno, the antinous of the dusky people. and what was i myself? no longer an innocent child but a moody man, bearing in my face, as i knew well, the marks of my strivings and strugglings; of what i had learnt and unlearnt. but this "moody man," let it be always remembered, was a good husband and father. his wife was devoted to him, his step-daughter carries now to an old age a profound reverence and affection for his memory. grieved beyond all words was she--the henrietta or "hen" of all his books--at what is maintained to be the utterly fictitious narrative of borrow's described deathbed that professor knapp presented from the ill-considered gossip that he picked up while staying in the neighbourhood. {80} borrow has himself something to say concerning his family in _wild wales_:- of my wife i will merely say that she is a perfect paragon of wives--can make puddings and sweets and treacle posset, and is the best woman of business in east anglia: of my step-daughter, for such she is though i generally call her daughter, and with good reason seeing that she has always shown herself a daughter to me, that she has all kinds of good qualities and several accomplishments, knowing something of conchology, more of botany, drawing capitally in the dutch style, and playing remarkably well on the guitar. yes, i am not quite sure but that borrow was really a good fellow all round, as well as being a good husband and father. he hated the literary class, it is true. he considered that the "contemptible trade of author," as he called it, was less creditable than that of a jockey. he avoided as much as possible the writers of books, and particularly the blue-stocking, and when they came in his way he was not always very polite, sometimes much the reverse. only the other day a letter was published from the late professor cowell describing a visit to borrow and his not very friendly reception. well, borrow was here as elsewhere a man of insight. the literary class is usually a very narrow class. it can talk about no trade but its own. things have grown worse since borrow's day, i am sure, but they were bad enough then. borrow was a man of very varied tastes. he took interest in gypsies and horses and prize fighters and a hundred other entertaining matters, and so he despised the literary class, which cared for none of these things. but unhappily for his fame the literary class has had the final word; it has revealed all the gossip of a gossiping peasantry, and it has done its best to present the recluse of oulton in a disagreeable light. fortunately for borrow, who kept the bores at bay and contented himself with but few friends, there were at least two who survived him to bear testimony to the effect that he was "a singularly steadfast and loyal friend." one of these was mr. watts-dunton, who tells us in one of his essays that: george borrow was a good man, a most winsome and a most charming companion, an english gentleman, straightforward, honest, and brave as the very best examplars of that fine old type. i have dwelt longer on this aspect of my subject than i should have done had i been addressing any other audience than a norwich one. but the fact is that all the gossip and backbiting and censoriousness that has gathered round borrow for a hundred years has come out of this very city, commencing with the "bursts of laughter" that, according to miss martineau, greeted borrow's travels in spain for the bible society. borrow was twenty-one years of age when he left norwich to make his way in the world. during the next twenty years he may have undergone many changes of intellectual view, as most of us do, as miss martineau notably did, and miss martineau and her laughing friends were diabolically uncharitable. that lack of charity followed borrow throughout his life. he was libelled by many, by miss frances power cobbe most of all. however, the great city of norwich will make up for it in the future, and she will love borrow as borrow indisputably loved her. how he praised her fine cathedral, her lordly castle, her mousehold heath, her meadows in which he once saw a prize fight, her pleasant scenery--no city, not even glorious oxford, has been so well and adequately praised, and i desire to show that that praise is not for an age but for all time. if george borrow has not been happy in his biographer, and if, as is true, he has received but inadequate treatment on this account--such series of little books as _the english men of letters_ and the _great writers_ quite ignoring him--he has been equally unfortunate in his critics. there are hardly any good and distinctive appreciations in print of borrow's works. while other great names in the great literature of the victorian period have been praised by a hundred pens, there has scarcely been any notable and worthy praise of borrow, and if i were in an audience that was at all sceptical as to borrow's supreme merits, which happily i am not; if i were among those who declared that they could see but small merit in borrow themselves, but were prepared to accept him if only i could bring good authority that he was a very great writer, i should be hardly put to to comply with the demand. i can only name mr. theodore watts-dunton and mr. augustine birrell as critics of considerable status who have praised borrow well. "the delightful, the bewitching, the never sufficiently-to-be-praised george borrow," says mr. birrell in one of the essays he has written on the subject; {84} while mr. theodore watts-dunton, has written no less than four papers on one whom he knew and admires personally, and of whom he insists that "his idealizing powers, his romantic cast of mind, his force, his originality, give him a title to a permanent place high in the ranks of english prose writers." all this is very interesting, but in literature as in life we have got to work out our own destinies. we have not got to accept borrow because this or that critic tells us he is good. i have therefore no quarrel with any one present who does not share my view that borrow was one of the greater glories of english literature. i only desire to state my case for him. to be a lover of borrow, a borrovian, in fact, it is not necessary to know all his books. you may never have seen copies of the _romantic ballads_ or of _faustus_, of _targum_ or of _the turkish jester_, of borrow's translation of _the talisman_ of pushkin. your state may be none the less gracious. to possess these books is largely a collector's hobby. they are interesting, but they would not have made for the author an undying reputation. further, you may not care for _the bible in spain_, you may be untouched by the _gypsies in spain_ and _wild wales_, and even then i will not deny to you the title of a good borrovian, if only you pronounce _lavengro_ and _the romany rye_ to be among the greatest books you know. i can admire the _gypsies in spain_ and _wild wales_. i can read _the bible in spain_ with something of the enthusiasm with which our fathers read it. it is a stirring narrative of travel and much more. robert louis stevenson did, indeed, rank it among his "dear acquaintances" in bookland, "the _pilgrim's progress_ in the first rank, _the bible in spain_ not far behind," he says. all the same, it has not, none of these three books has, the distinctive mark of first class genius that belongs to the other two in the five-volumed edition of borrow's collected works that many of us have read through more than once. not all clever people have thought _lavengro_ and _the romany rye_ to be thus great. a critic in the _athenaeum_ declared _lavengro_ when it was published in 1851 to be "balderdash," while a critic writing just fifty years afterwards and writing from norfolk, alas! insisted that the author of this book "was absolutely wanting in the power of invention" that he (borrow) could "only have drawn upon his memory," that he had "no sense of humour." if all this were true, if half of it were true, borrow was not the great man, the great writer that i take him to be. but it is not true. _lavengro_ with its continuation _the romany rye_, is a great work of imagination, of invention; it is in no sense a photograph, a memory picture, and it abounds in humour as it abounds in many other great characteristics. what makes an author supremely great? surely a certain quality which we call genius, as distinct from the mere intellectual power of some less brilliant writer:- true genius is the ray that flings a novel light o'er common things and here it is that borrow shines supreme. he has invested with quite novel light a hundred commonplace aspects of life. not an inventor! not imaginative! why, one of the indictments against him is that philologists decry his philology and gyptologists his gypsy learning. if, then, his philology and his gypsy lore were imperfect, as i believe they were, how much the greater an imaginative writer he was. to say that _lavengro_ merely indicates keen observation is absurd. not the keenest observation will crowd so many adventures, adventures as fresh and as novel as those of gil blas or robinson crusoe, into a few months' experience. "i felt some desire," says lavengro, "to meet with one of those adventures which upon the roads of england are generally as plentiful as blackberries in autumn." i think that most of us will wander along the roads of england for a very long time before we meet an isopel berners, before we have such an adventure as that of the blacksmith and his horse, or of the apple woman whose favourite reading was _moll flanders_. these and a hundred other adventures, the fight with the flaming tinman, the poisoning of lavengro by the gypsy woman, the discourse with ursula under the hedge, when once read are fixed upon the memory for ever. and yet you may turn to them again and again, and with ever increasing zest. the story of isopel berners is a piece of imaginative writing that certainly has no superior in the literature of the last century. it was assuredly no photographic experience. isopel berners is herself a creation ranking among the fine creations of womanhood of the finest writers. i doubt not but that it was inspired by some actual memory of borrow--the memory of some early love affair in which the distractions of his mania for word-learning--the armenian and other languages--led him to pass by some opportunity of his life, losing the substance for the shadow. but whether there were ever a real isopel we shall never know. we do know that borrow has presented his fictitious one with infinite poetry and fine imaginative power. we do know, moreover, that it is not right to describe isopel berners as a marvellous episode in a narrative of other texture. _lavengro_ is full of marvellous episodes. some one has ventured to comment upon borrow's style--to imply that it is not always on a high plane. what does that matter? style is not the quality that makes a book live, but the novelty of the ideas. stevenson was a splendid stylist, and his admirers have deluded themselves into believing that he was, therefore, among the immortals. but stevenson had nothing new to tell the world, and he was not, he is not, therefore of the immortals. borrow is of the immortals, not by virtue of a style, but by virtue of having something new to say. he is with dickens and with carlyle as one of the three great british prose writers of the age we call victorian, who in quite different ways have presented a new note for their own time and for long after. it is the distinction of borrow that he has invested the common life of the road, of the highway, the path through the meadow, the gypsy encampment, the country fair, the very apple stall and wayside inn with an air of romance that can never leave those of us who have once come under the magnificent spell of _lavengro_ and the _romany rye_. perhaps borrow is pre-eminently the writer for those who sit in armchairs and dream of adventures they will never undertake. perhaps he will never be the favourite author of the really adventurous spirit, who wants the real thing, the latest book of actual travel. but to be the favourite author of those who sit in arm-chairs is no small thing, and, as i have said already, borrow stands with carlyle and dickens in _our_ century, by which i mean the nineteenth century; with defoe and goldsmith in the eighteenth century, as one of the really great and imperishable masters of our tongue. what then will norwich do for george borrow? i ask this question, although it would, perhaps, be an impertinence to ask it were i not a norwich man. if you have read dr. knapp's _life of borrow_, you will have seen more than one reference to mrs. borrow's landlord, "old king," "tom king the carpenter," and so on, who owned the house in willow lane in which borrow spent his boyhood. that 'old king the carpenter'--i believe he called himself a builder, but perhaps this was when he grew more prosperous--was my great-great-uncle. one of his sons became physician to prince talleyrand and married a sister of john stuart mill. one of his great-nieces was my grandmother, and her mother's family, the parkers, had lived in norwich for many generations. so on the strength of this little piece of genealogy let me claim, not only to be a good borrovian, but also a good norvicensian. grant me then a right to plead for a practical recognition of borrow in the city that he loved most, although he sometimes scolded it as it often scolded him. i should like to see a statue, or some similar memorial. if you pass through the cities of the continent--french, german, or belgian--you will find in well-nigh every town a memorial to this or that worthy connected with its literary or artistic fame. how many memorials has norwich to the people connected with its literary or artistic fame? nay, i am not rash and impetuous. i would beg any one of my hearers who thinks that borrow might well have a memorial in marble or bronze in your city to wait a while. you are busy with a statue to sir thomas browne--a most commendable scheme. to attempt to raise one to borrow at this moment would probably be to court disaster. nor do i advocate a memorial by private subscription. observation has shown me what that means: failure or half failure in nearly every case. the memorial when it comes must be initiated by the city fathers in council assembled. that time is perhaps far distant. but let us all do everything we can to make secure the high and honourable achievement of george borrow, to kindle an interest in him and his writings, to extend a taste for the undoubted beauties of his works among all classes of his fellow-citizens--that is to secure borrow the best of all monuments. more durable than brass will be the memorial that is contained in the assurance that he possesses the reverence and the homage of all true norfolk hearts. iv. to the immortal memory of george crabbe an address delivered at the crabbe celebration at aldeburgh in suffolk on the 16th of september, 1905. i have been asked to say something in praise of george crabbe. the task would be an easier one were it not for the presence of the distinguished critic from the university of nancy who is with us to-day. m. huchon {97} has devoted to the subject a singleminded zeal to which one whose profession is primarily that of a journalist can make no claim. moreover it has been well said that _the judgment of foreigners is the judgment of posterity_, and i fully believe that where a writer has secured the suffrages of men of another nation than his own, he has done more for his ultimate fame than the passing and fickle favour of his countrymen can secure for him. in any case crabbe has been praised more eloquently than almost any other modern, and this in spite of the fact that he was not read by the generation succeeding his death, nor is he read much in our own time. if you want to read crabbe to-day in his entirety, you must become possessed of a huge and clumsy volume of sombre appearance, small type and repellant double columns. for fully seventy years it has not paid a publisher to reprint crabbe's poems properly. {98} when this was achieved in 1834, the edition in eight volumes was comparatively a failure, and the promised two volumes of essays and sermons were not forthcoming in consequence. selections from crabbe have been many, but when all is said he has been the least read for the past sixty or seventy years of all the authors who have claims to be considered classics. the least read but perhaps the best praised--that is one point of certainty. the praise began with the politicians--with the two greatest political leaders of their age. the eloquent and noble edmund burke, the greathearted charles james fox. burke "made" george crabbe as no poet was ever made before or since. to me there is no picture in all literature more unflaggingly interesting than that of the great man, whose life was so full of affairs, taking the poor young stranger by the hand, reading through his abundant manuscripts, and therefrom selecting--as the poet was quite unable to select--_the library_ and _the village_ as the most suitable for publication, helping him to a publisher, introducing him to friends, and proving himself quite untiring on his behalf. there is a letter of burke's printed in a little known book--_the correspondence of sir thomas hanmer_, speaker of the house of commons--in which burke takes the trouble to defend crabbe's moral character and to press his claims for being admitted to holy orders. "dudley north tells me," he continues, "that he has the best character possible among those with whom he has always lived, that he is now working hard to qualify, and has not only latin, but some smattering of greek." it had its gracious amenities, that eighteenth century, for i do not believe that there is a man in the ranks of the present government, or of the present opposition, who would take all this trouble for a poor unknown who had appealed to him merely by two or three long letters recounting his career. nay, cabinet ministers are less punctilious than formerly, and the newest type, i understand, leaves letters unanswered. i can imagine the attitude of one of our modern statesmen in the face of two quite bulky packages of many sheets from a young author. he would request his secretary to see what they were all about, and then would follow the curt answer--"i am directed by dash to say that he cannot comply with your request." burke not only wrote to the speaker of the house of commons, but enclosed crabbe's letter to him, a quite wonderful piece of autobiography. {100} all crabbe's admirers should read that letter. crabbe apologizes for writing again, and refers to "these repeated attacks on your patience." "my father," he said, "had a place in the custom house at aldeburgh. he had a large family, a little income and no economy," and then the story of his life up to that time is told to burke in fullest detail. again, there is that other statesman-admirer of crabbe, charles james fox. fox gave to crabbe's work an admiration which never faltered, and on his death-bed requested that the pathetic story of phoebe dawson in _the parish register_ should be read to him--it was, we are told, "the last piece of poetry that soothed his dying ear." in lord holland's _memoirs of the whig party_ there is a statement by his nephew which no biographer so far has quoted:- i read over to him the whole of crabbe's _parish register_ in manuscript. some parts he made me read twice; he remarked several passages as exquisitely beautiful, and objected to some few which i mentioned to the author and which he, in almost every instance, altered before publication. mr. fox repeated once or twice that it was a very pretty poem, that crabbe's condition in the world had improved since he wrote _the village_, and his view of life, likewise _the parish register_, bore marks of considerably more indulgence to our species; though not so many as he could have wished, especially as the few touches of that nature were beautiful in the extreme. he was particularly struck with the description of the substantial happiness of a farmer's wife. from great novelists the tributes are not less noteworthy than from great statesmen. jane austen, whose personality perhaps has more real womanly attractiveness than that of any sister novelist of the first rank, declared playfully that if she could have been persuaded to change her state it would have been to become mrs. crabbe; and who can forget sir walter scott's request in his last illness: "read me some amusing thing--read me a bit of crabbe." they read to him from _the borough_, and we all remember his comment, "capital--excellent--very good." yet at this time--in 1832--any popularity that crabbe had once enjoyed was already on the wane. other idols had caught the popular taste, and from that day to this there was to be no real revival of appreciation for these poems. there were to be no lack of admirers, however, of the audience "fit though few." byron's praise has been too often quoted for repetition. wordsworth, who rarely praised his contemporaries in poetry, declared of crabbe that his works "would last from their combined merit as poetry and truth." macaulay writes of "that incomparable passage in crabbe's _borough_ which has made many a rough and cynical reader cry like a child"--the passage in which the condemned felon takes his tasteless food, and when 'tis done, counts up his meals, now lessen'd by that one,-a story which macaulay bluntly charges robert montgomery with stealing. lord tennyson, again, at a much later date, admitted that "crabbe has a world of his own." not less impressive surely is the attitude of the two writers as far as the poles asunder in their outlook upon life and its mysteries--cardinal newman and edward fitzgerald. the famous theologian, we learn from the _letters and correspondence_ collected by anne mozley, writes in 1820 of his "excessive fondness" for _the tales of the hall_, and thirty years later in one of his _discourses_ he says of crabbe's poems that they are among "the most touching in our language." still another twenty years, and the aged cardinal reread crabbe to find that he was more delighted than ever with our poet. that great nineteenth century pagan, on the other hand, that prince of letter-writers and wonderful poet of whom suffolk has also reason to be proud, edward fitzgerald, was even more ardent. praise of crabbe is scattered freely throughout the many volumes of his correspondence, and he edited, as we all know, a book of selections, which i want to see reprinted. it contains a preface that, it may be admitted, is not really worthy of fitzgerald, so lacking is it in the force and vigour of his correspondence. but this also was in fact yet another death-bed tribute, for it was, i think, one of the last things fitzgerald wrote. fitzgerald, however, has done more for crabbe among the moderns than any other man. his keen literary judgment must have brought new converts to that limited brotherhood of the elect, of which this gathering forms no inconsiderable portion. we have one advantage in speaking about george crabbe that does not obtain with any other poet of great eminence; that is to say, that his life story has not been hackneyed by repetition. with almost any other writer there is some standing biography which is widely familiar. the _life of george crabbe_, written by his son, although it is one of the very best biographies that i have ever read, is little known. it was quite out of print for years, and it has never been reprinted separately from the poems. it is an admirable biography, and it offers a contradiction of the view occasionally urged that a man's life should not be written by a member of his own family; for george crabbe the second would seem not only to have been an exceedingly able man, but possessed of a frankness of disposition in criticizing his father which sons are often prone to show in real life, but which, i imagine, they rarely show in print. his book is a model of candid statement, treating of crabbe's little weaknesses--and who of us has not his little weaknesses--in the most cheery possible manner. it is perhaps a small matter to tell us in one place of his father's want of "taste," his insensibility to the beauty of order in his composition--that had been done by the critics before him; but he even has something to say about the philandering which characterized the old gentleman in the last years of his life, his apparent anxiety to get married again. {106} the only thing that he all but ignores is crabbe's opium habit--a habit that came to him as a sedative from a painful complaint and inspired, as was the case with coleridge, his more melodious utterances. taken altogether the picture is as pleasant as it is capable and exhaustive. we see his early boyhood at aldeburgh, his schooldays: his first period of unhappiness at slaughden quay, his apprenticeship near bury st. edmunds, where we seem to hear his master's daughters, when he reached the door, exclaim with laughter, "la! here's our new 'prentice." we follow him a little higher, to the house of the woodbridge surgeon, then through his prolonged courtship of sarah elmy, then to those dreary, uncongenial duties of piling up butter casks on slaughden quay. a brief period of starvation in london, and we find him again in a chemist's shop in aldeburgh. lastly comes his most important journey to london upon the borrowed sum of 5 pounds, only three of which he carried in hard cash. his hand to mouth existence in london for some months is among the most interesting things in literature. chatterton's tragic fate might have been his, but, more fortunate than chatterton, he had friends at beccles who helped him, and he was even able to publish a poem, _the candidate_. although this poem contained only thirty-four pages, one is not quite sure but that it helped to ruin its publisher. in any case that publisher went bankrupt soon after. crabbe has been reproached for having continually attempted to secure a "patron" at this time, and it has been hinted by sir leslie stephen that he ought to have recognized that the patron was out of date, killed by dr. johnson's sturdy defiance. i do not agree with this view. dr. johnson, in spite of his famous epigram, was always more or less assisted by the patron, although his personality was strong enough to enable him to turn the tables at the end. when one comes to think of it, thrale the brewer was a patron of johnson, so was strahan the printer. and does he not say in his famous letter to lord chesterfield that "seven years, my lord, have now passed since i waited in your outward rooms, or was repulsed from your door," clearly implying that if chesterfield was not johnson's patron it was not the great doctor's fault? in any case the patron must always exist for the poor man of letters in every age. now, he is frequently a collective personality rather than an individual. he is represented for the author who has tried and failed by the royal literary fund, by such bounty as is awarded by the society of authors, or by the civil list grant. for the author in embryo he is assisted above all by the literary log-roller who flourishes so much in our day. if he is not this "collective personality," or one of the others i have named, then he is something much worse--that is, a capitalist publisher. we can none of us who have to earn a living run away from the patronage of capital, and when sir leslie stephen was being paid a salary by the late mr. george smith for editing the _dictionary of national biography_, and was told, as we remember that he frequently was, that it was not a remunerative venture and that, as mr. smith was fond of saying, his publishing business did not pay for his vineries, sir leslie stephen was experiencing a patronage, if he had known it, not less melancholy than anything crabbe suffered from edmund burke or the duke of rutland. when one meets a writer who desires to walk on high stilts and to talk of the independence of literature, one is entitled to ask him if it was a greater indignity for lord tennyson in his younger days to have received 200 pounds a year from the civil list than for crabbe to have received the same sum as the duke of rutland's chaplain; in fact, crabbe earned the money, and tennyson did not. there are, as i have said, some most wonderful and pathetic touches in the account of crabbe's attempt to conquer london. there are his letters to his sweetheart, for example, his "dearest mira," in one of which he says that he is possessed of 6.25_d._ in the world. in another he relates that he has sold his surgical instruments in order to pay his bills. nevertheless, we find him standing at a bookstall where he sees dryden's works in three volumes, octavo, for five shillings, and of his few shillings he ventures to offer 3_s._ 6_d._--and carries home the dryden. what bibliophile but must love such a story as that, even though a day or two afterwards its hero writes, "my last shilling became 8_d._ yesterday." but what a good investment withal. dryden made him a much better poet. then comes the famous letter to burke, and the less known second letter to which i have referred, and burke's splendid reception of the writer. nothing, i repeat, in the life of any great man is more beautiful than that. as crabbe's son finely says: "he went in burke's room a poor young adventurer, spurned by the opulent and rejected by the publishers, his last shilling gone, and his last hope with it. he came out virtually secure of almost all the good fortune that by successive stages afterwards fell to his lot." the success that comes to most men is built up on such chances, on the kind help of some one or other individual. finally there came--for i am hastily recapitulating crabbe's story--the years of prosperity, curacies, rectories, the praise of great contemporaries, but nothing surely more edifying than the burning of piles of manuscripts so extensive that no fireplace would hold them. the son's account of his assisting at these conflagrations is not the least interesting part of his biography, the merits of which i desire to emphasize. people who make jokes about that most succulent edible, the crab, when the poet crabbe is mentioned in their presence--and who can resist an obvious pun--are not really far astray. there can be little doubt but that a remote ancestor of george crabbe took his name from the "shellfish," as we all persist, in spite of the naturalist, in calling it; and the poet did not hesitate to attribute it to the vanity of an ancestor that his name had had two letters added. nor when we hear of cromer crabs, or crabs from some other part of norfolk as distinct from what i am sure is equally palatable, the crustacean as it may be found in aldeburgh, are we remote from the story of our poet's life. for there cannot be a doubt but that norfolk shares with suffolk the glory of his origin. his family, it is clear, came first from norfolk. the crabbes of norfolk were farmers, the crabbes of suffolk always favoured the seacoast, and all the glory that surrounds the name of the poet to whom we do honour to-day is reflected in the town in which he was born and bred. aldeburgh is crabbe's own town, and it is an interesting fact that no other poet can be identified with one particular spot in the way in which crabbe can be identified with this beautiful watering-place in which we are now assembled. shakspere was more of a londoner than a stratfordian; nearly all his best work was written in london, and many of the most receptive years of his life were spent in that city. milton's honoured name is identified with many places, apart from london, the city of his birth. shelley, byron and keats were essentially cosmopolitans in their writings as in their lives. wordsworth was closely identified with grasmere, although born in a neighbouring county; but he went to many and varied scenes, and to more than one country, for some of his most inspired verses. then cowper, the poet of whom one most often thinks when one is recalling the achievement of crabbe, is a poet of some halfdozen places other than olney, and perhaps his best verses were written at weston-underwood. now george crabbe in the years of his success was identified with many places other than aldeburgh: with belvoir castle, with muston, and with trowbridge, where he died, and some of his admirers have even identified him with bath. when all this is allowed, it is upon aldeburgh that the whole of his writings turned, the place where he was born, where he spent his boyhood, and the earlier years of a perhaps too sordid manhood, whither he returned twice, as a chemist's assistant and as curate. it is the place that primarily inspired all his verses. aldeburgh stands out vividly before us in each succeeding poem--in _the village_, _the borough_, _the parish register_, _the tales_, and even in those _tales of the hall_, composed in later life in faraway trowbridge. crabbe's vivid observations indeed come home to every one who has studied his works when they have visited not only aldeburgh but its vicinity. every reach of the river ald recalls some striking line by him: the scenery in _the lover's journey_ we know is a description of the road between aldeburgh and beccles, and all who have sailed along the river to orford have recognized that no stream has been so perfectly portrayed by a poet's pen. here in his writings you may have a suggestion of muston, here of allington, and here again of trowbridge; but in the main it is the suffolk scenery that most of us here know so well that was ever in his mind. when an attempt was once made to stir up the great eastern railway to identify this district with the name of crabbe as the english lakes were identified with the name of wordsworth, and the scots lakes with that of sir walter scott, a high official of the railway made the statement that up to that moment he had never even heard the name of crabbe. well, all that is going to be changed. i do not at all approve of the phrase beloved of certain book-makers and of railway companies that implies that any county or district is the monopoly of one man, be he ever so great a writer. yet i venture to say that within the next ten years the "crabbe country" will sound as familiar to the officials of the great eastern as the "wordsworth country" does to those of the midland or the north western. it is true that once in the bitterness of his heart the poet referred to aldeburgh as "a little venal borough in suffolk" and that he more than once alluded to his unkind reception upon his reappearance as a curate, when he had previously failed at other callings. "in my own village they think nothing of me," he once said. but who does not know how the heart turns with the years to the places associated with childhood and youth, and crabbe was a remarkable exemplification of this. a well-known literary journal stated only last week that "crabbe's connexion with aldeburgh was not very protracted." so far from this being true it would be no exaggeration to say that it extended over the whole of his seventy-eight years of life. it included the first five-andtwenty years almost entirely. it included also the brief curacy, the prolonged residence at parham and glenham, frequent visits for holidays in after years, and who but a lover of his native place would have done as his son pictures him doing when at stathern--riding alone to the coast of lincolnshire, sixty miles from where he was living, only to dip in the waves that also washed the beach of aldeburgh and returned immediately to his home. "there is no sea like the aldeburgh sea," said edward fitzgerald, and we may be sure that was crabbe's opinion also, for revisiting it in later life he wrote:- there once again, my native place i come thee to salute, my earliest, latest home. one picture in crabbe's life stands out vividly to us all--the long years of devotion given by him to sarah elmy, and the reciprocal devotion of the very capable woman who finally became his wife. crabbe's courtship and marriage affords a pleasant contrast to the usual unhappy relations of poets with their wives. shakspere, milton, dryden, byron, shelley, and many another poet was less happy in this respect, and i am not sure how far the belief in crabbe's powers as a poet has been affected by the fact that he lived on the whole a happy, humdrum married life. the public has so long been accustomed to expect a different state of things. i have given thus much time to crabbe's life story because it interests me, and i do not believe that it is possible nowadays to kindle a very profound interest in any writer without a definite presentation of his personality. apart from his biography--his three biographies by george crabbe the second, mr. t. e. kebbel, and canon ainger, there are the seven volumes of his works. now i do not imagine that any great accession will be made to the ranks of crabbe's admirers by asking people to take down these seven volumes and read them right through--a thing i have myself done twice, and many here also i doubt not. rather would i plead for a reprint of edmund fitzgerald's selections, or failing that i would ask you to look at the volume of selections made by mr. bernard holland, or that other admirable selection by the rev. anthony deane. "i must think my old crabbe will come up again, though never to be popular," wrote fitzgerald to archbishop trench. well, perhaps the "large still books" of the older writers are never destined to be popular again, but they will always maintain with genuine book lovers their place in english literature, and if the adequate praise they have received from many good judges is well kept to the front there will be constant accessions to the ranks, and readers will want the whole of crabbe's works in which to dig for themselves. crabbe's place in english literature needed not such a gathering as this to make it secure, but we want celebrations of our literary heroes to keep alive enthusiasm, and to encourage the faint-hearted. in the glorious tradition of english literature, then, crabbe comes after cowper and before wordsworth. there is a lineal descent as clear and well-defined as any set forth in the peerages of "burke" or "debrett." we read in vain if we do not fully grasp the continuity of creative work. cowper was born in 1731, crabbe in 1754, and cowper was called to the bar in the year that crabbe was born. in spite of this disparity of years they started upon their literary careers almost at the same time. _the village_ was published in 1783, and _the task_ in 1785, yet cowper is in every sense the elder poet, inheriting more closely the traditions of pope and dryden, coming less near to humanity than crabbe, and being more emphatically a child of the eighteenth century in its artificial aspects. it is impossible to indict a whole century with all its varied accomplishments, and the century that produced swift and cowper and crabbe had no lack of the finer instincts of brotherhood. yet the century was essentially a cruel one. take as an example the attitude of naturally kindly men to the hanging of dr. dodd for forgery. even samuel johnson, who did what he could for dodd, did not find, as he should have done, his whole soul revolted by such a punishment for a crime against property. cowper has immense claim upon our regard. he is one of the truest of poets, and one of the most interesting figures in all english literature, although no small share of his one-time popularity was due to his identification with evangelicalism in religion. cowper had humour and other qualities which enabled him to make the universal appeal to all hearts which is the test of the greatest literature--the appeal of "john gilpin," the "lines" to his mother's portrait, and his verses on "the loss of the _royal george_." crabbe made no such appeal, and he has not the adventitious assistance that association with a religious sect affords. hence the popularity he once enjoyed was more entirely on his merits than was that of cowper. he was the first of the eighteenth century poets who was able to _see things as they really are_. therein lies his strength. were they poets at all--those earlier eighteenth century writers? it sounds like rank blasphemy to question it, but what is poetry? surely it is the expression artistically in rhythmic form--or even without it--of the sincerest emotions concerning nature and life. the greatest poet is not the one who is most sincere--a very bad poet can be that--but the poet who expresses that sincerity with the most perfect art. from this point of view the poets before cowper and crabbe, pope, goldsmith, johnson and others were scarcely poets at all. masters of language every one of them, able to command a fine rhetoric, but not poets. gray in two or three pieces was a poet, but for johnson that claim can scarcely be made. cowper was the first to emancipate himself from the conventionality of his age, and crabbe emancipated himself still further. he had boundless sincerity, and he is really a very great poet even if he has not the perfection of art of some later poets. many know crabbe only by the parody of his manner in _rejected addresses_: john richard william alexander dwyer was footman to justinian stubbs esquire; but when john dwyer listed in the blues, emanuel jennings polished stubbs's shoes. and it must be admitted that there are plenty of lines like these in crabbe, as for example:- grave jonas kindred, sybil kindred's sire was six feet high, and looked six inches higher. or this:- the church he view'd as liberal minds will view and there he fixed his principles and pew. banalities of this kind are scattered through his pages as they are scattered through those of wordsworth. nevertheless he was a great poet, bringing us before wordsworth out of the ruck of artificiality and insincerity. does any one suppose that pope in his _essay on man_, that johnson in his _london_ or that goldsmith in his _deserted village_ had any idea other than the production of splendid phrases. each and all of them were brilliant men of letters. crabbe was not a brilliant man of letters, but he was a fine and a genuine poet. you will look in vain in his truest work for the lyrical and musical gift that we associate with poets who came after:--shelley, keats, tennyson--poets who made crabbe's work quite distasteful for some three generations. crabbe it has been claimed had that gift also, to be found in "sir eustace grey" and other verses written under the inspiration of opium, as much of coleridge's best work was written--but it is not in these that his admirers will seek to emphasize his achievement--it is in his work which treats of the simple annals of my parish poor. _the village_, _the parish register_, _the borough_, and many of the _tales_ bear witness to a clear vision of life as it is lived by the majority of people born into this world. i have seen criticism of crabbe which calls him the poet who took the middle classes for his subjects, criticism which compared him with george eliot. all this is quite beside the mark. crabbe is pre-eminently the poet of the poor, with a lesson for to-day as much as for a century ago. villages are not now what they were then, we are told. but i fully believe that there are all the conditions of life to-day hidden beneath the surface as crabbe's close observations pictured them. "the altered position of the poor," says mr. courthope, "has fortunately deprived his poems of much of the reality they once possessed." i do not believe it. the closely packed towns, the herding together of families, the squalor are still to be found in our midst. crabbe has his message for our time as well as for his own. how he tore the veil from the conventional language of his day, the picture of the ideal village where the happy peasantry passed through life so joyously. contrast such pictures with his sad declaration- i've seldom known, though i have often read of happy peasants on their dying-bed. solution crabbe offers none for the tragedy of poverty. he was no politician. he signed the nomination paper for john wilson croker the tory in his native aldeburgh, and he supported a whig at the same election at trowbridge. his politics were summed up in backing his friends of both parties. but he did see, as politicians are only beginning to see to-day, that the ultimate solution was a social one and not a mere question of political parties. generations have passed away since he lived, and men are still shouting themselves hoarse to prove that in this shibboleth or in that may be found the salvation of the country, yet we have still our thousands on the verge of starvation, we have still the very poor in our midst, and the problem seems as far from solution as ever. but it would be all the better for the state if we could keep the questions raised by crabbe in his wonderful pictures more continually in view,--lacking in taste as they may sometimes seem to weak stomachs, coarse, unvarnished narratives though they be of a life which is really almost entirely sordid. then let us turn to crabbe's gallery of pictures. phoebe dawson, and the equally pathetic ruth, blaney and clelia, peter grimes and many another. they are as clearly defined a set of entirely human beings as any master has given us. it is not assuredly in george eliot, as canon ainger suggests, that i find an affinity to crabbe among the moderns, but in two much greater writers of quite different texture, balzac and dickens. had crabbe not been bounded and restrained by the conventions of his cloth, he might have become one of the most popular story-tellers in our literature--the english balzac. at a hundred points charles dickens is an entire contrast to crabbe--in his buoyant humour, his gaiety of heart, in the glamour that he throws over the life of the poor, a glamour that was more present in the early victorian era than in our own, but crabbe is with balzac and with dickens in that he presents as no other moderns have done living pictures of suffering human lives. there is yet one other literary force, powerful in our day, that has been largely influenced by crabbe. those who love the novels of mr. thomas hardy, whom we rejoice to see with us at this celebration,--his _woodlanders_, _the return of the native_, _far from the madding crowd_, and many another book that touches the very heart of things in nature and human life, will rejoice to hear that this great writer has admitted george crabbe to be the most potent influence that has affected his work. i have heard him declare many times how much he was inspired by crabbe, whereas the later french realists had no influence upon him whatever. "crabbe was our first great english realist" mr. hardy would tell you if only we could persuade him to speak from this platform, as unfortunately he will not. lastly let us take crabbe as a great story-teller. he has many more ideas than most of the novelists. that is why we do well to recall the hint of the writer who said that when a new work came out we should take down an old one from our shelves. instead of the "un-idead" novels, that come out by the dozen and are so popular. i wish we could agree to read crabbe's novels in verse. unhappily their form is against them in the present age. but it would not be at all a misfortune if we could make crabbe's _tales_ once more the vogue. they are good stories, absorbingly interesting. they leave a very vivid impression on the mind. once read they are unforgettable. i have seen it stated that these stories are old-fashioned both in manner and in substance. in manner they may be, but in substance i maintain they are intensely modern, alive with the spirit of our time. any latterday novelist might envy crabbe his power of developing a story. it is this essential modernity that is to make crabbe's place in english literature secure for generations yet to come. finally, crabbe's place in english literature is as the bridge between the eighteenth and nineteenth century. with him begins that "enthusiasm of humanity" which the eighteenth century so imperfectly understood. byron and wordsworth, disliking each other cordially, did well to praise him, for he was their forerunner. a master of pathos, you may find in his work incentive to tears and laughter, although sometimes the humour, as in _the learned boy_, is sadly unconscious. but i must bring these rambling remarks to a close, and in doing so i must once again quote that other suffolk worthy to whom many of us are very much attached, i mean edward fitzgerald. when sir leslie stephen wrote what is to my mind a singularly infelicitous essay on crabbe in the _cornhill_, he quoted the remark, which seemed to be new to fitzgerald, as to crabbe being a "pope in worsted stockings"--a remark made by horace smith of _rejected addresses_, although i have seen it ascribed to byron and others. "pope in worsted stockings," exclaimed fitzgerald, "why i could cite whole paragraphs of as fine a texture as moliere; 'incapable of epigram,' the jackanapes says--why, i could find fifty of the very best epigrams in five minutes," and later, in another letter he writes- i am positively looking over my everlasting crabbe again; he naturally comes in about the fall of the year. here surely is an appropriate quotation, a little prophetic perhaps, for our gathering--the "everlasting crabbe." we cannot all love crabbe as much as fitzgerald loved him, but this gathering will not be vain if after this we handle his volumes more lovingly, read his poems more sympathetically, and continue with more zeal than ever before to be proud of the man who, born in aldeburgh a century and a half ago, is closely identified with this county of suffolk as i believe no other great writer is closely identified with any county in england. an aldeburgh man--a suffolk man he was--yet even more in the future than in the past, he is destined to gain the whole world for his parish. he is the everlasting crabbe! v. the literary associations of east anglia an address to the east anglian society on the occasion of a dinner to mr. william dutt, author of "highways and byways in east anglia." march 25, 1901. i appreciate the privilege of being allowed to speak this evening for a few minutes upon the literary associations of east anglia, of being permitted to ask you, while doing honour to a well-known east anglian writer of to-day, to cast a glance back upon the literature of the past so far as it affects that portion of the british empire with which we nearly all of us here are proud to be associated. there is necessarily some difference of opinion as to what constitutes east anglia. i find that our guest of to-night tells us that it is "norfolk, suffolk and portions of essex, cambridgeshire and lincolnshire." dr. knapp, the biographer of borrow, says that it is norfolk, suffolk and cambridgeshire; personally i am content with that classification, because, although i was born in london, i claim, apart from schoolboy days at downham market, a pretty lengthy ancestry from norwich on one side--which is indisputably east anglia--and from welney, near wisbeach, on another side, and welney and wisbeach are, i affirm, just as much east anglia as norwich and ipswich. with reference to those other counties and portions of counties, i think that the inhabitants must be allowed to decide for themselves. i imagine that they will give every possible stretch to the imagination in order to allow themselves the honour of being incorporated in east anglia, a name that one never pronounces without recalling that fine old-world compliment of st. augustine of canterbury to our ancestors, that they ought to be called not "angles" but "angels." every one in particular who loves books must be proud to partake of our great literary tradition. if it is difficult to decide precisely what east anglia is, it is perhaps equally difficult to speak for a few minutes on so colossal a theme as the literature of east anglia. it would be easy to recapitulate what every biographical dictionary will provide, a long list of famous names associated with our counties; to remind you that we have produced two poet-laureates--john skelton, of diss, the author of _colyn cloute_, and thomas shadwell, of broomhill, the playwright--the latter perhaps not entirely a subject for pride; two very rough and ready political philosophers, thomas paine, born at thetford, and william godwin, born at wisbeach; a very popular novelist in bulwer lytton, and a very popular theologian in dr. samuel clarke; as also the famous brother and sister whose works appealed to totally different minds, james and harriet martineau. then there was that pathetic creature and indifferent poet, robert bloomfield, whose _farmer's boy_ once appeared in the luxurious glories of an expensive quarto. finally, one recalls that two of the most popular women writers of an earlier generation, clara reeve, the novelist, and agnes strickland, the historian, were suffolk women. but i am not concerned to give you a recapitulation of all the east anglian writers, whose names, as i have said, can be found in any biographical dictionary, and the quality of whose work would rather suggest that east anglia, from a literary point of view, is a land of extinct volcanoes. i am naturally rather anxious to make use of the golden opportunity that has been afforded me to emphasize my own literary sympathies, and to say in what i think lies the glory of east anglia, at least so far as the creation of books is concerned. here i make an interesting claim for east anglia, that it has given us in captain marryat perhaps the very greatest prose writer of the nineteenth century who has been a delight to youth, and two of the very greatest prose writers of all times for the inspiration of middle-age, sir thomas browne and george borrow. it has given us in sarah austin an example of a learned woman who was also a fascinating woman; it has given us again the most remarkable letter-writers in the english language--margaret paston, horace walpole and edward fitzgerald. to these there were only three serious rivals as letter-writers--william cowper, thomas grey and charles lamb; and the first found a final home and a last resting-place in our midst. it has given us that remarkable novelist and entertaining diarist, fanny burney. finally, it has given us in that same william cowper--who rests in east dereham church, and for whom we claim on that and for other reasons some share and participation in his genius--a great and much loved poet. it has given us indeed in william cowper and george crabbe the two most natural and the two most human poets in the english literature of two centuries, only excepting the favourite poet of scotland--robert burns. it is to these of all writers that i would pin my faith in talking of east anglia and its literature; it is their names that i would have you keep in your mind when you call up memories of the literature which has most inspired our east anglian life. in connexion with many writers a point of importance will occur to us. only occasionally has a great english author a special claim on one particular portion of england. he has not been the lesser or the greater for that, it has merely been an accident of his birth and of his career. the greatest of all writers, the one of whom all englishmen are naturally the most proud, shakspere, has, it is true, an abundant association with warwickshire, but shakspere stands almost alone in this, as in many things. chaucer, spenser, milton, byron and keats were born in london; they travelled widely, they lived in many different counties or countries, and cannot be said to have adorned any distinctively local tradition. shelley was born in sussex, but a hundred cities, including rome, where his ashes rest, may claim some participation in his fine spirit. wordsworth, on the other hand, who was born in cumberland, certainly obtained the greater part of his inspiration from the neighbouring county of westmorland, where his life was passed. but when we come to east anglia we are face to face with a body of writers who belong to the very soil, upon whom the particular character of the landscape has had a permanent effect, who are not only very great englishmen and englishwomen, but are great east anglians as well. i have said that captain marryat was an east anglian, and have we not a right to be proud of marryat's breezy stories of the sea? our youth has found such plentiful stimulus in _peter simple_, _frank mildmay_, and _mr. midshipman easy_; generations of boys have read them with delight, generations of boys will read them. and not only boys, but men. one recalls that carlyle, in one of his deepest fits of depression, took refuge in marryat's novels with infinite advantage to his peace of mind. speaking of captain marryat and books for boys, a quite minor kind of literature perhaps some of you may think, i must recall that an earlier and still more famous story for children had an east anglian origin. did not the babes in the wood come out of norfolk? was it not their estate in that county that, as we learn from percy's _reliques_, their wicked uncle coveted, and were not the last hours of those unfortunate children, in this most picturesque and pathetic of stories, solaced by east anglian robins and their poor bodies covered by east anglian vegetation? let me pass, however, to what may be counted more serious literature. what can one say of sir thomas browne unless indeed one has an hour in which to say it. every page of that great writer's _religio medici_ and _urn burial_ is quotable--full of worldly wisdom and of an inspiration that is not of the world. browne was born in london, and not until he was thirty-two years of age did he settle in norwich, where he was "much resorted to for his skill in physic," and where he lived for forty-five years, when the fine church of st. peter mancroft, received his ashes--a church in which, let me add, with pardonable pride, my own grandfather and grandmother were married. i am glad that norwich is shortly to commemorate by a fitting monument not the least great of her sons, one who has been aptly called "the english montaigne." {138} perhaps there are those who would dispute my claim for marryat and for sir thomas browne that they were east anglians--both were only east anglians by adoption. there are even those who dispute the claim for one whom i must count well-nigh the greatest of east anglian men of letters--george borrow. borrow, i maintain, was an east anglian if ever there was one, although this has been questioned by mr. theodore wattsdunton. now i have the greatest possible regard for mr. watts-dunton. he is distinguished alike as a critic, a poet, and a romancer. but i must join issue with him here, and you, i know, will forgive me for taking up your time with the matter; for if mr. watts-dunton were right, one of the chief glories would be shorn from our east anglian traditions. he denies in the introduction to a new edition of _the romany rye_, just published, the claim of borrow to be an east anglian, although borrow himself insisted that he was one. one might as well call charlotte bronte a yorkshire woman as call borrow an east anglian. he was no more an east anglian than an irishman born in london is an englishman. his father was a cornishman and his mother of french extraction. not one drop of east anglian blood was in the veins of borrow's father, and very little in the veins of his mother. borrow's ancestry was pure cornish on one side, and on the other mainly french. but such was the egotism of borrow that the fact of his having been born in east anglia made him look upon that part of the world as the very hub of the universe. well, i am not prepared to question the suggestion that east anglia is the hub of the universe, only to question mr. watts-dunton's position. there is virtue in that qualification of his that there was "very little" east anglian blood in the veins of borrow's mother, and that she was "mainly" french. as a matter of fact she was, of course, partly east anglian; that is to say, she must have had two or three generations of east anglian blood in her, seeing that it was her great-grandfather who settled in norfolk from france, and he and his children and grandchildren intermarried with the race. but i do not pin my claim for borrow upon that fact--the fact of three generations of his mother's family at dumpling green--or even on the fact that he was born near east dereham. there is nothing more certain than that we are all of us influenced greatly by our environment, and that it is this, quite as much as birth or ancestry, that gives us what characteristics we possess. it is the custom, for example, to call swift an irishman, whereas swift came of english parentage and lived for many of his most impressionable years in england. nevertheless, he may be justly claimed by the sister-island, for during a long sojourn in that country he became permeated with the subtle influence of the irish race, and in many things he thought and felt as an irishman. it is the custom to speak of maria edgeworth as an irish novelist, yet miss edgeworth was born in england of english parentage. nevertheless, she was quite as much an irish novelist as charles lever and samuel lover, for all her life was spent in direct communion with the irish race, and her books were irish books. it is, on the other hand, quite unreasonable to deny that charlotte bronte was a yorkshire woman. only once at the end of her life did she visit ireland for a few weeks. her irish father and her cornish mother doubtless influenced her nature in many ways, but not less certain was the influence of those wonderful moors around haworth, and the people among whom she lived. neither ireland nor cornwall has as much right to claim her as yorkshire. i am the last to disclaim the influence of what is sometimes called "celticism" upon english literature; upon this point i am certain that matthew arnold has said almost the last word. the celts--not necessarily the irish, as there are three or four races of celts in addition to the irish--have in the main given english literature its fine imaginative quality, and even where he cannot trace a celtic origin to an english writer we may fairly assume that there is celtic blood somewhere in an earlier generation. nevertheless, the impressions, as i have said, derived from environment are of the utmost vitality, and assuredly borrow was an east anglian, as sir thomas browne was an east anglian. in each writer you can trace the influence of our soil in a peculiar degree, and particularly in borrow. borrow was proud of being an east anglian, and we are proud of him. in _lavengro_, i venture to assert, we have the greatest example of prose style in our modern literature, and i rejoice to see a growing borrow cult, a cult that is based not on an acceptance of the narrower side of borrow--his furious ultra-protestantism, for example--as was the popularity that he once enjoyed, but upon the fact that he was a magnificent artist in words. no artist in words but is influenced by environment. charles kingsley, for example, who came from quite different surroundings, was profoundly influenced by the east anglian fencountry:- "they have a beauty of their own, those great fens," he said, "a beauty of the sea, of boundless expanse and freedom. overhead the arch of heaven spreads more ample than elsewhere, and that vastness gives such cloud-lands, such sunrises, such sunsets, as can be seen nowhere else within these isles." but i must hasten on, although i would fain tarry long over george borrow and his works. i have said that east anglia is the country of great letter writers. first, there was margaret paston. there is no such contribution to a remote period of english history as that contained in the _paston letters_, and i think we must associate them with the name of a woman--margaret paston. margaret's husband, john paston; her son, sir john paston; and her second son, who, strangely enough, was also a john, and called himself "john paston the youngest," come frequently before us in the correspondence, but margaret paston is the central figure. it may not be without interest to some of my hearers who are married to recall that margaret paston addresses her husband not as "dear john," or "my dear john," as i imagine a wife of to-day would do, but as "right reverend and worshipful husband." nowhere is there such a vivid picture of a bygone age as that contained in these _paston letters_. we who sit quietly by the hearth in the reign of king edward vii may read what it meant to live by the hearth in the reign of king edward iv. it is curious that the most humane documents of far-off times in our history should all come from east anglia, not only those _paston letters_, brimful of the most vital interest concerning the reigns of henry vi and edward iv, but also an even earlier period--the life, or at least the monastic life in the time of the first richard and of king john is in a most extraordinarily human fashion mirrored for us in that chronicle of st. edmund's bury monastery known as the jocelyn chronicle, published by the camden society, which carlyle has vitalized so superbly for us in _past and present_. but i was speaking of the great letter writers, commencing with margaret paston. who are our greatest letter writers? undoubtedly they are horace walpole, william cowper and edward fitzgerald. you know what a superb picture of eighteenth century life has been presented to us in the nine volumes of correspondence we have by horace walpole. {144} walpole was to all practical purposes an east anglian, although he happened to be born in london. his father, the great sir robert walpole, was a notable east anglian, and he had the closest ties of birth and association with east anglia. many of his letters were written from the family mansion of houghton. {145} next in order comes william cowper. i believe that more than one literary historian has claimed cowper as a norfolk man. cowper was born in hertfordshire; he lived for a very great deal of his life in olney, in buckinghamshire, in london and in huntingdon, but if ever there was a man who took on the texture of east anglian scenery and east anglian life it was cowper. that beautiful river, the ouse, which empties itself into the wash, was a peculiar inspiration to cowper, and those who know the scenery of olney know that it has conditions exactly analogous in every way to those of east anglia. one of cowper's most beautiful poems is entitled "on receipt of my mother's portrait out of norfolk," and he himself, as i have said, found his last resting-place on east anglian soil--at east dereham. if there may be some doubt about cowper, there can be none whatever about edward fitzgerald, the greatest letter-writer of recent times. in mentioning the name of fitzgerald i am a little diffident. it is like introducing "king charles's head" into this gathering; for was he not the author of the poem known to all of us as the _rubaiyat of omar khayyam_, and there is no small tendency to smile to-day whenever the name of omar khayyam is mentioned and to call the cult a "lunacy." it is perhaps unfortunate that fitzgerald gave that somewhat formidable title to his paraphrase, or translation, of the old persian poet. it is not the fault of those who admire that poem exceedingly that it gives them a suspicion of affecting a scholarship that they do not in most cases possess. what many of us admire is not omar khayyam the persian, nor have we any desire to see or to know any other translation of that poet. we simply admit to an honest appreciation of the poem by edward fitzgerald, the suffolk squire, the poem that tennyson describes as "the one thing done divinely well." that poem by fitzgerald will live as long as the english language, and let it never be forgotten that it is the work of an east anglian, an east anglian who, like borrow, possessed a marked celtic quality, the outcome of a famous irish ancestry, nevertheless of an east anglian who loved its soil, its rivers and its sea. then i come to another phase of east anglian literary traditions. it is astonishing what a zest for learning its women have displayed; i might give you quite a long list of distinguished women who have come out of east anglia. crabbe must have had one in mind when he wrote of arabella in one of his _tales_:- this reasoning maid, above her sex's dread had dared to read, and dared to say she read, not the last novel, not the new born play, not the mere trash and scandal of the day; but (though her young companions felt the shock) she studied berkeley, bacon, hobbes and locke. the one who perhaps made herself most notorious was harriet martineau, and in spite of her disagreeable egotism it is still a pleasure to read some of her less controversial writings. her _feats on the fiord_, for example, is really a classic. but i can never quite forgive harriet martineau in that she spoke contemptuously of east anglian scenery, scenery which in its way has charms as great as any part of europe can offer. no, in this roll of famous women, the two i am most inclined to praise are sarah austin and fanny burney. mrs. austin was, you will remember, one of the taylors of norwich, married to john austin, the famous jurist. she was one of the first to demonstrate that her sex might have other gifts than a gift for writing fiction, and that it was possible to be a good, quiet, domestic woman, and at the same time an exceedingly learned one. even before carlyle she gave a vogue to the study of german literature in this country; she wrote many books, many articles, and made some translations, notably what is still the best translation of von ranke's _history of the popes_. in the muster-roll of east anglian worthies let us never forget this singularly good woman, this correspondent of all the most famous men of her day, of guizot, of grote, of gladstone, and one who also, as a letter-writer, showed that she possessed the faculty that seems, as i have said, to be peculiar to the soil of east anglia. still less must we forget fanny burney, who, born in king's lynn, lived to delight her own generation by _evelina_ and by the fascinating _diary_ that gives so pleasant a picture of dr. johnson and many another of her contemporaries. _evelina_ and the _diary_ are two of my favourite books, but i practise self-restraint and will say no more of them here. i now come to my ninth, and last, name among those east anglian worthies whom i feel that we have a particular right to canonize--george crabbe--"though nature's sternest painter yet the best," as byron described him. now it may be frankly admitted that few of us read crabbe to-day. he has an acknowledged place in the history of literature, but there pretty well even well-read people are content to leave him. "what have our literary critics been about that they have suffered such a writer to drop into neglect and oblivion?" asks a recent quarterly reviewer. he does not live as cowper does by a few lyrics and ballads and by incomparable letters. scarcely a line of crabbe survives in current conversation. if you turn to one of those handy volumes of reference--dictionaries of quotation, as they are called--from which we who are journalists are supposed to obtain most of the literary knowledge that we are able to display on occasion, you will scarcely find a dozen lines of crabbe. and yet i venture to affirm that crabbe has a great and permanent place in literature, and that as he has been a favourite in the past, he will become a favourite in the future. crabbe can never lose his place in the history of literature, a place as the forerunner of wordsworth and even of cowper, but it would be a tragedy were he to drop out of the category of poets that are read. a dainty little edition in eight volumes is among my most treasured possessions. i have read it not as we read some so-called literature, from a sense of duty, but with unqualified interest. we have had much pure realism in these latter days; why not let us return to the most realistic of the poets. he was beloved by all the greatest among his contemporaries. scott and wordsworth were devoted to his work, and so also was jane austen. at a later date tennyson praised him. we have heard quite recently the story of mr. james russell lowell in his last illness finding comfort in reading scott's _rob roy_. let us turn to scott's own last illness and see what was the book he most enjoyed, almost on his deathbed:- "read me some amusing thing," said sir walter, "read me a bit of crabbe." "i brought out the first volumes of his old favourite that i could lay hand on," says lockhart, "and turned to what i remembered was one of his favourite passages in it. he listened with great interest. every now and then he exclaimed, "capital, excellent, excellent, very good." cardinal newman and edward fitzgerald at the opposite poles, as it were, of religious impressions, agree in a devotion to crabbe's poetry. cardinal newman speaks of _tales of the hall_ as "a poem whether in conception or in execution one of the most touching in our language," and in a footnote to his _idea of a university_ he tells us that he had read the poem thirty years earlier with extreme delight, "and have never lost my love of it," and he goes on to plead that it is an absolute _classic_. not to have read crabbe, therefore, is not to know one of the most individual in the glorious muster-roll of english poets, and crabbe was pre-eminently an east anglian, born and bred in east anglia, and taking in a peculiar degree the whole character of his environment, as only shakspere, cowper and wordsworth among our great poets, have done. in conclusion, let me recapitulate that the names of marryat, sir thomas browne, george borrow, margaret paston, horace walpole, sarah austin, fanny burney, edward fitzgerald, and george crabbe are those that i prefer to associate with east anglian literature. we are well aware that literature is but an aspect of our many claims on the gratitude of those englishmen who have not the good fortune to be east anglians. we have given to the empire a great scholar in porson, a great statesman in sir robert walpole, a great lawyer in sir edward coke, great ecclesiastics in cardinal wolsey and archbishop parker, great artists in gainsborough, constable and crome, and perhaps above all great sailors in sir cloudesley shovel and the ever memorable lord nelson. personally i admire a certain rebel, kett the tanner, as much as any of those i have named. of all these east anglian worthies the praise has often been sung, but let me be pardoned if, on an occasion like this, i have dwelt rather at length on the less familiar association of east anglia with letters. that i have but touched the fringe of the subject is obvious. what might not be said, for example, concerning norwich as a literary centre under bishop stanley--the norwich of the taylors and the gurneys, possessed of as much real intellectual life as london can boast of to-day. what, again, might not be said of the influence upon writers from afar. read kingsley's _hereward the wake_, mr. swinburne's _midsummer holiday_, charles dickens' description of yarmouth and goldsmith's poetical description in his _deserted village_, where clearly houghton was intended. {153} these, and a host of other memories touch the heart of all good east anglians, but that east anglians do not forget the living in doing honour to the dead is indicated by this gathering to-night. we are grateful to dr. augustus jessopp, to mr. walter rye, to mr. edward clodd, and to our guest of this evening, mr. william dutt, for keeping alive the folk-lore, the literary history, the historical tradition of that portion of the british isles to which we feel the most profound attachment by ties of residence or of kinship. vi. dr. johnson's ancestry a paper read before the members of the johnson club of london at simpson's restaurant in the strand. there is, i believe, a definite understanding among our members that we, the brethren of the johnson club, have each and all of us read every line about dr. johnson that is in print, to say nothing of his works. it is particularly accepted that the thirteen volumes in which our late brother, dr. birkbeck hill, enshrined his own appreciation of our great man, are as familiar to us all as are the bible and the book of common prayer. for my part, with a deep sense of the responsibility that must belong to any one who has rashly undertaken to read a paper before the club, i admit to having supplemented these thirteen volumes by a reperusal of the little book entitled _johnson club papers_, by various hands, issued in 1899 by brother fisher unwin. i feel as i reread these addresses that there were indeed giants in those days, although my admiration was moderated a little when i came across the statement of one brother that johnson's proposal for an edition of shakspere "came to nothing"; and the statement of another that "goldsmith's failings were almost as great and as ridiculous as boswell's;" while my bibliographical ire was awakened by the extraordinary declaration in an article on "dr. johnson's library," that a first folio edition of shakspere might have realized 250 pounds in the year 1785. still, i recognize the talent that illuminated the club in those closing years of the last century. happily for us, who love good comradeship, most of the giants of those days are still in evidence with their polished armour and formidable spears. what can i possibly say that has not already been said by one or other of the brethren? well, i have put together these few remarks in the hopes that no one of you has seen two books that are in my hands, the first, _the reades of blackwood hill_, _with some account of dr. johnson's ancestry_, by aleyn lyell reade; the other, _the life and letters of dr. birkbeck hill_, by his daughter mrs. crump. the first of these is privately printed, although it may be bought by any one of the brethren for a couple of guineas. as far as i am able to learn, brother augustine birrell is the only one of the brethren who has as yet purchased a copy. the other book, our brother birkbeck hill's biography, is to be issued next week by mr. edward arnold, who has kindly placed an early copy at my disposal. in both these volumes there is much food for reflection for all good johnsonians. dr. johnson's ancestry, it may be, makes little appeal to the crowd, but it will to the brethren. there is no more favourite subject for satire than the tendency to minute study of an author and his antecedents. but the lover of that author knows the fascination of the topic. he can forgive any amount of zeal. i confess that personally i stand amazed at the variety and interest of mr. reade's researches. let me take a sample case of his method before coming to the main issue. in the opening pages of boswell's _johnson_ there is some account of mr. michael johnson, the father. the most picturesque anecdote told of johnson senior is that concerning a young woman of leek in staffordshire, who while he served his apprenticeship there conceived a passion for him, which he did not return. she followed him to lichfield, where she took lodgings opposite to the house in which he lived, and indulged her hopeless flame. ultimately she died of love and was buried in the cathedral at lichfield, when michael johnson put a stone over her grave. this pathetic romance has gone unchallenged by all boswell's editors, even including our prince of editors, dr. birkbeck hill. mr. reade, it seems to me, has completely shattered the story, which, as all johnsonian students know, was obtained by boswell from miss anna seward. mr. reade is able to show that michael johnson had been settled in lichfield for at least eleven years before the death of elizabeth blaney, that for five years she had been the much appreciated domestic in a household in that city. her will indicates moreover a great affection for her mistress and for that mistress's son; she leaves the boy a gold watch and his mother the rest of her belongings. the only connexion that michael johnson would seem to have had with the woman was that he and his brother were called in after her decease to make an inventory of her little property. i think that these little facts about mistress blaney, her five years' residence at lichfield apparently in a most comfortable position, her omission of michael johnson from her will, and the fact that he had been in lichfield at least six months before she arrived, are conclusive. there is another picturesque fact about michael johnson that mr. reade has brought to light. it would seem that twenty years before his marriage to sarah ford, he had been on the eve of marriage to a young woman at derby, mary neyld; but the marriage did not take place, although the marriage bond was drawn out. mary was the daughter of luke neyld, a prominent tradesman of derby; she was twenty-three years of age at the time and michael twenty-nine. even mr. reade's industry has not been able to discover for us why at the very last moment the marriage was broken off. it explains, however, why michael johnson married late in life and his melancholia. the human romance that mr. reade has unveiled has surely a certain interest for johnsonians, for had michael johnson brought his first love affair to a happy conclusion, we should not have had the man described twenty years later as "possessed of a vile melancholy," who, when his wife's tongue wagged too much, got upon his horse and rode away. there would have been no samuel johnson, and there would have been no johnson club--a catastrophe which the human mind finds it hard to conceive of. two years after the breaking off of her engagement with michael johnson, i may add, mary neyld married one james warner. mr. reade also calls in question another statement of boswell's, that michael johnson was really apprenticed at leek in staffordshire; our only authority for this also is the excellent anna seward. further, it is sufficiently curious that the names of two samuel johnsons are recorded as being buried in one of the churches at lichfield, one before our samuel came into the world, the other three years later: of these, one died in 1654, the other in 1712. but these points, although of a certain interest, have nothing to do with dr. johnson's ancestry. now before we left our homes this evening, each member of the johnson brotherhood, as is his custom, turned up brother birkbeck hill's invaluable index to see what johnson had to say upon the subject of ancestry. we know that the doctor was very keen upon the founding of a family; that when mr. thrale lost his only son johnson's sympathies went out to him in a double way, and perhaps in the greater degree because as he said to boswell, "sir, don't you know how you yourself think? sir, he wished to propagate his name." johnson himself, boswell tells us, had no pretensions to blood. "i here may say," he said, "that i have great merit in being zealous for subordination and the honours of birth; for i can hardly tell who was my grandfather." johnson further informed mrs. thrale that he did not delight in talking much of his family: "there is little pleasure," he says, "in relating the anecdotes of beggary." he constantly deprecated his origin. according to miss seward, he told his wife before he married her that he was of mean extraction; but the letter in which miss seward gives her version of johnson's courtship is worth recalling, although i do not believe a single word of it:- the rustic prettiness and artless manners of her daughter, the present mrs. lucy porter, had won johnson's youthful heart, when she was upon a visit at my grandfather's in johnson's school-days. disgusted by his unsightly form, she had a personal aversion to him, nor could the beautiful verses he addressed to her teach her to endure him. the nymph at length returned to her parents at birmingham, and was soon forgotten. business taking johnson to birmingham on the death of his own father, and calling upon his coy mistress there, he found her father dying. he passed all his leisure hours at mr. porter's, attending his sick bed, and in a few months after his death, asked mrs. johnson's consent to marry the old widow. after expressing her surprise at a request so extraordinary--"no, sam, my willing consent you will never have to so preposterous a union. you are not twenty five, and she is turned fifty. if she had any prudence, this request had never been made to me. where are your means of subsistence? porter has died poor, in consequence of his wife's expensive habits. you have great talents, but, as yet, have turned them into no profitable channel." "mother, i have not deceived mrs. porter: i have told her the worst of me; that i am of mean extraction; that i have no money, and that i have had an uncle hanged. she replied, that she valued no one more or less for his descent; that she had no more money than myself; and that, although she had not had a relation hanged, she had fifty who deserved hanging." now why did dr. johnson take this attitude about his ancestry, so contrary to the spirit that guided him where other people's genealogical trees were concerned? it was certainly not indifference to family ties, because brother birkbeck hill publishes many interesting letters written by johnson in old age, when finding that he had a certain sum of money to bequeath, he looked around to see if there were any of his own kin living. the number of letters the old man wrote, inquiring for this or that kinsman, are quite pathetic. it seems to me that it was really due to an ignorant vagueness as to his family history. during his early years his family had passed from affluence to penury. they were of a type very common in england, but very rare in scotland and ireland, that take no interest whatever in pedigrees, and never discuss any but their immediate relations, with whom, in the case of the johnsons, very friendly terms did not prevail. i think we should be astonished if we were to go into some shops in london of sturdy prosperous tradesmen in quite as good a position as old michael johnson, and were to try and draw out one or other individual upon his ancestry. we should promptly come against a blank wall. what then do we know of johnson's father from the ordinary sources? that he was a bookseller at lichfield, and that he was sheriff of that city in the year that his son samuel was born; that he feasted the citizens, as johnson tells us, in his _annals_, with "uncommon magnificence." he is described by johnson as "a foolish old man," because he talked with too fond a pride of his children and their precocious ways. he was a zealous high churchman and jacobite. we are told by boswell further, on the authority of mr. hector of birmingham, that he opened a bookstall once a week in that city, but lost money by setting up as a maker of parchment. "a pious and most worthy man," mrs. piozzi tells us of him, "but wrongheaded, positive and affected with melancholia." "i inherited a vile melancholy from my father," johnson tells us, "which has made me mad all my life." when he died in 1731 his effects were estimated at 20 pounds. "my mother had no value for his relations," johnson tells us. "those we knew were much lower than hers." of michael johnson's brother, andrew, johnson's uncle, we know still less. from the various johnson books we only cull the story mentioned in mrs. piozzi's _anecdotes_. she relates that johnson, after telling her of the prowess of his uncle, cornelius ford, at jumping, went on to say that he had another uncle, andrew--"my father's brother, who kept the ring at smithfield for a whole year, and was never thrown or conquered. here are uncles for you, mistress, if that is the way to your heart." mr. reade has supplemented this by showing us that not only was andrew johnson a skilful wrestler, but that he was a very good bookseller. for a time he assisted his brother in the conduct of the business at lichfield. later, however, he settled as a bookseller at birmingham, which was to be his home until his death over thirty years later. here he published some interesting books; the titlepages of some of these are given by mr. reade, who reproduces of course his will. he had a son named thomas who fell on evil days. you will find certain letters to thomas in birkbeck hill's edition; dr. johnson frequently helped him with money. of more interest, however, than andrew johnson was catherine, the one sister of michael and andrew, an aunt of samuel's, who was evidently for some unknown reason ignored by her two brothers. here we are not on absolutely firm ground, but it seems to me clear that catherine johnson married into a position far above her brothers. a fortnight before his death dr. johnson wrote to the rev. william vyse, rector of lambeth; a letter in which he asked him to find out "whether charles skrymsher"--he misspelt it "scrimshaw"--"of woodseaves"--he misspelt it "woodease"--"in your neighbourhood, be now alive," and whether he could be found without delay. he added that "it will be an act of great kindness to me," charles skrymsher being "very nearly related." charles skrymsher was not found, and johnson told dr. vyse that he was disappointed in the inquiries that he had made for his relations. this particular relation, indeed, had been twenty-two years dead when dr. johnson, probably with the desire of leaving him something in his will, made these inquiries. his mother, mrs. gerald skrymsher, was michael johnson's sister. one of her daughters became the wife of thomas boothby. boothby was twice married, and his two wives were cousins, the first, elizabeth, being the daughter of one sir charles skrymsher, the second, hester, as i have said, of gerald skrymsher, dr. johnson's uncle. hence johnson had a cousin by marriage who was a potentate in his day, for it is told of thomas boothby of tooley park, grand-nephew of a powerful and wealthy baronet, that he was one of the fathers of english sport. an issue of _the field_ newspaper for 1875 contains an engraving of a hunting horn then in the possession of the late master of the cheshire hounds, and upon the horn is the inscription: "thomas boothby, esq., tooley park, leicester. with this horn he hunted the first pack of fox hounds then in england fifty-five years." he died in 1752. his eldest son took the maternal name of skrymsher, and under the title of thomas boothby skrymsher became m.p. for leicester, and an important person in his day. his wife was anne, daughter of sir hugh clopton of new place, stratfordon-avon. admirers of mrs. gaskell will remember the clopton legend told by her in howett's _visits to remarkable places_. i wish that i had time to follow mr. reade through all the ramifications of an interesting family history, but i venture to think that there is something pathetic in dr. johnson's inquiries a fortnight before his death as to cousins of whose life story he knew nothing, whose well-known family home of woodseaves he--the great lexicographer--could not spell correctly, and of whose very name he was imperfectly informed. yet he, the lover of family trees and of ancestral associations, was all his life in ignorance of these wealthy connexions and their many substantial intermarriages. before mr. reade it was known that johnson's father was a manufacturer of parchment as well as a bookseller; but it was supposed that only in his last few years or so of life did he undertake this occupation which ruined him. mr. reade shows that he had been for thirty years engaged in this trade in parchment. brother birkbeck hill quotes croker, who hinted that johnson's famous definition of excise as "a hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judge of property but by wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid," was inspired by recollections of his father's constant disputes with the excise officers. mr. reade has unearthed documents concerning the crisis of this quarrel, when michael johnson in 1718 was indicted "for useing ye trade of a tanner." the indictment, which is here printed in full, charges him, "one michael johnson, bookseller," "that he did in the third year of the reign of our lord george by the grace of god now king of great britain, for his own proper gain, get up, use and exercise the art, mystery or manual occupation of a byrseus, in english a tanner, in which art, mystery or manual occupation of a tanner the said michael johnson was not brought up or apprenticed for the space of seven years, an evil example of all others offending in such like case." michael's defence was that he was "tanned for" and did not tan himself, he being only "a merchant in skins tradeing to ireland, scotland and the furthermost parts of england." the only known example of michael johnson's handwriting is this defence. michael was committed for trial but acquitted. it is probable, however, that this prosecution laid the foundation of his ruin. but i must pass on to the other branch: the family of dr. johnson's mother. here dr. johnson did himself a great injustice, for he had a genuine right to count his mother's "an old family," although the term is in any case relative. at any rate he could carry his pedigree back to 1620. "in the morning," says boswell, "we had talked of old families, and the respect due to them. johnson said- "'sir, you have a right to that kind of respect, and are arguing for yourself. i am for supporting the principle, and i am disinterested in doing it, as i have no such right.'" nevertheless, boswell, in this opening chapter, refers to the mother as "sarah ford, descended of an ancient race of substantial yeomanry in warwickshire," and johnson's epitaph upon his mother's tomb describes her as "of the ancient family of ford." thus one is considerably bewildered in attempting to reconcile johnson's attitude. the only one of his family for whom he seems to have had a good word was cornelius harrison, of whom, writing to mrs. thrale, he said that he was "perhaps the only one of my relations who ever rose in fortune above penury or in character above neglect." this cornelius was the son of john harrison, who had married johnson's aunt, phoebe ford. johnson's account of uncle john in his _annals_ is not flattering, but he was the son of a rector of pilborough, whose father was sir richard harrison, one of the gentlemen of the king's bedchamber, and a personality of a kind. cornelius, the reputable cousin, died in 1748, but his descendants seem to have been a poor lot, whatever his ancestors may have been. mr. reade traces their history with all the relentlessness of the genealogist. johnson's great-grandfather was one henry ford, a yeoman in birmingham. one of his sons, henry, johnson's grand-uncle, was born in 1628. he owned property at west bromwich and elsewhere, and was a fellow of clifford's inn, london. then we come to cornelius ford--"cornelius ford, gentleman," he is styled in his marriage settlement. cornelius died four months before samuel johnson was born. cornelius had a sister mary, who married one jesson, and their only son, i may mention incidentally, entered at pembroke college in 1666, sixty years before his second-cousin, our samuel, entered the same college. another cousin by marriage was a mrs. harriots, to whom johnson refers in his _annals_, and also in his _prayers and meditations_. the only one of cornelius ford's family referred to in the biographies is joseph ford, the father of the notorious parson ford, johnson's cousin, of whom he several times speaks. joseph was a physician of eminence who settled at stourbridge. he married a wealthy widow, mrs. hickman. he was a witness to the marriage of his sister sarah to michael johnson. there can be no doubt but that the presence of dr. ford and his family at stourbridge accounts for johnson being sent there to school in 1725. he stayed in the house of his cousin cornelius ford, not as boswell says his _uncle_ cornelius, at pedmore, about a mile from stourbridge. he walked in every day to the grammar school. a connexion of the boy, gregory hickman, was residing next to the grammar school. a kinsman of johnson and a descendant of hickman, dr. freer, still lives in the house. i met him at lichfield recently, and he has sent me a photograph of the very house, which stands to-day much as it did when johnson visited it, and wrote at twenty-two, a sonnet to dorothy hickman "playing at the spinet." dorothy was one of johnson's three early loves, with ann hector and olivia lloyd. dorothy married dr. john turtin and had an only child, dr. turtin, the celebrated physician who attended goldsmith in his last illness. i have not time to go through the record of all dr. johnson's uncles on the maternal side, and do full justice to mr. reade's industry and mastery of detail. i may, however, mention incidentally that the uncle who was hanged, if one was, must have been one of his father's brothers, for to the fords that distinction does not seem to have belonged. much that is entertaining is related of the cousin parson ford, who, after sharing with the famous earl of chesterfield in many of his profligacies, received from his lordship the rectory of south luffenham. there is no evidence, however, that chesterfield ever knew that his at one time chaplain and boon companion was cousin of the man who wrote him the most famous of letters. the mother of cornelius ford was a crowley, and this brings johnson into relationship with london city worthies, for mrs. ford's brother was sir ambrose crowley, kt., alderman, of london, the original of addison's jack anvil. one of sir ambrose crowley's daughters married humphrey parsons, sometime m.p. for london and twice lord mayor. thus we see that during the very years of johnson's most painful struggle in london one of his distant cousins or connexions was chief magistrate of this city. another connexion, elizabeth crowley, was married in 1724 at westminster abbey to john, tenth lord st. john of bletsoe. "here are ancestors for you, mistress," dr. johnson might have said to mrs. thrale if he had only known--if he had had a genealogist at his elbow as well as a pushful biographer. mr. reade prints the whole of the marriage settlement upon the union of johnson's mother and father. it is a very elaborate document, and suggests the undoubted prosperity of the parties at the time. the husband was fifty, the bride thirty-seven. samuel was not born until three years and three months after the marriage. the pair frequently in early married life received assistance by convenient deaths as the following extracts from wills indicate:- _cornelius ford of packwood in the co. of warwick_. i give and bequeath unto my son-in-law michaell johnson the sum of five pounds, and to his wife my daughter five and twenty pounds. proved may 1, 1709. _jane ford of old turnford_, _widow of joseph ford_. i do will and appoint that my son cornelius ford do and shall pay to my brother-in-law, mr. michael johnson and his wife and their trustees, the sum of 200 pounds which is directed by his late father's will to be paid to me and in lieu of so much moneys which my said late husband received in trust for my said brother johnson and his wife. proved at worcester, october 2, 1722. then "good cousin harriotts" does not forget them:- i give and bequeath to my cousin sarah the wife of michael johnson the like sum of 40 pounds for her own separate use, and one pair of my best flaxen sheets and pillow coats, a large pewter dish and a dozen of pewter plates, provided that her husband doth at the same time give the like bond to my executor to permit his wife to dispose of the same at her will and pleasure. elizabeth harriotts of trysall in staff., october 23, 1726. but i must leave this fascinating volume. i cannot find time to tell you all it has to say about the porter family. mr. reade is as informative when treating of the porters, of mrs. johnson and her daughter lucy, as he is with the family trees of which i have spoken. i hasten on to dr. hill's _life_, with which i am only concerned here at the point where it is affected by mr. reade's book. the reflection inevitably arises that it is well-nigh impossible efficiently to do work involving research unless one has an income derived from other sources. your historian in proportion to the value of his work must be a rich man, and so must the biographer. good as brother birkbeck hill's work was, it would have been better if he had had more money. he might have had many of these wills and other documents copied, upon the securing of which mr. reade must have expended such very large sums. dr. hill was fully alive to this. "if i had not some private means," he wrote to a friend in 1897, "i could never edit johnson and boswell; but i do not get so well paid as a carpenter." as a matter of fact, i find that he lost exactly 3 pounds by publishing _dr. johnson_: _his friends and his critics_. he made 320 pounds by the first four years' sale of the "boswell." this 320 pounds, including american rights, made the bulk of his payments for his many years' work, and the book has not yet gone into a second edition. i think 2,000 were printed. there were between 40,000 and 50,000 copies of croker's editions sold, so that we must not be too boastful as to the improved taste of the present age. 320 pounds is a mere bagatelle to numbers of our present writers of utterly foolish fiction. several of them have been known to spend double that sum on a single motor-car. in connexion with this matter i cannot refrain from giving one passage from a letter of brother hill's:- my old friend d--lamented that the two new volumes (of my _johnson miscellanies_) are so dear as to be above his reach. the net price is a guinea. on sunday he had eight glasses of hollands and seltzer--a shilling each, a pint of stout and some cider, besides half a dozen cigars or so. two days' abstinence from cigars and liquor would have paid for my book. mrs. crump, who writes her father's life, has expressed regret to me that there is so little in the book concerning the johnson club to which brother hill was so devoted. she had asked me for letters, but i felt that all in my possession were unsuited for publication, dealing rather freely with living persons. brother hill was impatient of the mere bookmaker--the literary charlatan who wrote without reading sufficiently. there are two pleasant glimpses of our club in the volume; i quote one. it was of the night that we discussed _dr. johnson as a radical_:- i wish that you and lucy could have been present last night and witnessed my scene of triumph. i was indeed most nobly welcomed. the scribe told me with sympathetic pride that the correspondent of the _new york herald_ had asked leave to attend, as he wished to telegraph my paper out to america!!! as well as the discussion. there were some very good speeches made in the discussion that followed, especially by a mr. whale, a solicitor, who spoke remarkably well and with great knowledge of his _boswell_. he said that he preferred to call it, not johnson's radical side, but his humanitarian side. mr. birrell, the _obiter dicta_ man, also spoke very well. he is a clever fellow. he was equally complimentary. he maintained in opposition to mr. whale that radical was the right term, and in fact that radicalism and humanitarianism were the same. many of them said what a light the paper had thrown on johnson's character. one gentleman came up and congratulated me on the very delicate way in which i had handled so difficult a subject, and had not given offence to the liberal unionists and tories present. edmund gosse, by whom i sat, was most friendly, and called the paper a wonderful _tour de force_, referring to the way in which i had linked johnson's sayings. he asked me to visit him some day at trinity college, cambridge, and assured me of a hearty welcome. it is no wonder that what with the supper and the smoke i did not get to sleep till after two. among the guests was the great bonner, the australian cricketer, whose health had been drunk with that of the other visitors, and his praise sounded at having hit some balls over the pavilion at lord's. with great simplicity he said that after seeing the way in which johnson's memory was revered, he would much rather have been such a man than have gained his own greatest triumphs at cricket. he did not say it jocularly at all. another letter from dr. hill describes how he found himself at ashbourne in derbyshire with the club, or rather with a fragment of it. he wrote from the _green man_ there concerning his adventures. i have far exceeded my time, but i would like in conclusion to say how admirably his daughter has written this book on our brother birkbeck hill. what a pleasant picture it presents of a genuine lover of literature. his was not an analytical mind nor was he a great critic. his views on dante and newman will not be shared by any of us. but, what is far more important than analysis or criticism, he had an entirely lovable personality and was a most clubbable man. he was moreover the ideal editor of boswell. what more could be said in praise of a beloved brother of the johnson club! vii. the private life of ferdinand lassalle {185} ich habe die inventur meines lebens gemacht. es war gross, brav, wacker, tapfer und glanzend genug. eine kunftige zeit wird mir gerecht zu warden wissen. --ferdinand lassalle, _august_ 9, 1864. i. the countess sophie von hatzfeldt. ferdinand lassalle was born at breslau on april 11, 1825. his parents were of jewish race, his father a successful silk merchant. from boyhood he was now the tyrant, now the slave of a mother whom he loved and by whom he was adored. heymann lassal--his son changed the spelling during his paris sojourn--appears to have been irritable and tyrannical; and there are some graphic instances in the recently published "diary" {186} of the differences between them, ending on one occasion in the boy rushing to the river, where his terrified father finds him hesitating on the brink, and becomes reconciled. a more attractive picture of the old man is that told of his visit to his son-in-law, friedland, who had married lassalle's sister. friedland was ashamed of his jewish origin, and old lassalle startled the guests at dinner by rising and frankly stating that he was a jew, that his daughter was a jewess, and that her husband was of the same race. the guests cheered, but the host never forgave his too frank father-in-law. lassalle was a student at breslau university, and later at berlin, where he laid the foundation of those hegelian studies to which he owed his political philosophy. in 1845 he went to paris, and there secured the friendship of heine, being included with george sand in the interesting circle around the "mattress grave" of the sick poet. among heine's letters {187} there are four addressed to lassalle, now as "dear and best beloved friend," now as "dearest brother-in-arms." "be assured," he says, "that i love you beyond measure. i have never before felt so much confidence in any one." "i have found in no one," he says again, "so much passion and clearness of intellect united in action. you have good right to be audacious--we others only usurp this divine right, this heavenly privilege." and to varnhagen von ense he writes:- my friend, herr lassalle, who brings you this letter, is a young man of the most remarkable intellectual gifts. with the most thorough erudition, with the widest learning, with the greatest penetration that i have ever known, and with the richest gift of exposition, he combines an energy of will and a capacity for action which astonish me. . . . in no one have i found united so much enthusiasm and practical intelligence. "in every line," says brandes, "this letter shows the far-seeing student of life, indeed, the prophet!" lassalle is not backward in reciprocating the enthusiasm. "i love heine," he declares; "he is my second self. what audacity! what crushing eloquence! he knows how to whisper like a zephyr when it kisses rose-blooms, how to breathe like fire when it rages and destroys; he calls forth all that is tenderest and softest, and then all that is fiercest and most daring. he has the command of all the range of feeling." lassalle's sympathy with heine never lessened. it was heine who lost grasp of the intrinsically higher nature of his countryman and co-religionist, and an acute difference occurred, as we shall see, when lassalle interfered in the affairs of the countess von hatzfeldt. introduced to the countess by his friend dr. mendelssohn, in 1846, lassalle felt that here in concrete form was scope for all his enthusiasm of humanity, and he determined to devote his life to championing the cause of the oppressed lady. {188} the countess was the wife of a wealthy and powerful nobleman, who ill-treated her shamefully. he imprisoned her in his castles, refused her doctors and medicine in sickness, and carried off her children. her own family, as powerful as the count, had often intervened, and the count's repentances were many but short-lived. in 1846 matters reached a crisis. the count wrote to his second son, paul, asking him to leave his mother. the boy carried this letter to the countess; and lassalle relates that, finding the lady in tears, he persuaded her to a full disclosure of the facts. he pledged himself to save her, and for nine years carried on the struggle, with ultimate victory, but with considerable loss of reputation. he first told the story to mendelssohn and oppenheim, two friends of great wealth, the latter a judge of one of the superior courts in prussia. they agreed to help him; for then, as always, lassalle's persuasive powers were irresistible. they went with him from berlin to dusseldorf, the count being in that neighbourhood. von hatzfeldt was at aix-la-chapelle, caught in the toils of a new mistress, the baroness meyendorff. lassalle discovered that she had obtained from the count a deed assigning to her some property which should in the ordinary course have come to the boy paul. the countess, hearing of the disaster which seemed likely to befall her favourite son, made her way into her husband's presence, and in the scene which followed secured a promise that the document should be revoked--destroyed. but no sooner had she left him than the count returned to the meyendorff influence, and refused to see his wife again. soon afterwards it was discovered that the woman had set out for cologne. lassalle begged his friends oppenheim and mendelssohn, to follow her and, if possible, to ascertain whether the momentous document had actually been destroyed. they obeyed, and reached the hotel at cologne about the same time as the baroness. here they were guilty of an indiscretion, if of nothing worse, for which lassalle can surely in no way be blamed, but which was used for many a year to tarnish his name. oppenheim, on his way upstairs, observed a servant with the luggage of the baroness; among other things a desk or casket of a kind commonly used to carry valuable papers. thinking only of the fact that it was desirable to obtain a certain document from the brutal count, he pounced upon the casket when the servant's back was turned. but he had no luggage with him in which to conceal it, and so handed it to mendelssohn. mendelssohn, although fully sensible of the blunder that had been committed, could not desert his friend, and placed the casket in his trunk. the whole hotel was in an uproar when the baroness discovered her loss. the friends fled panic-stricken in opposite directions. suspicion immediately fell upon dr. mendelssohn, because his room was seen to have been left in confusion. he was pursued, but succeeded in escaping from a railway carriage and fleeing to paris, leaving his luggage in the hands of the police. in his box some papers were found which incriminated oppenheim; and oppenheim, a judge of one of the superior courts, and the son of a millionaire, was arrested and imprisoned for theft! lassalle visited oppenheim in prison, and extracted from him a promise of silence as to the motive for his conduct. he then threw himself vigorously into the struggle, both in the press and in the law courts. here he seems to have parted company with heine, because, as he tells us, "the baroness meyendorff was a friend of the princess de lieven, and the princess de lieven was the mistress of guizot, and heine received a pension from guizot." oppenheim was acquitted in 1846, and mendelssohn, who was really innocent of the actual robbery, naturally thought it safe to return to germany. he was, however, tried before the assize court of cologne, and sentenced to five years' imprisonment. alexander von humboldt obtained a reduction of the sentence to one year, but on condition that mendelssohn should leave europe. he went, after his release from prison, to constantinople, and when the crimean war broke out joined the turkish army, dying on the march in 1854. meanwhile germany rang for many years with the story of the so-called robbery, and lassalle's name was even more associated therewith than were those of his more culpable friends. and this was not unnatural, because he was engaged year after year in continuous warfare with count hatzfeldt. at length, in 1854, about the time that the unfortunate dr. mendelssohn died in the east, he secured for the countess complete separation and an ample provision. lassalle's friendship with this lady inevitably gave rise to scandal. but never surely was scandal so little justified. she was twenty years his senior, and the relation was clearly that of mother and son. in her letters he is always "my dear child," and in his she is the confidante of the innumerable troubles of mind and of heart of which so impressionable a man as ferdinand lassalle had more than his share. "you are without reason and judgment where women are concerned," she tells him, when he confides to her his passion for helene von donniges; and the remark opens out a vista of confidences of which the world happily knows but little. from the assize court of dusseldorf, of all places, we have a very definite glimpse of a good-looking man, likely to be a favourite in the society of the opposite sex:- "ferdinand lassalle," runs the official document, "aged twenty-three, a civilian, born at breslau, and dwelling recently at berlin. stands five feet six inches in height, has brown curly hair, open forehead, brown eyebrows, dark blue eyes, well proportioned nose and mouth, and rounded chin." he was indeed a favourite in berlin drawing-rooms, pronounced a "wunderkind" by humboldt, and enthusiastically admired on all sides. but, assuming the story of sophie solutzeff to be mythical, there is no evidence that lassalle had ever had any very serious romance in his life until he met helene von donniges. _es ist eine alte geschichte_, _doch bleibt sie immer neu_.--heine. ii. helene von donniges helene von donniges has told us the story in fullest detail--the story of that tragic love which was to send lassalle to his too early death. she was the daughter of a bavarian diplomatist who had held appointments in italy, and later in switzerland. she was betrothed as a child of twelve to an italian of forty years of age. at a time when, as she says, her thoughts should have been concentrated upon her studies, they were distracted by speculations on marriage and the marriage tie. a young wallachian student named yanko racowitza crossed her path. his loneliness--he was far from home and friends--kindled her sympathy. dark and ugly, she compared him to othello, and called him her "moor." in spite of some parental opposition she insisted upon plighting her troth to him, and the italian lover was scornfully dismissed. then comes the opening scene of the present story. it was in berlin, whither helen--we will adopt the english spelling of the name--had travelled with her grandmother in 1862, that she was asked at a ball the momentous question, "do you know lassalle?" she had never heard his name. her questioner was baron korff, a son-in-law of meyerbeer, who, charmed by her originality, remarked that she and lassalle were made for one another. two weeks later her curiosity was further excited, when dr. karl oldenberg let fall some similar remark as to her intellectual kinship with the mysterious lassalle. she asked her grandmother about him, and was told that he was a "shameless demagogue." then she turned to her lover, who promised to inquire. racowitza brought her information about the countess, the casket, and other "sensations"--only to excite her curiosity the more. finally a friend, frau hirsemenzel, undertook to introduce her to the notorious socialist. the introduction took place at a party, and if her account is to be trusted, no romance could be more dramatic than the actuality. they loved one another at first sight, conversed with freedom, and he called her by an endearing name as he offered her his arm to escort her home. "somehow it did not seem at all remarkable," she says, "that a stranger should thus call me 'du' on first acquaintance. we seemed to fit to one another so perfectly." she was in her nineteenth year, lassalle in his thirty-ninth. the pair did not see one another again for some months, not in fact until helen visited berlin as the guest of a certain lawyer holthoff. here she met lassalle at a concert, and the friendly lawyer connived at their being more than once together. at a ball, on one occasion, lassalle asked her what she would do if he were sentenced to death, and she beheld him ascending the scaffold. "i should wait till your head was severed," was her answer, "in order that you might look upon your beloved to the last, and then--i should take poison." he was pleased with her reply, but declared that there was no fear--his star was in the ascendant! and so it seemed; for although young racowitza even then accosted him in the ballroom, the friendly holthoff soon arranged an informal betrothal; and lassalle was on the eve of a great public triumph which seemed more likely to take him to the throne than to the scaffold. to many this will seem an exaggeration. yet hear prince bismarck in the reichstag seventeen years after lassalle's death:- he was one of the most intellectual and gifted men with whom i have ever had intercourse, a man who was ambitious in high style, but who was by no means republican: he had very decided national and monarchical sympathies, and the idea which he strove to realize was the german empire, and therein we had a point of contact. lassalle was extremely ambitious, and it was perhaps a matter of doubt to him whether the german empire would close with the hohenzollern dynasty or the lassalle dynasty; but he was monarchical through and through. lassalle was an energetic and very intellectual man, to talk with whom was very instructive. our conversations lasted for hours, and i was always sorry when they came to an end. {198} the year 1864, which was to close so tragically, opened indeed with extraordinary promise. lassalle left berlin in may--helen had gone back to geneva two or three months earlier--travelling by leipzig and cologne through the rhenish provinces, and holding a "glorious review" the while. "i have never seen anything like it," he writes to the countess von hatzfeldt. "the entire population indulged in indescribable jubilation. the impression made upon me was that such scenes must have attended the founding of new religions." and it appeared possible that heine's description of lassalle as the messiah of the nineteenth century was to be realized. the bishop of mayence was on his side, and the king of prussia sympathetic. as he passed from town to town the whole population turned out to do him honour. countless thousands met him at the stations: the routes were ornamented with triumphal arches, the houses decorated with wreaths, and flowers were thrown upon him as he passed. as the cavalcade approached the town of ronsdorf, for example, it was easy to see that the people were on tip-toe with expectation. at the entrance an arch bore the inscription:- willkommen dem dr. ferdinand lassalle viel tausendmal im ronsdorfer thal! under arches and garlands, smothered with flowers thrown by young workgirls, whose fathers, husbands, brothers, cheered again and again, lassalle and his friends entered the town, while a vast multitude followed in procession. it was at ronsdorf that lassalle made the speech which had in it something of fateful presentiment:- "i have not grasped this banner," he said, "without knowing quite clearly that i myself may fall. the feelings which fill me at the thought that i may be removed cannot be better expressed than in the words of the roman poet: '_exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor_!' or in german, '_moge_, _wenn ich beseitigt werde_, _irgend ein racher und nachfolger aus meinen gebeinen auferstehen_!' may this great and national movement of civilization not fall with my person, but may the conflagration which i have kindled spread farther and farther, so long as one of you still breathes. promise me that, and in token raise your right hands." all hands were raised in silence, and the impressive scene closed with a storm of acclamation. but lassalle was worn out, and he fled for a time from the storm and conflict to switzerland. helen at geneva heard of his sojourn at righikaltbad, and she made an excursion thither with two or three friends, and thus on july 25 (1864) the lovers met again. an account of their romantic interview comes to us in helen's own diary and in the letter which lassalle wrote to the countess hatzfeldt two days later. helen tells how they climbed the kulm together, discussing by the way the question of their marriage and the possibility of opposition. "what have your parents against me?" asked lassalle; and was told that only once had she mentioned his name before them, and that their horror of the jew agitator had ever since closed her mouth. so the conversation sped. the next morning their hope of "a sunrise" was destroyed by a fog. "how often," says helen, "when in later years i have stood upon the summit of the righi and seen the day break in all its splendour, have i recalled this foggy, damp morning, and lassalle's disappointment!" as he looked upon her, so pale and trembling, he abused the climate, and promised that he would give up politics, devote himself to science and literature, and take her to egypt or india. he talked to her of the countess, "who will think only of my happiness," and he talked of religion. was his jewish faith against him in her eyes? mahommedanism and judaism, it was all one to her, was the answer, but paganism by preference! they parted, to correspond immediately, and lassalle to write to the astonished, and in this affair, unsympathetic countess, of the meeting with his beloved. with the utmost friendliness, however, he endeavoured to keep the elder lady at a distance for a time. on july 20 helen writes to him, repeating her promise to become his wife. you said to me yesterday: "say but a sensible and decided 'yes'--_et je me charge du reste_." good; i say "yes"--_chargez-vous donc du reste_. i only require that we first do all in our power to win my parents to a friendly attitude. to me belongs, however, a painful task. i must slay in cold blood the true heart of yanko von racowitza, who has given me the purest love, the noblest devotion. with heartless egotism i must destroy the day-dream of a noble youth. but for your sake i will even do what is wrong. meanwhile lassalle's unhappy attempts to conciliate the countess continue. he writes of helen's sympathy and dwells upon her entire freedom from jealousy. he tells frau von hatzfeldt how much helen is longing to see his old friend. in conclusion, as though not to show himself too blind a lover, he remarks that helen's one failing is a total lack of will. "when, however, we are man and wife," he adds, "then shall i have 'will' enough for both, and she will be as clay in the hands of the potter." the countess continues obdurate, and in a further letter (aug. 2) lassalle says:- it is really a piece of extraordinary good fortune that, at the age of thirty-nine and a half, i should be able to find a wife so beautiful, so sympathetic, who loves me so much, and who--an indispensable requirement--is so entirely absorbed in my personality. at lassalle's request, helen herself wrote thus to the baroness von hatzfeldt:- dear and beloved countess,- armed with an introduction from my lord and master, i, his affianced wife, come to you--unhappily only in writing--_le coeur et la main ouverte_, and beg of you a little of that friendship which you have given to him so abundantly. how deeply do i regret that your illness separates us, that i cannot tell you face to face how much i love and honour him, how ardently i long for your help and advice as to how i can best make my beautiful and noble eagle happy. this my first letter must necessarily seem somewhat constrained to you; for i am an insignificant, unimportant being, who can do nothing but love and honour him, and strive to make him happy. i would fain dance and sing like a child, and drive away all care from him. my one desire is to understand his great and noble nature, and in good fortune and in bad to stand faithful and true by his side. then followed a further appeal for the love and help of this friend of lassalle's early years. it was all in vain. instead of a letter, helen received from the countess what she called "a scrawl," and lassalle a long homily on his lack of judgment and foresight. lassalle defended himself, and so the not too pleasing correspondence went on. yet these days in berne were the happiest in the lives of lassalle and his betrothed. helen was staying with a madame aarson, and was constantly visited by her lover. it was agreed between them that lassalle should follow her to geneva, and see her parents. but no sooner had he entered his room at the pension leovet, in the neighbourhood of the house of herr von donniges, than a servant handed him a letter from helen. it told how on her arrival she had found the whole house excited by the betrothal of her sister margaret to count von keyserling. her mother's delight in the engagement had tempted her (contrary to lassalle's express wish) to confidences, and she had told of her love for the arch-agitator. her mother had turned upon her with loathing, execrated lassalle without stint, spoken scornfully of the countess, the casket robbery, and kindred matters. "it is quite impossible," urged the frantic woman, "that count keyserling will unite himself to a family with a connexion of this kind." the father joined in the upbraiding, the disowning of an undutiful daughter. one has but to remember the vulgar, tradesman instinct, which then, as now, guides the marriage ideals of a certain class, to take in the whole situation at a glance. lassalle had hardly begun to read the letter when helen appeared before him, and begged him to take her away immediately--to france--anywhere! her father's violence, her mother's abuse, had driven her to despair. lassalle was indignant with her. why had she not obeyed him? he would speak to her father. all would yet be well. but--she was compromised there--at his hotel. had she a friend in the neighbourhood? at this moment her maid came in to say that there was a carriage ready to take them to the station. a train would start for paris in a quarter of an hour. helen renewed her entreaty, but lassalle remained resolute. he would only receive her from her father. to what friend could he take her? helen named madame caroline rognon, who beheld them with astonishment. a few minutes later frau von donniges and her daughter margaret entered the house. then followed a disagreeable scene between lassalle and the mother, ending, after many scornful words thrown at the ever self-restrained lover, in helen being carried off before his eyes--indeed, by his wish. lassalle had shown dignity and self-restraint, but he had killed the girl's love--until it was too late. duhring speaks of lassalle's "inconceivable stupidity," and there is a great temptation at this date, with all the circumstances before us, to look at the matter with duhring's eyes. but to one whom heine had called a messiah, whom humboldt had termed a "wunderkind," and bismarck had greeted as among the greatest men of the age, it may well have seemed flatly inconceivable that this insignificant little swiss diplomatist could long refuse the alliance he proposed. yet stronger and more potent may have been the feeling--although of this there is no positive evidence extant--that the social movement which he had so much at heart could not well endure a further scandal. the hatzfeldt story had been used against him frequently enough. an elopement--so sweetly romantic under some circumstances--would have been the ruin of his great political reputation. lassalle speedily regretted his course of action--what man in love would not have done so?--but his first impulse was consistent with the life of strenuous effort for the cause he had embraced. to a romantic girl, however, his conduct could but seem brutal and treacherous. helen had done more than enough. she had compromised herself irretrievably, and an immediate marriage was imperatively demanded by the conventionalities. she was, however, seized by a brutal father and confined to her room, until she understood that lassalle had left geneva. then the entreaties of her family, the representation that her sister's marriage, even her father's position, were in jeopardy, caused her to declare that she would abandon lassalle. at this point the story is conflicting. helen herself says that she never saw lassalle again after he had handed her over to her mother, and that after a long period of ill-usage and petty persecution, she was hurried one night across the lake. becker, however, declares that as lassalle and his friend rustow were walking in geneva a carriage passed them on the way to the station containing helen and another lady, and that helen acknowledged their salute. anyway, it is clear that helen went to bex on august 9, and that lassalle left geneva on the 13th. letter after letter was sent by lassalle to helen--one from karlsruhe on the 15th, and one from munich on the 19th, but no answer. in karlsruhe, according to von hofstetten, lassalle wept like a child. his correspondence with the countess and with colonel rustow becomes forcible in its demands for assistance. writing to rustow, he tells of a two hours' conversation with the bavarian minister for foreign affairs, baron von schrenk, who assures him of his sympathy, says that he cannot understand the objections of von donniges, and that in similar circumstances he would be proud of the alliance, although he deprecated the political views of lassalle. finally this accommodating minister of state--here, at least, the tragi-comedy is but too apparent--engages to send a lawyer, dr. haenle, as an official commissioner to negotiate with the obdurate father and refractory ambassador. richard wagner, the great composer, the bishop of mayence, and noblemen, generals, and scholars without number were also pressed into the service, but in vain. the treachery of intimate friends more than counterbalanced all that could be achieved by well-meaning strangers. if helen is to be believed--and the charge is not denied--lassalle's friend holthoff, sent to negotiate in his favour, entreated her to abandon lassalle, and to comply with her parents' wishes. lassalle, he declared, was not in any way a suitable husband, and her father had decided wisely. the poor girl lived in a constant atmosphere of petty persecution. her father, she was told, might lose his post in the bavarian service if she married this socialist, her brother would have absolutely no career open to him, her sisters could not marry in their own rank of life; in fact, the whole family were alleged to be entirely unhappy and miserable through her stubbornness. the following letter--obviously dictated--was the not unnatural outcome:- to herr lassalle. sir,- i have again become reconciled to my betrothed bridegroom, herr yanko von racowitza, whose love i have regained, and i deeply repent my earlier action. i have given notice of this to your legal representative, herr holthoff, and i now declare to you of my own free will and firm conviction, that there never can be any further question of a marriage between us, and that i hold myself in all respects to be released from such an engagement. i am now firmly resolved to devote to my aforesaid betrothed bridegroom my eternal love and fidelity. helene von donniges. this letter came through rustow, and lassalle addressed the following reply to helen, which, however, she never received--it came in fact into the possession of the countess--a sufficient commentary on the duplicity and the false friendship not only of holthoff, but of colonel rustow and the countess hatzfeldt in this sad affair. munich, _aug._ 20, 1864. helen,- my heart is breaking! rustow's letter will kill me. that you have betrayed me seems impossible! even now i cannot believe in such shamelessness, in such frightful treachery. it is only for a moment that some one has overridden your will and obliterated your true self. it is inconceivable that this can be your real, your abiding determination. you cannot have thrown aside all shame, all love, all fidelity, all truth. if you did, you would dishonour and disfigure humanity. there can be no truth left in the world if you are false, if you are capable of descending to this depth of abandonment, of breaking such holy oaths, of crushing my heart. then there is nothing more under the sun in which a man can still believe. have you not filled me with a longing to possess you? have you not implored me to exhaust all proper measures, before carrying you away from wabern? have you not by your own lips and by your letters, sworn to me the most sacred oaths? have you not declared to me, even in your last letters, that you were nothing, nothing but my loving wife, and that no power on earth should stay your resolution? and now, after you have bound this true heart of mine to yourself so strongly, this heart which when once it gives itself away gives itself for ever; now, when the battle has scarcely begun, do you cast me off? do you betray me? do you destroy me? if so, you succeed in doing what else no fate can do; you will have crushed and shattered one of the hardest of men, who could withstand unflinchingly all outward storms. no, i can never survive such treachery. it will kill me inwardly and outwardly. it is not possible that you are so dishonourable, so shameless, so reckless of duty, so utterly unworthy and infamous. if you were, you would deserve of me the most deadly hatred. you would deserve the contempt of the world. helen, it is not your own resolution which you have communicated to rustow. some one has fastened it upon you by a coercion of your better feelings. listen to me. if you abide by this resolution, you will lament it as long as you live. helen, true to my words, "_je me charge du reste_," i shall stay here, and shall take all possible steps to break down your father's opposition. i have already excellent means in my hand, which will certainly not remain unused, and if they do not succeed, i shall still possess thousands of other means, and i will grind all hindrances to dust if you will but remain true to me. if you remain true, there is no limit to my strength or to my love of you, _je me charge toujours du reste_! the battle is hardly begun, you cowardly girl. but can it be, that while i sit here, and have already achieved what seemed impossible, you are betraying me, and listening to the flattering words of another man? helen, my fate is in your hands! but if you destroy me by this wicked treachery, from which i cannot recover, then may evil fall upon you, and my curse follow you to the grave! this is the curse of a true heart, of a heart that you wantonly break, and with which you have cruelly trifled. yes, this curse of mine will surely strike you. according to rustow's message, you want your letters to be returned to you. in any case, you will never receive them otherwise than from me--after a personal interview. for i must and will speak to you personally, and to you alone. i must and will hear my death-doom from your own lips. it is only thus that i can believe what otherwise seems impossible to me. i am continuing here to take further steps to win you, and when i have done all that is possible, i shall come to geneva. helen, our destinies are entwined! f. lassalle. {213} it is pitiable to realize the amount of false or imperfect friendship which led lassalle on to his ruin. rustow was false, and holthoff was false, if it were not rather that both looked upon lassalle's affection for this girl, half his age, as a mad freak to be cured and forgotten. more might have been expected from the countess, to whom lassalle had given so much pure and disinterested devotion; but here again, a sense of maternal ownership in lassalle was sufficient to justify, in such a woman, any means to keep him apart from this fancy of the hour. to the countess, however, helen had turned for help, and had received a note which had but enraged her, and made the breach between her and lassalle yet wider. in the after years, helen published one letter and the countess another as the actual reply of the countess to helen's appeal, and the truth will now never be known. meanwhile dr. arndt, a nephew of von donniges, had gone to berlin to fetch yanko von racowitza. of yanko helen has herself given us a pleasant picture, as the one man for whom she really cared until the overwhelming presence of lassalle appeared upon the scene, as her one friend during her persecution. absent from lassalle's influence, it was not strange that the delicate wallachian--even younger than herself and the slave of her every whim--should have an influence in her life. had lassalle, however, had yet another personal interview with her, there can scarcely be a doubt that she would have been as he had once said, "as clay in the hands of the potter"--but this was not to be. lassalle came back to geneva on august 23, and immediately wrote an earnest letter to herr von donniges, begging for an interview, and stating that he had not the least enmity towards him for what had happened. with the fear of the foreign minister at munich before his eyes helen's father could not well refuse again, and the interview took place. lassalle, according to von donniges, demanded that yanko von racowitza should be forbidden the house, while he himself should have ready access to helen. he further charged von donniges with cruelty to his daughter, and was called a liar to his face, while even the cook was called upon the scene to give her evidence as to the domestic ethics of this family circle. the letter of von donniges to dr. haenle was clearly meant to be shown to the foreign minister, and the wily diplomatist naturally took the opportunity both to justify himself and to vilify lassalle. then began a painful dispute as to whether herr von donniges had ill-used his daughter; the overwhelming evidence, which includes the testimony of that daughter, written long after her father's death, tending to prove the truth of lassalle's allegation. lassalle meanwhile found no opportunity of approaching helen, and having every reason to believe that she was entirely faithless, gave up the struggle. he referred to the girl in language characteristic of a despairing and jilted lover, and sent von donniges a challenge, although many years before, in a political controversy, he had declined to fight--on principle. his seconds were to be general becker and colonel rustow, and the latter has left us a long account of the affair. on the appointed day, august 22, rustow went everywhere to look for herr von donniges, but the minister had fled to berne. rustow then saw lassalle at the rooms of the countess von hatzfeldt. lassalle mentioned that he had that morning had his challenge accepted by von racowitza, whose seconds were count keyserling and dr. arndt. rustow insisted, both to lassalle and to racowitza's friends, that von donniges should have priority, but was overruled; and it was agreed that the duel should be fought that very evening. rustow protested that he could not find another second in so short a time--general becker does not seem to have been available--but at length it was arranged that general bethlem should be asked to fill the office, and that the duel should take place on the following morning, august 28. there seems to have been considerable difficulty in finding suitable pistols, and at the last moment general bethlem declined to be a second, and herr von hofstetten consented to act. rustow called upon lassalle at the victoria hotel at five o'clock. at half-past six the party started for carouge, a village in the neighbourhood of geneva, which they reached an hour later. lassalle was quite cheerful, and perfectly confident that he would come unharmed out of the conflict. the opponents faced one another and racowitza wounded lassalle, who was carried by rustow and dr. seiler to a coach, and thence to the victoria hotel, geneva. he suffered dreadfully both then and afterwards, and was only relieved by a plentiful use of opium. three days later, on wednesday, august 31, 1864, he died. was it the chance shot of a delicate boy that killed one of the most remarkable men of the nineteenth century, or was it a planned attack upon one who loved the people? this last view was taken and is still taken by many of his followers; but it is needless to say that it has no foundation in fact. lassalle was killed by a chance shot, and killed in a duel which had not even the doubtful justification of hatred of his opponent. "count me no longer as a rival; for you i have nothing but friendship," were the words written to racowitza at the moment that he challenged von donniges, and he declared on his death-bed that he died by his own hand. the revolutionists of all lands assembled around his dead body, which was embalmed by order of the countess. this woman talked loudly of vengeance, called not only von racowitza but helen a murderer, {218} little thinking that posterity would judge her more hardly than helen. she proposed to take the corpse in solemn procession through germany; but an order from the prussian government disturbed her plans, and at breslau, lassalle's native town, it was allowed to rest. lassalle is buried in the family vault in the jewish cemetery, and a simple monument bears the inscription: here rests what is mortal of ferdinand lassalle, the thinker and the fighter. to understand the whole tragedy and to justify its great victim is to feel something of the strain which comes to every thinker and fighter who, like lassalle, writes and speaks persistently to vast audiences, often against great odds, and always with the prospect of a prison before him. that his nerves were utterly unstrung, that he was not his real self in those last days, is but too evident. armed, as he claimed, with the entire culture of his century, a maker of history if ever there was one, he became the victim of a love drama which i suppose that mr. matthew arnold would describe as of the surgeon's apprentice order: but which, apart from his political creed, will always endear him to men and women who have "lived and loved." and what shall we say of helen von donniges? her own story is surely one of the most romantic ever written. in _my relation to ferdinand lassalle_, she tells how yanko broke to her the news that he was going to fight lassalle, and how much she grieved. "lassalle will inevitably kill yanko," she thought; and she pitied him, but her pity was not without calculation. "when yanko is dead and they bring his body here, there will be a stir in the house," she said, "and i can then fly to lassalle." but the hours flew by, and finally yanko came to tell her that he had wounded his opponent. for the moment, and indeed until after lassalle's death, she hated her successful lover; but a little later his undoubted goodness, his tenderness and patience, won her heart. they were married, but he died within a year, of consumption. being disowned by her relations, helen then settled in berlin, and studied for the stage. she herself relates how at breslau on one occasion, when acting a boy's part in one of moser's comedies, some of lassalle's oldest friends being present remarked upon her likeness to lassalle in his youth, a resemblance on which she and lassalle had more than once prided themselves. at a later date frau von racowitza married a russian socialist, s. e. shevitch, then resident in america. m. shevitch returned to russia a few years after this and lived with his wife at riga. those who have seen madame shevitch describe her as one of the most fascinating women they have ever met. she and her husband were very happy in their married life. madame shevitch is now living in munich. our great novelist and poet george meredith has immortalized her in his _tragic comedians_. viii. lord acton's list of the hundred best books every one has heard of lord avebury's (sir john lubbock's) hundred best books, not every one of lord acton's. it is the privilege of the _pall mall magazine_ {225} to publish this latter list, the final impression as to reading of one of the most scholarly men that england has known in our time. the list in question is, as it were, an omitted chapter of a book that was one of the successes of its year--_the letters of lord acton to miss mary gladstone_--published by mr. george allen. that series of letters made very pleasant reading. they showed lord acton not as a dryasdust, but as a very human personage indeed, with sympathies invariably in the right place. nor can his literary interests be said to have been restricted, for he read history and biography with avidity, and probably knew more of theology than any other layman of modern times. in imaginative literature, however, his critical instinct was perhaps less keen. he called heine "a bad second to schiller in poetry," which is absurd; and he thought george eliot the greatest of modern novelists. in arriving at the latter judgment he had the excuse of personal friendship and admiration for a woman whose splendid intellectual gifts were undeniable. in one letter we find lord acton discussing with miss gladstone the eternal question of the hundred best books. sir john lubbock had complained to her of the lack of a guide or supreme authority on the choice of books. lord acton had replied that, "although he had something to learn on the graver side of human knowledge," sir john would execute his own scheme better than almost anybody. we all know that sir john lubbock attempted this at a lecture delivered at the great ormond street working men's college; that that lecture has been reprinted again and again in a book entitled _the pleasures of life_, and that the publishers have sold more than two hundred thousand copies--a kind of success that might almost make some of our popular novelists turn green with envy. later on in the correspondence lord acton quoted one of the popes, who said that "fifty books would include every good idea in the world." "but," continued lord acton, "literature has doubled since then, and it would be hard to do without a hundred." lord acton was possessed of the happy thought that he would like some of his friends and acquaintances each to name his ideal hundred best books--as for example bishop lightfoot, dean church, dean stanley, canon liddon, professor max muller, mr. j. r. lowell, professor e. a. freeman, mr. w. e. h. lecky, mr. john morley, sir henry maine, the duke of argyll, lord tennyson, cardinal newman, mr. gladstone, matthew arnold, professor goldwin smith, mr. r. h. hutton, mr. mark pattison, and mr. j. a. symonds. strange to say, he thought there would be a surprising agreement between these writers as to which were the hundred best books. i am all but certain, however, that there would not have been more than twenty books in common between rival schools of thought--the secular and the ecclesiastical--between, let us say, mr. john morley and cardinal newman. but it is probable that not one of these eminent men would have furnished a list with any similarity whatever to the remainder. each would have written down his own hundred favourites, and herein may be admitted is an evidence of the futility of all such attempts. the best books are the books that have helped us most to see life in all its complex bearings, and each individual needs a particular kind of mental food quite unlike the diet that best stimulates his neighbour. writing more than a year later, lord acton said that he had just drawn out a list of recommended authors for his son, as being the company he would like him to keep; but this list is not available--it is not the one before me. that was compiled yet another twelve months afterwards, when we find lord acton sending to miss mary gladstone (mrs. drew) his own ideal "hundred best books." this list is now printed for the first time. evidently miss gladstone remonstrated with her friend over the character of the list; but lord acton defended it as being in his judgment really the hundred _best books_, apart from works on physical science--that it treated of principles that every thoughtful man ought to understand, and was calculated, in fact, to give one a clear view of the various forces that make history. "we are not considering," he adds, "what will suit an untutored savage or an illiterate peasant woman, who would never come to an end of the _imitation_." however, here is lord acton's list, which mrs. drew has been kind enough to place in the hands of the editor of the _pall mall magazine_. i give also lord acton's comment with which it opens, and i add in footnotes one or two facts about each of the authors: * * * * * "in answer to the question: which are the hundred best books in the world? "supposing any english youth, whose education is finished, who knows common things, and is not training for a profession. "to perfect his mind and open windows in every direction, to raise him to the level of his age so that he may know the (20 or 30) forces that have made our world what it is and still reign over it, to guard him against surprises and against the constant sources of error within, to supply him both with the strongest stimulants and the surest guides, to give force and fullness and clearness and sincerity and independence and elevation and generosity and serenity to his mind, that he may know the method and law of the process by which error is conquered and truth is won, discerning knowledge from probability and prejudice from belief, that he may learn to master what he rejects as fully as what he adopts, that he may understand the origin as well as the strength and vitality of systems and the better motive of men who are wrong, to steel him against the charm of literary beauty and talent; so that each book, thoroughly taken in, shall be the beginning of a new life, and shall make a new man of him--this list is submitted":-1. plato--_laws_--steinhart's _introduction_. {230a} 2. aristotle--_politics_--susemihl's _commentary_. {230b} 3. epictetus--_encheiridion_--_commentary_ of simplicius. {230c} 4. st. augustine--_letters_. {230d} 5. st. vincent's _commonitorium_. {231a} 6. hugo of s. victor--_de sacramentis_. {231b} 7. st. bonaventura--_breviloquium_. {231c} 8. st. thomas aquinas--_summa contra gentiles_. {231d} 9. dante--_divina commedia_. {232a} 10. raymund of sabunde--_theologia naturalis_. {232b} 11. nicholas of cusa--_concordantia catholica_. {232c} 12. edward reuss--_the bible_. {232d} 13. pascal's pensees--_havet's edition_. {233a} 14. malebranche, _de la recherche de la verite_. {233b} 15. baader--_speculative dogmatik_. {233c} 16. molitor--_philosophie der geschichte_. {233d} 17. astie--_esprit de vinet_. {233e} 18. punjer--_geschichte der religions-philosophie_. {234a} 19. rothe--_theologische ethik_. {234b} 20. martensen--_die christliche ethik_. {234c} 21. oettingen--_moralstatistik_. {234d} 22. hartmann--_phanomenologie des sittlichen bewusstseins_. {234e} 23. leibniz--_letters_ edited by klopp. {235a} 24. brandis--_geschichte der philosophie_. {235b} 25. fischer--_franz bacon_. {235c} 26. zeller--_neuere deutsche philosophie_. {235d} 27. bartholomess--_doctrines religieuses de la philosophie moderns_. {236a} 28. guyon--_morale anglaise_. {236b} 29. ritschl--_entstehung der altkatholischen kirche_. {236c} 30. loening--_geschichte des kirchenrechts_. {236d} 31. baur--_vorlesungen uber dogmengeschichte_. {237a} 32. fenelon--_correspondence_. {237b} 33. newman's _theory of development_. {237c} 34. mozley's _university sermons_. {237d} 35. schneckenburger--_vergleichende darstellung_. {238a} 36. hundeshagen--_kirckenvorfassungsgeschichte_. {238b} 37. schweizer--_protestantische centraldogmen_. {238c} 38. gass--_geschichte der lutherischen dogmatik_. {238d} 39. cart--_histoire du mouvement religieux dans le canton de vaud_. {238e} 40. blondel--_de la primaute_. {239a} 41. le blanc de beaulieu--_theses_. {239b} 42. thiersch.--_vorlesungen uber katholizismus_. {239c} 43. mohler--_neue untersuchungen_. {239d} 44. scherer--_melanges de critique religieuse_. {240a} 45. hooker--_ecclesiastical polity_. {240b} 46. weingarten--_revolutionskirchen englands_. {240c} 47. kliefoth--_acht bucher von der kirche_. {240d} 48. laurent--_etudes de l'histoire de l'humanite_. {240e} 49. ferrari--_revolutions de l'ltalie_. {241a} 50. lange--_geschichte des materialismus_. {241b} 51. guicciardini--_ricordi politici_. {241c} 52. duperron--_ambassades_. {241d} 53. richelieu--_testament politique_. {242a} 54. harrington's writings. {242b} 55. mignet--_negotiations de la succession d'espagne_. {242c} 56. rousseau--_considerations sur la pologne_. {243a} 57. foncin--_ministere de turgot_. {243b} 58. burke's _correspondence_. {243c} 59. las cases--_memorial de ste. helene_. {243d} 60. holtzendorff--_systematische rechtsenzyklopadie_. {244a} 61. jhering--_geist des romischen rechts_. {244b} 62. geib--_strafrecht_. {244c} 63. maine--_ancient law_. {245a} 64. gierke--_genossenschaftsrecht_. {245b} 65. stahl--_philosophie des rechts_. {245c} 66. gentz--_briefwechsel mit adam muller_. {246a} 67. vollgraff--_polignosie_. {246b} 68. frantz--_kritik aller parteien_. {246c} 69. de maistre--_considerations sur la france_. {246d} 70. donoso cortes--_ecrits politiques_. {247a} 71. perin--_de la richesse dans les societes chretiennes_. {247b} 72. le play--_la reforme sociale_. {247c} 73. riehl--_die burgerliche sociale_. {247d} 74. sismondi--_etudes sur les constitutions des peuples libres_. {248a} 75. rossi--_cours du droit constitutionnel_. {248b} 76. barante--_vie de royer collard_. {248c} 77. duvergier de hauranne--_histoire du gouvernement parlementaire_. {249a} 78. madison--_debates of the congress of confederation_. {249b} 79. hamilton--_the federalist_. {249c} 80. calhoun--_essay on government_. {249d} 81. dumont--_sophismes anarchiques_. {250a} 82. quinet--_la revolution francaise_. {250b} 83. stein--_sozialismus in frankreich_. {250c} 84. lassalle--_system der erworbenen rechte_. {251a} 85. thonissen--_le socialisme depuis l'antiquite_. {251b} 86. considerant--_destines sociale_. {251c} 87. roscher--_nationalokonomik_. {251d} 89. mill--_system of logic_. {251e} 90. coleridge--_aids to reflection_. {252a} 91. radowitz--_fragmente_. {252b} 92. gioberti--_pensieri_. {252c} 93. humboldt--_kosmos_. {253a} 94. de candolle--_histoire des sciences et des savants_. {253b} 95. darwin--_origin of species_. {253c} 96. littre--_fragments de philosophie_. {253d} 97. cournot--_enchainements des idees fondamentales_. {253e} 98. _monatschriften der wissenschaftlichen vereine_. {254} this list, written in 1883 in miss gladstone's (mrs. drew's) diary, must always have an interest in the history of the human mind. but my readers will, i imagine, for the most part, agree with me that there are others besides untutored savages and illiterate peasant women to whom such a list is entirely impracticable. it indicates the enormous preference which on the whole lord acton gave to the literature of knowledge over the literature of power, to use de quincey's famous distinction. with the exception of dante's _divine comedy_ there is practically not a single book that has any title whatever to a place in the literature of power, a literature which many of us think the only thing in the world of books worth consideration. great philosophy is here, and high thought. who would for a moment wish to disparage st. bonaventure, the seraphic doctor, or aquinas the angelic? plato and pascal, malebranche and fenelon, bossuet and machiavelli are all among the world's immortals. yet now and again we are bewildered by finding the least important book of a well-known author--as for example rousseau's _poland_ instead of the _confessions_ and coleridge's _aids to reflection_ instead of the _poems_ or the _biographia literaria_. think of an historian whose ideal of historical work was so high that he despised all who worked only from printed documents, selecting the _memorial of st. helena_ of las casas in preference not only to a hundredand-one similar compilations concerning napoleon's exile, but in preference to thucydides, herodotus and gibbon. sometimes lord acton names a theologian who is absolutely out-of-date, at others a philosopher who is in the same case. but on the whole it is a fascinating list as an index to what a well-trained mind thought the noblest mental equipment for life's work. at the best, it is true, it would represent but one half of life. but then lord acton recognized this when he asked that men should be "steeled against the charm of literary beauty and talent," and he was assuming in any case that all the books in aesthetic literature, the best poetry and the best history had already been read, as he undoubtedly had read them. "the charm of literary beauty and talent!" there is the whole question. nothing really matters for the average man, so far as books are concerned, but this charm, and i am criticizing lord acton's list for the average man. the student who has got beyond it need not worry himself about classified lists. he may read his plato, and aristotle, his pascal and newman, his christian apologists and german theologians, as he wills; or he may read in some other quite different direction. guidance is impossible to a mind at such a stage of cultivation as lord acton had in view. only minds at a more primitive stage of culture than this most learned and most accomplished man seemed able to conceive of, could be bettered by advice as to reading. given, indeed, contact with some superior mind, which out of its rich equipment of culture should advise as to the books that might be most profitably read, i could imagine advice being helpful. it would be of no value, it is true, to an untutored savage or illiterate peasant, but to a youth fresh from school-books and much modern fiction, to a young girl about to enter upon life in its more serious aspects, it would be immensely serviceable. it was of such as these that mr. ruskin thought when he wrote of "king's treasures" in _sesame and lilies_, and the same idea was doubtless in sir john lubbock's mind when he lectured on the "hundred best books." but lord avebury's list had its limitations, it seems to me, for any one who has an interest in good literature and guidance to the reading thereof. to give "scott" as one book and "shakspere" as another was i suggest to shirk much responsibility of selection. scott is a whole library, shakspere is yet another. one may give "keats" or "shelley" because they are more limited in quantity. even to name novels by charles kingsley and bulwer lytton in this select hundred was to demonstrate to men of this generation that lord avebury being of an earlier one had a bias in favour of the books that we are all outgrowing. to include mill's _logic_ is to ignore the time spirit acting on philosophy; to include tennyson's _idylls_ its action on poetry. mill and tennyson will always live in literature but not i think by these books. but the fact is that there is no possibility of naming the hundred best books. no one could quarrel with lord avebury if he had named these as his hundred own favourites among the books of the world. still, it might have been _his_ hundred; it could not possibly have been any one else's hundred because every man of education must make his own choice. no! the naming of the hundred best books for any large, general audience is quite impossible. all that is possible in such a connexion is to state emphatically that there are very few books that are equally suitable to every kind of intellect. temperament as well as intellectual endowment make for so much in reading. take, for example, the _imitation_ of _christ_. george eliot, although not a christian, found it soul-satisfying. thackeray, as i think a more robust intellect, found it well nigh as mischievous as did eugene sue, whose anathematizations in his novel _the wandering jew_ are remembered by all. other books that have been the outcome of piety of mind leave less room for difference of opinion. surely dante's _divine comedy_, and bunyan's _pilgrim's progress_, make an universal appeal. that universal appeal is the point at which alone guidance is possible. there are great books that can be read only by the few, but surely the very greatest appeal alike to the educated and the illiterate, to the man of rich intellectual endowment and to the man to whom all processes of reasoning are incomprehensible. _hamlet_ is a wonderful test of this quality. it "holds the boards" at the small provincial theatre, it is enacted by mr. crummles to an illiterate peasantry, and it is performed by the greatest actor to the most select city audience. it is made the subject of study by learned commentators. it is world-embracing. are there in the english language, including translations, a hundred books that stand the test as _hamlet_ stands it? no two men would make the same list of books that answer to this demand of an universal appeal, and obviously each nation must make its own list. mine is for english boys and girls just growing into manhood and womanhood, or for those who have had no educational advantages in early years. i exclude living writers, and i give the hundred in four groups. poetry. 1. the bible. {260a} 2. _the odyssey_, translated by butcher and lang. {260b} 3. the _iliad_, translated by lang, leaf and myers. {260b} 4. aeschylus, translated by george warr. {261a} 5. sophocles, translated by j. s. phillimore. {261a} 6. euripides, translated by gilbert murray. {261a} 7. virgil, translated by dryden. {261b} 8. catullus, translated by theodore martin. {261c} 9. horace, translated by theodore martin. {261d} 10. dante, translated by cary. {262a} 11. shakspere, _hamlet_. {262b} 12. chaucer, _canterbury tales_. {262c} 13. fitzgerald, _omar khayyam_. {263a} 14. goethe, _faust_. {263b} 15. shelley. {263c} 16. byron. {263d} 17. wordsworth. {264a} 18. keats. {264b} 19. burns. {264c} 20. coleridge. {264d} 21. cowper. {264e} 22. crabbe. {265a} 23. tennyson. {265b} 24. browning. {265c} 25. milton. {265d} fiction. 1. _the arabian nights entertainment_. {266a} 2. _don quixote_, by cervantes. {266b} 3. _pilgrim's progress_, by bunyan. {266c} 4. _robinson crusoe_, by defoe. {266d} 5. _gulliver's travels_, by swift. {267a} 6. _clarissa_, by richardson. {267b} 7. _tom jones_, by fielding. {267c} 8. _rasselas_, by johnson. {267d} 9. _vicar of wakefield_, by goldsmith. {268a} 10. _sentimental journey_, by sterne. {268b} 11. _nightmare abbey_, by peacock. {268c} 12. _kenilworth_, by walter scott. {268d} 13. _pere goriot_, by balzac. {268e} 14. _the three musketeers_, by dumas. {269a} 15. _vanity fair_, by thackeray. {269b} 16. _villette_, by charlotte bronte. {269c} 17. _david copperfield_, by charles dickens. {269d} 18. _barchester towers_, by anthony trollope. {269e} 19. boccaccio's _decameron_. {269f} 20. _wuthering heights_, by emily bronte. {270a} 21. _the cloister and the hearth_, by charles reade. {270b} 22. _les miserables_, by victor hugo. {270c} 23. _cranford_, by mrs. gaskell. {270d} 24. _consuelo_, by george sand. {270e} 25. _charles o'malley_, by charles lever. {270f} miscellaneous. history, essays, etc. 1. macaulay, _history of england_. {271a} 2. carlyle, _past and present_. {271b} 3. motley, _dutch republic_. {271c} 4. gibbon, _decline and fall of the roman empire_. {271d} 5. plutarch's _lives_. {272a} 6. montaigne's _essays_. {272b} 7. richard steele, _essays_. {272c} 8. lamb, _essays of elia_. {272d} 9. de quincey, _opium eater_. {272e} 10. hazlitt, _essays_. {273a} 11. borrow, _lavengro_. {273b} 12. emerson, _representative men_. {273c} 13. landor, _imaginary conversations_. {273d} 14. arnold, _essays in criticism_. {273e} 15. herodotus, _macaulay's translation_. {273f} 16. howell's _familiar letters_. {274a} 17. buckle's _history of civilization_. {274b} 18. tacitus, church and brodribb's translation. {274c} 19. mitford's _our village_. {274d} 20. green's _short history of the english people_. {274e} 21. taine, _ancient regime_. {275a} 22. bourrienne, _napoleon_. {275b} 23. tocqueville, _democracy in america_. {275c} 24. walton, _compleat angler_. {275d} 25 white, _natural history of selbourne_. {276a} biographical and autobiographical. 1. boswell's johnson. {276b} 2. lockhart's scott. {276c} 3. pepys's diary. {276d} 4. walpole's letters. {277a} 5. the memoirs of count de gramont. {277b} 6. gray's letters. {277c} 7. southey's nelson. {277d} 8. moore's byron. {277e} 9. hogg's shelley. {278a} 10. rousseau's confessions. {278b} 11. froude's carlyle. {278c} 12. rogers's table talk. {279a} 13. confessions of st. augustine. {279b} 14. amiel's journal. {279c} 15. meditations of marcus aurelius. {279d} 16. lewes's life of goethe. {279e} 17. sime's life of lessing. {280a} 18. franklin's autobiography. {280b} 19. greville's memoirs. {280c} 20. forster's life of dickens. {280d} 21. madame d'arblay's diary. {280e} 22. newman's apologia. {281a} 23. the paston letters. {281b} 24. cellini's autobiography. {281c} 25. browne's religio medici. {281d} my readers for the most part have read every one of these books. i throw out this list as a tentative effort in the direction of suggesting a hundred books with which to start a library. the young student will find much to amuse, and certainly nothing here to bore him. these books will not make him a prig, as mr. james payn said that lord avebury's list would make him a prig. they will make the dull man less dull, the bright man brighter. here is good, cheerful, robust reading for boy and girl, for man and woman. there are many sins of omission, but none of commission. our young friend will add to this list fast enough, but there is nothing in it that he may not read with profit. these books, i repeat, make an universal appeal. the learned man may enjoy them, the unlearned may enjoy them also. they are, as _hamlet_ is, of universal interest. devotion to science will not impair a taste for them, nor will zest for abstract speculations. not even those who are "better skilled in grammar than in poetry" can fail to appreciate. these hundred books will in the main be the hundred best books of many of my readers who are quite capable of selecting for themselves. one last word of advice. let not the young reader buy large quantities of books at once or be beguiled into subscribing for some cheap series which will save him the trouble of selecting. he may buy many books from such cheap series afterwards, but not his first hundred, i think. these should be acquired through much saving, and purchased with great thought and deliberation. the purchase of a book should become to the young book-lover a most solemn function. _butler and tanner_, _the selwood printing works_, _frome_, _and london_ footnotes: {3} richard garnett (1835-1906) was son of the philologist of the same name who was for a time priest-vicar of lichfield cathedral. he attended the johnson celebration on sept. 18, 1905, and proposed "the immortal memory of dr. johnson." he died on the following good friday, april 13, and was buried in highgate cemetery april 17, 1906. {6} anna seward (1747-1809). her works were published after her death:--_the poetical works of anna seward_. _with extracts from her literary correspondence_. edited by walter scott, esq. in three volumes--_john ballantyne & co._, 1810. _letters of anna seward written between the years_ 1784 _and_ 1807. in six volumes. archibald constable & co., 1811. "longwinded and florid" one biographer calls her letters, but by the aid of what scott calls 'the laudable practice of skipping' they are quite entertaining. {8} sir robert thomas white-thomson, k.c.b., wrote to me in reference to this estimate of miss seward from broomford manor, exbourne, north devon, and his letter seemed of sufficient importance from a genealogical standpoint for me to ask his permission to make an extract from the letter: "i have read your address in a lichfield newspaper. apart from the wider and more important bearings of your words, those which had reference to the seward family were especially welcome to me. you will understand this when i tell you that, with the exception of the romney portrait of anna, and a few other objects left 'away' by her will, my grandfather, thomas white, of lichfield close, her cousin and residuary legatee, became possessed of all the contents of her house. some of the books and engravings were sold by auction, but the remainder were taken good care of, and passed to me on my mother's death in 1860. as thus, 'in a way' the representative of the 'swan of lichfield,' you can easily see what such an appreciation of her as was yours means to me. of course i know her weak points, and how the pot of clay must suffer in trying to 'bump' the pot of iron in midstream, but i also know that she was no ordinary personage in her day, when the standard of feminine culture was low, and i have resented some things that have been written of her. mrs. oliphant treats her kindly in her _literary history of england_, and now i have your 'appreciation' of her, for which i beg to thank you." {15} once certainly in the lines "on the death of mr. robert levet":- well try'd through many a varying year, see levet to the grave descend, officious, innocent, sincere, of ev'ry friendless name the friend. {18} _prayers and meditations_: composed by samuel johnson, ll.d., and published from his manuscripts by george straham, d.d., prebendary of rochester and vicar of islington in middlesex, 1785. dr. birkbeck hill suggests that johnson could not have contemplated the publication of the work in its entirety, but the world is the better for the self revelation, notwithstanding cowper's remark in a letter to newton (august 27, 1785), that "the publisher of it is neither much a friend to the cause of religion nor to the author's memory; for by the specimen of it that has reached us, it seems to contain only such stuff as has a direct tendency to expose both to ridicule." {19} there is an edition with a brief introduction by augustine birrell, published by elliot stock in 1904, and another, with an introduction by "h. c.," was issued by h. r. allenson in 1906. {31} the rev. angus mackay, author of _the brontes in fact and fiction_. he was rector of holy trinity church, dean bridge, edinburgh, when he died, aged 54, on new year's day, 1907. earlier in life he had been a curate at olney. {34} john newton (1725-1807) had been the captain of a slave ship before his 'conversion.' he became curate of olney in 1764 and published the famous olney hymns with cowper in 1779. in 1780 newton became the popular incumbent of st. mary woolnoth, london. {35} see the globe _cowper_, with an introduction by the rev. william benham, the rector of st. edmund's, lombard street. canon benham has written many books, but he has done no better piece of work than this fine introduction which first appeared in 1870. {36} thomas scott (1747-1821). his commentaries first appeared in weekly parts between 1788 and 1792, and were first issued in ten volumes, 1823-25. he was rector of astin sandford in buckinghamshire from 1801 until his death. his _life_ was published by his son, the rev. john scott, in 1822. {37} thomas percy (1729-1811) became vicar of easton maudit, northamptonshire, in 1753. johnson visited him here in 1764. in 1765 percy published his _reliques of ancient english poetry_. he became bishop of dromere in 1782. {38a} william hayley (1745-1820) was counted a great poet in his day and placed in the same rank with dryden and pope. he wrote _triumphs of temper_ 1781, _triumphs of music_ 1804, and many other works; but he is of interest here by virtue of his _life and letters of william cowper_, _esq._, _with remarks on epistolary writers_, published in 1803. {38b} robert southey (1774-1843), whose _life and works of cowper_ is in fifteen volumes, which were published by baldwin & cradock between the years 1835 and 1837. the attractive form in which the works are presented, the many fine steel engravings, and the excellent type make this still the only way for book lovers to approach cowper. southey had to suffer the competition of the rev. t. s. grimshawe, who produced, through saunders & otley, about the same time a reprint of hayley's biography with much of cowper's correspondence that is not in southey's volumes. the whole correspondence was collected by mr. thomas wright, and published by hodder & stoughton in 1904. {38c} walter bagehot (1826-1877) in his _literary studies_. james russell lowell (1819-1891) in his _essays_. mrs. oliphant (1828-1897) in her _literary history of england_; and george eliot (1819-1880) in her _essays_ (worldliness and other worldliness). {44} it has no bearing upon the subject that the horrors of the bastille at the time of its fall were greatly exaggerated. {47} _theology in the english poets_, by stopford a. brooke. {56} mr. leslie stephen, who became sir leslie stephen, k.c.b., in 1902, was born in 1832 and died in 1904. in addition to the article in the _d.n.b._, this great critic has one on "cowper and rousseau" in his _hours in a library_. {62} sir john fenn (1739-1794), the antiquary, obtained the originals of the _paston letters_ from thomas worth, a chemist of diss. the following lines were first printed in cowper's collected poems, by mr. j. c. bailey in his admirable edition of 1906, published by the methuens:- two omens seem propitious to my fame, your spouse embalms my verse, and you my name; a name, which, all self-flattery far apart belongs to one who venerates in his heart the wise and good, and therefore of the few known by these titles, sir, both yours and you. they were written to please his cousin john johnson who was to oblige fenn by giving him an autograph of cowper's. {66} edward stanley (1779-1849), the father of arthur penrhyn stanley (1815-1881), dean of westminster, was bishop of norwich from 1837 to 1849. {80} borrow's step-daughter, henrietta clarke, married james mcoubrey, an irish doctor. she outlived borrow for many years, dying at great yarmouth in 1904. all her literary effects, including many interesting manuscripts, have been passed on to me by her executor, mr. hubert smith, and these will be used in my forthcoming biography of borrow. {84} i ventured to ask my friend mr. birrell for a line to read to my norwich audience and he sent me the following characteristic letter dated december 8, 1903:-". . . for my part i should leave george borrow alone, to take his own part even as isopel berners learnt to take hers in the great house at long melford. he has an appealing voice which no sooner falls on the ear of the born borrovian, than up the lucky fellow must get and follow his master to the end of the chapter. "however, if you will insist upon going out into the highways and hedges and compelling the wayfaring man--though a fool--to come in and take a seat at the _lavengro_ feast, nobody can stop you. "the great thing is to get people to read the borrow books: there is nothing else to be done. if, after having read them, some enthusiasts go on to learn _romany_ and seek to trace authorities on gypsies and gypsy lore--why, let them. they may soon know more about gypsies than borrow ever did--but they will never write about them as he did. "the essence of the matter is to enjoy borrow's books for themselves alone. as for borrow's biography, it appears to me either that he has already written it, or it is not worth writing. anyhow, place the books in the forefront, reprint things as often as you dare without _note or comment_ or even _prefatory appreciation_, and you cannot but earn the gratitude of every true borrovian who in consequence of your efforts come upon the borrow books for the first time." {97} m. rene huchon, who addressed the visitors at the crabbe celebration, published his _george crabbe and his times_: _a critical and biographical study_, through mr. john murray, early in the present year, 1907. {98} this reproach has since been removed by the appearance of the _complete works of george crabbe_ in three volumes of the cambridge english classics series, published by the cambridge university press, and edited by dr. a. w. ward, the master of peterhouse. {100} the original letter is in the possession of mr. a. m. broadley, of bridport. it is reprinted from the hanmer correspondence in an appendix to m. huchon's biography. {106} but m. huchon makes it clear in _george crabbe and his times_ that crabbe declined at the last moment to marry miss charlotte ridout, who seems to have been really in love with him. {138} this monument, a fine statue facing the house which replaces the one in which sir thomas browne lived, was unveiled in october, 1905. {144} for every student cunningham's nine volumes have been superseded since this address was delivered by the sixteen volumes of the letters of horace walpole, edited by mrs. paget toynbee for the clarendon press. {145} the other side of the picture may, however, be presented. horace, says cunningham (walpole's _letters_, vol. i.), hated norfolk, the native country of his father, and delighted in kent, the native country of his mother. "he did not care for norfolk ale, norfolk turnips, norfolk dumplings and norfolk turkeys. its flat, sandy aguish scenery was not to his taste." he dearly liked what he calls most happily, "the rich, blue prospects of kent." {153} goldsmith doubtless had more than one experience in his mind when he wrote of:- sweet auburn! loveliest village of the plain. lissoy, near ballymahon, ireland, served to provide many concrete features of the picture, but that the author drew upon his experiences of houghton is believed by his principal biographer, john forster, by professor masson and others, and on no other assumption than that of an english village can the lines be explained:- a time there was, ere england's griefs began, when every rood of ground maintained its man. {185} originally written to serve as an introduction to an edition of mr. george meredith's _tragic comedians_, of which book lassalle is the hero. that edition was published by messrs. ward lock & bowden, who afterwards transferred all rights in it to messrs. archibald constable & co., by whose courtesy the paper is included here. {186} lassalle's _tagebuch_, edited by paul lindau, 1891. {187} _henrich heine's sammtliche werke_, vol. xxii., pp. 84-99. {188} the most concise account of the affair is contained in the story of sophie solutzeff, entitled, _eine liebes-episode aus dem leben ferdinand lassalle's_. this booklet, which is published in german, french, and russian, professes to be an account of lassalle's love for a young russian lady, sophie solutzeff, some two years before he met helene von donniges. he is represented as being himself in a frenzy of passion; the lady, however, rejecting as a lover the man she had been prepared to worship as a teacher. there can be little doubt that the whole story is a fabrication, in which the countess von hatzfeldt had a considerable part. the countess was rightly judged by popular opinion to have played a discreditable role in the love passages between lassalle and helene; and helene's own account of the matter in her _reminiscences_ was an additional blow at the pseudo-friend who might have helped the lovers so much. what more natural than that the countess should be anxious to break the force of helene's indictment, by endorsing the popular, and indeed accurate judgment, that lassalle was very inflammable where women were concerned. this she could do by depicting him, a little earlier, in precisely similar bondage to that which he had professed to helene. that the countess wrote, or assisted to write, the compilation of letters and diaries, does not, however, destroy its value as a record of lassalle's struggle on her behalf. that account, if not written by lassalle, was written or inspired by the other great actor in the hatzfeldt drama, and may therefore be considered a fairly safe guide in recounting the story. mr. israel zangwill, since the above was written, has published an article on lassalle in his _dreamers of the ghetto_. he accepts sophie solutzeff's story as genuine, but that is merely the credulity of an accomplished romancer. {198} debate in the german reichstag, april 2, 1881. quoted by w. h. dawson. {213} becker's _enthullungen_, 1868. {218} briefe an hans von bulow, 1885. {225} reprinted with alterations from the _pall mall magazine_ of july, 1905, by kind permission of the proprietor and editor; and of miss mary gladstone (mrs. drew) to whom the list of books was sent in a letter. {230a} plato (b.c. 427-347). dr. jowett has translated the _laws_. see _the dialogues_ of plato with analysis and introductions by benjamin jowett. in five volumes. vol. v. the clarendon press. {230b} aristotle (b.c. 384-322). dr. jowett has translated the _politics_ into english. two volumes. the clarendon press. {230c} epictetus (born a.d. 50, died in rome, but date unknown). his _encheiridion_, a collection of maxims, was made by his pupil arrian. the best translation into english is that by george long, first published in 1877. (george bell.) {230d} st. augustine (a.d. 353-430). see a translation of his _letters_ edited by mary allies, published in 1890. {231a} st. vincent of lerins--vincentius lirinensis. native of gaul. monk in monastery of lerinat, opposite cannes. died about 450. in 434 wrote _commonitorium adversus profanus omnium heretiecrum novitates_. it contains the famous threefold text of orthodoxy--"quod ubique, quod semper, quod ad omnibus creditum est." printed at paris, 1663 and later. also in mignes, patrologia latina, vol. 50. hallam calls the text "the celebrated rule." it is all now remembered of st. v. by most educated men. it is shown to be of no practical value in an able criticism by sir g. c. lewis, _influence of authority in matters of opinion_, 2nd ed., 1875, p. 57. mr gladstone reviewed this work of lewis, _nineteenth century_ march, 1877. {231b} hugo of st. victor (1097-1141), a celebrated mystic born at ypres in flanders. his collected works first appeared at rouen in 1648. {231c} st. bonaventura (a.d. 1221-1274). born at bagnarea, near orvieto, in tuscany, became a franciscan monk and afterwards a professor of theology at paris, where he gained the title of the "seraphic doctor." made a cardinal by pope gregory x, who sent him as his legate to the council at lyons, where he died. in 1482 he was canonized. his writings appeared at rome in 1588-96. {231d} st. thomas aquinas (a.d. 1225-1274). the angelic doctor was born at the castle of rocca-secca near aquino, between rome and naples. entered the dominican order in 1243. went to paris in 1252 and attained great distinction as a theologian. his _summa theologiae_ was followed by his _summa contra gentiles_. his works were first collected in 17 volumes in 1570. aquinas was canonized in 1323. {232a} dante (a.d. 1265-1321). the _divina commedia_ has been translated into english by many scholars. the best known version is the poetical renderings of h. f. cary (1772-1844) and w. w. longfellow (18071882) and the prose translations (the "inferno" only) of john carlyle (1801-79) and a. j. butler in whose three volumes of the "purgatory," "paradise" and "inferno" the original italian may be studied side by side with the translation. {232b} raymund of sabunde, a physician of toulouse of the fifteenth century. he published his _theologia naturalis_ at strassburg in 1496. "i found the concerts of the author to be excellent, the contexture of his works well followed, and his project full of pietie" writes montaigne in telling us of his father's request that he should translate sabunde's _theologia naturalis_. florio's translation. book ii, ch. xii. {232c} nicholas of cusa (a.d. 1401-1464) was born at kues on the moselle. his _de concordantia catholica_ was a treatise in favour of the councils of the church and against the authority of the pope. he was made a cardinal by pope nicholas v. {232d} edward reuss (1804-1891), a professor of theology, who was born at strassburg. published his _history of the new testament_ in 1842 and his _history of the old testament_ in 1881. _the bible_, _a new translation with introduction and commentaries_, appeared in 19 volumes between 1874 and 1881. {233a} pascal, blaise (1623-1662). born at clermont-ferrand in auvergne. his _letters to a provincial_, written in 1656-7, made his fame by their attack on the jesuists. his _pensees_ appeared after his death, in 1669, and they have reappeared in many forms, "edited" by many schools of thought. the edition edited by ernest havet (1813-1889) was published in 1852. {233b} malebranche, nicolas (1638-1715). born in paris. the works of descartes drew him to philosophy. the famous dictum, "malebranche saw all things in god," had reference to his treatise, _de la recherche de la verite_, first published in 1674. {233c} baader, franz (1765-1841). a speculative philosopher and theologian, born at munich, who endeavoured to reconcile the tenets of the church of rome with philosophy. of his many works his _vorlesungen uber spekulative dogmatik_ is here selected. it appeared between 1828 and 1838 in five parts. {233d} molitor, franz joseph (1779-1860). a philosophical writer, born near frankfurt. his _philosophie der geschichte_, _oder uber tradition_ was published in 4 volumes between 1827 and 1853. {233e} astie, jean frederic (1822-1894). a french protestant theologian, who held a chair of theology in new york from 1848 to 1853. in 1856 became a professor in switzerland. he published his _esprit d'alexandre vinet_ at paris in 1861. in 1882 appeared his _le vinet de la legende et celui de l'histoire_. {234a} punjer, bernard (1850-1884). a theologian whose _geschichte der religions-philosophie_ was much the vogue with theological students at the time of its publication in 1880. it was reissued in 1887 in an english translation by w. hastie, under the title, _history of the christian philosophy of religion from the reformation to kant_. punjer also wrote _die religionslehre kant's_, published at jena in 1874. {234b} rothe, richard (1799-1867). a protestant theologian. was for a time preacher to the prussian embassy in rome, and afterwards in succession professor of theology at wittenberg, at heidelberg, and at bonn. his _theologische ethik_ appeared at wittenberg in 3 volumes between 1845 and 1848. {234c} martensen, hans lassen (1808-1884). a danish theologian, born at fleusburg and died at copenhagen, where he was long a professor of theology. he became bishop of zeeland. _die christliche ethik_ was one of many works by him. he also wrote _die christliche dogmatik_, _die christliche taufe_, and a _life of jakob bohme_. {234d} oettingen, alexander von (1827-1905). a theologian and statistician principally associated with dorpat in livonia, where he studied from 1845 to 1849. he became professor of theology at its famous university. his principal book is entitled, _die moralstatistik in ihrer bedeutung fur eine sozialethik_. {234e} hartmann, karl robert eduard von (1842-1906). born in berlin, the son of general robert von hartmann, and served for some time in the artillery of the german army. he has written many philosophical works. his _phanomenologie des sittlichlen bewusstseins_ was published in berlin in 1879. {235a} leibniz, gottfried wilhelm (1646-1716). born at leipzig and died at hanover. visited paris and london, and became acquainted with boyle and newton. in 1676 appointed to a librarianship at hanover. his philosophical views are mainly derived from his letters. the edition of the _letters_, edited by ouno klopp (1822-1903), appeared at hanover between 1862 and 1884 in 11 volumes. {235b} brandis, christian august (1790-1867). a philosopher and philologist, born in hildesheim, studied in gottingen and kiel. accompanied niebuhr as secretary to the embassy to rome in 1816. in 1822 became professor of philosophy in bonn. his _handbuch der geschichte der griechischromischen philosophie_, doubtless here referred to by lord acton, was published in berlin at long intervals (1835-66) in 3 volumes. {235c} fischer, kuno (1824-1907). born at sandewalde in silesia. deprived of his professorship of philosophy at heidelberg by the baden government in 1853 on account of charge of pantheism, but recalled to heidelberg in 1872. his principal book is _geschichte der neuern philosophie_ (1852-1903). his _franz baco von verulam_ appeared in 1856, and _francis bacon und seine schule_ made the 10th volume of his _geschichte_. {235d} zeller, eduard (1814still living). theologian and historian of philosophy. studied at tubingen and berlin, became professor of theology at berne, afterwards held chairs successively at heidelberg and berlin. his many works include _the philosophy of ancient greece_, _platonic studies_ and _zwingli's theological system_. {236a} bartholomess, christian (1815-1856). a french philosopher, born at geiselbronn in alsace. from 1853 professor of philosophy at strassburg. died at nuremberg. wrote a _life of giordano bruno_, and _philosophical history of the prussian academy_, _particularly under frederick the great_, as well as the _histoire critique des doctrines religieuses de la philosophie moderne_, published in 2 volumes in 1855. {236b} madame guyon (1648-1717) was born at montargis in france, and her maiden name was jeanne marie bouvieres de la mothe. she married at 16 years of age jacques guyon. left a widow, she devoted herself to a religious mysticism which raised up endless controversies during the succeeding years. she was compelled to leave geneva because her doctrines were declared to be heretical. she was imprisoned in the bastile from 1695 to 1702. her works are contained in 39 volumes. {236c} ritschl, albrecht (1822-1889). professor of theology, born in berlin, died in gottingen. became professor of theology in bonn and later in gottingen. he wrote many books. his _die entstehung der altkatholischen kirche_ first appeared in 1850. {236d} loening, edgar (1843still living), was born in paris. has held professorial chairs at strassburg, dorpat, rostock, and at halle. his _geschichte des deutschen kirchenrechts_ first appeared in 1878. {237a} baur, ferdinand christian (1792-1860). born at schmiden, near kannstatt. held various theological chairs before that of tubingen, which he occupied from 1826 until his death. he wrote a great number of theological works, of which his _vorlesungen uber die christliche dogmengeschichte_ was published in leipzig in 3 volumes between 1865 and 1867. {237b} fenelon, francois de salignac de la mothe (1651-1715). born in perigord in france, and famous alike as a divine and as a man of letters, his _telemaque_ living in literature. his controversy over madame guyon is well known. louis xiv made him preceptor to his grandson, the duke of burgundy, and later archbishop of cambrai. his _correspondence_ was published between 1727 and 1729 in 11 volumes. {237c} newman, john henry (1801-1890). a famous cardinal of the church of rome; born in london, educated at trinity college, oxford; first vicar of st. mary's, oxford; took part in the tractarian movement with some of the _tracts for the times_. his _apologia pro vita sua_ appeared in 1864, his _dream of gerontius_ in 1865. there is no _theory of development_ by newman. his _essay on the development of christian doctrine_ appeared in 1845, and was replied to by the rev. j. b. mozley in a volume bearing the title _the theory of development_. {237d} mozley, james bowling (1813-1878). a church of england divine; born at gainsborough, educated at oriel college, oxford; became vicar of old shoreham, canon of worcester, and, in 1871, regius professor of divinity at oxford. his _oxford university sermons_ appeared in 1876. {238a} schneckenburger, matthias (1804-1848). a protestant theologian; born at thalheim and died in berne, where he was for a time professor of theology at the newly founded university. his _vergleichende darstellung des lutherischen und reformierten lehrbegriffs_ was published in stuttgart in 2 volumes in 1855. {238b} hundeshagen, karl bernhard (1810-1872). a protestant theologian who held a professorship in berne, later in heidelberg and finally in bonn, where he died. his many works included one upon the conflict between the lutheran, the calvinistic, and the zwinglian churches. his _beitrage zur kirchenverfassungsgeschichte und kirchenpolitik insbesondere des protestantismus_ was published at wiesbaden in 1864 in 1 volume. {238c} schweizer, alexander (1808-1888). a theologian and preacher who studied in zurich and berlin. he wrote his _autobiography_ which was published in zurich the year after his death. his book, _die protestantischen centraldogmen innerhalb der reformierten kirche_, appeared in zurich in 2 volumes in 1854 and 1856. {238d} gass, wilhelm (1813-1889). a protestant theologian; born at breslau and died in heidelberg, where he held a theological chair. his best-known book is his _geschichte der protestantischen dogmatik_, published in berlin between 1854 and 1867 in 4 volumes, and to this lord acton doubtless refers. {238e} cart, jacques louis (1826probably still living). a swiss pastor; born in geneva; the author of many books, of which the one named by lord acton is fully entitled, _histoire du mouvement religieux et ecclesiastique dans le canton de vaud pendant la premiere moitie du xixe siecle_. it appeared between 1871 and 1880 in 6 volumes. {239a} blondel, david (1590-1655). born at chalons-sur-marne in france; a learned theologian and historian who defended the protestant position against the catholics. was professor of history at amsterdam. his _de la primaute de l'eglise_ appeared in 1641. {239b} le blanc de beaulieu, louis (1614-1675). a french protestant theologian who enjoyed the consideration of both parties and was approached by turenne with a view to a reunion of the churches. his position was sustained before the protestant academy at sedan with certain theses published under the title of _theses sedanenzes_ in 1683. {239c} thiersch, heinrich wilhelm josias (1817-1885). born in munich and died in basle; held for a time a professorship of theology in marburg, then became the principal pastor of the irvingite church in germany, preaching in many cities. he wrote many books. his _vorlesungen uber katholizismus und protestantismus_ appeared first in 1846. {239d} mohler, johann adam (1796-1838). born in igersheim and died in munich. a catholic theologian and professor of theology at tubingen. his _neue untersuchungen der lehrgegensatze zwischen den katholiken und protestanten_ was first published in mainz in 1834. {240a} scherer, edmond (1815-1889). a french theologian; born in paris, died at versailles. was for a time in england, then professor of exegesis in geneva. was for many years a leader of the french protestant church. his _melanges de critique religieuse_ appeared in paris in 1860. {240b} hooker, richard (1554-1600). born in exeter. in 1584 was rector of drayton-beauchamp, near tring, and the following year became master of the temple. in 1591 became vicar of boscombe and sub-dean of salisbury. his _laws of ecclesiastical polity_ was published in 1594. in 1595 he removed to bishopsbourne, near canterbury, where he died. {240c} weingarten, hermann (1834-1892). protestant ecclesiastical historian, born in berlin, where in 1868 he became a professor, later held chairs successively at marberg and breslau. his book _die revolutionskirchen englands_ appeared in 1868. {240d} kliefoth, theodor friedrich (1810-1895). a lutheran theologian; born at kirchow in mecklenburg, and died at schwerin, where he was for a time instructor to the grand duke of mecklenburg-schwerin, and held various offices in connexion with that state. he wrote many theological works. his _acht bucher von der kirche_ was published at schwerin in 1 volume in 1854. {240e} laurent, francois (1810-1887). born in luxemburg and died in gent, where he long held a professorship. his principal work, _etudes sur l'histoire de l'humanite_, _histoire du droit des gens_ was published in brussels in 18 volumes between 1860 and 1870. {241a} ferrari, guiseppe (1812-1876) was born in milan, and died in rome. achieved fame as a philosophical historian. held a chair at turin and afterwards at milan. as member of the parliament of piedmont he was an opponent of cavour's policy of a united italy. his principal book is entitled _histoire des revolutions de l'italie_, _ou guelfes et gibelins_, published in paris in four volumes between 1856 and 1858. {241b} lange, friedrich albert (1828-1875). philosopher and economic writer, born at wald bei solingen, died at marburg. held a professorial chair at zurich and later at marburg. his most famous book, the _geschichte des materialismus und kritik seiner bedentung in der gegenwart_, first appeared in 1866. it was published in england in 187881 by trubner in three volumes. {241c} guicciardini, francesco (1483-1540), the italian historian and statesman, was born at florence. undertook in 1512 an embassy from florence to the court of ferdinand the catholic, and learned diplomacy in spain. in 1515 he entered the service of pope leo x. his principal book is his _history of italy_. the _istoria d'italia_ appeared in florence in ten volumes between 1561 and 1564. his _recordi politici_ consists of some 400 aphorisms on political and social topics and has been described by an italian critic as "italian corruption codified and elevated to a rule of life." {241d} duperron, jacques davy (1556-1618), a cardinal of the church, born at saint lo. he was a court preacher under henry iii of france and denounced elizabeth of england in a funeral sermon on mary stuart. it is told of him that he once demonstrated before the king the existence of god, and being complimented upon his irrefutable arguments, replied that he was prepared to bring equally good arguments to prove that god did not exist. he became bishop of evreux in 1591. {242a} richelieu, cardinal--(armand-jean du plessis)--(1585-1642). the famous minister of louis xiii; born in paris, of a noble family of poitou. was made bishop of lucon by henry iv at the age of twenty-two. became almoner to marie de medici, the regent of france. was elected a cardinal in 1622. he wrote many books, including theological works, tragedies, and his own memoirs. the authenticity of his _testament politique_ was disputed by voltaire. {242b} harrington, james (1611-1677) was born at upton, northamptonshire; was educated at trinity college, cambridge. he travelled on the continent, but was back in england at the time of the civil war, in which, however, he took no part. he published his _oceana_ in 1656. he is buried in st. margaret's church, westminster, next to the tomb of sir walter raleigh. his _writings_ in an edition issued in 1737 by millar contained twenty separate treatises in addition to _oceana_, but concerned with that book. {242c} mignet, francois auguste marie (1796-1884). the historian; was born at aix and died in paris. published his _history of the french revolution_ in 1824. his _negociations relatives a la succession d'espagne_ appeared in 4 volumes between 1836 and 1842. he also wrote a _life of franklin_, a _history of mary stuart_, and many other works. {243a} rousseau, jean jacques (1712-1778), the famous writer, was born in geneva and died at ermenonville. much of his life story has been told in his incomparable _confessions_. in 1759 he published _nouvelle heloise_; in 1762, _l'emile ou de l'education_. his _considerations sur la pologne_ was written by rousseau in 1769 in response to an application to apply his own theories to a scheme for the renovation of the government of poland, in which land anarchy was then at its height. mr. john morley (_rousseau_, vol. ii) dismisses the pamphlet with a contemptuous line. {243b} foncin, pierre (1841still living). a french professor of history; born at limoges, and has long held important official positions in connexion with education. he has written many books, including an _atlas historique_. his _essai sur le ministere turgot_ appeared in 1876, and obtained a prize from the french academy. {243c} burke, edmund (1729-1797), the famous statesman, was born in dublin and died at beaconsfield, bucks, where he was buried. his _vindication of natural society_ appeared in 1756. burke entered parliament for wendover in 1765, sat for bristol, 1774-80, and malton, 1780-94. his _collected works_ first appeared in 1792-1827 in 8 volumes, the first three of which were issued in his lifetime; his _collected works and correspondence_ was published in 8 volumes in 1852, but the _correspondence_ had appeared separately in 4 volumes in 1844. {243d} las cases, emmanuel augustine dieudonne marir joseph (1766-1842). educated at the military school in paris but entered the french navy; emigrated at the revolution; fought at quiberon; taught french in london; published in 1802 his _atlas historique et geographique_ under the pseudonym of "le sage." on his return to france he came under the notice of napoleon, who made him a count of the empire and sent him upon several important missions. during the emperor's exile in elba he again went to england. he returned during the hundred days and accompanied napoleon to st. helena. here he recorded day by day the conversations of the great exile. at the end of eighteen months he was exiled by sir hudson lowe to the cape of good hope. he returned to france after the death of napoleon and became a deputy under louis philippe. his _memorial de sainte-helene_, published in 1823-1824, secured a great success. {244a} holtzendorff, franz von (1829-1889), was professor of jurisprudence first at berlin and afterwards at munich, where he died. he wrote many books concerned with crime and its punishment, with the prison systems of the world, etc. his _enzyklopadie der rechtswissenschaft in systematischer und alphabetischer bearbeitung_ was first published at leipzig in 1870 and 1871. {244b} jhering, rudolph von (1818-1892), was for a time professor at basle, rostock, kiel and vienna. his _geist des romischen rechts auf den verschiedenen stufen seiner entwickelung_ appeared in leipzig between 1852 and 1865, and is counted a classic in jurisprudence. {244c} geib, karl gustav (1808-1864). an eminent criminologist. was a professor of zurich and afterwards of tubingen, where he died. wrote many books, of which the most important was his _geschichte des romischen kriminalprozesses bis zum tode justinians_ in 1842. his _lehrbuch des deutschen strafrechts_ appeared in 1861 and 1862, but was never completed. {245a} maine, sir henry james sumner (1822-1888). jurist; born in kelso, scotland; educated at christ's hospital, london, and at pembroke college, cambridge; was regius professor of civil law at cambridge, 184754. in 1862 he became a legal member of council in india and held the office for seven years. in 1871 he became a k.c.s.i. and had a seat on the indian council. in 1877 he was elected master of trinity hall, cambridge, and in 1887 became whewell professor of international law at cambridge. he died at cannes. his principal work is his _ancient law_: _its connexion with the early history of society and its relation to modern ideas_, first published in 1861. {245b} gierke, otto friedrich (1841still living), was born in stettin; was professor of law in breslau, heidelberg and berlin successively. served in the franco-german war of 1870. his principal work, _das deutsche genossenschaftsrecht_, appeared in 3 volumes in berlin, the first in 1868, the third in 1881. {245c} stahl, friedrich julius (1802-1861), was born in munich of jewish parents, died in bruckenau. held chairs of law and jurisprudence in berlin and other cities, and wrote many books. his _die philosophie des rechts und geschichtlicher ansicht_ appeared at heidelberg in 2 volumes in 1830 and 1837. {246a} gentz, friedrich von (1764-1832). a distinguished publicist and statesman; born in breslau, died at weinhaus, near vienna; studied jurisprudence in konigsberg. one of his earliest literary efforts was a translation of burke's _reflections upon the french revolution_. played a very considerable part in the combination of the powers of europe against napoleon in 1809-15. he was the author of many books. his _briefewechsel mit adam muller_ was published in stuttgart in 1857--long after his death. {246b} vollgraff, karl friedrich (1794-1863), was for a time professor of jurisprudence at marburg, where he died. his two most important books were: (1) _der systeme der praktischen politik im abendlande_; (2) _erster versuch einer begrundung der allgemeinen ethnologie durch die anthropologie und der staats und rechts philosophie durch die ethnologie oder nationalitat der volker_, published in 4 volumes in 1851 to 1855. it is in this last volume that a section is devoted to polignosie. {246c} frantz, konstantin (1817-1891). distinguished publicist; born at halberstadt and died at blasewitz, near dresden, where he made his home for many years. was for a time german consul in spain. his great doctrine laid down in his _die weltpolitik_, 1883, was the union of central europe against the growing power of russia and the united states of america. his _kritik aller parteien_ was published in berlin in 1862. {246d} maistre, joseph marie comte de (1753-1821). a distinguished french publicist; born at chambery; studied at the university of turin. lived for some years at lausanne, where he published in 1796 his _considerations sur la revolution francaise_. {247a} donoso cortes, jean francois (1809-1853). a famous spanish publicist; born in estremadura; played a considerable part in spanish affairs under marie-christine and queen isabella. was for a time spanish ambassador to berlin, and later to france, where he died in paris. he wrote much upon such questions as the catholic church and socialism. {247b} perin, henri charles xavier (1815), a belgium economist, born at mons; became an advocate at brussels and also professor of political economy in that city. his book _de la richesse dans les societes chretiennes_ appeared in paris in 2 volumes in 1861. {247c} le play, pierre guillaume frederic (1806-1882). born at honfleur. he directed the organization of the paris international exhibitions of 1855 and 1867. he wrote many books. his _la reforme sociale en france deduite de l'observation comparee des peuples europeens_ was published in two volumes in 1864. {247d} riehl, wilhelm heinrich (1823-1897). a well-known author; born at biebrich-am-rhein, died in munich. he was associated with several german newspapers, and edited from 1848 to 1851 the _nassauische allgemeine zeitung_, from 1851 to 1853 the _augsburger allgemeine zeitung_, and afterwards became a professor of literature at munich. in 1885 he became the director of the bavarian national museum. he wrote many books, the one referred to by lord acton having been published in 1851 under the title of _die burgerliche gesellschaft_. {248a} sismondi, jean charles leonard sismonde de (1773-1842), the distinguished historian of the italian republics, was born at geneva of an italian family originally from pisa. he resided for a time in england. his famous book the _histoire des republiques italiennes de moyen-age_ appeared between 1807 and 1818 in 16 volumes. his _etudes sur les constitutions des peuples libres_, was one of many other books. {248b} rossi, pellegrino luigi odoardo (1787-1848). an italian publicist; born at carrara. keenly sympathized with the french revolution and served under murat in the hundred days, after which he fled to geneva. in later years he became a nationalized frenchman, occupied a chair of constitutional law, and finally became a peer. as comte rossi he went on a special embassy to rome. he was assassinated in that city during the troubles of 1848. his _traite du droit constitutionnel_ appeared in 2 volumes. {248c} barante, aimable guillaume prosper brugiere, baron de (1782-1868), historian and politician, was born at riom. he was made a counciller of state by louis xviii in 1815, and a peer of france in 1819. he was elected a member of the french academy in 1828. under louis philippe he became ambassador first at turin and afterwards at st. petersburg. after the revolution of 1848 he devoted himself entirely to literature. he wrote many historical and literary studies, and translated the works of schiller into french. his _vie politique de royer-collard_ has several times been reprinted. {249a} duvergier de hauranne, prosper (1798-1881), was a distinguished french publicist, born at rouen. he was parliamentary deputy for sancerre in 1831 and took part in most of the political struggles of the following twenty years. he was exiled from france at the time of the _coup d'etat_, but returned during the reign of napoleon iii. henceforth he devoted himself exclusively to historical studies. his _histoire du gouvernement parlementaire en france_, published in 1870, secured his election to the french academy. {249b} madison, james (1751-1836). the fourth president of the united states; born at port conway, virginia. acted with jay and hamilton in the convention which framed the constitution and wrote with them _the federalist_. he had two terms of office--between 1809 and 1817--as president. he died at montpelier, virginia. his _debates of the congress of confederation_ was published in elliot's "debates on the state conventions," 4 vols., philadelphia, 1861. {249c} hamilton, alexander (1757-1804). a great american statesman, who served in washington's army, and after the war became eminent as a lawyer in new york. he wrote fifty-one out of the eighty-five essays of _the federalist_. he was appointed secretary of the treasury to the united states in 1789. he was mortally wounded in a duel by aaron burr in 1804. his influence upon the american constitution gives him a great place in the annals of the republic. {249d} calhoun, john campbell (1782-1850). an american statesman; born in abbeville county, south carolina and studied at yale. as a member of congress he supported the war with great britain in 1812-15. he was twice vice-president of the united states. he died at washington. a _disquisition on government_ and a _discourse on the constitution and government of the united states_ were written in the last months of his life. his _collected works_ appeared in 1853-4. {250a} dumont, pierre etienne louis (1759-1829). a great publicist; born in geneva, and principally known in england by his association with bentham, to whom he acted as an editor and interpreter. lived much in paris, st. petersburg, and, above all, in london, where he knew fox, sheridan, and other famous men, and taught the children of lord shelburne. dumont's _sophismes anarchiques_ appears in bentham's _collected works_ as _anarchical fallacies_. {250b} quinet, edgar (1803-1875). french historian and philosopher; born at borg and died in paris. his epic poem of _ahasuerus_ was placed upon the index. of his many books his _la revolution francaise_ is the best known. it was written in switzerland, where he was an exile during the reign of napoleon iii. he returned to france in 1870. {250c} stein, lorenz von (1815-1890). writer on economics, studied in kiel and in jena. in 1855 he became professor of international law in vienna. he wrote books on statecraft and international law. his work entitled _der sozialismus und kommunismus des heutigen frankreich_ appeared in leipzig in 1843. {251a} lassalle, ferdinand (1825-1864), the famous social democrat, was of jewish birth; born at breslau. he took part in the revolution of 1848 and received six months' imprisonment. he was wounded in a duel at geneva over a love affair and died two days later. his _system der erworbenen rechte_ appeared in 1861. {251b} thonissen, jean joseph (1817-1891). a distinguished jurist; born in belgium. he studied at liege and in paris; became a professor of the catholic university of louvain; afterwards became a minister of state. of his many works his _socialisme depuis l'antiquite jusqu'a la constitution francaise de 1852_ is best known. {251c} considerant, victor (1808-1894). born at salins, and, after the revolution of 1848, entered the chamber of deputies. he crossed to america to found a colony in texas, but ruined himself by the experiment. he returned to france in 1869. he was the author of many socialistic treatises. {251d} roscher, wilhelm (1817-1894), economist, was born in hanover. held a chair first in gottingen and afterwards in leipzig, where he died. his _geschichte der nationalokonomik in deutschland_ appeared in munich in 1874. {251e} mill, john stuart (1806-1873), the famous publicist and author, was born in london, and educated by his father, james mill (1773-1836). he served in the india office, 1823-58; he was m.p. for westminster, 186568. his works include the _principles of political economy_, 1848; the _essay on liberty_, 1859, and the _system of logic_, which first appeared in 1843. {252a} coleridge, samuel taylor (1772-1834), poet and critic, was born at ottery st. mary, devonshire; educated at christ's hospital, london, and at jesus college, cambridge. in the volume of _lyrical ballads_ by wordsworth of 1798 coleridge contributed the _ancient mariner_, and he was to make his greatest reputation by this and other poems. his best prose work was his _biographia literaria_ (1817). his _aids to reflection_ was first published in 1825. {252b} radowitz, joseph maria von (1797-1853). a prussian general and statesman; born in blankenberg and died in berlin. fought in the napoleonic wars and was wounded at the battle of leipzig. afterwards served as ambassador to various german courts. he wrote several treatises bearing upon current affairs, and his _fragments_ form vols. iv and v of his _collected works_ in 5 volumes, which were issued in berlin in 1852-53. {252c} gioberti, vincent (1801-1852). an italian statesman and philosopher; born in turin, where he afterwards became professor of theology. was for a time court chaplain, but his liberal views led to exile, and he retired first to paris, then to brussels. afterwards became famous as a neo-catholic with his attempt to combine faith with science and art, and urged the independence and the unity of italy. his _jesuite moderne_, published in 1847, created a sensation. after some years of home politics he was appointed by king victor emmanuel as ambassador to paris. it is noteworthy in the light of lord acton's recommendation of his _pensieri_ that his works have been placed on the index. {253a} humboldt, friedrich heinrich alexander baron von (1769-1859), the great naturalist, was born and died in berlin, and studied at frankforton-the-oder, berlin and gottingen; he spent five years (1799-1804) in exploring south america, and in 1829 travelled through central asia. his _kosmos_ appeared between 1845 and 1858 in 4 volumes. {253b} de candolle, alphonse de (1806-1893). the son of the celebrated botanist, augustin pyramus de candolle, and was himself a professor of that science at geneva. his _histoire des sciences et des savants depuis deux siecles_ appeared in 1873. {253c} darwin, charles robert (1809-1882), the great naturalist and discoverer of natural selection, was born at shrewsbury, where he was educated at the grammar school, at edinburgh university, and at christ's college, cambridge. his most famous book, _the origin of species by means of natural selection_, was first published in 1859. {253d} littre, maximilien paul emile (1801-1884), the famous lexicographer whose _dictionnaire de la langue francaise_ gave him a world-wide reputation. he was born in paris. he associated himself with auguste comte and the _positive philosophy_, and contributed many volumes in support of comte's standpoint. {253e} cournot, antoine augustin (1801-1877). born at gray in savoy; wrote many mathematical treatises. his _traite de l'enchainement des idees fondamentales dans les sciences et dans l'histoire_ was published in 2 volumes. {254} this was a most comprehensive addition, and fully makes up for the abrupt termination of the list of the hundred best books with two omissions. the omission of the book numbered 88 will also have been remarked. there are probably a hundred "monatschriften der wissenschaftlichen vereine" or magazines of scientific societies issued in germany. sperling's _zeitschriften-adressbuch_ gives more than two columns of these. {260a} the bible can be best read in paragraph form from the eversley edition, published by the macmillans, or from the temple bible, issued by j. m. dent--the latter an edition for the pocket. the translation of 1610 is literature and has made literature. the revised translation of our own day has neither characteristic. something can be said for the douay bible in this connexion. it was published in douay in the same year as the protestant version appeared--1610. certain words from it, such as "threnes" for "lamentations" as the threnes of jeremiah, have a poetical quality that deserved survival. {260b} the iliad may be read in a hundred verse translations of which those by pope and cowper are the best known. both these may be found in bohn's libraries (g. bell & sons); but the prose translation for which mr. lang and his friends are responsible (macmillan) is for our generation far and away the best introduction to homer for the non-grecian. {261a} under the title of "the athenian drama," george allen has published three fine volumes of the works of the greek dramatists. {261b} dryden's translation of virgil has been followed by many others both in prose and verse. there was one good prose version by c. davidson recently issued in laurie's classical library. an interesting translation of virgil's _georgics_ into english verse was recently made by lord burghclere and published by john murray. the young student, however, will do well to approach virgil through dryden. he will find the book in the chandos classics, or superbly printed in professor saintsbury's edition of _dryden's works_, vol. xiv. {261c} there have been many translations of catullus. one, by sir richard burton, was issued by leonard smithers in 1894. in bohn's library there is a prose translation by walter k. kelly. professor robinson ellis made a verse translation that has been widely praised. grant allen translated the attis in 1892. on the whole, the english verse translation by sir theodore martin made in 1861 (blackwood & son) is far and away the best suited for a first acquaintance with this the 'tenderest of roman poets.' {261d} horace has been made the subject of many translations. perhaps there are fifty now available. john conington's edition of his complete works, two volumes (bell), is well known. the best introduction to horace for the young student is in sir theodore martin's translation, two volumes (blackwood), and a volume by the same author entitled _horace_ in "ancient classics for english readers" (blackwood) is a charming little book. {262a} dante's _divine comedy_ as translated by henry francis cary (17721844) has been described by mr. ruskin as better reading than milton's "paradise lost." james russell lowell, with true patriotism, declared that his countrymen longfellow's translation (routledge) was the best. something may be said for the prose translation by dr. john carlyle of the _inferno_ (bell) and for mr. a. j. butler's prose translation of the whole of the _divine comedy_ in three volumes (macmillan). other translations which have had a great vogue are by wright and dean plumptre. the best books on dante are those by dr. edward moore (clarendon press). cary's translation can be obtained in one volume in bohn's library (bell) or in the chandos classics (warne). {262b} i contend that while most of the poets are self-contained in a single volume, shakspere's plays are best enjoyed as separate entities. certainly each of them has a library attached to it, and it is quite profitable to read hamlet in mr. horace howard furness's edition (lippincott) with a multitude of criticisms of the play bound up with the text of hamlet. but hamlet should be read first in the temple shakspere (dent) or in the arden shakspere (methuen). to this last there is an admirable introduction by professor dowden. {262c} chaucer's _canterbury tales_ should be read in mr. alfred w. pollard's edition, which forms two volumes of the "eversley library" (macmillan). the "tales" may be obtained in cheaper form in the _chaucer_ of the aldine poets (bell), of which i have grateful memories, having first read "chaucer" in these little volumes. the enthusiast will obtain the complete works of chaucer edited for the clarendon press by professor w. w. skeat. {263a} fitzgerald's _omar khayyam_ can be obtained in its four versions, each of which has its merits, only from the macmillans, who publish it in many forms. the edition in the golden treasury series may be particularly commended. the present writer has written an introduction to a sixpenny edition of the first version. it is published by william heinemann. {263b} goethe's _faust_ has been translated in many forms. certainly anster's version (sampson low) is the most vivacious. anna swanwick, sir theodore martin and bayard taylor's translations have about equal merit. {263c} shelley's _poetical works_ should be read in the one volume issued in green cloth by the macmillans, with an introduction by edward dowden, or in the oxford poets (henry froude), with an introduction by h. buxton forman, but perhaps the best edition is that of the clarendon press with an introduction by thomas hutchinson. mr. forman's library edition of _shelley's complete works_ is the desire of all collectors. {263d} _byron's poetical works_, edited by ernest coleridge, form seven volumes of john murray's edition of byron's _works_ in thirteen volumes. there is not a good one-volume byron. i particularly commend the threevolume edition (george newnes). {264a} wordsworth may be read in his entirety in the sixteen volumes of _prose and poetry_ edited by william knight in the eversley library (macmillan). the same publisher issues an admirable _wordsworth_ in one volume, edited, with an introduction by john morley. but the first approach to wordsworth's verse should be made through matthew arnold's _select poems_ in the golden treasury series (macmillan). {264b} _keats's works_ are issued in one volume in the oxford poets (froude), and in five shilling volumes by gowans and gray of glasgow. mr. buxton forman's annotations to this cheap edition exceed in value those attached to his more expensive "library edition," which, however, as with the _shelley_, in eight volumes, is out of print. {264c} the four volumes of burns, with an introduction by w. e. henley, are pleasant to read. they are published by jack, of edinburgh. the best single-volume _burns_ is that in the globe library (macmillan), with an introduction by alexander smith. {264d} there is no rival to the one-volume edition of _coleridge's poems_, with an introduction by j. dykes campbell, published by macmillan. mr. dykes campbell's biography of coleridge should also be read. the prose works of coleridge are obtainable in bohn's library. the fortunate book lover has many in pickering editions. {264e} _cowper's complete works_ are acquired for a modest sum of the second-hand bookseller in southey's sixteen-volume edition. the two best one-volume issues of the _poems_ are the globe library edition with an introduction by canon benham (macmillan), and _cowper's complete poems_ with an introduction by j. c. bailey (methuen). the best of the letters are contained in a volume in the golden treasury series, with an introduction by mrs. oliphant. _the complete letters of cowper_, edited by thomas wright, have been published by hodder & stoughton in four volumes. {265a} _crabbe's works_, in eight volumes, with biography by his son, may be obtained very cheaply from the second-hand book seller. with all the merits of both _works_ and _life_ they have not been reprinted satisfactorily. the only good modern edition of _crabbe's poems_ is in three volumes published by the cambridge university press, edited by a. w. ward. {265b} the best one-volume _tennyson_ is issued by the macmillans, who still hold certain copyrights. the library edition of _tennyson_, with the biography included in the twelve volumes, is a desirable acquisition. {265c} not all the sixteen volumes of the library edition of _browning_ pay for perusal. the most convenient form is that of the two-volume edition (smith, elder & co.), with notes by augustine birrell. {265d} _milton's poetical works_ as annotated by david masson (macmillan) make the standard library edition, and the same publishers have given us the best one-volume _milton_ in the globe library, with an introduction by professor masson, milton's one effective biographer. {266a} _the arabian nights' entertainments_ is first introduced to us all as a children's story-book. tennyson has placed on record his own early memories:- "in sooth it was a goodly time, for it was in the golden prime of good haroun alraschid." but the collector of the hundred best books will do well to read the _arabian nights_ in the translation by edward william lane, edited by stanley lane poole, in 4 volumes, for george bell & sons. {266b} the most satisfactory translation of cervantes's great romance is that made by john ormesby, revised and edited by james fitzmaurice-kelly, published by gowans & gray in 4 shilling volumes. {266c} _the pilgrim's progress_ is presented in a hundred forms. the present writer first read it in a penny edition. it should be possessed by the book-lover in a volume of the cambridge english classics, in which _grace abounding_ and _the pilgrim's progress_ are given together, edited by dr. john brown, and published by the cambridge university press. {266d} schoolboys, notwithstanding macaulay, usually know but few good books, but every schoolboy knows defoe's _robinson crusoe_ in one form or another. the maker of a library will prefer it as a volume of defoe's _works_ (j. m. dent), or as volume vii of defoe's _novels and miscellaneous works_ (bell & sons). there are many good shilling editions of the book by itself, but defoe should be read in many of his works and particularly in _moll flanders_. {267a} as with _robinson crusoe_, _gulliver's travels_ can be obtained in many cheap forms, but it is well that it should be obtained as volume viii of _swift's prose works_, published in bohn's libraries by george bell & sons. there has not been a really good edition of swift's works since scott's monumental book. {267b} _clarissa_ should be read in nine of the twenty volumes of richardson's novels, published by chapman & hall--a very dainty well-printed book. "i love these large, still books," said lord tennyson. {267c} the greatest of all novels, _tom jones_, is obtainable in several library editions of fielding's _works_. a cheap well-printed form is that of the _works of henry fielding_ in 12 volumes, published by gay & bird. here _the story of tom jones a foundling_ is in 4 volumes. the book is in 2 volumes in bohn's library--an excellent edition. {267d} johnson's _rasselas_ has frequently been reprinted, but there is no edition for a book-lover at present in the bookshops. it is included in _classic tales_ in a volume of bohn's standard library. the wise course is to look out for one of the earlier editions with copper plates that are constantly to be found on second-hand bookstalls. but johnson's _works_ should be bought in a fine octavo edition. {268a} goldsmith's _vicar of wakefield_ should be possessed in the edition which mr. hugh thomson has illustrated and mr. austin dobson has edited for the macmillans. there is a good edition of goldsmith's _works_ in bohn's library. {268b} sterne's _sentimental journey_ is also a volume for the secondhand bookstall, although that and the equally fine _tristram shandy_ may be obtained in many pretty forms. i have two editions of sterne's books, but they are both fine old copies. {268c} there are two very good editions of peacock's delightful romances. _nightmare abbey_ forms a volume of j. m. dent's edition in 9 volumes, edited by dr. garnett; and the whole of peacock's remarkable stories are contained in a single volume of newnes' "thin paper classics." {268d} sir walter scott's novels are available in many forms equally worthy of a good library. the best is the edition published by jack of edinburgh. the temple library of scott (j. m. dent) may be commended for those who desire pocket volumes, while mr. andrew lang's introductions give an added value to an edition published by the macmillans, scott's twenty-eight novels are indispensable to every good library, and every reader will have his own favourite. {268e} balzac's novels are obtainable in a good translation by ellen marriage, edited by george saintsbury, published in new york by the macmillan company and in london by j. m. dent. {269a} a translation of dumas' novels in 48 volumes is published by dent. _the three musketeers_ is in 2 volumes. there are many cheap one volume editions. {269b} thackeray's _vanity fair_ is pleasantly read in the edition of his novels published by j. m. dent. his original publishers, smith, elder & co., issue his works in many forms. {269c} the best edition of charlotte bronte's _villette_ is that in the "haworth edition," published by smith, elder & co., with an introduction by mrs. humphry ward. {269d} charles dickens' novels, of which _david copperfield_ is generally pronounced to be the best, should be obtained in the "oxford india paper dickens" (chapman & hall and henry frowde). a serviceable edition is that published by the macmillans, with introductions by charles dickens's son, but that edition still fails of _our mutual friend_ and _the mystery of edwin drood_, of which the copyright is not yet exhausted. {269e} anthony trollope's novels are being reissued, in england by john lane and george bell & sons, and in america in a most attractive form by dodd, mead & co. all three publishers have a good edition of _barchester towers_, trollope's best novel. {269f} boccaccio's _decameron_ is in my library in many forms--in 3 volumes of the villon society's publications, translated by john payne; in 2 handsome volumes issued by laurence & bullen; and in the extra volumes of bohn's library. there is a pretty edition available published by gibbons in 3 volumes. {270a} emily bronte's _wuthering heights_ forms a volume of the haworth edition of the bronte novels, published by smith, elder & co. it has an introduction by mrs. humphry ward. {270b} charles reade's _cloister and the hearth_ is available in many forms. the pleasantest is in 4 volumes issued by chatto & windus, with an introduction by sir walter besant. there is a remarkable shilling edition issued by collins of glasgow. {270c} victor hugo's _les miserables_ may be most pleasantly read in the 10 volumes, translated by m. jules gray, published by j. m. dent & co. {270d} mrs. gaskell's _cranford_ can be obtained in the six volume edition of that writer's works published by smith, elder & co., with introductions by dr. a. w. ward; in a volume illustrated by hugh thomson, with an introduction by mrs. ritchie, published by the macmillans, or in the world's classics (henry frowde), where there is an additional chapter entitled, "the cage at cranford." {270e} the translation of george sand's _consuelo_ in my library is by frank h. potter, 4 volumes, dodd, mead & co., new york. {270f} lever's _charles o'malley_ i have as volumes of the _complete works_ published by downey. there is a pleasant edition in nelson's "pocket library." {271a} macaulay's _history of england_ is available in many attractive forms from the original publishers, the longmans. there is a neat thin paper edition for the pocket in 5 volumes issued by chatto & windus. {271b} for carlyle's _past and present_ i recommend the centenary edition of carlyle's _works_, published by chapman & hall. there is an annotated edition of _sartor resartus_ by j. a. s. barrett (a. & c. black), two annotated editions of _the french-revolution_, one by dr. holland rose (g. bell & sons), and an other by c. r. l. fletcher, 3 volumes (methuen), and an annotated edition of _the cromwell letters_, edited by s. c. lomax, 3 volumes (methuen). no publisher has yet attempted an annotated edition of _past and present_, but sir ernest clarke's translation of _jocelyn of bragelond_ (chatto & windus) may be commended as supplemental to carlyle's most delightful book. {271c} motley's _works_ are available in 9 volumes of a library edition published by john murray. a cheaper issue of the _dutch republic_ is that in 3 volumes of the world's classics, to which i have contributed a biographical introduction. {271d} for many years the one standard edition of _gibbon_ was that published by john murray, in 8 volumes, with notes by dean milman and others. it has been superseded by professor bury's annotated edition in 7 volumes (methuen). {272a} plutarch's _lives_, translated by a. stewart and george long, form 4 volumes of bohn's standard library. there is a handy volume for the pocket in dent's temple classics in 10 volumes, translated by sir thomas north. {272b} montaigne's _essays_ i have in three forms; in the tudor translations (david nutt), where there is an introduction to the 6 volumes of sir thomas north's translation by the rt. hon. george wyndham; in dent's temple classics, where john florio's translation is given in 5 volumes. a much valued edition is that in 3 volumes, the translation by charles cotton, published by reeves & turner in 1877. {272c} steele's essays were written for the _tatler_ and the _spectator_ side by side with those of addison. the best edition of _the spectator_ is that published in 8 volumes, edited by george a. aitken for nimmo, and of _the tatler_ that published in 4 volumes, edited also by mr. aitken for duckworth & co. {272d} lamb's _essays of elia_ can be read in a volume of the eversley library (macmillan), edited by canon ainger. the standard edition of lamb's _works_ is that edited by mr. e. v. lucas, in 7 volumes, for methuen. mr. lucas's biography of lamb has superseded all others. {272e} thomas de quincey's _opium eater_ may be obtained as a volume of newnes's thin paper classics, in the world's classics, or in dent's everyman's library. but the _complete works_ of de quincey, in 16 volumes, edited by david mason and published by a. & c. black, should be in every library. {273a} william hazlitt never received the treatment he deserved until mr. j. m. dent issued in 1903 his _collected works_, in 13 volumes, edited by a. r. waller and arnold glover. of cheap reprints of hazlitt i commend _the spirit of the age_, _winterslow_ and _sketches and essays_, three separate volumes of the world's classics (frowde). {273b} george borrow's _lavengro_ should only be read in mr. john murray's edition, as it there contains certain additional and valuable matter gathered from the original manuscript by william i. knapp. the library edition of borrow, in 6 volumes (murray), may be particularly commended. {273c} emerson's _complete works_ are published by the routledges in 4 volumes, in which _representative men_ may be found in vol. ii. some may prefer the eversley library _emerson_, which has an introduction by john morley. there are many cheap editions of about equal value. {273d} lander's _imaginary conversations_ form six volumes of the complete _landor_, edited by charles g. crump, and published in 10 volumes by j. m. dent. {273e} matthew arnold's _essays in criticism_ is published by macmillan. it also forms vol. iii of the library edition of his _works_ in 15 volumes. a "second series" has less significance. {273f} _the works of herodotus_, published by the macmillans, translated by george c. macaulay, is the best edition for the general reader. canon rawlinson's _herodotus_, published by john murray, has had a longer life, but is now only published in an abridged form. {274a} james howell's _familiar letters_, or _epistolae ho elianae_, should be read in the edition published in 2 volumes by david nutt, with an introduction by joseph jacobs. {274b} _the history of civilization_, by henry thomas buckle, is in my library in the original 2 volumes published by parker in 1857. it is now issued in 3 volumes in longman's silver library, and in 3 volumes in the world's classics. {274c} _the history of tacitus_ should be read in the translation by alfred john church and william jackson brodripp. it is published by the macmillans. {274d} _our village_, by mary russell mitford, is a collection of essays which in their completest form may be obtained in two volumes of bohn's library (bell). the essential essays should be possessed in the edition published by the macmillans--_our village_, by mary russell mitford, with an introduction by anne thackeray ritchie, and one hundred illustrations by hugh thomson. {274e} green's _short history of the english people_ is published by the macmillans in 1 volume, or illustrated in 4 volumes. the book was enlarged, but disimproved, under the title of _a history of the english people_, in 4 volumes, uniform with the _conquest of england_ and the _making of england_ by the same author. {275a} taine's _ancient regime_ is a good introduction to the conditions which made the french revolution. it forms the first volume of _les origines de la france contemporaine_, and may be read in a translation by john durand, published by dalby, isbister & co. in 1877. {275b} _the life of napoleon_ has been written by many pens, in our own day most competently by dr. holland rose (2 vols. bell); but a good account of the emperor, indispensable for some particulars and an undoubted classic, is that by de bourrienne, napoleon's private secretary, published in an english translation, in 4 volumes, by bentley in 1836. {275c} _democracy in america_, by alexis de tocqueville, may be had in a translation by henry reeve, published in 2 volumes by the longmans. read also _a history of the united states_ by c. benjamin andrews, 2 volumes (smith, elder), and above all the _american commonwealth_, by james bryce, 2 volumes (macmillan). {275d} _the compleat angler_ of isaac walton may be purchased in many forms. i have a fine library edition edited by that prince of living anglers, mr. r. b. marston, called the lea and dove edition, this being the 100th edition of the book (sampson low, 1888). i have also an edition edited by george a. b. dewar, with an introduction by sir edward grey and etchings by william strang and d. y. cameron, 2 volumes (freemantle), and a 1 volume edition published by ingram & cooke in the illustrated library. {276a} there are many editions of gilbert white's _natural history of selbourne_ to be commended. three that are in my library are (1) edited with an introduction and notes by l. c. miall and w. warde fowler (methuen); (2) edited with notes by grant allen, illustrated by edmund h. new (john lane); (3) rearranged and classified under subjects by charles mosley (elliot stock). {276b} of _boswell's life of johnson_ there are innumerable editions. the special enthusiast will not be happy until he possesses dr. birkbeck hill's edition in 6 volumes (clarendon press). the most satisfactory 1 volume edition is that published on thin paper by henry frowde. i have in my library also a copy of the first edition of _boswell_ in 2 volumes. it was published by henry baldwin in 1791. {276c} the best edition of lockhart's _life of scott_ is that published in 10 volumes by jack of edinburgh. readers should beware of abridgments, although one of these was made by lockhart himself. the whole eighty-five chapters are worth reading, even in the 1 volume edition published by a. & c. black. {276d} _pepys's diary_ can be obtained in bohn's library or in newnes' thin paper classics, but pepys should only be read under mr. h. b. wheatley's guidance. a cheap edition of his book, in 8 volumes, has recently been published by george bell & sons. i have no. 2 of the large paper edition of this book, no. 1 having gone to pepys's own college of brazenose, where the pepys cypher is preserved. {277a} until recently one knew walpole's _letters_ only through peter cunningham's edition, in 9 volumes (bentley), and this has still exclusive matter for the enthusiast, cunningham's introduction to wit; but the clarendon press has now published walpole's _letters_, edited by mrs. paget toynbee, in 16 volumes, or in 8. here are to be found more letters than in any previous edition. {277b} _the memoirs of count de gramont_, by anthony, count hamilton, can be obtained in splendid type, unannotated, in an edition published by arthur l. humphreys. a well-illustrated and well-edited edition is that published by bickers of london and scribner of new york, edited by allan fea. {277c} gray's _letters_, with poems and life, form 4 volumes in macmillan's eversley library, edited by edmund gosse. {277d} you can obtain southey's _nelson_, originally written for murray's pocket library as a publisher's commission, in one well-printed volume, with introduction by david hannay, published by william heinemann. it should, however, be supplemented in the _life_ by captain mahan (2 volumes, sampson low & co.), or by professor laughton's _nelson and his companion in arms_ (george allen). {277e} moore's _life and letters of byron_ is published by john murray in 6 volumes. it is best purchased second-hand in an old set. moore's book must be supplemented by the 6 volumes of _correspondence_ edited by rowland prothero for mr. murray. {278a} sir george trevelyan says in his _early history of charles james fox_ that hogg's _life of shelley_ is "perhaps the most interesting book in our language that has never been republished." the reproach has been in some slight measure removed by a cheap reprint in small type issued by the routledges in 1906. the reader should, however, secure a copy of the first edition, 2 volumes, 1857. professor dowden, in his _life of shelley_, 1886, uses the book freely. {278b} "what is the best book you have ever read?" emerson is said to have asked george eliot when she was about twenty-two years of age and residing, unknown, near coventry. "rousseau's _confessions_," was the reply. "i agree with you," emerson answered. but the book should not be read in a translation. the completest translation is one in 2 volumes published by nicholls. there is a more abridged translation by gibbons in 4 volumes. {278c} _the life of carlyle_, by james anthony froude, which created so much controversy upon its publication, is worthy of a cheap edition, which does not, however, seem to be forthcoming. the book appeared in 4 volumes, _the first forty years_ in 1882 and _life in london_ in 1884. it had been preceded by _reminiscences_ in 1881. every one should read the _letters and memorials of jane welsh carlyle_, 3 volumes, 1883. all the 9 volumes are published by the longmans. {279a} samuel rogers' _table talk_ has been given us in two forms, first as _recollections of the table talk of samuel rogers_, edited by alexander dyce, 1856, and second as _reminiscences of samuel rogers_, 1859. the _recollections_ were reprinted in handsome form by h. a. rogers, of new southgate, in 1887, and the material was combined in a single volume in 1903 by g. h. powell (r. brimley johnson). i have the four books, and delight in the many good stories they contain. {279b} _the confessions of st. augustine_ may be commended in many small and handy editions. one, with an introduction by alice meynell, was published in 1900. the most beautifully printed modern edition is that issued by arthur humphreys in his classical series. {279c} amiel's _journal_ is a fine piece of introspection. a translation by mrs. humphry ward is published in 2 volumes by the macmillans. de senancour's _obermann_, translated by a. e. waite (wellby), should be read in this connexion. {279d} _the meditations of marcus aurelius_, translated by george long, appears as a volume of bohn's library, and more beautifully printed in the library of arthur humphreys. there are many other good translations--one by john jackson, issued in 1906 by the clarendon press, has great merit. {279e} george henry lewes's _life of goethe_ has gone through many editions and remains a fascinating book, although it may be supplemented by the translation of duntzer's _life of goethe_, 2 volumes, macmillan, and bielschowsky's _life of goethe_, vols. i and ii (putnams). {280a} _the life of lessing_, by james sime, is not a great biography, but it is an interesting and most profitable study of a noble man. lessing will be an inspiration greater almost than any other of the moderns for those who are brought in contact with his fine personality. the book is in 2 volumes, published by the trubners. {280b} you can read benjamin franklin's _autobiography_ in 1 volume (dent), or in his collected works--_memoirs of the life and writings of benjamin franklin_, edited by his grandson, william temple franklin, 6 volumes (colburn), 1819. there have been at least two expensive reprints of his _works_ of late years. {280c} _the greville memoirs_ were published in large octavo form in the first place. much scandal was omitted from the second edition. they are now obtainable in 8 volumes of longmans' silver library. they form an interesting glimpse into the court life of the later guelphs. {280d} it has been complained of john forster's _life of charles dickens_ that there is too much forster and not enough dickens. yet it is the only guide to the life-story of the greatest of the victorian novelists. is most pleasant to read in the 2 volumes of the gadshill edition, published by chapman & hall. {280e} _the early diary of frances burney_, afterwards madame d'arblay, edited by annie raine ellis, has just been reprinted in two volumes of bohn's library (bell). we owe also to mr. austen dobson a fine reprint of the later and more important _diaries_, which he has edited in 6 volumes for the macmillans. {281a} the _apologia pro vita sua_ of john henry newman is one of the volumes of cardinal newman's _collected works_ issued by the longmans. it is the most interesting, and is perhaps the most destined to survive, of all the books of theological controversy of the nineteenth century. {281b} there is practically but one edition of the _paston letters_, that edited by james gairdner, of the public record office, and published by the firm of archibald constable. the luxurious library edition issued by chatto & windus in 6 volumes should be acquired if possible. {281c} _the autobiography of benvenuto cellini_ is best known in the translation of thomas roscoe in bohn's library. mr. j. addington symonds, however, made a new translation, issued in two fine volumes by nimmo. {281d} the _religio medici_ of sir thomas browne can be obtained in many forms, although the well-to-do collector will be satisfied only with the edition edited by simon wilkin. the book is admirably edited by w. a. greenhill for the "golden treasury series." the world's best books a key to the treasures of literature by frank parsons third edition revised and enlarged boston little, brown, and company 1893 _copyright, 1889, 1891, 1893,_ by frank parsons. university press: john wilson and son, cambridge, u.s.a. preface to the third edition. at the request of the publishers the following statement is made as a substitute for the former indefinite arrangement in respect to authorship. the plan and composition of the book were mine; the work of my colleagues, f. e. crawford and h. t. richardson, consisting of criticism, verifications, and assistance in gathering materials for the appendix,--services of great value to me, and of which i wish to express my high appreciation. a few additions have been made in this edition, and the book has been carefully revised throughout. frank parsons. boston, january, 1893. preface to the second edition. the public and the critics have met us with a welcome far more cordial than we had dared to expect, though not more so, of course, than we hoped for. when did a thing such as that ever happen? we are glad to discover that in forming our expectations we underrated their discernment, or our own merit (probably not the latter, judging by the remarks of two or three of our critics), and in real earnest we are grateful for their high appreciation of our work. some few--a very few--have found fault with us, and our thanks are due to them also; for honest, kindly, intelligent criticism is one of the most powerful means of growth. the fact that this little volume is not intended as an _infallible_ guide, or as anything more than a _stimulus_ to seek the best, and a _suggestion_ of the method of guiding one's self and one's children, has been missed by some, though it appears distinctly in various places through the book, and is involved in what we deem the most useful part of our work,--the remarks following table v., wherein we endeavor to show the student how he may learn to estimate the value of a book for himself. so far were we from wishing to _decide_ matters which manifestly vary with the wants and capacities of each individual, that we emphatically advised the reader not to accept the opinions of any one as final, but to form his own judgments. some have failed to perceive that, _in ranking the books, we have considered, not merely their intrinsic merit, but also the needs and abilities of the average english reader_, making a compound test by which to judge, not the relative greatness of the books simply, but their relative claims on the attention of the ordinary reader. this also was set forth, as we thought, quite distinctly, and was in fact understood by nearly every one, but not by all, for some have objected to the order of the books in table i., affirming, for example, that the "federalist" and bryce's "american commonwealth" are far _superior_ to "our country," and should be placed above it. that would be true if intrinsic greatness alone decided the matter. but the average reader with his needs and abilities is a factor in the problem, as well as the book with its subject and style. now, the ordinary reader's time and his mental power are both limited. "our country" is briefer and simpler than the others, and its contents are of vital interest to every american, of even more vital interest than the discussions of the "federalist" or bryce; and so, although as a work of art it is inferior to these, it must rank above them in this book, because of its superior claims upon the attention of the average reader. in a similar manner other questions of precedence are determined on the principles contained in the remarks on table v. it is not pretended, however, that the arrangement is perfect even in respect to our own tests, especially among the authors on the second shelf of table i. the difficulties of making a true list may be illustrated by the fact that one critic of much ability affirms that marietta holley ought to head the tenth column, as the best humorist of all time; another says it is absurd to place her above the roman wits juvenal and lucian; and a third declares with equal positiveness that she ought not to appear in the list at all. we differ from them all, and think the high place we have given miss holley is very near the truth. communications have been received from oliver wendell holmes, marietta holley, senator hoar, phillips brooks, bishop j. h. vincent, brooke herford, francis parkman, ex-gov. john d. long, gen. benj. f. butler, t. w. higginson, and many other eminent persons, bringing to us a number of suggestions, most of which we have adopted to the great advantage of our book, as we hope and believe. we have added a number of valuable works to the lists of the first edition, and have written a new chapter on the guidance of children, the means of training them to good habits of reading, and the books best adapted to boys and girls of various ages. if any one, on noting some of the changes that have been made in this edition, feels inclined to raise the cry of inconsistency, we ask him to remember the declaration of wendell phillips, that "inconsistency is progress." there is room for still further inconsistency, we do not doubt; and criticism or suggestion will be gladly received. frank parsons. boston, january, 1891. contents. introductory remarks. purposes of the book briefly stated system in reading purposes of reading its influence on health and mind on character on beauty and accomplishments its pleasures quantity and quality of reading selection of books order of reading method of reading importance of owning the books you read effect of bad books useless books good books abbreviations used in this work note of explanation the first two shelves of the world's library (table.) remarks on table i. religion and morals poetry and the drama science biography history philosophy essays fiction oratory wit and humor fables and fairy tales travel guides miscellaneous glimpses of the great fields of thought, arranged for the purpose of securing breadth of mind (table ii.) a series of brief but very choice selections from general literature, constituting a year's course for the formation of a true literary taste (table iii.) groups i. and ii., poetry group iii., prose group iv., wit and humor a short course supplementary to the last (table iv.) what to give the children special studies the distribution of the world's great authors in time and space, with a parallel column of contemporaneous noted historic events (table v.) remarks on table v. definitions and divisions eight tests for the choice of books intrinsic merit periods of english literature the pre-shakspearian age the shakspearian age the post-shakspearian age time of milton dryden pope the novelists, historians, and scientists the greatest names of other literatures:- greece, rome, italy, france, spain, germany, persia, portugal, denmark, russia the fountains of national literatures:- homer, nibelungenlied, cid, chansons, morte d'arthur, etc. appendix i. the best thoughts of great men about books and reading appendix ii. books used in the boston public schools as supplementary reading, text-books, etc. the world's best books. introductory remarks. this book is the result of much reading and thought, teaching, lecturing, and conversation, in the direction of its subject-matter. its purpose is fivefold: _first_, to call attention to the importance of reading the best literature to the exclusion of all that is inferior, by setting forth the benefits that may be derived from the former and the injuries that are sure to result from the latter. _second_, to select the best things from all the literatures of the world; to make a survey of the whole field of literature and locate the mines most worthy of our effort, where with the smallest amount of digging we may find the richest ore; and to do this with far greater precision, definiteness, and detail than it has ever been done before. _third_, to place the great names of the world's literature in their proper relations of time and space to each other and to the great events of history,--accompanying the picture with a few remarks about the several periods of english literature and the golden age of literature in each of the great nations. _fourth_, to discuss briefly the best methods of reading, and the importance of system, quantity, quality, due proportion, and thoroughness in reading, and of the ownership of books and the order in which they should be read. _fifth_, to gather into a shining group, like a constellation of stars, the splendid thoughts of the greatest men upon these subjects. the book is meant to be a practical handbook of universal literature for the use of students, business men, teachers, and any other persons who direct the reading of others, and for the guidance of scholars in departments other than their own. 1. =system= in reading is of as much importance as it is in the business of a bank or any other mercantile pursuit. 2. =the purposes of reading= should ever be kept in mind. they are the purposes of life; namely, health, mental power, character, beauty, accomplishments, pleasure, and the knowledge which will be of use in relation to our business, domestic life, and citizenship. literature can aid the _health_, indirectly, by imparting a knowledge of the means of its attainment and preservation (as in works on physiology and hygiene); and directly, by supplying that exercise of the mind which is essential to the balance of the functions necessary to perfect health. a study of literature will develop the _mind_--the perception, memory, reason (especially true of science and philosophy), and the imagination (especially the study of poetry and science)--directly, by exercising those all-important faculties; and indirectly, by yielding a knowledge of the conditions of their existence and strength. on the other hand, the mind may be greatly injured, if not wholly destroyed, by pouring into it a flood of filth and nonsense; or by a torrent of even the best in literature, so rapid and long continued that it cannot be properly absorbed and digested. the evil effects of cramming the mind are only too often seen about us. literature can build or destroy the _character_ both directly and indirectly. poetry, religion, philosophy, fiction, biography, history,--indeed, all sorts of writings in some degree make us more sympathetic, loving, tender, noble, generous, kind, and just, or the opposite, by the simple power of exercise, if for no other reason. if we freely exercise the muscles of the arm, we shall have more vigor there. if we continually love, our power and tendency to love will grow. the poet's passion, passing the gates of the eye and ear into our souls, rouses our sympathies to kindred states of feeling. we love when he loves, and weep when he weeps; and all the while he is moulding our characters, taking from or adding to the very substance of our souls. brave words change the coward to a hero; a coward's cry chills the bravest heart. a boy who reads of crime and bravery sadly mixed by some foul traitor to the race, soon thinks that to be brave and grand he must be coarse and have the blood of villainy and rashness pulsing from his misled heart. not all the books that picture vice are harmful. if they show it in its truth, they drive us from it by its very loathsomeness; but if they gild it and plume it with pleasure and power, beware. literature, too, can give us a knowledge of the means for the development of character, and the inspiration to make the best use of these means. books of morals, religion, biography, science, poetry, and fiction especially hold these treasures. in the attainment and enrichment of _beauty_, literature has a work to do. the choicest beauty is the loveliness of soul that lights the eye and prints its virtue in the face; and as our reading moulds the mind and heart to beauty, their servants at the doorways ever bend to their instructions and put on the livery of their lords. even that beauty which is of the rounded form, the soft cheek's blooming tinge, the rosy mouth, and pearly lip, owes its debt to health; and that, as has been seen, may profit much by literature. and beyond all this we learn the means of great improvement in our comeliness,--how crooked may be changed to straight, and hollow cheeks to oval; frowns to smiles, and lean or gross to plump; ill-fitting, ill-adapted dress to beautiful attire; a shambling gait to a well-conducted walk,--and even the stupid stare of ignorance be turned to angel glances of indwelling power and interested comprehension. _accomplishments_, too, find help in written works of genius, not merely as affording a record of the best methods of acquiring any given art, but directly as supplying the substance of some of the greatest of all accomplishments,--those of inspiring eloquent conversation, and of writing clear and beautiful english. _pleasure_ manifestly is, by all these aids to beauty, health, and power, much beholden to the books we read; but more than this, the very reading of a worthy book is a delicious joy, and one that does not drain but fills the fount from which the happiness of others comes. plato, fénelon, gibbon, and a host of others name the love of books the chiefest charm and glory of their lives. 3. =the quantity and quality= of what we read should have our careful thought. whoever lives on literary husks and intoxicants, when corn and wheat and milk are just as easily within his reach, is certainly no wiser than one who treats his physical receptacle in the same way, and will as surely suffer from ill feeding in diminished vital force. indeed, he may be glad if he escapes acquiring intellectual dyspepsia or spiritual delirium tremens. even of the best of reading there may be too much as well as not enough. more than we can assimilate is waste of time and energy. besides the regulation of the _total_ quantity we read, with reference to our powers of digestion, we must watch the _relative_ amounts of all the various kinds of literary sustenance we take. a due proportion ought to be maintained by careful mixture of religious, scientific, poetic, philosophic, humorous, and other reading. a man who exercises but one small muscle all his days would violate the laws of health and power. the greatest mind is that which comes the nearest to attainment of a present perfect picture in the mind of all the universe, past, present, and to come. the greatest character is that which gets the greatest happiness for self through fullest and most powerful activities for others, and requires for its own work, existence, and delight, the least subtraction from the world's resources of enjoyment. the greatest man is he who combines in due proportion and completest harmony the fullest physical, emotional, and intellectual life. 4. =the selection= of books is of the utmost importance, in view of their influence upon character. all the reasons for care that apply to the choice of friends among the living, have equal force in reference to the dead. the same tests avail in one case as in the other,--reputation and personal observation of the words and deeds of those we think to make companions. we may at will and at slight cost have all the great and noble for our intimate friends and daily guests, who will come when we call, answer the questions we put, and go when we wish. and better yet, however long we talk to them, no other friends will be kept waiting in the anterooms, longing to take our place. our most engrossing friendship, though we keep them _always_ with us, will produce no interference with their equal friendship with all the world besides. we may associate with angels and become angelic, or with demons and become satanic. besides the difference in the nature of books, the very number of them commands a choice. in one library there are three million volumes; in the boston public library about three hundred thousand, or five hundred thousand including pamphlets. in your short life you can read but a trifling part of the world's literature. suppose you are fortunate enough to be able to read one book a week, in thirty years you would read but fifteen hundred books. use, then, every care to get the best. if it were in your equal choice to go to one of two reputed entertainments and but one, it surely would be worth your while to know their character before selecting. one might be beethoven's loveliest symphony, the other but a minstrel show. 5. =the order of our reading= must be carefully attended to. the very best books are not always to be first read. if the reader is young or of little culture, the _simplicity_ of the writing must be taken into account, for it is of no use to read a book that cannot be understood. one of mature and cultivated mind who begins a course of systematic reading may follow the order of absolute value; but a child must be supplied with easy books in each department, and, as his powers develop, with works of increasing difficulty, until he is able to grasp the most complex and abstruse. if you take up a book that is recommended to you as one of the world's best, and find it uninteresting, be sure the trouble is in you. do not reject it utterly, do not tell people you do not like it; wait a few months or years, then try it again, and it may become to you one of the most precious of books. 6. =the method= of your reading is an important factor in determining its value to you. it is in proportion to your _conquest_ of what is worthy in literature that you gain. if you pour it into your mind so fast that each succeeding wave forces the former out before its form and color have been fixed, you are not better off, but rather worse, because the process washes out the power of memory. memory depends on health, attention, repetition, reflection, association of ideas, and practice. some books should be very carefully read, looking to both thought and form; the best passages should be marked and marginal notes made; reflection should digest the best ideas, until they become a part of the tissue of your own thought; and the most beautiful and striking expressions should be verbally committed. if you saw a diamond in the sand, surely you would fix it where it might adorn your person. if you find a sparkling jewel in your reading, fix it in your heart and let it beautify your conversation. shakspeare, milton, homer, bacon, æschylus, and emerson, and nearly all the selections in table iii. should be read in this way. other books have value principally by reason of the line of thought or argument of which the whole book is an expression; such for the most part are books of history, science, and philosophy. while reading them marks or notes should be made; so that when the book is finished, the steps of thought may several times be rapidly retraced, until the force and meaning of the book becomes your own forever. still other books may be simply glanced through, it being sufficient for the purposes of the general reader to have an idea of the nature of their contents, so that he may know what he can find in them if he has need. such books to us are the koran, the works of the lesser essayists, orators, and philosophers. ruskin says that no book should be read fast; but it would be as sensible to say that we should never walk or ride fast over a comparatively uninteresting country. adaptation of method to the work in hand is the true rule. we should not read "robert elsmere" as slowly and carefully as shakspeare. as the importance of the book diminishes, the speed of our journey through it ought to increase. otherwise we give an inferior book equal attention with its superiors. 7. =own the books you read,= if possible, so that you may mark them and often refer to them. if you are able, buy the best editions, with the fullest notes and finest binding,--the more beautiful, the better. a lovely frame adds beauty to the picture. if you cannot buy the best-dressed books, get those of modest form and good large type. if pennies must be counted, get the catalogues of all the cheap libraries that are multiplying so rapidly of late,--the elzevir, bohn, morley, camelot, national, cassel, irving, chandos, people's library, world's library, etc.,--and own the books you learn to love. use the public libraries for reference, but do not rely on them for the standard literature you read. it is better far to have an eight cent bunyan, twelve cent bacon, or seven cent hamlet within your reach from day to day, and marked to suit yourself, than to read such books from the library and have to take them back. that is giving up the rich companionship of new-found friends as soon as gained. the difference between talking with a sage or poet for a few brief moments once in your lifetime, and having him daily with you as your friend and teacher is the difference between the vales and summits of this life. the immense importance of possessing the best books for your own cannot be too strongly impressed upon you, nor the value of clothing your noble friends as richly as you can. if they come to you with outward beauty, they will claim more easily their proper share of your attention and regard. get an elzevir shakspeare if you can afford no other, but purchase the splendid edition by richard grant white, if you can. even if you have to save on drink and smoke and pie-crust for the purpose, you never will regret the barter. 8. =bad books= corrupt us as bad people do. whenever they are made companions, insensibly we learn to think and feel and talk and act as they do in degree proportioned to the closeness that we hug them to our hearts. books may be bad, not only by imparting evil thoughts, awakening lust and gilding vice, but by developing a false philosophy, ignoble views of life, or errors in whatever parts of science or religion they may touch. avoid foul books as you would shun foul men, for fear you may be like them; but seek the errors out and conquer them. spend little time in following a teacher you have tested and found false, but do the testing for yourselves, and take no other person's judgment as to what is truth or error. truth is always growing; you may be the first to catch the morning light. the friend who warns you of some book's untruth may be himself in error, led by training, custom, or tradition, or unclearly seeing in the darkness of his prejudice. 9. =useless books=. many books that are not positively bad are yet mere waste of time. a wise man will not spend the capital of his life, or part with the wealth of his energies except he gets a fair equivalent. he will demand the highest market price for his time, and will not give his hours and moments--precious pieces of his life--for trash, when he can buy with them the richest treasures of three thousand years of thought. you have not time to drink the whole of human life from out the many colored bottles of our literature; will you take the rich cream, or cast that aside for the skimmed milk below, or turn it all out on the pathway and swallow the dirt and the dregs in the bottom? 10. =good books=.--=a short sermon=.--if you are a scholar, professor or lawyer, doctor or clergyman, do not stay locked in the narrow prison of your own department, but go out into the world of thought and breathe the air that comes from all the quarters of the globe. read other books than those that deal with your profession,--poetry, philosophy, and travel. get out of the valleys up on to the ridges, where you can see what relation your home bears to the rest of the world. go stand in the clamor of tongues, that you may learn that the truth is broader than any man's conception of it and become tolerant. look at the standards that other men use, and correct your own by them. learn what other thinkers and workers are doing, that you may appreciate them and aid them. learn the past, that you may know the future. do not look out upon the world through one small window; open all the doorways of your soul, let all genius and beauty come in, that your life may be bright with their glory. if you are a busy merchant, artisan, or laborer, you too can give a little time each day to books that are the best. if plato, homer, shakspeare, tennyson, or milton came to town to-day, you would not let the busiest hour prevent your catching sight of him; you would stand a half day on the street in the sun or the snow to catch but a glimpse of the famous form; but how much better to receive his spirit in the heart than only get his image on the eye! his choicest thought is yours for the asking. if you are a thoughtless boy or silly girl, trying the arts that win the matrimonial prize, remember that there are no wings that fly so high as those of sense and thought and inward beauty. remember the old song that ends,- "beauty vanish, wealth depart, wit has won the lady's heart." even as a preparation for a noble and successful courtship, the best literature is an absolute necessity. perhaps you cannot travel: humboldt, cook, and darwin, livingstone, and stanley will tell you more than you could see if you should go where they have travelled. perhaps you cannot have the finest teachers in the studies you pursue: what a splendid education one could get if he could learn philosophy with plato, kant, and spencer; astronomy with galileo, herschel, and laplace; mathematics with newton or leibniz; natural history with cuvier or agassiz; botany with gray; geology with lyell or dawson; history with bancroft; and poetry with shakspeare, milton, dante, and homer! well, those very teachers at their best are yours if you will read their books. each life is a mixture of white and black, no one is perfect; but every worthy passage and ennobling thought you read adds to the white and crowds out the black; and of what enormous import a few brief moments daily spent with noble books may be, appears when we remember that each act brings after it an infinite series of consequences. it is an awe-inspiring truth to me that with the color of my thought i tinge the stream of life to its remotest hour; that some poor brother far out on the ocean of the future, struggling to breast the billows of temptation, may by my hand be pulled beneath the waves, ruined by the influences i put in action now; that, standing here, i make the depths of all eternities to follow tremble to the music of my life: as tennyson has put it so beautifully in his "bugle song,"- "blow, let us hear the purple glens replying: blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. "o love, they die in yon rich sky, they faint on hill or field or river: _our echoes roll from soul to soul_, _and grow for ever and for ever_." how careful we should be of every moment if we had imaginative power enough to fully realize the meaning of the truth that slightly differing actions now may build results at last as wide apart as poles of opposite eternities! even idleness, the negative of goodness, would have no welcome at our door. some persons dream away two thirds of life, and deem quiescence joy; but that is certainly a sad mistake. the nearer to complete inaction we attain, the nearer we are clay and stone; the more activity we gain, that does not draw from future power, the higher up the cliffs of life we climb, and nearer to celestial life that never sleeps. let no hour go idly by that can be rendered rich and happy with a glorious bit of shakspeare, dante, or carlyle. let us never be deluded with the praise of peace, excepting that of heart and conscience clear of all remorse. it is ambition that has climbed the heights, and will through all the future. give me not the dead and hopeless calm of indolent contentment, but far rather the storm and the battle of life, with the star of my hopes above me. let me sail the central flow of the stream, and travel the tides at the river's heart. i do not wish to stay in any shady nook of quiet water, where the river's rushing current never comes, and straws and bubbles lie at rest or slowly eddying round and round at anchor in their mimic harbor. how often are we all like these imprisoned straws, revolving listlessly within the narrow circle of the daily duties of our lives, gaining no new truth, nor deeper love or power or tenderness or joy, while all the world around is sweeping to the sea! how often do we let the days and moments, with their wealth of life, fly past us with their treasure! youth lies in her loveliness, dreaming in her drifting boat, and wakes to find her necklace has in some way come unfast, and from the loosened ribbon trailing o'er the rail the lustrous pearls have one by one been slipping far beyond her reach in those deep waters over which her slumbers passed. do not let the pearls be lost. do not let the moments pass you till they yield their wealth and add their beauty to your lives. 11. =abbreviations=.- r. means, read carefully. d. means, digest the best passages; make the thought and feeling your own. c. means, commit passages in which valuable thought or feeling is _exquisitely expressed_. g. means, grasp the idea of the whole book; that is, the train of the author's thought, his conclusions, and the reasons for them. s. means, swallow; that is, read as fast as you choose, it not being worth while to do more than get a general impression of the book. t. means, taste; that is, skip here and there, just to get an idea of the book, and see if you wish to read more. e. means _easy_; that is, of such character as to be within the easy comprehension of one having no more than a grammar-school education or its equivalent; and it applies to all books that can be understood without either close attention or more than an ordinary new england grammar-school training. m. means _medium_; that is, of such character as to require the close attention called "study," or a high-school education, or both; and it applies to books the degree of whose difficulty places them above the class e. and below the class _d_. d. means _difficult_; that is, beyond the comprehension of an ordinary person having only a new england high-school education or its equivalent, even with close study, unless the reader already has a fair understanding of the _subject_ of the book. in order to read with advantage books that are marked _d._, the mind should be prepared by special reading of simpler books in the same department of thought. table i. note of explanation. +----------------------------------------------------------------+ | transcriber's note: the original format of the table exceeded | | the width requirements for e-text. therefore the table was | | reformatted. it is now from top to bottom in the order of | | importance. the first shelf and second shelf are arranged | | side by side. | +----------------------------------------------------------------+ table i. contains a list of authors whose books, on principle and authority, have the strongest claims on the attention of the average reader of english. they are arranged from left to right in the order of importance of the divisions of the subject matter regarded as wholes, and from above downward in the order of their value in relation to the highest standard in their own department. the _numbers_ have nothing to do with the ranking, but refer to notes that will be found on the pages following the table. there is also, at the head of the notes relating to each column of the table, a special note on the subject matter of that column. the upper part of the table represents the first shelf of the world's library, and contains the books having the very strongest claims upon the attention of all,--books with which every one should endeavor to gain an acquaintance, at least _to the extent_ indicated in the notes. the lower part of the table represents the second shelf of the world's library, and contains books which in addition to those of the first shelf should enter into a liberal education. it must be always kept in mind that intrinsic merit alone does not decide the position of a book in this table; for in order to test the claim of a book upon the attention of a reader we have to consider not only the artistic value of the author's work, and its subject matter, but also the needs and abilities of the reader. thus it happens that it is not always the work of the greatest genius which stands highest in the list. moreover, no claim is made that the ranking is perfect, especially on the second shelf. the table is an example of the application of the principles set forth in the remarks following table v., to the case of the general reader. for every one above or below the average reader the lists would have to be changed, and even the average list has no quality of the absolute. it is but a suggestion,--a suggestion, however, in which we have a good deal of confidence, one that is based on a very wide induction,--and we have no hesitation in affirming that the upper shelf represents the best literature the world affords. in addition to table i., there will be found in tables iii. and iv., and in the remarks upon the guidance of children following table iv., a number of pieces of literary work of the very highest merit and value. some of the most important are lowell's "vision of sir launfal," one of the very finest american poems; browning's "ivan ivanovitch;" guyot's "earth and man;" mary treat's "home book of nature;" burroughs' "pepacton," "signs and seasons," "wake robin," etc.; buckley's "fairy land of science," etc.; ragozin's "chaldea;" fénelon's "lives of the philosophers;" bolton's "poor boys who became famous;" rives' "story of arnon;" drake's "culprit fay;" dr. brown's "rab and his friends;" mary mapes dodge's "hans brinker;" andrews' "ten boys on the road;" arnold's "sweetness and light;" higginson's "vacations for saints;" and general booth's "in darkest england, and the way out," a book of great power, which sets forth the most practical method yet proposed for the immediate relief of society from the burdens of pauperism and vice. table i.--the world's best books. [see explanation on the preceding pages.] (first shelf) (second shelf) 1. religion & morals. bible[1] milton[11] bunyan[2] keble[12] taylor[3] cicero[13] kempis[4] pascal[14] spencer[5] channing[15] m. aurelius[6] aristotle[16] plutarch[7] st. augustine[17] seleca[8] butler[18] epictetus[9] spinoza[19] brooks[10] drummond[10] 2. poetry & the drama. shakspeare[20] spenser[27] homer[21] lowell[28] dante[22] whittier[29] goethe[23] tennyson[30] milton[24] scott[32] æschylus[25] byron[33] fragments[26] shelley[34] keats[35] campbell[36] moore[37] thomson[38] macaulay[39] dryden[40] collins[41] ingelow[42] bryant[43] longfellow[44] herbert[45] goldsmith[46] coleridge[47] wordsworth[48] pope[49] southey[50] walton[51] browning[52] young[53] jonson[54] beaumont & f.[55] marlowe[56] sheridan[57] carleton[58] virgil[60] horace[61] lucretius[62] ovid[63] sophocles[64] euripides[65] aristophanes[66] pindar[67] hesiod[68] heine[69] schiller[70] corneille[71] racine[71] molière[71] musset[74] calderon[75] petrarch[76] ariosto[77] tasso[78] camoens[79] omar[80] firdusi[81] hafiz[81] saadi[81] arnold[82] pushkin[83] lermontoff[84] 3. science. physiology and hygiene[85] de tocqueville[99] "our country"[86] von holst[100] federalist[88] smith[101] bryce[89] malthus[102] montesquieu[90] carey[103] bagehot[90] cairnes[104] mill[91] freeman[105] bain[92] jevons[106] spencer[93] mulford[107] darwin[94] hobbes[108] herschel[95] machiavelli[109] proctor[95] max müller[110] lyell[96] trench[111] lubbock[96] taylor[112] dawson[96] white[113] wood[97] cuvier[114] whewell[98] cook[115] tyndall[116] airy[117] faraday[118] helmholtz[119] huxley[120] gray[121] agassiz[122] silliman[123] 4. biography. plutarch[124] g. smith[139] phillips[125] bourrienne[140] boswell[126] johnson[141] lockhart[127] walton[142] marshall[128] stanley[143] franklin[128] irving[144] nicolay & h.[129] southey[145] grant[129] stanhope[146] carlyle[130] moore[147] renan[130] jameson[148] farrar[131] baring-gould[149] emerson[132] field[150] [100] greatest men[133] hamilton[151] parton[134] darwin[151] hale[135] alcott[151] drake[136] talleyrand[151] fox[137] macaulay[151] grimm[138] bashkirtseff[151] guerin[151] jefferson[151] american statesmen[151] english men of letters[151] 5. history. green[152] creasy [155a] bancroft[153] lecky[156] guizot[154] clarke[157] buckle[154] moffat[158] parkman[155] draper[159] freeman[155] hallam[160] fiske[155] may[161] fyffe[155] hume[162] macaulay[163] froude[164] gibbon[165] grote[166] palfrey[167] prescott[168] motley[169] frothingham [169a] wilkinson[170] niebuhr[171] menzel[172] milman[173] ranke[174] sismondi[175] michelet[176] carlyle[177] thierry[178] tacitus[179] livy[180] sallust[181] herodotus[182] xenophon[183] thucydides[184] josephus[185] mackenzie[185] rawlinson[185] 6. philosophy. spencer[186] mill[192] plato[187] mansel[193] berkeley[188] büchner[194] kant[189] edwards[195] locke & hobbes[190] bentham[196] comte[191] maurice[197] lewes hume[198] or ueberweg hamilton[199] or schwegler aristotle[200] or schlegel descartes[201] on the cousin[201] history of hegel & schelling[202] philosophy. fichte[203] erasmus[204] fiske[205] hickok[206] mccosh[207] spinoza[208] 7. essays. emerson[209] macaulay bacon[210] leigh hunt montaigne[211] arnold ruskin[212] buckle carlyle[212] hume addison[212] froude symonds steele browne johnson de quincey foster hazlitt lessing sparks disraeli whipple lamb schiller coleridge 8. fiction. scott[213] rousseau[235] eliot[214] saintine[235] dickens[215] coffin[236] hawthorne[216] reade[236] goldsmith[217] warren[236] bulwer[218] landor[237] macdonald[219] turgenieff[237] thackeray[220] sue[237] kingsley[221] manzoni[237] wallace[222] cottin[238] tourgée[223] besant[238] hugo[224] stevenson[238] dumas[224] ward[239] defoe[225] deland[239] hughes[225] sewell[239] stowe[226] bret harte[239] cooper[226] green[240] curtis[227] mulock[240] warner[227] disraeli[240] aldrich[228] howells[240] hearn[228] tolstoï[240] ebers[229] sand[241] sienkiewicz[229] black[241] austen[230] blackmore[241] bronté[230] schreiner[241] alcott[231] bremer[242] burnett[231] trollope[242] cable[232] winthrop[242] craddock[232] richardson[243] whitney[233] smollett[243] jewett[233] boccaccio[243] fielding[234] le sage[234] balzac[234] 9. oratory. demosthenes sumner burke henry fox otis pitt jay webster madison clay jefferson phillips beecher lincoln brooks everett choate bright garfield ingersoll erskine sheridan gladstone cicero quintilian bossuet saint chrysostom 10. wit & humor. lowell[244] ingersoll[248] holmes[245] holley[249] dickens[246] curtis[250] cervantes[247] depew[251] twain[252] warner[253] edwards[254] hale[255] nasby[256] ward[257] jerrold[258] voltaire[259] byron[259] butler[260] swift[260] rabelais[261] sterne[261] juvenal[262] lucian[262] 11. fables & fairy tales. andersen[263] bulfinch[268] la fontaine[264] saxe[269] æsop[265] florian[270] grimm[266] kipling[270] goethe[267] babrius[271] hawthorne[267] hauff[272] ovid[273] curtin[273] fiske[273] 12. travel. cook[274] marco polo[277] humboldt[275] kane[278] darwin[276] livingstone[279] stanley[280] du chaillu[281] niebuhr[282] bruce[283] heber[284] lander[285] waterton[286] mungo park[287] ouseley[288] barth[289] boteler[290] maundeville[291] warburton[292] 13. guides. foster[293] brook[303] pall mall[294] leypoldt[304] morley[295] richardson[305] welsh[296] harrison[306] taine[297] ruskin[307] botta[298] bright[308] allibone[299] dunlop[309] bartlett[300] baldwin[309] ballou[301] adams[309] bryant[302] palgrave[302] roget's thesaurus dictionaries encyclopædias 14. miscellaneous. smiles' self-help[310] sheking[324] irving's sketch book[311] analects of confucius[325] bacon's new atlantis[312] mesnevi[326] bellamy[313] buddhism[327] arabian nights[314] mahabharata[328] munchausen[315] ramayana[329] beowulf[316] vedas[330] anglo-saxon chronicle[317] koran[331] froissart[318] talmud[332] nibelungenlied[319] hooker[333] icelandic sagas[320] swedenborg[333] elder edda[321] newton[333] the cid[322] kepler[333] morte d'arthur[323] copernicus[333] laplace[333] remarks on table i. religion and morals. religion and morals, though not identical, are so closely related that they are grouped together. the books in column 1 by no means exhaust these subjects, for they run like threads of gold through the whole warp and woof of poetry. philosophy, fiction, and fable, biography, history, and essays, oratory and humor, seem rather satellites that attend upon moral feelings than independent orbs, and even science is not dumb upon these all-absorbing topics. if we are to be as broad-minded in our religious views as we seek to be in other matters, we must become somewhat acquainted with the worship of races other than our own. this may be done through homer, hesiod, ovid, confucius, buddha, the vedas, koran, talmud, edda, sagas, beowulf, nibelungenlied, shah nameh, etc. (which are all in some sense "bibles," or books that have grown out of the hearts of the people), and through general works, such as clarke's "ten great religions." [1] especially job, and psalms 19, 103, 104, 107, in the old testament; and in the new the four gospels, the acts, and the epistles. (m. r. d. c. g.) [2] next to the bible, probably no book is so much read by the english peoples as bunyan's "pilgrim's progress," a simple, vivid, helpful story of christian life and its obstacles. no writer has so well portrayed the central truths of christianity as this great, untrained, imaginative genius, pouring his life upon the deathless pages of his poetic allegory during the twelve long years in the latter part of the 17th century, when he was imprisoned, under the restoration, merely because of his religious principles. (e. r. d.) [3] taylor's "holy living and dying" is a wise, frank talk about the care of our time, purity of intention, practice of the presence of god, temperance, justice, modesty, humility, envy, contentedness, etc. some portions of the first hundred and fifty pages are of the utmost practical value. even ruskin admits that taylor and bunyan are rightly placed among the world's best. (eng., 17th cent.--m. r. d.) [4] "imitation of christ" is a sister book to the last, written in the 15th century by thomas à kempis, a german monk, of pure and beautiful life and thought. it is a world-famous book, having been translated into every civilized language, and having passed through more than five hundred editions in the present century. (m. r. d.) [5] spencer's "data of ethics" is one of the most important books in literature, having to the science of ethics much the same relation as newton's "principia" to astronomy, or darwin's "origin of species" to biology. note especially the parts concerning altruistic selfishness, the morality of health, and the development of moral feeling in general. (eng., 19th cent.--d. r. d. g.) spencer's "first principles" is also necessary to an understanding of the scientific religious thinking of the day. in connection with spencer's works, "the idea of god" and the "destiny of man," by fiske, may be read with profit. the author of these books is in large part a follower and expounder of spencer. [6] the "meditations" of m. aurelius is a book that is full of deep, pure beauty and philosophy; one of the sweetest influences that can be brought into the life, and one of canon farrar's twelve favorites out of all literature. (rome, 2d cent.--m. r. d.) [7] plutarch's "morals" supplied much of the cream used by taylor in the churning that produced the "holy living and dying." emerson says that we owe more to plutarch than to all the other ancients. many great authors have been indebted to him,--rabelais, montaigne, montesquieu, voltaire, rousseau, shakspeare, bacon, and dryden, among the number. plutarch's "morals" is a treasure-house of wisdom and beauty. there is a very fine edition with an introduction by emerson. (rome, 1st cent.--m. r. d.) [8] seneca's "morals" is a fit companion of the preceding six books, full of deep thought upon topics of every-day import, set out in clear and forceful language. the camelot library contains a very good selection from his ethical treatises and his delightful letters, which are really moral essays. (rome, 1st cent.--m. r. d.) [9] epictetus was another grand moralist, the teacher of marcus aurelius. next to bunyan and kempis, the books of these great stoics, filled as they are with the serenity of minds that had made themselves independent of circumstance and passion, have the greatest popularity accorded to any ethical works. epictetus was a roman slave in the 1st century a. d. (m. r. d.) [10] the little book on "tolerance" by phillips brooks ought to be read by every one. see table iii. side no. 23. the sermons of dr. brooks and of robertson are among the most helpful and inspiring reading we know. drummond's "natural law in the spiritual world" is a book of ingenious and often poetic analogies between the physical and spiritual worlds. if read as poetry, no fault can be found with it; but the reader must be careful to test thoroughly the laws laid down, and make sure that there is some weightier proof than mere analogy, before hanging important conclusions on the statements of this author. a later book by drummond entitled "the greatest thing in the world" is also worthy of attention. (u. s., 19th cent.) [11] "areopagitica." a noble plea for liberty of speech and press. (eng., early 17th cent.) [12] keble's beautiful "christian year." [13] cicero's "offices" is a very valuable ethical work. it directs a young roman how he may attain distinction and the respect and confidence of his fellow-citizens. its underlying principles are of eternal value, and its arrangement is admirable. dr. peabody's translation is the best. (rome, 1st cent. b. c.) [14] "pensées." pascal's "thoughts" are known the world over for their depth and beauty. (france, 17th cent.) [15] "the perfect life" and other works. (u. s., 19th cent.) [16] ethics. (greece, 4th cent. b. c.) [17] "confessions" and "the city of god." (rome, 4th cent.) [18] analogy of religion. (eng., 18th cent.) [19] ethics and theologico-political speculation. (dutch, 17th cent.) poetry and the drama. the faculty which most widely distinguishes man from his possible relatives, the lower animals, and the varying power of which most clearly marks the place of each individual in the scale of superiority, is imagination. it lies at the bottom of intellect and character. memory, reason, and discovery are built upon it; and sympathy, the mother of kindness, tenderness, and love, is itself the child of the imagination. poetry is the married harmony of imagination and beauty. the poet is the man of fancy and the man of music. this is why in all ages mankind instinctively feel that poetry is supreme. of all kinds of literature, it is the most stimulating, broadening, beautifying, and should have a large place in every life. buy the best poets, read them carefully, mark the finest passages, and recur to them many, many times. a poem is like a violin: it must be kept and played upon a long time before it yields to us its sweetest music. the drama, or representation of human thought and life, has come into being, among very many peoples, as a natural outgrowth of the faculty of mimicry in human nature. among the south sea islanders there is a rude drama, and in china such representations have existed from remote ages. greece first brought the art to high perfection; and her greatest tragic artists, æschylus, sophocles, and euripides, of the fifth century b. c., are still the highest names in tragedy. the greek drama with æschylus was only a dialogue. sophocles introduced a third actor. it would be a dull play to us that should fill the evening with three players. in another thing the grecian play was widely different from ours. the aim of ancient playwrights was to bring to view some thought in giant form and with tremendous emphasis. the whole drama was built around, moulded, and adapted to one great idea. the aim of english writers is to give an interesting glimpse of actual life in all its multiplicity of interwoven thought and passion, and let it speak its lessons, as the great schoolmistress, nature, gives us hers. the french and italian drama follow that of greece, but spain and england follow nature. _mystery and miracle plays_ were introduced about 1100 a. d., by hilarius, and were intended to enforce religious truths. god, adam, the angels, satan, eve, noah, etc., were the characters. in the beginning of the 15th century, _morality plays_ became popular. they personified faith, hope, sadness, magnificence, conceit, etc., though there might seem little need of invention to personify the latter. about the time of henry viii., _masques_ were introduced from italy. in them the performers wore extravagant costumes and covered the face, and lords and ladies played the parts. it was at such a frolic that king henry met anne boleyn. the first english comedy was written in 1540, by udall; and the first tragedy in 1561, by sackville and norton. it was called "ferrex and porrex." from this time the english drama rapidly rose to its summit in shakspeare's richest years at the close of the same century. at first the theatre was in the inn-yard,--just a platform, with no scenery but what the imagination of the drinking, swearing, jeering crowd of common folk standing in the rain or sunlight round the rough-made stage could paint. on the stage sat a few gentlefolk able to pay a shilling for the privilege. they smoked, played cards, insulted the pit, "who gave it to them back, and threw apples at them into the bargain." such were the beginnings of what in shakspeare's hands became the greatest drama that the world has ever seen. the manner of reading all good poetry should be: r. d. c. g. if the reader wishes to study poetry critically, he will find abundant materials in lanier's "science of english verse" and dowden's "mind and art of shakspeare" (books that once read by a lover of poetry will ever after be cherished as among the choicest of his possessions); lowell's "fable for critics," "my study windows," and "among my books;" arnold's "essays;" hazlitt's "english poets;" "english men of letters;" poe's "essay on the composition of the raven;" taine's "english literature;" swinburne's "essays and studies;" stedman's "victorian poets;" shairp's "studies in poetry;" warton's "history of english poetry;" ward's "history of english dramatic literature;" and schlegel's "dramatic literature." [20] shakspeare is the summit of the world's literature. in a higher degree than any other man who has lived on this planet, he possessed that vivid, accurate, exhaustive imagination which creates a second universe in the poet's brain. between our thought of a man and the man himself, or a complete representation of him with all his thoughts, feelings, motives, and possibilities, there is a vast gulf. if we had a perfect knowledge of him, we could tell what he would think and do. to this ultimate knowledge shakspeare more nearly approached than any other mortal. he so well understood the machinery of human nature, that he could create men and women beyond our power to detect an error in his work. this grasp of the most difficult subject of thought, and the oceanic, myriad-minded greatness of his plays prove him intellectually the greatest of the human race. it is simple nonsense to suppose that bacon wrote the dramas that bear the name of shakspeare. they were published during shakspeare's life under his name; and greene, jonson, milton, and other contemporaries speak with unmistakable clearness of the great master. donnelly's cryptogram is a palpable sham; and to the argument that an uneducated man like shakspeare could not have written such grand poetry, while bacon, as we know, did have a splendid ability, it is a sufficient answer to remark that shakspeare's sonnets, the authorship of which is not and cannot be questioned, show far higher poetical powers than anything that can be found in bacon's acknowledged works. richard grant white's edition is the best; and certainly every one should have the very best of shakspeare, if no other book is ever bought. (16th cent.) see table iii. no. 1. with shakspeare may be used dowden's "shakspeare primer," and "the mind and art of shakspeare," abbott's "shakspearian grammar," lanier's "science of english verse," hazlitt's "characters of shakspeare's plays" and "age of elizabeth," lamb's "tales from shakspeare," ward's "english dramatic literature, and history of the drama," lewes' "actors and the art of acting," hutton's "plays and players," leigh hunt's "imagination and fancy," and whipple's "literature of the age of elizabeth." [21] homer is the world's greatest epic poet. he is the brother of shakspeare, full of sublimity and pathos, tenderness, simplicity, and inexhaustible vigor. pope's translation is still the best on the whole, but should be read with derby's iliad and worsley's odyssey. in some parts these are fuller of power and beauty; in others, pope is far better. flaxman's designs are a great help in enjoying homer, as are also the writings of gladstone, arnold, and symonds. (greece, about 1000 b. c.) see table iii. no. 2. [22] ruskin thinks dante is the first figure of history, the only man in whom the moral, intellectual, and imaginative faculties met in great power and in perfect balance. (italy, 14th cent.) follow the advice given in table iii. no. 5, and, if possible, read longfellow's translation. see note 24, p. 30. among writings that will be found useful in connection with dante, are rossetti's "shadow of dante," lowell's essay in "among my books," symonds' "introduction to the study of dante," farrar's "lecture on dante," mrs. ward's "life of dante," botta's "dante as a philosopher," and carlyle's "heroes and hero worship." [23] goethe is unquestionably the greatest german, and one of the first six names in literature. his "faust" is a history of the soul. read bayard taylor's translation, and the explanation of the drama's meaning given in taylor's "studies in german literature." "faust" was the work of half a century, and completed in 1818, when goethe was past eighty. as a preparation for goethe it is interesting to study the story of faust in butterworth's "zigzag journeys," and read marlowe's "drama of faustus." the novel "wilhelm meister" has been splendidly translated by carlyle, and is full of the richest poetic thought, crammed with wisdom, and pervaded by a delicious sweetness forever provoking the mind to fresh activity. as a work of genius, it is preferred by some critics even to hamlet. see table iii. no. 15. [24] milton stands in his age like an oak among hazel-bushes. the nobility of his character, the sublimity of his thought, and the classic beauty of his style give him, in spite of some coldness and some lack of naturalness in his conception of the characters of adam and eve, the second place in english literature. his "lycidas" is a beautiful elegy. his "comus" is the best masque in english, and certainly a charming picture of chastity and its triumph over temptation. it should be read along with spenser's "britomart." his "l' allegro" and "il penseroso," on mirth and melancholy, are among the best lyrics of the world. his "paradise lost" is the greatest epic in english, and the greatest that any literature has had since dante's "divine comedy." the two books should be read together. milton shows us satan in all the pride and pomp and power this world oft throws around his cloven majesty. dante tears away the wrappings, and we see the horrid heart and actual loathsomeness of sin. (eng., 17th cent.) see table iii. no. 2. the writings of stopford brooke, macaulay, dr. johnson, de quincey, and pattison about milton may be profitably referred to. [25] æschylus was the greatest of the noble triumvirate of greek tragedy writers. sublimity reached in his soul the greatest purity and power that it has yet attained on earth. one can no more afford to tread in life's low levels all his days and never climb above the clouds to thought's clear-ethered heights with æschylus, than to dwell at the foot of a cliff in new mexico and never climb to see the rockies in the blue and misty distance, with their snowy summits shining in the sun. read, at any rate, his "prometheus bound" and his "agamemnon." (5th cent. b. c., the golden age of grecian literature.) see table iii. no. 4. the student of æschylus will find much of value to him in mahaffy's "greek literature," "old greek life," and "social life in greece;" schlegel's "dramatic literature;" donaldson's "theatre of the greeks," and froude's "sea studies." following the "prometheus" of æschylus, it is a good plan to read the works of goethe, shelley, lowell, and longfellow on the same topic. we thus bring close the ideas and fancies of five great minds in respect to the myth of prometheus. [26] many a selection in table iii. is of very high merit, and belongs on the world's first shelf, although the poetic works of the author as a whole cannot be allowed such honor. in the section preceding table v. also will be found a number of short writings of the very highest merit. see explanatory note to table i. [27] edmund spenser is the third name in english literature. no modern poet is more like homer. he is simple, clear, and natural, redundant and ingenuous. he is a platonic dreamer, and worships beauty, a love sublime and chaste; for all the beauty that the eye can see is only, in his view, an incomplete expression of celestial beauty in the soul of man and nature, the light within gleaming and sparkling through the loose woven texture of this garment of god called nature, or pouring at every pore a flood of soft, translucent loveliness, as the radiance of a calcium flame flows through a porcelain globe. spenser was milton's model. the "faërie queen," the "shepherd's calendar," and the "wedding hymn" should be carefully read; and if the former is studied sufficiently to arrive at the underlying spiritual meaning, it will ever after be one of the most precious of books. (eng., 16th cent.) see table iii. no. 6. see also lowell's "among my books," craik's "spenser and his poetry," and taine's "english literature." [28] lowell is one of the foremost humorists of all time. no one, except shakspeare, has ever combined so much mastery of the weapons of wit with so much poetic power, bonhomie, and common-sense. every american should read his poems carefully, and digest the best. (amer., 19th cent.) see table iii. nos. 12 and 24. [29] whittier is america's greatest lyric poet. read what lowell says of him in the "fable for critics," and get acquainted with his poetry of nature and quiet country life, as pure as the snow and as sweet as the clover. (amer., 19th cent.) see table iii. no. 11. [30] tennyson is the first poet of our age; and though he cannot rank with the great names on the upper shelf, yet his tenderness, and noble purity, and the almost absolutely perfect music of much of his poetry commands our love and admiration. read his "in memoriam," "princess," "idylls of the king," etc. (eng., 19th cent.) see table iii. no. 11. [31] burns is like a whiff of the pure sea air. he is a sprig of arbutus under the snow; full of tenderness and genuine gayety, always in love, and singing forever in tune to the throbs of his heart. read "the jolly beggars," "the twa dogs," and see table iii. no. 11. (scot., 18th cent.) [32] probably nothing is so likely to awaken a love for poetry as the reading of scott. (scot., 19th cent.) see table iii. no. 7. [33] byron is the greatest english poet since milton, and except goethe the greatest poet of his age in the world. his music, his wonderful control of language, his impassioned strength passing from vehemence to pathos, his fine sense of the beautiful, and his combination of passion with beauty would place him high on the first shelf of the world's literature if it were not for his moral aberration. read his "childe harold." (eng., 1788-1824.) see table iii. no. 13. [34] shelley is indistinct, abstract, impracticable, but full of love for all that is noble, of magnificent poetic power and marvellous music. read "prometheus unbound," and see table iii. no. 13. (eng., 19th cent.) [35] keats is the poetic brother of shelley. he is deserving of the title "marvellous boy" in a far higher degree than chatterton. if the lives of shakspeare, milton, and wordsworth had ended at twenty-five, as did the life of keats, they would have left no poetry comparable with that of this impassioned dreamer. like shakspeare, he had no fortune or opportunity of high education. read "hyperion," "lamia," "eve of saint agnes," "endymion," and see table iii. no. 13. (eng., 19th cent.) [36] campbell clothed in romantic sweetness and delicate diction, the fancies of the fairy land of youthful dreams, and poured forth with a master voice the pride and grandeur of patriotic song. read his "pleasures of hope," "gertrude of wyoming," and see table iii. no. 12. (eng., 19th cent.) [37] moore is a singer of wonderful melody and elegance and of inexhaustible imagery. read his "irish melodies." (eng., 19th cent.) see table iii. no. 11. [38] thomson is one of the most intense lovers of nature, and sees with a clear eye the correspondences between the inner and outer worlds upon which poetry is built. read his "seasons" and "the castle of indolence." (eng., 18th cent.) [39] read macaulay's "lays of ancient rome." "horatius" cannot fail to make the reader pulse with all the heroism and patriotism that is in his heart, and "virginia" will fill each heart with mutiny and every eye with tears. (eng., 19th cent.) see table iii. no. 12. [40] dryden's song is not so smooth as pope's, but doubly strong. his translation of virgil has more fire than the original, though less elegance. he was the literary king of his time, but knew better _how_ to say things than _what_ to say. (eng., 17th cent.) see table iii. no. 14. [41] collins was a poet of fine genius. beauty, simplicity, and sweet harmony combine in his works, but he wrote very little. read his odes, "to pity," "to evening," "to mercy," "to simplicity." see table iii. no. 14. (eng., 18th cent.) [42] jean ingelow's poems deserve at least tasting, which will scarcely fail to lead to assimilation. (eng., 1862.) see table iii. no. 14. [43] bryant's "thanatopsis," written at eighteen, gave promise of high poetic power; but in the life of a journalist the current of energy was drawn away from poetry, and america lost the full fruitage of her best poetic tree. he is serene and lofty in thought, and strong in his descriptive power and the noble simplicity of his language. (amer., 19th cent.) see table iii. no. 13. [44] longfellow's poetry is earnest and full of melody, but _as a whole_ lacks passion and imagery. relatively to a world standard he is not a great poet and has written little worthy of universal reading, but as bone of our bone he has a claim on us as americans for sufficient attention at least to investigate for ourselves his merits. (amer., 19th cent.) see table iii. no. 10. [45] lowell says that george herbert is as "holy as a flower on a grave." (eng., 1631.) see table iii. no. 13. [46] goldsmith's "deserted village" and "traveller" will live as long as the language. they are full of wisdom and lovely poetry. his dramas abound in fun. read "the good-natured man" and "she stoops to conquer." (eng., 18th cent.) see table iv. [47] read coleridge's "christabel," and get somebody to explain its mysterious beauty to you; also his "remorse," "ode to the departing year," "ancient mariner," and "kubla khan." the latter is the most magnificent creation of his time, but needs a good deal of study for most readers to perceive the beautiful underlying thought, as is the case also with the "mariner." coleridge is difficult reading. he wrote very little excellently, but that little should be bound in gold, and read till the inner light of it shines into the soul of the reader. the terrible opium habit ruined him. read his life; it is a thrilling story. (eng., 1772-1834.) table iii. no. 11. [48] lowell says, in his "fable for critics," that he is always discovering new depths "in wordsworth, undreamed of before,- that divinely inspired, wise, deep, tender, grand--bore." nothing could sum up this poet better than that. his intense delight in nature and especially in mountain scenery, and his pure, serene, earnest, majestic reflectiveness are his great charms. his "excursion" is one of the great works of our literature, and stands in the front rank of the world's philosophical poetry. its thousand lines of blank verse roll through the soul like the stately music of a cathedral organ. (eng., 19th cent.) see table iii. no. 13. [49] pope is the greatest of the world's machine poets, the noblest of the great army who place a higher value on skilful execution than on originality and beauty of conception. the "rape of the lock" is his most successful effort, and is the best of all mock-heroic poems. "the sharpest wit, the keenest dissection of the follies of fashionable life, the finest grace of diction, and the softest flow of melody adorn a tale in which we learn how a fine gentleman stole a lock of a lady's hair." read also his "essay on man," and glance at his "dunciad," a satire on fellow-writers. (eng., 1688-1744.) see table iii. no. 13, and table iv. [50] southey had great ideas of what poetry should be, and strove for purity, unity, and fine imagery; but there was no pathos or depth of emotion in him, and the stream of his poetry is not the gush of the river, but the uninteresting flow of the canal. byron says, "god help thee, southey, and thy readers too." glance at his "thalaba the destroyer" and "curse of kehama." (eng., 1774-1843.) [51] walton's "compleat angler" is worthy of a glance. (eng., 1653.) [52] browning is very obscure, and neither on authority nor principle a first-rate poet; but he is a strong thinker, and dear to those who have taken the pains to dig out the nuggets of gold. canon farrar puts him among the three living authors whose works he would be most anxious to save from the flames. mrs. browning has more imagination than her husband, and is perhaps his equal in other respects. (eng., 19th cent.) [53] read young's "night thoughts." [54] jonson, on account of his noble aims, comparative purity, and classic style, stands next to shakspeare in the history of english drama. read "the alchemist," "catiline," "the devil as an ass," "cynthia's revels," and "the silent woman." the plot of the latter is very humorous. (eng., 1700.) [55] the dramas of beaumont and fletcher are poetically the best in the language except those of shakspeare. read "philaster," "the fair maid of the inn," "thierry and theodoret," "the maid's tragedy." (eng., 17th cent.) [56] marlowe's "mighty line" is known to all lovers of poetry who have made a wide hunt. his energy is intense. read "the tragical history of dr. faustus," based on that wonderfully fascinating story of the doctor who offered his soul to hell in exchange for a short term of power and pleasure, on which goethe expended the flower of his genius, and around which grew hundreds of plays all over europe. (eng., 17th cent.) [57] for whimsical and ludicrous situations and a rapid fire of witticisms, sheridan's plays have no equals. read "the school for scandal" and "the rivals." (eng., 18th cent.) [58] carleton's poetry is not of a lofty order, but exceedingly enjoyable. read his "farm ballads." (amer., 19th cent.) [60] virgil is the greatest name in roman literature. his "æneid" is the national poem of rome. his poetry is of great purity and elegance, and for variety, harmony, and power second in epic verse only to his great model, homer. (rome, 1st cent. b. c.) read dryden's translation if you cannot read the original. [61] the odes of horace combine wit, grace, sense, fire, and affection in a perfection of form never attained by any other writer. he is untranslatable; but martin's version and commentary will give some idea of this most interesting man, "the most modern and most familiar of the ancients." (rome, 1st cent. b. c.) [62] lucretius is a philosophic poet. he aimed to explain nature; and his poem has much of wisdom, beauty, sublimity, and imagination to commend it. virgil imitated whole passages from lucretius. (rome, 1st cent. b. c.) [63] ovid is gross but fertile, and his "metamorphoses" and "epistles" have been great favorites. (rome, 1st cent. b. c.) [64] the "antigone" and "oedipus at colonus" of sophocles are of exquisite tenderness and beauty. in pathos shakspeare only is his equal. (greece, 5th cent. b. c.) [65] euripides is the third of the great triumvirate of greek dramatists. his works were very much admired by milton and fox. read his "alcestis," "iphigenia," "medea," and the "bacchanals." (greece, 5th cent. b. c.) [66] aristophanes is the greatest of greek comedy writers. his plays are great favorites with scholars, as a rule. read the "clouds," "birds," "knights," and "plutus." (greece, 5th cent. b. c.) [67] pindar's triumphal odes stand in the front rank of the world's lyric poetry. (greece, 5th cent. b. c.) [68] hesiod's "theogony" contains the religious faith of greece. he lived in or near the time of homer. [69] heine is the most remarkable german poet of this century. he has written many gems of rare beauty, and many sketches of life unmatched for racy freshness and graphic power. [70] schiller is the second name in german literature; indeed, as a lover of men and as a poet of exquisite fancy, he far excels goethe. he was a great philosopher, historian, and critic. read his "song of the bell," and his drama of "wallenstein," translated by coleridge. (germany, 18th cent.) [71] corneille, racine, and molière are the great french triumvirate of dramatists. their object is to produce one massive impression. in this they follow the classic writers. a french, greek, or roman drama is to a shakspearean play as a statue to a picture, as an idea carved out of nature and rendered magnificently impressive by its isolation and the beauty of its modelling, to nature itself. the historical and ethical value of the french plays is very great. corneille is one of the grandest of modern poets. read "the cid" ("as beautiful as the cid" became a proverb in france), and "horace" (which is even more original and grand than "the cid"), and "cinna" (which voltaire thought the best of all). racine excels in grace, tenderness, and versatility. read his "phèdre." molière was almost as profound a master of human nature on its humorous side as shakspeare. he hates folly, meanness, and falsehood; he is always wise, tender, and good. read "le misanthrope," or "the man-hater," and "tartuffe," or "the impostor." (17th cent.) [74] alfred de musset is a famous french poet of this century, and is a great favorite with those who can enjoy charming and inspiring thoughts though mixed with the grotesque and extravagant. [75] calderon de la barca is one of the greatest dramatists of the world. his purity, power, and passion, his magnificent imagination and wonderful fertility, will place him in company with shakspeare in the eternal society of the great. read shelley's fragments from calderon, and fitzgerald's translation, especially "zalamea" and "the wonder-working magician," two of his greatest plays. (spain, 17th cent.) [76] petrarch's lyrics have been models to all the great poets of southern europe. the subject of nearly all his poems is his hopeless affection for the high-minded and beautiful laura de sade. his purity is above reproach. he is pre-eminent for sweetness, pathos, elegance, and melody. (italy, 14th cent.) [77] ariosto is italy's great epic poet. read his "orlando furioso," a hundred-fold tale of knights and ladies, giants and magicians. (italy, 1474-1533). [78] tasso is the second name in italian epic poetry; and by some he is placed above ariosto and named in the same breath with homer and virgil. read his "jerusalem delivered," and "aminta," and glance at his minor poems composed while in confinement. (italy, 16th cent.) [79] camoens is the glory of portugal, her only poet whose fame has flown far beyond her narrow borders. read his grand and beautiful poem, the "lusiad," a national epic grouping together all the great and interesting events in the history of his country. (16th cent.) [80] omar khayyám, the great astronomer poet of persia, has no equal in the world in the concise magnificence with which he can paint a grand poetic conception in a single complete, well-rounded, melodious stanza. read fitzgerald's translation. (12th cent.) [81] firdusi, the author of the "shah nameh," or poetic history of the great deeds of the sultans. hafiz, the poet of love, and saadi are other great persian poets deserving at least a glance of investigation. (11th-14th cents.) [82] arnold's "light of asia" claims our attention for the additions it can make to our breadth of thought, giving us as it does briefly and beautifully the current of thinking of a great people very unlike ourselves. (eng., 19th cent.) [83] pushkin is called the byron of russia. russian songs have a peculiar, mournful tenderness. "they are the sorrows of a century blended in one everlasting sigh." (19th cent.) [84] lermontoff is the russian schiller. (19th cent.) science. the most important sciences for the ordinary reader are physiology, hygiene, psychology, logic, political economy, sociology and the science of government, astronomy, geology, and natural history; but an elementary knowledge of all the sciences is very desirable on account of the breadth of mind and grasp of method which result therefrom. the international scientific series is very helpful in giving the brief comprehensive treatment of such subjects that is needed for those who are not specialists. the best books in this department are continually changing, because science is growing fast, and the latest books are apt to be fuller and better than the old ones. the best thing that can be done by one who wishes to be sure of obtaining the finest works upon any given subject in the region of scientific research, is to write to a professor who teaches that subject in some good university,--a professor who has not himself written a book on the subject,--and get his judgment on the matter. [85] physical health is the basis of all life and activity, and it is of the utmost importance to secure at once the best knowledge the world has attained in relation to its procurement and preservation. this matter has far too little attention. if a man is going to bring up chickens, he will study chicken books no end of hours to see just what will make them lay and make them fat and how he may produce the finest stock; but if he only has to bring up a few children, he will give no time to the study of the physical conditions of their full and fine development. some few people, however, have a strange idea that a child is nearly as valuable as a rooster. there is no book as yet written which gives in clear, easily understood language the known laws of diet, exercise, care of the teeth, hair, skin, lungs, etc., and simple remedies. perhaps dalton's "physiology," flint's "nervous system," cutter's "hygiene," blaikie's "how to get strong," and duncan's "how to be plump," beard's "eating and drinking," bellows' "philosophy of eating," smith on foods, holbrook's "eating for strength," "fruit and bread," "hygiene for the brain," "how to strengthen the memory," and kay's book on the memory, walter's "nutritive cure," clark's "sex in education," alice stockham's "tokology" or "hygiene for married women," and naphy's "transmission of life" will together give some idea of this all-valuable subject, though none of these books except the first are in themselves, apart from their subject, worthy of a place on the first shelf. [86] dr. strong's little book, "our country," is of the most intense interest to every american who loves his country and wishes its welfare. (u. s., 19th cent.) [88] the "federalist" was a series of essays by hamilton, jay, and madison, in favor of the federal constitution, and is the best and deepest book on the science of government that the world contains. (amer., 1788.) [89] bryce on the american commonwealth is a splendid book, a complete, critical, philosophic work, an era-making book, and should be read by every american who wishes to know how our institutions appear to a genial, cultured, broad-minded foreigner. mr. bryce has the chair of political economy in oxford, and is a member of parliament. his chief criticism of our great republic is that it is _hard to fix responsibility_ for lawlessness under our institutions, which is always an encouragement to wrongdoers. his book should be read with de tocqueville. (eng., 19th cent.) [90] montesquieu's "spirit of laws" is a profound analysis of law in relation to government, customs, climate, religion, and commerce. it is the greatest book of the 18th century. read with it bagehot's "physics and politics." [91] mill's "logic" and "political economy" are simply necessities to any, even moderately, thorough preparation for civilized life in america. (eng., 19th cent.) [92] read bain on the "emotions and the will," "mind and body," etc. (eng., 19th cent.) [93] herbert spencer is the foremost name in the philosophic literature of the world. he is the shakspeare of science. he has a grander grasp of knowledge, and more perfect _conscious_ correspondence with the external universe, than any other human being who ever looked wonderingly out into the starry depths; and his few errors flow from an over-anxiety to exert his splendid power of making beautiful generalizations. read his "first principles," "data of ethics," "education," and "classification of the sciences," at any rate; and if possible, all he has written. plato and spencer are brothers. plato would have done what spencer has, had he lived in the 19th century. [94] darwin's "origin of species" stands in history by the side of newton's "principia." the thought of both has to a great extent become the common inheritance of the race; and it is perhaps sufficient for the general reader to refer to a good account of the book and its arguments, such as may be found in the "encyclopædia britannica." (eng., 19th cent.) [95] read herschel and proctor in astronomy, to broaden and deepen the mind with the grand and beautiful conceptions of this most poetic of the sciences. proctor's books are more fascinating than any fiction. (eng., 19th cent.) [96] for a knowledge of what has been going on in this dim spot beneath the sun, in the ages before man came upon the stage, and for an idea about what kind of a fellow man was when he first set up housekeeping here, and how long ago that was, read lyell's "geology;" lubbock's "prehistoric times," "origin of civilization and primitive condition of man," and lyell's "antiquity of man" (eng., 19th cent.); and dawson's "chain of life." (u. s., 19th cent.) [97] read wood's beautiful and interesting books on natural history; especially his "evidences of mind in animals," "out of doors," "anecdotes of animals," "man and beast," "here and hereafter." (eng., 19th cent.) [98] whewell's "history of the inductive sciences" is a very broadening book. [99] de tocqueville's "democracy in america" is one of the great books, and is superior in depth and style even to bryce. the two books supplement each other. see note 89: (france, 18th cent.) [100] "constitutional history of the united states." (ger., 19th cent.) [101] "wealth of nations," "moral sentiments." (eng., 18th cent.) [102] "principles of population." one of the most celebrated of books. (eng., 18th cent.) [103] "principles of social philosophy." (eng., 19th cent.) [104] "essays on political economy," "leading principles of political economy." (eng., 19th cent.) [105] "comparative politics." (eng., 19th cent.) [106] "the theory of political economy," "the logic of statistics." (eng., 19th cent.) [107] "the nation, the foundation of civil order and political life in the united states." (u. s., 19th cent.) [108] "leviathan." see note 190. (eng., 16th cent.) [109] "the prince." (italy, 1469-1527.) [110] "chips from a german workshop," and various works on philology. (ger., 19th cent.) [111] "study of words," etc. (eng., 19th cent.) [112] "words and places." (eng., 19th cent.) [113] "natural history of selborne." (eng., 19th cent.) [114] "animal kingdom." (france, early 19th cent.) [115] "voyages." (eng., 18th cent.) [116] "heat as a mode of motion," "forms of water," etc. (eng., 19th cent.) [117] "on sound." (eng., 19th cent.) [118] "scientific researches." (eng., 19th cent.) [119] "conservation of energy." in a book on this subject edited by e. l. youmans. (ger., 19th cent.) [120] "man's place in nature." (eng., 19th cent.) [121] botany. (u. s., 19th cent.) [122] "methods of study in natural history." (u. s. 19th cent.) [123] physics. (u. s., 19th cent.) biography. biography carefully read will cast a flood of light before us on the path of life. read longfellow's "psalm of life," and try to find the teachings he refers to in the lives of great men. the world still lacks what it very much needs,--a book of _brief_ biographies of the greatest and noblest men and women of every age and country, by a master hand. the aim should be to extract from the past what it can teach us of value for the future; and to do this biography must become a comparative science, events and lives must be grouped over the whole range of the years, that by similarities and contrasts the truth may appear. smiles's "self-help" is a partial realization of this plan. the manner of reading should be: r. d. [124] plutarch's "lives" comes nearer to a comparative biography than any other book we have. he contrasts his characters in pairs, a greek and a roman in each couplet. it is one of the most delightful of books, and among those most universally read by cultured people of all nations. dryden's translation revised by clough is the best. (rome, 1st cent.) [125] in wendell phillips's oration on "toussaint l'ouverture," there is a fascinating comparison of the noble negro warrior with napoleon. (u. s., 19th cent.) [126] boswell's "johnson" is admittedly the greatest life of a single person yet written. (eng., 18th cent.) [127] lockhart's "life of scott" is a favorite with all who read it. wilkie collins especially recommends it as finely picturing genius and nobility of character. (eng., 19th cent.) [128] marshall's "life of washington" is an inspiring book. gladstone said to mr. depew: "sixty years ago i read chief-justice marshall's 'life of washington,' and i was forced to the conclusion that he was quite the greatest man that ever lived. the sixty years that have passed have not changed that impression; and to any englishman who seeks my advice in the line of his development and equipment i invariably say, 'begin by reading the life of george washington.'" (u. s., 19th cent.) franklin's "autobiography" is brief, philosophic, and delightfully frank and clear. (u. s., 18th cent.) [129] "the life of lincoln," by nicolay and hay, is a book that has very strong claims to the attention of every american, and every lover of liberty, greatness, nobility, and kindliness. (u. s., 19th cent.) grant's "memoirs" deserves reading for similar reasons. the great general lived an epic, and wrote a classic. (u. s. 19th cent.) [130] read carlyle's "life of john sterling," "oliver cromwell's letters and speeches," and "heroes and hero worship." (eng., 19th cent.) renan's "life of christ." (france, 19th cent.) [131] canon farrar's little "life of dante" is, considering its brevity, one of the best things in this department. (eng., 19th cent.) [132] emerson's "representative men" most strongly stirs thought and inspires the resolution. (u. s., 19th cent.) [133] "the portrait collection of the hundred greatest men," published by sampson, low, & co., 1879. [134] read parton's "sketches of men of progress." (u. s., 19th cent.) [135] "lights of two centuries." (u. s., 19th cent.) [136] "our great benefactors." (u. s., 19th cent.) [137] "book of martyrs." (eng., early 16th cent.) [138] "the life and times of goethe," and "michaelangelo." most interesting books. (germany, 19th cent.) [139] "english statesmen." (eng., 19th cent.) [140] "life of napoleon." (france, 19th cent.) [141] "lives of the poets." (eng., 18th cent.) [142] walton's "lives." (eng., 17th cent.) [143] "life of dr. arnold." (eng., 19th cent.) [144] "life of washington." (u. s., 19th cent.) [145] "life of nelson." (eng., 19th cent.) [146] "life of pitt." (eng., 19th cent.) [147] "life of byron." (eng., 19th cent.) [148] "lives of female sovereigns and illustrious women." (eng., 19th cent.) [149] "lives of the saints." (eng., 19th cent.) [150] "memories of many men." (u. s., 19th cent.) [151] "reminiscences." (u. s., 18th cent.) the life and letters of darwin, talleyrand, and macaulay; the journals of miss alcott, marie bashkirtseff, and eugénie de guerin; the autobiography of joseph jefferson; the "american statesmen" series, edited by john t. morse, jr., and the "english men of letters" series are all valuable books. the journals of miss alcott and marie bashkirtseff are stories of heart struggles, longings, failures, and triumphs, and are of exceeding interest and great popularity. the journal of eugénie de guerin deserves to be better known than it is, for the delicate sweetness of feeling that fills its pages. history. remarks may be made about history very similar to those in the special remarks concerning biography. the field is too vast for an ordinary life, and there is no book that will give in brief compass the net results and profits of man's investment in experience and life,--the dividends have not been declared. guizot and buckle come nearer to doing this than any other writers; but _the_ book that shall reduce the past to principles that will guide the future has not yet been written. the student will be greatly assisted by the "manual of historical literature," by c. k. adams. it is an admirable guide. putnam's series, "the stories of the nations," and scribner's "epoch" series are very useful, especially for young people. the manner of reading the best history should be: r. d. g. [152] green's "history of the english people" has probably the first claims on the general reader. (eng., 19th cent.) [153] bancroft's "history of the united states" should be read by every american citizen, along with dr. strong's "our country." (u. s., 19th cent.) the only trouble with bancroft is that he does not bring the history down to recent times. hildreth for the student, and ridpath for practical business men supply this defect. doyle's "history of the united states" is perhaps the best small book, and his "american colonies" is also good. mcmaster's "history of the people of the united states" is a brilliant work, given largely to an account of the social life of the people. [154] guizot's "history of civilization" and "history of france" (france, 19th cent.) are among the greatest books of the world; and with buckle's "history of civilization" (eng., 19th cent.) will give a careful reader an intellectual breadth and training far above what is attained by the majority even of reading men. [155] parkman is the macaulay of the new world. he invests the truths of sober history with all the charms of poetic imagination and graceful style. his literary work must take its place by the side of scott and irving. read his "france and england in north america," "conspiracy of pontiac," and "the oregon trail." freeman, fiske, and fyffe are also great historians, who require notice here. freeman's "comparative politics," "history of the saracens," "growth of the english constitution," "history of federal government," and "general sketch of history" are all great works,--the last being the best brief account of general history that we possess. (eng., 19th cent.) fiske's "civil government," "war of independence," and "critical period of american history" are standard books. (u. s., 19th cent.) fyffe's "modern europe" is called the most brilliant picture of the revolutionary period in existence. it is certainly one of the best of histories. [155a] "fifteen decisive battles of the world." (eng., 19th cent.) [156] "history of england in the 18th century," "history of european morals." these books take very high rank in respect to style, accuracy, and completeness. (eng., 19th cent.) [157] "ten great religions," by james freeman clarke. (u. s., 19th cent.) [158] "comparative history of religion." [159] "intellectual development of europe." a work of great power. (u. s., 19th cent.) [160] "middle ages." (eng., 19th cent.) [161] "constitutional history of england." bagehot's "english constitution" should be read with the works of hallam, freeman, and may on this topic, because of its brilliant generalizations and ingenious suggestions. (eng., 19th cent.) [162] "history of england." (eng., 18th cent.) [163] "history of england." (eng., 19th cent.) [164] "history of england." (eng., 19th cent.) [165] "decline and fall of the roman empire." (eng., 18th cent.) [166] "history of greece." (eng., 19th cent.) [167] "history of new england." (u. s., 19th cent.) [168] "conquest of mexico," "peru," "ferdinand and isabella," etc. prescott's style is of the very best, clear, graphic, and ever interesting. (u. s., 19th cent.) [169] "rise of the dutch republic." (u. s., 19th cent.) [169a] "rise of the republic of the united states." (u. s., 19th cent.) [170] "ancient egyptians." (eng., 19th cent.) [171] "history of rome." (eng., 19th cent.) [172] "history of the germans." (ger., 1798.) [173] "latin christianity." (eng., 19th cent.) [174] "history of the papacy in the 16th and 17th centuries." ranke is one of the strongest names in history. (ger., 19th cent.) [175] "italian republics." (france, 1773-1842.) [176] "history of france." (france, 19th cent.) [177] "french revolution." (eng., 19th cent.) [178] "history of france," "norman conquest of england." (france, 19th cent.) [179] "germania." his "life of agricola" is also worthy of note for the insight into character, the pathos, vigor, and affection manifested in its flattering pages. (rome, 1st cent.) [180] "history of rome." (rome, 1st cent. b. c.) [181] "the war of catiline." (rome, 1st cent. b. c.) [182] history of nearly all the nations known at the time he wrote. (greece, 5th cent. b. c.) [183] "anabasis, the retreat of the greek mercenaries of the persian king." (greece, 5th cent. b. c.) [184] "history of the athenian domination of greece." (greece, 5th cent. b. c.) [185] "history of the jewish wars." (jerusalem, 1st cent.) mackenzie's "history of the nineteenth century" is the best english book on the subject. rawlinson's "five great monarchies" is strongly recommended. philosophy. there have been, since the waters of thought began to flow, two great streams running side by side,--rationalism and mysticism. those who sail upon the former recognize reason as king; those upon the latter enthrone some vague and shadowy power, in general known as intuition. the tendency of the one is to begin with sense impressions, and out of these to build up a universe in the brain corresponding to the outer world, and to arrive at a belief in god by climbing the stairway of induction and analogy. the tendency of the other is to start with the affirmed nature of god, arrived at, the thinker knows not how, and deduce the universe from the conception of the divine nature. if this matter is kept in mind, the earnest student will be able to see through the mists sufficiently to discover what the philosophers are talking about whenever it chances that they themselves knew. spencer, plato, berkeley, kant, locke, are all worthy of a thorough reading; and comte's philosophy of mathematics is of great importance. the manner of reading good philosophic works should be: r. d. g. [186] spencer's philosophy is the grandest body of thought that any one man has ever given to the world. no one who wishes to move with the tide can afford to be unfamiliar with his books, from "first principles" to his essays. he believes that all ideas, or their materials, have come through the avenues of the senses. (eng., 19th cent.) [187] plato and socrates are a double star in the sky of philosophy that the strongest telescopes have failed to resolve. socrates wrote nothing, but talked much. plato was a pupil of his, and makes socrates the chief character in his writings. ten schools of philosophy claimed socrates as their head, but plato alone represented the master with fulness. considering the times in which he lived, the grandeur of his thought, the power of his imagination, and the nobility, elegance, originality, and beauty of his writings, plato has no superior in the whole range of literature. with plato, ideas are the only realities, things are imperfect expressions of them, and all knowledge is reminiscence of what the soul learned when it was in the land of spirit, face to face with ideas unveiled. read his dialogues, especially "phædo" and the "republic." (greece, 429-348 b. c.) [188] a most acute idealist, whose argument against the existence of matter is one of the great passages of literature. (eng., 18th cent.) [189] kant argues that the _forms_ of _thought_, _time_, and _space_ are necessarily intuitive, and not derived from sensation, since they are prerequisites to sensation. read the "critique of pure reason," "critique of practical reason," in which he treats moral philosophy, and "observations on the sublime and beautiful." (germany, 18th cent.) [190] locke bases knowledge on sensation. his "essay on the conduct of the understanding" is one of the most valuable books in the language. spencer, mill, and locke have so fully imbibed all that was good in hobbes that it is scarcely necessary to read him. (eng., 17th cent.) [191] comte's "positive philosophy" rejects intuitive knowledge. it is characterized by force of logic, immense research, great power of generalization (which is frequently carried beyond the warrant of facts), and immense bulk. (france, 19th cent.) [192] sensationalist. a very strong writer. (eng., 19th cent.) [193] "limits of religious thought." a very powerful exposure of the weakness of human imagination. (eng., 19th cent.) [194] "matter and force." a powerful presentation of materialism. (ger., 19th cent.) [195] "freedom of the will." a demonstration of the impossibility of free will. (amer., 18th cent.) [196] a very acute english philosopher. (eng., 1748-1832.) [197] moral and metaphysical philosophy. (eng., 19th cent.) [198] a deep, clear thinker, of sceptical character, who laid bare the flaws in the old philosophies. (eng., 1711-1776.) [199] one of the most profound metaphysicians the world can boast, and inventor of quaternions, the latest addition to mathematics. (scot., 19th cent.) [200] aristotle was the bacon of the old world. his method was the very opposite of plato's. he sought knowledge chiefly by carefully looking out upon the world, instead of by introspection. no one has exerted a greater influence on the thought of the world than this deep and earnest thinker. (greece, 4th cent. b. c.) [201] a very beautiful writer of the idealist school, though he claims to be eclectic. (france, 19th cent.) [202] hegel endeavored, by the method set forth in his "absolute logic," to reduce all knowledge to one science. (ger., 1770-1831.) schelling, in his "philosophy of identity," tries to prove that the same laws hold in the world of spirit as in the world of matter. schelling bases his system on an _intuition_ superior to reason, and admitting neither doubt nor explanation. (ger., 1775-1854.) [203] fichte carries the doctrines of kant to their limit: to him all except the life of the mind is a delusion. (ger., 18th cent.) [204] a great german philosopher of the time of luther (16th cent.), very learned, refined, and witty. read his "familiar colloquies." [205] "cosmic philosophy." (amer. 19th cent.) [206] "rational cosmology, or the eternal principles and necessary laws of the universe." (u. s., 19th cent.) [207] scottish philosophy. (u. s., 19th cent.) [208] theologico-politico-moral, voluminous dissertations. (amsterdam, 17th cent.) essays. next to shakspeare's plays, emerson's essays and lectures are to me the richest inspiration. at every turn new and delightful paths open before the mind; and the poetic feeling and imagery are often of the best. only the music and the power of discriminating the wheat from the chaff were lacking to have made one of the world's greatest poets. to pour into the life the spirit of emerson, bacon, and montaigne is a liberal education in itself. addison's "spectator" is inimitable in its union of humor, sense, and imagination. a number of eminent men, franklin among them, have referred to it as the source of their literary power. read these essays: r. d. c. g. [209] emerson's essays and lectures certainly deserve our first attention in this department, because of their poetic beauty and stimulating effect upon the imagination and all that is pure and strong and noble in the character. (amer., 19th cent.) [210] nowhere can be found so much wit and wisdom to the square inch as in bacon's essays. (eng., 1600.) [211] montaigne is the most popular of all the world's essayists, because of his common-sense, keen insight, and perfect frankness. the only author we certainly know to have been in shakspeare's own library. (france, 1580.) [212] ruskin's "ethics of the dust," "crown of wild olives," "sesame and lilies," while somewhat wild in substance as well as in title, are well worthy of reading for the intellectual stimulus afforded by their breadth of view, novelty of expression and illustration, and the intense force--almost fanaticism--which characterizes all that ruskin says. ruskin is one of three living writers whom farrar says he would first save from a conflagration of the world's library. carlyle is another of the same sort. read his "past and present," a grand essay on justice. (eng., 19th cent.) so far as style is concerned, addison's essays in the "spectator" are probably the best in the world. fiction. in modern times much that is best in literature has gone into the pages of the novel. the men and women of genius who would in other days have been great poets, philosophers, dramatists, essayists, and humorists have concentrated their powers, and poured out all their wealth to set in gold a story of human life. don't neglect the novels; but be sure to read _good_ ones, and don't read too many. in fiction, england, america, and france are far ahead of the rest of the world. scott may well be held to lead the list, considering the quantity and quality of what he wrote; and dickens, i presume, by many would be written next, though i prefer the philosophic novelists, like george eliot, macdonald, kingsley, hugo, etc. fielding, richardson, goldsmith, sterne, and defoe, jane austen, cooper, and marryat all claim our attention on one account or another. the united states can boast of hawthorne, tourgée, wallace, hearn, aldrich, warner, curtis, jewett, craddock, and many others. france has a glorious army, led by victor hugo, george sand, balzac, dumas, gautier, mérimée, etc. but the magnificent powers of these artists are combined with sad defects. hugo is the greatest literary force since goethe and scott; but his digressions are sometimes terribly tedious, his profundity darkness, and his "unities," his plot, and reasons for lugging in certain things hard to find. balzac gives us a monotony of wickedness. george sand is prone to idealize lust. "notre dame" and "les misérables," "le père goriot" and "eugénie grandet," "consuelo" and "la mare au diable," "capitaine fracasse" and "vingt ans après," are great books; but they will not rank with "tom jones" artistically, nor with the "vicar of wakefield," "ivanhoe," "adam bede," "romola," or "the scarlet letter," considering all the elements that go to make a great novel. germany, italy, and spain have no fiction that compares with ours. no doubt many will be surprised to find fielding, balzac, tolstoï, and others placed so low in the list as they are. the reason is that the moral tone of a book is, with us, a weightier test of its claims on the attention of the general reader, than the style of the author or the merit of his work from an artistic point of view. there might be some doubt whether or no we ought not to exclude from our tables entirely all books that are not noble enough in character to admit of their being read aloud in the family. the trouble is that much of the finest literature of the world would have to be excluded. so there seems to be no course but to admit these men, with a note as to their character. one who wishes to make a study of the novel will be interested in dunlop's "history of fiction," tuckerman's "history of english prose fiction," hazlitt's "english novelists," lanier's "novel," masson's "british novelists and their styles," and jeaffreson's "novels and novelists." the best fiction should be read: r. d. g. [213] "heart of midlothian," "waverley," "ivanhoe," "kenilworth," "guy mannering," "the antiquary," "rob roy," "old mortality," "red gauntlet," etc. scott is by very many--and among them some of the greatest--loved more than any other novelist. the purity, beauty, breadth, and power of his works will ever place them among the most desirable reading. (eng., 19th cent.) hutton's "sir walter scott," carlyle's "essay on scott," hazlitt's essay in "the spirit of the age," and other books referred to in the head notes to poetry and fiction will be useful to the student of scott. [214] "adam bede," "mill on the floss," "romola," "silas marner," etc. deep philosophy and insight into character mark all george eliot's writings. (eng., 19th cent.) lanier's "development of the novel" is practically only an enthusiastic study of george eliot. [215] "pickwick," "david copperfield," "bleak house," "martin chuzzlewit," "old curiosity shop," etc. dickens needs no comment. his fame is in every house. (eng., 19th cent.) [216] hawthorne's "scarlet letter," "marble faun," "great stone face," etc., are by universal consent accorded the first place in the lists of american novels, and are among the best to be found anywhere. (u. s., 19th cent.) [217] "vicar of wakefield." one of goethe's earliest favorites. (eng., 18th cent.) [218] "rienzi," "last days of pompeii," "last of the barons," etc. most powerful, delightful, and broadening books. (eng., 19th cent.) [219] "malcolm," "marquis o' lossie," "david elginbrod," etc. books of marvellous spiritual helpfulness. (eng., 19th cent.) [220] "esmond," "vanity fair," etc. very famous books. (eng., 19th cent.) [221] "westward, ho!" "two years ago," etc. among the best and most famous pictures of true english character. (eng., 19th cent.) [222] "ben hur." this book has been placed close to the bible and bunyan. (u. s., 19th cent.) [223] "hot plowshares," "the fool's errand," "the invisible empire," "appeal to cæsar," etc. books widely known, but whose great merit is not fully recognized. tourgée, though uneven, seems to us a writer of very great power. his "hot plowshares" is a powerful historical novel; and few books in the whole range of literature are so intensely interesting, and so free from all that is objectionable in subject or execution. (u. s., 19th cent.) [224] "les misérables," "notre dame de paris," "les travailleurs de la mer," etc. wraxall's translations of these great french novels are most excellent. (france, 19th cent.) some critics think that no characters in shakspeare are better drawn than those of dumas. "monte cristo," "the vicomte de bragelonne" (stevenson's favorite), "the three musketeers," "twenty years after," "the marie antoinette romances," etc., are powerful and intensely interesting novels. (france, 19th cent.) [225] "robinson crusoe." there are few persons who do not get delight and inspiration from defoe's wonderful story. (eng., 1661-1731.) "tom brown at rugby" and "tom brown at oxford," by thomas hughes, are delightful books for boys. (eng., 19th cent.) [226] mrs. stowe's "uncle tom's cabin," was god's bugle-call to the war against slavery. her "oldtown folks" and "sam lawson's fireside stories" are very humorous sketches of new england life. (u. s., 19th cent.) cooper's "the spy," "the pilot," "leather stocking," "deerslayer," "pathfinder," etc., are books that interfere with food and sleep, and chain us to their pages. (u. s., 19th cent.) [227] "prue and i," by george william curtis, is one of the most suggestive stories in print, and is in every way a delightful book. "potiphar papers," "our best society," "trumps," "lotus eaters,"--in fact, everything mr. curtis writes, is of the highest interest, and worthy of the most careful attention. (u. s., 19th cent.) the same may be said of the works of charles dudley warner,--"being a boy," "a hunting of the deer," "in the wilderness," "backlog studies," "my summer in a garden," etc. (u. s., 19th cent.) [228] t. b. aldrich, while perhaps not destined to rank with scott, eliot, and hawthorne, is nevertheless one of the most wholesome and interesting of living authors. "the stillwater tragedy" is his strongest book. "prudence palfrey," "the story of a bad boy," "margery daw," and "the queen of sheba" will doubtless be read by those who once become acquainted with the author. (u. s., 19th cent.) the first part of hearn's "chita" exceeds in beauty and strength any other piece of descriptive writing with which we are familiar. (u. s., 19th cent.) [229] ebers' "homo sum," "uarda," and "an egyptian princess" are very powerful studies of egyptian life and history. (ger., 19th cent.) "with fire and sword," and its sequels, "the deluge" and "pan michael," by henryk sienkiewicz, are among the greatest books of modern times. they are historical romances of the conflict between russia, poland, and sweden; and their power may be guessed from the fact that critics have compared the author favorably with scott, dumas, schiller, cervantes, thackeray, turgenieff, homer, and even shakspeare. (poland, 19th cent.) [230] miss austen's "emma," "pride and prejudice" (eng., 19th cent.), and charlotte bronté's "jane eyre" (eng., 19th cent.), are all noble and renowned novels. [231] louisa alcott's "little women" is a lovely story of home life; and its exceeding popularity is one of the most encouraging signs of the growth of a taste for pure, gentle, natural literature. (u. s., 19th cent.) mrs. burnett's "little lord fauntleroy" deservedly met at once a high reward of popularity, and was placed in the front rank among stories of child-life. as a teacher of gentleness and good manners it is invaluable. (eng., 19th cent.) [232] cable's "grande pointe," "the grandissimes," etc., should be read by all who wish to know the best living novelists. (u. s., 19th cent.) craddock's "where the battle was fought," "despot of broomsedge cove," "prophet of great smoky mountain," "story of keedon bluffs," and "down the ravine" are fascinating stories, the last two being fine books for children. (u. s., 19th cent.) [233] mrs. a. d. t. whitney's "sights and insights," though somewhat too wordy for this busy world, is worthy a place here, because of its spiritual beauty and its keen common-sense in respect to marriage and courtship. (u. s., 19th cent.) sarah orne jewett has won a good name by her excellent stories, "deephaven," "betty leicester," etc. her "play days" is a fine book for girls. (u. s., 19th cent.) [234] fielding, le sage, and balzac are writers of great power, whose works are studied for their artistic merit, their wit, and the intense excitement some of them yield; but the general moral tone of their writings places them below the purer writers above spoken of in respect to their value to the general reader, one of whose deepest interests is character-forming. fielding's "tom jones" is by many considered the finest novel in existence; and it undoubtedly would be, if along with its literary skill it possessed the high tone of curtis or scott. "jonathan wild" is also a powerful story. (eng., 18th cent.) "gil blas," by le sage, is one of the most famous and widely read books in the world. (france, 1668--1747.) balzac's best are "le père goriot" (and especially the magnificent preface to this book), "la recherche de l'absolu," "eugénie grandet," "la peau de chagrin," etc. (france, 19th cent.) [235] rousseau's "emile" has been called the greatest book ever written; but we presume that bias and limitation of knowledge on the part of critics (not rare accomplishments of theirs) might procure a similar judgment in respect to almost any strong and peculiar book. rousseau's "confessions" are worth some attention. (france, 18th cent.) saintine's "picciola" is a beautiful story. (france, 19th cent.) [236] coffin's "boys of '76," "boys of '61," "story of liberty," etc., are splendid books for young people. the last describes the march of the human race from slavery to freedom. (u. s., 19th cent.) charles reade's "hard cash," "peg woffington," "cloister and hearth" are fascinating stories. (eng., 19th cent.) warren's "ten thousand a year." [237] landor's "imaginary conversations of great men." (eng., 18th cent.) turgenieff's "liza," "smoke," and "fathers and sons." (russia, 19th cent.) eugene sue's "wandering jew." manzoni's "i promessi sposi." [238] cottin's "elizabeth." besant's "all sorts and conditions of men." (eng., 19th cent.) stevenson's "the strange case of dr. jekyll and mr. hyde." a book that teaches the danger of giving way to the evil side of our nature. [239] mrs. ward's "robert elsmere" is a famous picture of the struggle in the religious mind to-day. (eng., 19th cent.) margaret deland's "john ward, preacher," is a book of the same class as the last, but is not as interesting as her "florida days" or her poems. (u. s., 19th cent.) anna sewell's "black beauty" is the autobiography of a noble horse, and is tender and intelligent. a book that every one who has anything to do with horses, or indeed with animals of any sort, cannot afford to neglect. (eng., 19th cent.) bret harte's "luck of roaring camp" is an interesting picture of western life, and opens a new vein of fiction. (u. s., 19th cent.) [240] green's "hand and ring," "leavenworth case," etc., are splendid examples of reasoning, without any of the objectionable features usually found in detective stories. (u. s., 19th cent.) miss mulock's "john halifax, gentleman," is a great and famous book. (eng., 19th cent.) disraeli's "lothair," "endymion," etc., are strong books; requiring the notice of one who reads widely in english fiction. (eng., 19th cent.) howells' "a modern instance," "the undiscovered country," "a hazard of new fortunes," "a chance acquaintance," "lady of the aroostook," etc., are not objectionable. (u. s., 19th cent.) tolstoï's "anna karénina" deserves mention, though we cannot by any means agree with howells that tolstoï is the greatest of novelists. the motive and atmosphere of his books are not lofty, and some of his work is positively disgraceful. (russia, 19th cent.) [241] george sand's "consuelo" is a great book in more senses than one; and although it deserves a place in this lower list, yet there are so many better books, that if one follows the true order, life would be likely to depart before he had time to read a four-volume novel by an author of the tone of george sand. (france, 19th cent.) black's "strange adventures of a phaeton," "princess of thule." (eng., 19th cent.) blackmore's "lorna doone." (eng., 19th cent.) olive schreiner's "story of an african farm" is powerful, but not altogether wholesome. (eng., 19th cent.) [242] bremer's "the neighbors." (norway, 19th cent.) trollope's "last chronicles of barsetshire." (eng., 19th cent.) winthrop's "cecil dreeme," "john brent." (u. s., 19th cent.) [243] richardson's "pamela" and "clarissa harlowe" are interesting, because they were the beginning of the english novel; but they are not nice or natural, and have no attractions except their historic position. (eng., 1689-1761.) smollett's "humphrey clinker" is his strongest work. "peregrine pickle" is very witty, and "adventures of an atom" altogether a miserable book. smollett possessed power, but his work is on a very low plane. (eng., 18th cent.) boccaccio's "decameron" is a series of splendidly told tales, from which chaucer drew much besides his inspiration. the book is strong, but of very inferior moral tone. oratory. great and successful oratory requires deep knowledge of the human mind and character, personal force, vivid imagination, control of language and temper, and a faculty of putting the greatest truths in such clear and simple and forceful form, that they may not only be grasped by untrained minds, but will break down the barriers of prejudice and interest, and fight their way to the throne of the will. oratory is religion, science, philosophy, biography, history, wit, pathos, and poetry _in action_. this department of literature is therefore of the greatest value in the development of mind and heart, and of the power to influence and control our fellows. especially read and study demosthenes on the crown, burke's "warren hastings' oration," webster's "reply to hayne," phillips' "lovejoy" and "toussaint l'ouverture," and lincoln's "gettysburg," his debates with douglas, and his great speeches in new york and the east before the war, in which fun, pathos, and logic were all welded together in such masterly shape that professors of oratory followed him about from city to city, studying him as a model of eloquence. there is a book called "great orations of great orators" that is very valuable, and there is a series of three volumes containing the best british orations (fifteen orators), and another similar series of american speeches (thirty-two orators). wit and humor. in what wit consists, and why it is we laugh, are questions hard to answer (read on that subject spencer and hobbes, and mathews' "wit and humor; their use and abuse"); but certain it is that a little seasoning of fun makes intellectual food very palatable, and much better adapts it for universal and permanent assimilation. most men can keep what is tied to their memories with a joke. considering all things, lowell, holmes, dickens, and cervantes are the best humorists the world affords. see table iii. group 4. they exhibit a union of power and purpose that is not found elsewhere. they always subordinate wit to wisdom, always aim at something far higher than making fun for its own sake, never appear to make any effort for their effects, and always polish their work to perfection. a great deal of the keenest wit will be found in books whose general character puts them in some other column,--poetry, fiction, oratory, etc. the works of shakspeare, addison, eliot, sheridan, goldsmith, irving, higginson, carleton, thackeray, hood, saxe, fielding, smollett, aristophanes, molière, etc., abound in wit and humor. the student of humor will be interested in hazlitt's "english comic writers," thackeray's "english humorists," and besant's "french humorists." [244] "fable for critics," "biglow papers." considering the keenness and variety of wit, the depth of sarcasm, the breadth of view, and the importance of its subject, the "biglow papers" is the greatest humorous work of all history. (u. s., 19th cent.) [245] "autocrat of the breakfast-table," "professor at the breakfast-table," etc. (u. s., 19th cent.) [246] "pickwick papers." (eng., 19th cent.) [247] "don quixote." (spain, 1547-1616.) [248] along with much violent scoffing, and calling of his betters by hard names, ingersoll's speeches contain some of the keenest wit in the language. (u. s., 19th cent.) [249] marietta holley's "sweet cicely," "samantha at the centennial," "betsey bobbet," "my wayward pardner," "samantha at saratoga," "samantha among the brethren," etc., are full of quaint fun, keen insight, and common-sense. they are somewhat more wordy than we wish they were, but they are wholesome, and the author's purpose is always a lofty one. her fun is not mere fun, but is like the laughing eye and smiling lip of one whose words are full of thought and elevated feeling. (u. s., 19th cent.) [250] g. w. curtis's "potiphar papers" is a good example of quiet, refined humor. (u. s., 19th cent.) [251] chauncey m. depew's orations and after-dinner speeches are worthy of perusal by all lovers of wit and sense. (u. s., 19th cent.) [252] mark twain is the greatest of those who make humor the primary object. he does not, like artemus ward, make it the sole object,--there is a large amount of keen common-sense in his "a yankee in king arthur's court," and there is also in it an open-mindedness to the newest currents of thought that proves the author to be one of the most wide-awake men of the day. "innocents abroad," "the prince and the pauper," "roughing it," etc., are very amusing books, the only drawback being that the reader is sometimes conscious of an effort to be funny. (u. s., 19th cent.) 253: charles dudley warner's "in the wilderness" gives some exceedingly amusing sketches of backwoods life. see also other books mentioned under the head of fiction. (u. s., 19th cent.) [254] s. k. edwards' "two runaways, and other stories" is a book that no lover of humor can afford to be without. (u. s., 19th cent.) [255] e. e. hale's "my double, and how he undid me," and other stories contain much innocent recreation. (u. s., 19th cent.) [256] nasby's "ekoes from kentucky" and "swingin' round the circle" are full of the keenest political sarcasm. lincoln was so impressed with nasby's power, that he said he had rather possess such gifts than be president of the united states. (u. s., 19th cent.) [257] "artemus ward his book," is funny, but lacks purpose beyond the raising of a laugh. (u. s., 19th cent.) [258] "caudle lectures," "catspaw," etc. jerrold is one of the sharpest of wits. (eng., 19th cent.) [259] voltaire was the ingersoll of france, only more so. his "dictionnaire" is full of stinging sarcasm and fierce wit. (france, 18th cent.) "english bards and scotch reviewers." the sharpest edge of byron's keen mind. (eng., 1788-1824.) [260] "hudibras." a tirade against the puritans. (eng., 17th cent.) "gulliver's travels," "tale of a tub," etc. coarse raillery. (eng., 18th cent.) [261] "gargantua and pantagruel." immense coarse wit. (france, 16th cent.) "tristram shandy." not delicate, but full of humor. (eng., 18th cent.) [262] juvenal is one of the world's greatest satirists. (rome, 1st cent.) lucian is the voltaire of the old world. in his "dialogues of the gods" he covers with ridicule the religious notions of the people. (greek lit, 2d cent. a. d.) fables and fairy tales. fables and fairy tales are condensed dramas, and some of them are crystal drops from the fountains of poetic thought. often they express in picture language the deepest lessons that mankind have learned; and one who wishes to gather to himself the intellectual wealth of the nations must not neglect them. in the section of the book devoted to remarks upon the guidance of children, the literature of this subject receives more extended attention. among the books that will most interest the student of this subject may be mentioned the works of fiske and bulfinch, named below, baldwin's "story of the golden age," ragozin's "chaldea," kingsley's "greek heroes," cox's "tales of ancient greece," hanson's "stories of charlemagne," church's "story of the iliad" and "story of the æneid," and the books mentioned in connection with the "morte d'arthur," note 323 following:-[263] "fairy tales," "shoes of fortune," etc. (denmark, 19th cent.) [264] the inimitable french poet of fable. (france, 17th cent.) [265] the world-famous greek fabulist. his popularity in all ages has been unbounded. socrates amused himself with his stories. (greece, 6th cent. b. c.) [266] "household tales." (ger., early 19th cent.) [267] "reineke fox." (bohn lib.) (ger., early 19th cent.) kipling's "indian tales." (eng., 19th cent.) [268] "age of fable," "age of chivalry," etc. (eng., 19th cent.) [269] fables in his poems. (u. s., 19th cent.) [270] a french fabulist, next in fame to la fontaine. (18th cent.) [271] greek fables. (about com. christ. era.) [272] "tales." (ger., 19th cent.) [273] "metamorphoses." an account of the mythology of the ancients. ovid was one of rome's greatest poets. (rome, 1st cent. b. c.) curtin's "myths and folk-lore of ireland," "myths and folk-tales of the russians," etc. (u. s., 19th cent.) fiske's "myths and myth makers." (u. s., 19th cent.) travel. nothing favors breadth more than travel and contact with those of differing modes of life and variant belief. the tolerance and sympathy that are folding in the world in these modern days owe much to the vast increase of travel that has resulted from growth of commerce, the development of wealth, and the cheapness and rapidity of steam transportation. even a wider view of the world comes to us through the literature of travel than we could ever gain by personal experience, however much of wealth and time we had at our disposal; and though the vividness is less in each particular picture of the written page than if we saw the full original reality that is painted for us, yet this is more than compensated by the breadth and insight and perception of the meaning of the scenes portrayed, which we can take at once from the writer, to whom perhaps the gaining of what he gives so easily has been a very costly, tedious process, and would be so to us if we had to rely on personal observation. voyages and travels therefore are of much importance in our studies, and delightful reading too. stanley's opinions have been much relied on in selecting the following books:-[274] voyages. (eng., 18th cent.) [275] cosmos; travels. (ger., 1762-1832.) [276] naturalist on the beagle. (eng., 19th cent.) [277] travels. (venice, 14th cent.) [278] arctic explorations. (u. s., 19th cent.) [279] south africa. (eng., 19th cent.) [280] through the dark continent; in darkest africa. (u. s., 19th cent.) [281] travels in africa. (france, 19th cent.) [282] on egypt. (germany, 19th cent.) [283] abyssinia. (eng., 19th cent.) [284] india. [285] niger. [286] south america. [287] upper niger. [288] persia. [289] central africa. [290] west coast of africa. [291] travelled for thirty years, then wrote the marvels he had seen and heard; and his book became very popular in the 14th and 15th centuries. (eng., 14th cent.) [292] the nile. guides. in this column of "guides" are placed books that will be useful in arriving at a fuller knowledge of literature and authors, in determining what to read, and in our own literary efforts. [293] "what to read on the subject of reading," by william e. foster, librarian of the providence public library. every one who is interested in books should keep an eye on this thorough and enthusiastic worker, and take advantage of the information he lavishes in his bulletins. [294] the "pall mall extra," containing sir john lubbock's "list of the best hundred books," and letters from many distinguished men. [295] english literature. [296] english literature. [297] "english literature." the most philosophic work on the subject; but it is difficult, and requires a previous knowledge of the principal english authors. [298] handbook of universal literature. [299] dictionary of authors. [300] bartlett's "familiar quotations" is one of the most famous and valuable of books. [301] "edge-tools of speech." brief quotations arranged under heads such as books, government, love, etc. [302] "library of poetry and song;" but for the general reader palgrave's exquisite little "golden treasury" is better. [303] "primer of english literature." the best very brief book on the subject. [304] bibliographical aids. [305] "motive and habit of reading." [306] "choice of books." [307] "sesame and lilies." [308] "the love of books." [309] "history of prose fiction." baldwin's "book lover" is valuable for its lists of books bearing on special topics. c. k. adams' "manual of historical literature" is invaluable to the student of history. there ought to be similar books relating to philosophy, fiction, science, etc. miscellaneous. in the column "miscellaneous" are placed a number of books which should be at least glanced through to open the doors of thought on all sides and to take such account of their riches as will place them at command when needed. [310] one of the noblest little books in existence; to read it is to pour into the life and character the inspiration of hundreds of the best and most successful lives. every page should be carefully read and digested. (u. s., 19th cent.) [311] an exquisite book; one of robert collyer's early favorites. put its beauty in your heart. (u. s., 19th cent.) [312] a book that should be read for its breadth. (eng., early 17th cent.) [313] edward bellamy's "looking backward" is one of the same class of books to which bacon's "new atlantis," more's "utopia," etc., belong, and may be read with much pleasure and profit along with them. it is really a looking forward to an ideal commonwealth, in which the labor troubles and despotisms of to-day shall be adjusted on the same principle as the political troubles and despotisms of the last century were settled; namely, the principle that each citizen shall be industrially the equal of every other, as all are now political equals. it is a very famous book, and has been called the greatest book of the century, which, happily for the immortality of spencer and darwin, carlyle and ruskin, parkman and bancroft, guizot and bryce, goethe and hugo, byron and burns, scott and tennyson, whittier and lowell, bulwer and thackeray, dickens and eliot, is only the judgment of personal friendship and blissful ignorance. but while the book cannot feel at home in the society of the great, it is nevertheless a very entertaining story, and one vastly stimulative of thought. the idea of a coming _industrial democracy_, bearing more or less analogy to the political democracy, the triumph of which we have seen, is one that has probably occurred to every thoughtful person; and in bellamy's book may be found an ingenious expansion of the idea much preferable to the ordinary socialistic plans of the day, though not wholly free from the injustice that inheres in all social schemes that do not aim to secure to each man the wealth or other advantage that his lawful efforts naturally produce. (u. s., 19th cent.) [314] everywhere a favorite. it opens up wide regions of imagination. ruskin says he read it many times when he might have been better employed, and crosses it from his list. but the very fact that he read the book so often shows that even his deep mind found irresistible attraction in it. (first introduced into europe in 17th cent.) [315] the most colossal lies known to science. (ger., 18th cent.) [316] the poem of "beowulf" should be looked into by all who wish to know the character of the men from whom we sprang, and therefore realize the basic elements of our own character. (eng., early saxon times.) [317] should be glanced at for the light it throws on english history and development. (9th-12th cents.) [318] froissart's "chronicles" constitute a graphic story of the states of europe from 1322 to the end of the 14th century. scott said that froissart was his master. breadth demands at least a glance at the old itinerant tale-gatherer. note especially the great rally of the rebels of ghent. [319] this masterpiece of old german minstrelsy is too much neglected by us. read it with the three preceding. (early german.) [320] _saga_ means "tale" or "narrative," and is applied in iceland to every kind of tradition, true or fabulous. read the "heimskringla," njal's saga, and grettir's saga, (9th-13th cents.) [321] along with the last should be read the poems of the elder edda. (compiled by samund the wise, 12th cent.) [322] the epic of spain, containing a wonderful account of the prowess of a great leader and chief. (spain, before the 13th cent.) [323] a collection of fragments about the famous king arthur and his round table. they crop out in every age of english literature. read the book with tennyson's "idylls of the king,"--a poem inspired by malory's "morte d'arthur,"--cervantes' "don quixote," and twain's "yankee in the court of king arthur," lanier's "boy's king arthur," ritson's "ancient english metrical romances," ellis' introduction to the study of the same, preston's "troubadours and trouvères," sismondi's "literature of southern europe," chapon's "troubadours," and van laun's "history of french literature" may be referred to with advantage by the student of malory. [324] a collection of chinese odes. [325] this and the last are recommended, not for intrinsic merit, but for breadth, and to open the way to an understanding of and sympathy with four hundred millions of mankind who hold these books in profound veneration. (china, as early as 5th cent. b. c.) [326] this is the bible of the sufis of persia, one of the manifestations of that great spirit of mysticism which flows like a great current through the world's history, side by side with the stream of rationalism. it found certain outlets in schelling, swedenborg, emerson, etc., and is bubbling up even now through the strata of worldliness in the united states in the shape of theosophy. (7th cent.) [327] read saint hilaire's "buddha" and arnold's "light of asia." they will open great regions of thought. [328] these are epitomized by talboys wheeler in his "history of india." very interesting and broadening. (very ancient.) [330] not valuable reading intrinsically, but as opening the doors of communication with the minds and hearts of whole races of men, most useful. the vedas are the bible of the hindus, and contain the revelation of brahma (15th cent.). the koran is the mohammedan bible (6th cent.). the talmud belongs to the rabbinical literature of the jews, and is a collection of jewish traditions (3d cent.). [333] the works of hooker, swedenborg, newton, kepler, copernicus, laplace, should be actually _handled_ and _glanced through_ to form a nucleus of experience, around which may gather a little knowledge of these famous men and what they did. this remark applies with more or less of force to all the names on the second shelf. few can hope to _read all_ these books, but it is practicable by means of general works, such as those mentioned in column 13, to gain an idea of each man, his character and work; and there is no better way to put a hook in the memory on which such knowledge of an author may be securely kept, than to take his book in your hands, note its size and peculiarities (visual and tactual impressions are more easily remembered than others as a rule), glance through its contents, and read a passage or two. short courses. when the reader has a special purpose in view, it is of the greatest advantage to arrange in systematic order the books that will be most helpful in the accomplishment of his purpose, study them one after the other, mark them, compare them, make cross references from one to another, digest and assimilate the vital portions of each, and seek to obtain a mastery of all that the best minds of the past have given us in reference to the object of his effort. for example: a person who has devoted himself exclusively to one line of ideas will be greatly benefited by reading a short course of books that will give him a glimpse of each of the great fields of thought. one who is lacking in humor should get a good list of fine humorous works and devote himself to them, and to the society of fun-loving people, until he can see and enjoy a good joke as keenly as they do,--not only to quicken his perception of humor, but that the organ of fun (the gland that secretes wit and humor) may be roused into normal activity. again, if a gentleman finds that he does not appreciate shakspeare, dante, irving, etc., as he sees or is told that literary people do; if he prefers his newspaper to the english classics as a source of pleasure and profit; if he sees little difference between tennyson and tupper, enjoys bill nye as much or more than holmes, and is able to compare the verses he writes to his sweetheart with milton without any very distinct feeling except perhaps a disgust for milton,--if any of these things are true, he has need of a course to develop a literary taste. in the three tables following will be found a suggestion of several important short courses, and others will be found on page 123 _et seq._ table ii. a short special course, to gather _ideas_ of practical importance to every life, and to make a beginning in the gaining of that _breadth of mind_ which is of such vital value by reason of its influence on morals and the aid it gives in the attainment of truth. 1. physiology and hygiene. read and digest the best books. see table i. col. 3. 2. "our country," by strong; the constitution of the united states; the declaration of independence, and washington's farewell. (all m. r. d.) 3. mill's logic; at any rate, the canons of induction and the chapter on fallacies, (m. r. d. c. g.) 4. smiles's "self-help." (m. r. d.) 5. wood's books on natural history; especially his anecdotes of animals, and evidences of mind, etc., in animals (e. r. d.). proctor's books on astronomy, "other worlds than ours," etc. (e. r. g.). lubbock's "primitive condition of man" (m. r.). dawson's "chain of life" (m. r.). in some good brief way, as by using the "encyclopædia britannica," read _about_ copernicus, galileo, kepler, newton, darwin, herschel, lyell, harvey, and torricelli. 6. spencer's "first principles." (d. r. d. g.) 7. green's "short history of the english people" (m. r. d. g.). bancroft's "history of the united states" (m. r. d. g). guizot's "history of civilization" (m. r. d. g.). 8. max müller's philological works, or some of them (m. r.). taylor's "words and places" (m. r.). 9. in some public library, if the books are not accessible elsewhere, get into your hands the books named in columns 12 and 13 of table i., and not already spoken of in this table, and glance through each, reading a little here and there to make a rapid survey of the ground, acquire some idea of it, and note the places where it may seem to you worth while to dig for gold. table iii. a short course of the choicest selections from the whole field of general literature. it may easily be read through in a year, and will form a taste and provide a standard that will enable the reader ever after to judge for himself of the quality and value of whatever books may come before the senate of his soul to ask for an appropriation of his time in their behalf. very few books are requisite for this course, but it will awaken a desire that will demand a library of standard literature. no. 1, no. 2, etc., refer to the numbers of the "100 choice selections." monroe's "sixth reader" and palgrave's "golden treasury" are also referred to, because they contain a great number of these gems, and are books likely to be in the possession of the reader. for the meaning of the other abbreviations, see the last section of the introductory remarks. group i.--_poetry._ [*] in headings denotes "degree of difficulty." +-------------------------------------+-----+----------+---------------+ | | [*] | manner | | | | | of | where found. | | | | reading. | | +-------------------------------------+-----+----------+---------------+ | 1. shakspeare. | | | | | | | | | | hamlet, especially noting hamlet's | | | shakspeare's | | conversations with the ghost, | | | plays are | | with his mother and ophelia, his | | | published | | advice to the players, his | | | separately, | | soliloquy, and his discourse on | d. | r.d.c.g. | and also | | the nobleness of man | | | together, | | merchant of venice, especially | | | richard grant | | noting the scene in court, and | | | white's | | the parts relating to portia | e. | r.d.c.g. | edition being | | julius cæsar, especially noting the | | | the best. | | speeches of brutus and antony, | | | | | and the quarrel of brutus and | m. | r.d.c.g. | | | cassius | | | | | taming of the shrew | e. | r.g. | | | henry the eighth | m. | r.d. | | | henry the fourth, read for the wit | | | | | of falstaff | m. | r.d. | | | henry the fifth, noting especially | | | | | the wooing | m. | r.d. | | | coriolanus, noting especially the | | | | | grand fire and force and | | | | | frankness of coriolanus | m. | r.d.c.g. | | | sonnets in palgrave's golden | | | | | treasury, nos. 3, 6, 11, 12, 13, | | | | | 14, 18, 36, 46 | m. | r.d.c. | | | | | | | | 2. milton. | | | | | | | | | | the opening of the gates of hell, | | | | | one of the sublimest conceptions | | | | | in literature. it is in paradise | | | | | lost, about six pages from the | | | | | end of book ii. read sixty lines | | | | | beginning, "thus saying, from her | | | | | side the fatal key, sad | | | | | instrument of all our woe" | d. | r.d.g. | milton's | | satan's throne, ten lines at the | | | poems. | | beginning of book ii. | m. | r.d.g. | | | opening of paradise lost, 26 lines | | | | | at the beginning of book i. | m. | r.d.g. | | | the angels uprooting the mountains | | | | | and hurling them on the rebels. | | | | | fifty lines beginning about the | | | | | 640th line of book vi., "so they | | | | | in pleasant vein," etc. | m. | r.d.g. | | | "hail, holy light," fifty-five | | | | | lines at the beginning of book | m. | r.d.g. | | | iii. | | | | | comus, a masque, and one of the | | | | | masterpieces of english | d. | r.d.c.g. | milton's | | literature | | | poems. | | l' allegro, a short poem on mirth | d. | r.d.c.g. | the last | | il penseroso, a short poem | | | three of this | | on melancholy | d. | r.d.c.g. | list are in | | lycidas, a celebrated elegy | d. | r.g. | palgrave. | | | | | | | 3. homer. | | | | | | | | | | | | | homer has had | | | | | many | | pope's translation. at least the | | | translators, | | first book of the iliad. a | | | pope, derby, | | simple, clear story of battles | | | worsley, | | and quarrels, and counsels, | | | chapman, | | charming in its sublimity, | | | flaxman, | | pathos, vigor, and naturalness. | | | lang, bryant, | | the world's greatest epic | e. | r.d.c.g. | etc. | | | | | | | 4. æschylus. | | | | | | | | potter, | | | | | morshead, | | prometheus bound, the sublimest of | | | swanwick, | | the sublime. be sure to reach and | | | milman, and | | grasp the grand picture of the | | | browning have | | human race and its troubles which | | | translated | | underlies this most magnificent | | | æschylus. the | | poem | d. | r.d.c.g. | first two are | | agamemnon, the grandest tragedy | | | the best. | | in the world | m. | r.d.g. | flaxman's | | | | | designs add | | | | | much. | | | | | | | 5. dante. | | | | | | | | | | divine comedy. read farrar's little | | | translated by | | life of dante (john alden, | | | longfellow, | | n. y.), and then take the comedy | | | carey, john | | and read the thirty-third canto, | | | carlyle, | | the portions relating to the | | | butler, and | | hells of incontinence and of | | | dean church. | | fraud, thepicture of satan, and | | | | | the whole of the purgatorio | d. | r.d.g. | | | | | | | | 6. spenser. | | | | | | | | | | faerie queen, noting specially the | | | | | first book and the book of | | | | | britomart, endeavoring to grasp | | | | | and apply to your own life the | | | | | truths that underlie the rich and | | | | | beautiful imagery | d. | r.d.g. | spenser's | | hymn in honor of his own wedding | d. | r.d.g. | poems. the | | fable of the oak and the briar, in | | | calendar is | | shepherd's calendar, february | m. | r. | published | | | | | separately. | | | | | | | 7. scott. | | | | | | | | | | lady of the lake | e. | r. | scott's poems,| | marmion | e. | r. | or separate. | +-------------------------------------+-----+----------+---------------+ +---------------------------------------------------------+ | transcriber's note: numbers 8 and 9 are missing in the | | original. | +---------------------------------------------------------+ group ii.--_short poetical selections._ +-------------------------------------+-----+----------+---------------+ | | | manner | | | | [*] | of | where found. | | | | reading. | | +-------------------------------------+-----+----------+---------------+ | 10. payne. | | | | | home, sweet home | e. | c. | | | | | | | | longfellow. | | | | | psalm of life. | | r.d.c. | longfellow's | | paul revere's ride | | | poems. | | the building of the ship | e. | r. | | | (these may be found in most | | | | | of the reading-books.) | e. | | | | suspiria, and the close of | | | | | morituri salutamus | m. | r.d. | | | | | | | | holmes. | | | | | nautilus; the last stanza | | | autocrat of | | commit | m. | r.d. | the | | the stars and flowers, a | | | breakfast | | lovely little poem,--the | | | table. | | first verses in the | | | | | autocrat of the | | | | | breakfast-table | e. | r.d. | | | | | | | | hunt. | | | | | abou ben adhem | e. | r.d. | monroe. | | | | | | | carew. | | | | | the true beauty | e. | r.d. | palgrave, 87. | | | | | | | gray. | | | | | elegy in a country churchyard | m. | r.d.c. | " 147. | | hymn to adversity | m. | r.d. | " 159. | | progress of poesy | m. | r.d. | " 140. | | the bard | m. | r.d. | " 123. | | | | | | | saxe. | | | | | the blind men and the elephant| e. | r.d. | no. 4. | | | | | | | jackson. | | | poems of | | the release | m. | r.d. | h. h. jackson.| | | | | | | 11. hood. | | | | | bridge of sighs | m. | r.d. | palgrave, 231.| | song of the shirt | e. | r.d. | no. 2. | | | | | | | burns. | | | | | ye banks and braes o' bonnie | | | | | doon | e. | r.d. | palgrave, 139.| | to a field-mouse | e. | r.d. | " 144.| | mary morrison | e. | r.d. | " 148.| | bonnie lesley | e. | r.d. | " 149.| | jean | e. | r.d. | " 155.| | john anderson | e. | r.d. | " 156.| | a man's a man for a' that | e. | r.d. | burns's poems.| | auld lang syne | e. | r.d. | | | robert bruce's address to his | | | | | army | e. | r.d. | | | | | | | | moore. | | | | | the light of other days | e. | r.d. | palgrave, 225.| | come rest in this bosom | e. | r.d. | irish melodies| | at the mid hour of night | e. | r.d. | irish melodies| | those evening bells | e. | r.d. | monroe. | | | | | | | coleridge. | | | | | rime of the ancient mariner | d. | r.d.g. | coleridge's | | kubla khan; a picture of the | | | poems. | | stream of life | d. | r.d.g. | | | vale of chamouni | e. | r. | monroe. | | | | | | | whittier. | | | | | the farmer's wooing, in among | | | | | the hills | m. | r.d.c. | whittier's | | the harp at nature's advent | | | poems. | | strung, etc., in tent on | | | | | the beach | m. | r.d.c. | | | snow bound, centennial hymn | | | | | (no. 13), and at least | | | | | glance athis voices of | | | | | freedom | m. | r.d.c. | | | barefoot boy | e. | r.d.c. | | | | | | | | tennyson. | | | | | "break, break, break, on thy | | | tennyson's | | cold gray stones, o sea" | m. | r.d.c. | poems. | | "ring out, wild bells," in | | | | | the in memoriam | m. | r.d.c. | | | bugle song, in the princess | m. | r.d.c. | no. 2. | | charge of the light brigade | e. | r.d.c. | no. 2. | | the brook | e. | r.d.c. | monroe. | | | | | | | chaucer. | | | | | the clerk's tale, or the | | | | | story of grisilde, in the | | | chaucer's | | canterbury tales | m. | r. | poems. | | | | | | | 12. key. | | | | | the star-spangled banner | e. | c. | no. 4. | | | | | | | drake. | | | | | the american flag | e. | r. | no. 1. | | | | | | | smith. | | | | | "my country, 'tis of thee" | e. | c. | | | | | | | | boker. | | | | | the black regiment | e. | r. | no. 1. | | | | | | | campbell, | | | | | full of fire | | | | | and martial music. | | | | | ye mariners of england | m. | r.d.c. | palgrave, 206.| | battle of the baltic | m. | r.c. | " 207.| | soldier's dream | m. | r.c. | " 267.| | hohenlinden | m. | r.c. | " 215.| | lord ullin's daughter | m. | r.c. | " 181.| | love's beginning | m. | r.c. | " 183.| | ode to winter | m. | r.c. | " 256.| | | | | | | thomson. | | | | | rule britannia | m. | r.c. | palgrave, 122.| | | | | | | lowell. | | | | | the crisis | d. | r.d.c.g. | lowell's | | harvard commemoration ode | d. | r.d.c.g. | poems. | | the fountain | e. | r.d.c.g. | | | | | | | | halleck. | | | | | marco bozzaris | e. | r. | no. 1. | | | | | | | macaulay. | | | | | lays of ancient rome, | | | | | especially horatius, and | e. | r.d. | no. 2. | | virginia, also the battle of | | | | | ivry | m. | r.d. | no. 5. | | | | | | | o'hara. | | | | | the bivouac of the dead | | | | | | | | | | mitford. | | | | | rienzi's address | m. | r. | no. 1. | | | | | | | croly. | | | | | belshazzar | m. | r. | no. 4. | | | | | | | 13. shelley. | | | shelley's | | | | | poems. | | ode to the west wind | m. | r.d.c. | palgrave, 275.| | ode to a skylark | m. | r.d.c. | " 241.| | to a lady with a guitar | m. | r.d.c. | " 252.| | italy | m. | r.d.c. | " 274.| | naples | m. | r.d.c. | " 227.| | the poet's dream | d. | r.d.c. | " 277.| | the cloud, sensitive plant, | | | | | etc. | m. | r.d.c. | | | | | | | | byron. | | | byron's poems.| | all for love | m. | r.d. | palgrave, 169.| | beauty | m. | r.d. | " 171.| | apostrophe to the ocean, and | | | | | the eve of waterloo | m. | r.d.c. | monroe. | | the field of waterloo | m. | r.d.c. | no. 1. | | (these are among the most | | | | | magnificent poems in any | | | | | language.) | | | | | | | | | | bryant. | | | | | thanatopsis | m. | r.c.g. | no. 1. | | | | | | | prentice. | | | | | the closing year | m. | r.c.g. | no. 1. | | | | | | | poe. | | | | | the bells; the raven | m. | r.c.g. | no. 1. | | annabel lee | m. | r. | no. 5. | | | | | | | keats. | | | keats's poems.| | the star | m. | r. | palgrave, 198.| | ode to a nightingale | m. | r. | " 244.| | ode to autumn | m. | r. | " 255.| | ode on the poets | m. | r. | " 167.| | | | | | | wordsworth. | | | | | a beautiful woman | e. | r.c. | palgrave, 174.| | the reaper | m. | r. | " 250.| | simon lee | m. | r. | " 219.| | intimations of immortality | | | " 367.| | | | | | | herbert. | | | | | gifts of god | e. | r.d.c. | " 74.| | | | | | | read. | | | | | drifting | m. | r.d.c. | no. 1. | | sheridan's ride | e. | r. | " | | | | | | | fletcher. | | | | | melancholy | e. | r. | palgrave, 104.| | | | | | | pope. | | | | | rape of the lock | m. | r. | pope's poems. | | | | | | | 14. ingelow. | | | | | the brides of enderby | m. | r. | no. 2. | | high tide, etc. | | | | | | | | | | cowper. | | | | | loss of the royal george | e. | r. | palgrave, 129.| | solitude of selkirk | m. | r. | " 160.| | | | | | | dryden. | | | | | alexander's feast | d. | r. | " 116.| | | | | | | collins. | | | | | the passions | d. | r. | " 141.| | | | | | | jonson. | | | | | hymn to diana | m. | r. | " 78.| | | | | | | addison. | | | | | cato's soliloquy | m. | r. | no. 1. | | | | | | | lodge. | | | | | rosaline | m. | r. | palgrave, 16.| | | | | | | herrick. | | | | | counsel to girls | e. | r. | " 82.| | the poetry of dress | e. | r. | " 92.| | | | | | | 15. goethe. | | | | | raphael chorus,--a wonderful | | | | | chorus of three stanzas in | | | | | faust. read shelley's | | | | | translations, both literal | | | | | and free, in his fragments | m. | r.c.g. | shelley's | | | | | poems. | | omar khayyám. | | | | | rubáiyát, especially the | | | | | "moving shadow-shape" and the | | | | | "phantom caravan" stanzas, | | | | | for their magnificent imagery | m. | r.c.g. | fitzgerald's | | | | | translation. | | euripides. | | | | | chorus in medea--campbell's | | | | | translation | m. | r.c.g. | campbell's | | | | | poems. | | | | | | | calderon. | | | | | read shelley's fragments | m. | r.c.g. | shelley's | | | | | poems. | | schiller. | | | schiller's | | the battle | m. | r. | poems. no. 4. | | the song of the bell | m. | r. | publ. | | | | | separately. | | molière. | | | | | tartuffe, or the hypocrite | e. | r.d. | molière's | | le misanthrope, or the | | | plays. | | man-hater | e. | r.d. | | +-------------------------------------+-----+----------+---------------+ group iii.--_short prose selections._ +-------------------------------------+-----+----------+---------------+ | | | manner | | | | [*] | of | where found. | | | | reading. | | +-------------------------------------+-----+----------+---------------+ | | | | | | 16. lincoln. | | | | | gettysburg oration. famous | | | | | for its calm, clear, simple | | | | | beauty, breadth, and power | m. | r.c. | no. 2. | | | | | | | irving | | | | | our greatest | | | | | master of style; | | | | | his prose is poetry. | | | | | rip van winkle | e. | r.d.c. | sketch book. | | the spectre bridegroom | e. | r.d.c. | " " | | the art of book-making | e. | r.d.c. | " " | | the legend of sleepy hollow | e. | r.d.c. | " " | | | | | | | 17. bacon. | | | | | essay on studies. note the | | | | | clearness and completeness | | | | | of bacon, and his tremendous| | | | | condensation of thought | m. | r.d.c. | bacon's | | | | | essays. | | carlyle. | | | | | apostrophe to columbus, p. | | | | | 193 of past and present,- | | | | | carlyle's finest passage | m. | r.d.c. | | | await the issue | m. | r.d.c. | monroe. | | the account of the | | | | | conversational powers of | | | | | coleridge, given in | | | | | carlyle's life of sterling | e. | r.d.c. | | | | | | | | 18. webster. | | | | | liberty and union,--a | | | | | selection from the answer to| | | | | hayne in the united states | | | | | senate, on the question of | | | | | the power of a state to | | | | | nullify the acts of | | | | | congress, and to withdraw | | | | | from the union,--the | | | | | greatest of american | | | | | orations, and worthy to | | | | | rank side by side with the | | | | | world's best | m. | r.d.c. | no. 1. | | | | | | | phillips. | | | | | comparison of toussaint | | | | | l'ouverture with napoleon, | | | phillips's | | in his oration on toussaint | m. | r.d.c. | speeches. | | | | | | | 19. everett. | | | | | discoveries of galileo | m. | r. | no. 1. | | | | | | | burritt. | | | | | one niche the highest | e. | r. | no. 7. | | | | | | | 20. hugo. | | | | | the monster cannon, one of | | | | | the great frenchman's master| | | | | strokes,--a very thrilling | | | | | scene, splendidly painted | e. | r. | no. 11. | | rome and carthage | m. | r. | no. 6. | | | | | | | de quincey. | | | | | noble revenge | m. | r. | no. 7. | | | | | | | 21. poe. | | | | | murders in the rue morgue | d. | r. | little | | | | | classics. | | ingersoll. | | | | | oration at the funeral of his | | | ingersoll's | | brother | m. | r. | prose poems. | | | | | | | 22. scott. | | | | | thirty-sixth chapter of the | | | | | heart of midlothian | m. | r. | | | | | | | | curtis. | | | | | nations and humanity | m. | r. | no. 11. | | | | | | | 23. taylor. | | | | | the sections on temperance | | | | | and chastity in the holy | | | | | living and dying | m. | r.d. | | | | | | | | brooks. | | | | | pamphlet on tolerance,--the | | | | | best book in the world on a | | | | | most vital subject | m. | r.d. | | +-------------------------------------+-----+----------+---------------+ group iv.--_wit and humor_--_short list._ +-------------------------------------+-----+----------+---------------+ | | | manner | | | | [*] | of | where found. | | | | reading. | | +-------------------------------------+-----+----------+---------------+ | | | | | | 24. lowell. | | | | | biglow papers | e. | r.d. | lowell's | | fable for critics | d. | r.d. | poems. | | the courtin' | e. | r.d. | | | | | | | | holmes. | | | | | autocrat of the | | | | | breakfast-table | m. | r.d. | | | | | | | | 25. carleton. | | | | | farm ballads, especially the | | | | | visit of the school | | | | | committee, and the rivals | e. | s. | | | | | | | | stowe. | | | | | laughin' in meetin' | e. | s. | no. 11. | | | | | | | twain. | | | | | on new england weather | e. | s. | no. 13. | | european guides, and | | | innocents | | turkish baths | e. | s. | abroad. | | | | | | | 26. dickens. | | | | | pickwick papers | e. | s. | | | | | | | | james de mille. | | | cumnock's | | a senator entangled | e. | s. | choice | | | | | readings. | | lover. | | | | | the gridiron | e. | s. | " " | | | | | | | whately. | | | | | historic doubts regarding | | | publ. | | napoleon | e. | s. | separately. | +-------------------------------------+-----+----------+---------------+ table iv. supplementary general reading. in addition to the short courses set forth in tables ii. and iii., at the same time, if the reader has a sufficiency of spare hours, but always in subordination to the above courses, it is recommended that attention be given to the following books:-bunyan's pilgrim's progress. (e. r. d.) defoe's robinson crusoe. (e. s.) dickens' christmas carol (m. r. d.); cricket on the hearth. (m. r. d.) ruskin's crown of wild olive (m. r. d.); ethics of the dust (m. r. d.); sesame and lilies. (m. r. d.) emerson's essays (d. r. d. c.); especially those on manners, gifts, love, friendship, the poet, and on representative men. demosthenes on the crown. (m. r. d. c. g.) burke's warren hastings oration. (m. r. d. c. g.) phillips' speeches on lovejoy and garrison. (m. r. d. c. g.) la fontaine's fables. (m. r. d.) short biographies of the world's hundred greatest men. (m. r. d.) marshall's life of washington. (m. r. d. g.) carlyle's cromwell. (m. r. d. g.) tennyson's in memoriam. (d. r. d. c.) byron's childe harold. (m. r. d. c.) burns' cotter's saturday night. (m. r. d.) keats' endymion. (d. r. d. c.) shelley's prometheus unbound. (d. r. d. c. g.) campbell's pleasures of hope. (m. r. d. c.) goldsmith's deserted village. (m. r. d. c.) pope's essay on man. (m. r. d. c.) thomson's seasons. (m. r. d. c.) children. so far we have spoken of reading for grown people. now we must deal with the reading of young folks,--a subject of the utmost importance. for to give a child good habits of reading, to make him like to read and master strong, pure books,--books filled with wisdom and beauty,--and equally eager to shun bad books, is to do for him and the world a service of the highest possible character; and to neglect the right care of a child in this matter is to do him an injury far greater than to mutilate his face or cut off his arm. what to give the children. parents, teachers, and others interested in the welfare of young people have not only to solve the problem of selecting books for their own nourishment, but also the more difficult problem of providing the young folks with appropriate literary food. as literature may be made one of the most powerful influences in the development of a child, the greatest care should be taken to make the influence true, pure, and tender, and give it in every respect the highest possible character, which requires as much care to see that bad books do not come into the child's possession and use, as to see that good books do. the ability to read adds to life a wonderful power, but it is a power for evil as well as good. as lowell says, "it is the key which admits us to the whole world of thought and fancy and imagination,--to the company of saint and sage, of the wisest and wittiest at their wisest and wittiest moments. it enables us to see with the keenest eyes, hear with the finest ears, and listen to the sweetest voices of all time. more than that, it annihilates time and space for us,--reviving without a miracle the age of wonder, and endowing us with the shoes of swiftness and the cap of darkness." yes, but it opens our minds to the thoughts of the vile as well as to those of the virtuous; it unlocks the prisons and haunts of vice as well as the school and the church; it drags us through the sewer as well as gives us admission to the palace; it feeds us on filth as well as the finest food; it pours upon our souls the deepest degradation as well as the spirit of divinity. parents will do well to keep from their children such books as richardson's "pamela" and "clarissa harlowe;" fielding's "joseph andrews," "jonathan wild," and "tom jones;" smollett's "humphrey clinker," "peregrine pickle," and "adventures of an atom;" sterne's "tristram shandy;" swift's "gulliver," and their modern relatives. many of these coarse pictures of depravity and microscopic analyses of filth i cannot read without feeling insulted by their vulgarity, as i do when some one tells an indecent story in my presence. whatever the power or wit of a book, if its motive is not high and its expression lofty, it should not come into contact with any life, at least until its character is fixed and hardened in the mould of virtue beyond the period of plasticity that might receive the imprint of the badness in the book. there are plenty of splendid books that are pure and ennobling as well as strong and humorous,--more of them than any one person can ever read,--so that there is no necessity of contact with imperfect literature. if a boy comes into possession of a book that he would not like to read aloud to his mother or sister, he has something that is not good for him to read,--something that is not altogether the very best for anybody to read. some liberty of choice, however, ought to be allowed the children. it will add much to the vigor and enthusiasm of a boy's reading if, instead of prescribing the precise volume he is to have at each step, he is permitted to make his own selection from a list of three or four chosen by the person who is guiding him. what these three or four should be, is the problem. i cannot agree with lowell, when he says that young people ought to "confine themselves to the supreme books in whatever literature, or, still better, choose some one great author and make themselves thoroughly familiar with him." it is possible to know something of people in general about me without neglecting my best friends. it is possible to enjoy the society of shakspeare, goethe, æschylus, dante, homer, plato, spencer, scott, eliot, marcus aurelius, and irving, without remaining in ignorance of the power and beauty to be found in chaucer, spenser, milton, byron, burns, goldsmith, keats, shelley, tennyson, longfellow, whittier, holmes, and lowell, ingersoll, omar, arnold, brooks, and robertson, curtis, aldrich, warner, jewett, burroughs, bulwer, tourgée, hearn, kingsley, macdonald, hawthorne, dickens, thackeray, carlyle, ruskin, hugo, bronté, sienkiewicz, and a host of others. scarcely a day passes that i do not spend a little time with shakspeare, goethe, æschylus, spencer, and irving; but i should be sorry to have any one of those i have named beyond call at any time. there are parts of holmes, lowell, brooks, emerson, omar, arnold, tourgée, and hearn that are as dear to me as any passages of equal size in goethe or irving. so it does not seem best to me to _confine_ the attention to the supreme books; a just _proportion_ is the true rule. let the supreme books have the supreme attention, absorb them, print them on the brain, carry them about in the heart, but give a due share of time to other books. i like the suggestion of marietta holley: "i would feed children with little sweet crumbs of the best of books, and teach them that a whole rich feast awaited them in the full pages," only taking care in each instance that the crumb is well rounded, the picture not torn or distorted. there are paragraphs and pages in many works of the second rank that are equal to almost anything in the supreme books, and superior to much the latter contain. these passages should be sought and cherished; and the work of condensing the thought and beauty of literature--making a sort of literary prayer-book--is an undertaking that ought not to be much longer delayed. until it is done, however, there is no way but to read widely, adapting the speed and care to the value of the volume. some things may be best read by deputy, as mark twain climbed the alps by agent; newspapers, for example, and many of the novels that flame up like a haystack on fire, and fade like a meteor in its fall, striking the earth never to rise again. the time that many a young man spends upon newspapers would be sufficient to make him familiar with a dozen undying books every year. newspapers are not to be despised, but they should not be allowed to crowd out more important things. i keep track of the progress of events by reading the "outlook" in the "christian union" every week, and glancing at the head-lines of the "herald" or "journal," reading a little of anything specially important, or getting an abstract from a friend who always reads the paper. a good way to economize time is for a number of friends to take the same paper, the first page being allotted to one, the second to another, and so on, each vocally informing the others of the substance of his page. if time cannot be found for both the newspaper and the classic, the former, not the latter, should receive the neglect. this matter of the use of time is one concerning which parents should strive to give their children good habits from the first. if you teach a child to economize time, and fill him with a love of good books, you ensure him an education far beyond anything he can get in the university,--an education that will cease only with his life. the creation of a habit of industrious study of books that will improve the character, develop the powers, and store the mind with force and beauty,--that is the great object. a good example is the best teacher. it is well for parents to keep close to the child until he grows old enough to learn how to determine for himself what he should read (which usually is not before fifteen or twenty, and in many cases never); for children, and grown folks too for that matter, crave intellectual as much as they do physical companionship. the methods of guiding the young in the paths of literature fall naturally into two groups,--the first being adapted to childhood not yet arrived at the power of reading alone, the second adapted to later years. there is no sharp line of division or exclusion, but only a general separation; for the methods peculiarly appropriate to each period apply to some extent in the other. some children are able to read weighty books at three or four years of age, but most boys and girls have to plod along till they are eight or ten before they can read much alone. i will consider the periods of child life i have referred to, each by itself. =the age of stories=.--it is not necessary or proper to wait until a child can read, before introducing it to the best literature. most of the books written for children have no permanent value, and most of the reading books used in primary and grammar schools contain little or no genuine literature, and what they do contain is in fragments. portions of good books are useful, if the story of each part is complete, but children do not like the middle of a story without the beginning and end; they have the sense of entirety, and it should be satisfied. and it is not difficult to do this. literature affords a multitude of beautiful stories of exceeding interest to children, and of permanent attractiveness through all the after years of their lives. such literature is as available, as a means of teaching the art of reading, as is the trash in dreary droning over which the precious years of childhood are spent in our public schools. the development of the child mind follows the same course as the development of the mind of the race. the little boy loves the wonderful and the strong, and nearly everything is wonderful to him except himself. living things especially interest him. every child is a born naturalist; his heart turns to birds and beasts, flowers and stars. he is hungry for stories of animals, giants, fairies, etc. myths and fairy tales are his natural food. his power of absorbing and retaining them is marvellous. one evening a few weeks ago a little boy who is as yet scarcely able to read words of two and three letters asked me for a story. i made an agreement with him that whatever i told him, he should afterward repeat to me, and then gave him the story of the elephant who squirted muddy water over the cruel tailor that pricked his trunk with a needle. no sooner had i finished than he threw his arms around my neck and begged for another story. i told him eight in rapid succession, some of them occupying three or four minutes, and then asked him to tell me about the elephants, dogs, bears, etc., that i had spoken of. he recited every story with astonishing accuracy and readiness, and apparently without effort, and would have been ready for eight more bits of wood or andersen, if his bedtime had not intervened. if parents would take as much pains to satisfy the mind hunger of their children as they do to fulfil their physical wants, and give them the best literature as well as the best beef and potatoes, the boys and girls would have digested the greater part of mythology, natural science, and the best fiction by the time they are able to read. children should be fed with the literature that represents the childhood of the race. out of that literature has grown all literature. give a child the contents of the great books of the dawn, and you give him the best foundation for subsequent literary growth, and in after life he will be able to follow the intricate interweaving of the old threads throughout all modern thought. he has an immense affinity for those old books, for they are full of music and picturesqueness, teeming with vigorous life, bursting with the strange and wonderful. in the following list parents and teachers will find abundant materials for the culture of the little ones, either by reading aloud to them, or still better by telling them the substance of what they have gathered by their own reading of these famous stories and ditties. pictures are always of the utmost value in connection with books and stories, as they impart a vividness of conception that words alone are powerless to produce. one plea for sincerity i must make,--truth and frankness from the cradle to the grave. do not delude the children. do not persuade them that a fairy tale is history. i have a sad memory of my disgust and loss of confidence in human probity when i discovered the mythical character of kriss kringle, and i believe many children are needlessly shocked in this way. _list of materials for story-telling and for the instruction and amusement of childhood._ "mother goose," "jack and the bean-stalk," "jack the giant-killer," "three bears," "red riding-hood," "the ark," "hop o' my thumb," "puss in boots," "samson," "ugly duckling," "the horse of troy" (virgil), "daniel in the lion's den," etc. andersen's "fairy tales." delightful to all children. grimm's "fairy tales." de garmo's "fairy tales." craik's "adventures of a brownie." "parents' assistant," by maria edgeworth, recommended by george william curtis, mary mapes dodge, charles dudley warner, etc. "zigzag journeys," a series of twelve books, written by hezekiah butterworth, one of the editors of the "youth's companion." as might be supposed, they are among the very best and most enduringly popular books ever written for young people. wood's books of anecdotes about animals, and many other works of similar character, that may be obtained from the american society for the prevention of cruelty to animals, 19 milk street, boston. the literature distributed by this society is filled with the spirit of love and tenderness for all living things, and is one of the best influences that can come into a child's life. mary treat's "home book of nature." one of the best books of science for young people. bulfinch's "age of fable." a book that is exhaustive of greek and roman mythology, but meant for grown folks. bulfinch's "age of chivalry." fiske's "myths and myth makers." brief, deep, and suggestive. hawthorne's "wonder book" and "tanglewood tales." books that no house containing children should lack. cox's "tales of ancient greece." baldwin's "stories of the golden age." forestier's "echoes from mist land." an interesting study of the nibelungenlied. lucian's "dialogues of the gods." written to ridicule ancient superstitions. curtin's "folk lore of ireland." stories of greek heroes, kingsley. stories from bryant's odyssey. stories from church's "story of the iliad." stories from church's "story of the æneid." stories from herodotus, church. stories from the greek tragedians, church. stories of charlemagne, hanson. stories from "arabian nights," bulfinch. stories from "munchausen," and maundeville. stories from chaucer, especially "griselda." (from chaucer, or from mrs. haweis' book.) stories told to a child, by jean ingelow. stories from the "morte d'arthur," malory or lanier. stories from lanier's "froissart." stories from shakspeare. stories of the revolution, riedesel. stories from american and english history about the magna charta, henry viii., queen elizabeth, cromwell, pitt, gladstone, boston tea party, declaration of independence, washington, rebellion, lincoln, etc. stories of american life, from "oldtown folks," "sam lawson's fireside stories," and from the best novels. stories from the "book of golden deeds," miss yonge. stories from bolton's "poor boys who became famous," and "girls who became famous." stories from smiles's "self-help." full of brief, inspiring stories of great men. stones from todd's "students' manual." stories from irving's "sketch book," rip van winkle, etc. stories from green's "short history of the english people." stories from doyle's "history of the united states." one of the very best brief histories. stories from mackenzie's "history of the nineteenth century." stories from coffin's "story of liberty." stories from freeman's "general sketch of history." stories from the "stories of the nations." (putnam's series.) stories from the books of columns 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 12, and 14 of table i. the story of christ and his apostles. (it is scarcely needful to mention bible stories in general. every child born into a civilized family is saturated with them; but the simple story of christ's life as an entirety is too seldom told them.) the story of buddha, from the "light of asia." the story of mahomet, irving. the story of confucius. the story of socrates drinking the hemlock, from plato, or from fénelon's "lives of the philosophers," which contains many splendid greek stories. the story of prometheus, from æschylus. the story of diogenes in his tub. the story of thermopylæ and other battles, from cressy. the story of carthage, from putnam's series of the "stories of the nations." (nine to eleven years.) the story of roland, baldwin. the story of the cid, southey. the story of the nibelungenlied. (see baldwin's "story of siegfried.") the story of faust, from "zigzag journeys." the story of "reynard the fox," goethe. the story of pythagoras and the transmigration of souls. the story of astronomy, from herschel, proctor, etc. the story of geology, from lyell, dawson, miller, etc., or from dana's "the geological story, briefly told." the story of athena, pluto, neptune, apollo, juno, mars, jupiter, mercury, charon, vulcan, zeus, io, orpheus, and eurydice, phaeton, arachne, ariadne, iphigenia, ceres, vesta, herakles, minerva, venus, scylla and charybdis, hercules, ulysses, helen, achilles, æneas, etc., from bulfinch's "age of fable," "zigzag journeys," etc. the story of william tell, the man in the moon, etc., from s. baring gould's "curious myths." the story of the courtship of miles standish. the story of the nürnburg stove, from ouida's "bimbi." the story of robert bruce. the story of circe's palace, from "tanglewood tales." the story of pandora's box, from the "wonder book." the story of little nell, from "the old curiosity shop." the story of the boy in "vanity fair." many other books might be placed on the list of parent-helpers. indeed, the perfect guidance of youth would require a perfect knowledge of literature throughout its breadth and depth; but the above suggestions, if followed in any large degree, will result in a far better training than most children now receive. the formation of a good reading habit. as the child learns to read by itself, the books from which were drawn the stones it has heard may be given to it, care being taken that every gift shall be adapted to the ability of the little one. the fact that the boy has heard the story of horatius at the bridge does not diminish, but vastly increases, his desire to read the "lays of ancient rome." when he comes to the possession of the book, it seems to him like a discovery of the face of a dear friend with whose voice he has long been familiar. i well remember with what delight i adopted the "sketch book" as one of my favorites on finding rip van winkle in it. below will be found a list of books intended as a suggestion of what should be given to children of various ages. the larger the number of good books the child can be induced to read each year, the better of course, so long as his powers are not overtaxed, and the reading is done with due thoroughness. but if only four or five are selected from each year's list, the boy will know more of standard literature by the time he is sixteen, than most of his elders do. each book enters the list at the earliest age an ordinary child would be able to read it with ease, and it may be used then or at any subsequent age; for no books are mentioned which are not of everlasting interest and profit to childhood, manhood, and age. many of the volumes named below may also be used by parents and teachers as story-mines. there is no sharp line between the periods of story-telling and of reading. most children read simple english readily at eight or ten years of age; many do a large amount of reading long before that, and nearly all do some individual work in the earlier period. the change should be gradual. for the stimulus that comparison gives, story-telling and reading aloud should be continued long after the child is able to read alone; in truth, it ought never to cease. story-telling ought to be a universal practice. stories should be told to and _by_ everybody. one of the best things grown folks can do is to tell each other the substance of their experience from day to day; and probably no finer means of education exists than to have the children give an account at supper or in the hour or two following, of what they have seen, heard, read, thought, and felt during the day. in the same way reading _solus_ should lap over into the early period as far as possible. one of the greatest needs of the day is a class of books that shall put _solid sense_ into _very_ simple words. a child can grasp the wonderful, strong, loving, pathetic, and even the humorous and critical, long before it can overcome the mechanical difficulties of reading. by so much as we diminish these, we push education nearer to the cradle. charles dudley warner says, "as a general thing, i do not believe in books written for children;" and phillips brooks, marietta holley, brooke herford, and others express a similar feeling. but the trouble is not with the _plan_ of writing for children, but with the execution. if the highest _thoughts_ and feelings were written in the simplest words,--written as a wise parent _tells_ them to his little ones,--then we should have a juvenile literature that could be recommended. as it is, most writers for babies seem to have far less sense than the babies. their books are filled with unnatural, make-believe emotions, and egregious nonsense in the place of ideas. the best prose for young people will be found in the works of hawthorne, curtis, warner, holmes, irving, addison, goldsmith, burroughs, and poe; and the best poets for them are longfellow, lowell, whittier, burns, and homer. books that flavor sense with fun, as do those of curtis, holmes, lowell, holley, stowe, irving, goldsmith, warner, addison, and burroughs, are among the best means of creating in any heart, young or old, a love for fine, pure writing. p. t. barnum, a man whose great success is largely due to his attainment of that serenity of mind which lowell calls the highest result of culture, says: "i should, above almost everything else, try to cultivate in the child a kindly sense of humor. wherever a pure, hearty laugh rings through literature, he should be permitted and taught to enjoy it." this judgment comes from a knowledge of the sustaining power a love of humor gives a man immersed in mental cares and worriments. lincoln is, perhaps, the best example of its power. it is often an inspiration to a boy to know that a book he is reading has helped and been beloved by some one whose name is to him a synonym of greatness,--to know, for example, that franklin got his style from the "spectator," which he studied diligently when a boy; that francis parkman from fifteen to twenty-one obtained more pleasure and profit from scott than from any other writer; that darwin was very fond of mark twain's "treatise on the frog;" that marietta holley places emerson, tennyson, and eliot next to the bible in her list of favorites; that senator hoar writes emerson, wordsworth, and scott next after the bible and shakspeare; that robert collyer took great delight in irving's "sketch book," when a youth; that the great historian lecky is said to be in the habit of taking irving with him when he goes to bed; that phillips brooks read jonson many times when a boy, and that lockhart's scott was a great favorite with him, though the doctor attaches no special significance to either of these facts; that susan coolidge thinks "hans brinker" is the best of all american books for children, etc. similar facts may be found in relation to very many of the best books, and will aid much in arousing an interest in them. plato, bacon, goethe, spencer, emerson, and many others of the best are for the most part too difficult to be properly grasped until the mind is more mature than it usually is at sixteen. no precise rules, however, can be laid down on this subject, i have known a boy read spencer's "first principles" and goethe's "faust" and "wilhelm meister" at sixteen, and gain a mastery of them. all i have attempted to do is to make broad suggestions; experiment in each case must do the rest. _literature adapted to a child six or eight years of age and upward._ little lord fauntleroy. a book that cannot fail to delight and improve every reader. king of the golden river, ruskin. "rosebud," from "harvard sophomore stories." christmas all the year round, howells. mrs. stowe's "laughin' in meetin'." an exceedingly funny story. "each and all" and "seven little sisters," by jane andrews. used in the boston public schools as supplementary reading. classics in babyland, bates. scudder's "fables and folk stories." fine books for little ones. æsop. rainbows for children, lydia maria child. black beauty, by anna sewell. the autobiography of a splendid horse, and the best teacher of kindness to animals we know of. burroughs' "birds and bees." in fact, all his beautiful and simple stories of nature--"pepacton," "fresh fields," "wake robin," "winter sunshine," "signs and seasons," etc.--are the delight of children as soon as they can read. winslow's "fairy geography." by sea-side and wayside, wright. _literature adapted to a child eight to nine years of age and upward._ sandford and merton, day. one of the very best of children's books. play days, sarah orne jewett. andersen's "fairy tales." cannot be too highly praised. stories from king arthur, hanson. a good foundation for the study of malory, tennyson, etc. "winners in life's race," and "life and her children," by miss arabella buckley. books that charm many children of eight or nine. fairy frisket; or, peeps at insect life. nelson & sons. physiology, with pictures. queer little people, mrs. stowe. kingsley's "water babies." a beautiful book, as indeed are all of kingsley's. longfellow's "building of the ship." the fountain, lowell. ye mariners of england, campbell. carleton's "farm ballads and farm legends." humorous, pathetic, sensible. _literature adapted to a child nine to ten years of age and upward._ story of a bad boy, aldrich. a splendid book for boys. boys of '76, coffin. an eight-year-old boy read it five times, he was so pleased with it. new year's bargain, coolidge. pussy willow, stowe. hanson's "homer and virgil." brief, clear, simple, clean. stories from homer, hanson. stories from pliny, white. grimm's "fairy tales." legend of sleeping beauty. clodd's "the childhood of the world." a splendid book to teach children the development of the world. "friends in feathers and fur," "wings and fins," "paws and claws," by johonnot. books much liked by the little ones. first book of zoölogy, morse. halleck's "marco bozzaris." wordsworth's "peter bell." mary, queen of scots, strickland. the prince and the pauper, twain. a book that mingles no small amount of sense with its abounding fun and occasional tragedy. _literature adapted to a child ten or eleven years of age and upward._ being a boy, warner. little women, alcott. one of the most popular books of the day. a dog's mission, stowe. two years before the mast, dana. recommended by sarah orne jewett, george william curtis, and others. ten boys on the road, andrews. a great favorite with the boys. jan of the windmill, ewing. the story of a poor boy who becomes a famous painter. hawthorne's "celestial railroad." little people of asia, miller. hawthorne's "tanglewood tales" and "wonder book" should belong to every child old enough to read ordinary english. adventures of a brownie, craik. stories from chaucer, seymour. stories from livy, church. lives of the philosophers, fénelon. an excellent book. what darwin saw in his trip round the world in the ship beagle. fairy land of science, miss buckley. an author who writes for children to perfection. animal life in the sea and on the land, cooper. very fine indeed. darwin's chapter on the "habits of ants" (in the "origin of species") is very interesting and amusing to little ones, and together with burroughs' books prepares them to read such works as lubbock's "ants, bees, and wasps." ragozin's "chaldea." one of the indispensable books for children. longfellow's "psalm of life." longfellow's "hiawatha." lowell's "under the old elm." wordsworth's "white doe of rylstone." lamb's essay on roast pig. a piece of fun always enjoyed by boys and girls. _literature adapted to a child eleven to twelve years of age and upward._ shakspeare's "merchant of venice." marcus aurelius. in a school where the book was at their call children from ten to thirteen carried it to and from school, charmed with its beautiful thoughts. hans brinker, mary mapes dodge. one of the very best stories for children. dickens' "christmas carol." hawthorne's "great stone face." highly appreciated by the young folks. uncle tom's cabin, mrs. stowe. a book that every child should have as soon as he is able to read it. another flock of girls, nora perry. at the back of the north wind, macdonald. a beautiful story, with a high motive. a hunting of the deer, warner. crusade of the children, gray. a thrilling story. bryant's translation of the odyssey. story of the iliad, church. stories from herodotus, church. mary treat's "home book of nature." half hours with the stars, proctor. guyot's "earth and man." a most excellent book. first book in geology, shaler. first steps in chemistry, brewster. first steps in scientific knowledge, best. abou ben adhem, hunt. scott's "lady of the lake." macaulay's "lays of ancient rome." longfellow's "tales of a wayside inn." whittier's "snow bound." how they brought the good news to aix, browning. wordsworth's "we are seven." franklin's autobiography. lincoln's gettysburg speech. samantha at the centennial. _literature adapted to a child twelve to thirteen years of age and upward._ shakspeare's "julius cæsar." pilgrim's progress, bunyan. indispensable. meditation of thomas à kempis. a strong influence for sweetness and purity. vicar of wakefield, goldsmith. full of fun and good feeling; one of the most indispensable of books. cooper's novels, especially "the spy" and the "last of the mohicans." books that are fascinating and yet wholesome. "my summer in a garden," and "in the wilderness," warner. very humorous. "the dog of flanders," from "little classics." picciola, saintine. a great favorite. the story of arnon, amélie rives. drake's "culprit fay." dr. brown's "rab and his friends." "the man without a country," "my double and how he undid me," etc., by e. e. hale. the cast is extremely funny. the hoosier schoolmaster, eggleston. boots and saddles, mrs. custer. story of the æneid, church. stories from greek tragedians, church. plumptre's "sophocles." ruskin's "athena." boys and girls in biology, stevenson. other worlds than ours, proctor. captains of industry, parton. lowell's "vision of sir launfal." one of the great poet's finest productions. byron's "eve of waterloo." longfellow's "evangeline." scott's "marmion." milton's "comus." "the two runaways," "the born inventor," "idyl of sinkin' mountain," etc., by edwards. very funny. _literature adapted to a child thirteen to fourteen years of age and upward._ shakspeare's "coriolanus" and "taming of the shrew." scott's "ivanhoe," "heart of midlothian," "guy mannering," etc. it is the making of a boy if he learns to love scott. he will make a gentleman of him, and give him an undying love of good literature. journal of eugénie de guerin. full of delicacy and quiet strength. tom brown, hughes. an universal favorite. curtis' "prue and i." one of the very choicest books, both in substance and expression,--especially remarkable for its moral suggestiveness. craddock's "floating down lost creek." most excellent. dr. jekyll and mr. hyde, stevenson. a story with a powerful moral,--if we give scope to our evil nature, it will master us. goldsmith's "good-natured man." carlyle's "heroes and hero worship." ben hur, wallace. the fool's errand, tourgée. the boys' king arthur, lanier. epictetus. physiology for girls, shepard. physiology for boys, shepard. what young people should know, wilder. a book that no boy or girl should be without. how plants behave, gray. goethe's "erl king." browning's "ivan ivanovitch." a favorite. the forsaken merman, matthew arnold. an exquisite poem. longfellow's "miles standish." scott's "lay of the last minstrel." the veiled statue of truth, schiller. gütenburg, and the art of printing. doyle's "united states history." john bright's "speeches on the american question." backlog studies, warner. "encyclopædia of persons and places," and "encyclopædia of common things," by champlin, should be within the reach of every child over twelve or thirteen years of age. _literature adapted to a child fourteen to fifteen years of age._ shakespeare's "henry fourth" and "henry fifth." autocrat of the breakfast-table, holmes; and irving's "sketch book." two of the best books in all the world. george eliot's novels, especially "silas marner," "the mill on the floss," "romola," and "adam bede." the wit and wisdom of george eliot. our best society, curtis. bulwer's "rienzi." the marble faun, hawthorne. sad little prince, fawcett. chita, or youma, by hearn, a master of english style. grande pointe, cable. la fontaine's fables. plutarch's "morals." ethics of the dust, ruskin. lady how and madam why, kingsley. sketches of creation, winchell. very interesting to children of fourteen or fifteen. the geological story, briefly told, dana. ready for business, or choosing an occupation, fowler and wells. ode to a skylark, shelley. birds of aristophanes, frere. alfred the great, hughes. plutarch's "lives." green's "short history of the english people." demosthenes on the crown. the finest of all orations. the biglow papers, lowell. the best of fun and sense. sweet cicely, holley. quiet humor and unfailing wisdom. higginson's "vacations for saints." a splendid example of humorous writing. _literature adapted to a child fifteen to sixteen years of age and upward._ shakspeare's "hamlet" and "the tempest." dante's "inferno." dickens' "pickwick papers," "david copperfield," "old curiosity shop," etc. thackeray's "vanity fair." tourgée's "hot plowshares," and "with fire and sword," by sienkiewicz. two of the greatest historical novels. carlyle's "past and present." arnold's "sweetness and light." ruskin's "crown of wild olive." emerson's essays on "manners," "self-reliance," "eloquence," "friendship," "representative men," etc. mrs. whitney's "sights and insights." a book that is filled with beautiful thoughts and unselfish actions. spencer's "data of ethics." indispensable to a complete understanding of ethical subjects. "the light of asia." a book that cannot fail to broaden and deepen every life it touches. ten great religions, clarke. omar. superb poetry. bryant's "thanatopsis." coleridge's "ancient mariner." a lesson of the awfulness of cruelty. auld lang syne, burns. toilers of the sea, hugo. huxley's "man's place in nature." tyndall's "forms of water." our country, strong. a book that ought to be in the hands of every young person. bryce's "american commonwealth." guizot's "history of civilization." mill's "logic." no young man can afford to remain unacquainted with this book. the hand and ring, green. one of the finest examples of reasoning in the language. poe's "murders in the rue morgue" is another such example, and his "gold bug" is another. phillips' speeches webster's "liberty and union." golden treasury, palgrave. the spectator. one of the very best books to study, in order to form a good style. franklin and others attribute their success largely to reading it carefully in boyhood. the fable for critics, lowell. the yankee at the court of king arthur, twain. fun and sense welded together to make the most delightful book the author has written. special studies. next in value to a love of good reading is a habit of concentrating the attention upon one subject through a long course of reading. in this way only can any thorough mastery be obtained. the child should be taught not to be satisfied with the thought of any one writer, but to investigate the ideas of all upon the topic in hand, and then form his own opinion. thus he will gain breadth, depth, tolerance, independence, and scientific method in the search for truth. of course it is impossible in a work of this kind to map out lines of study for the multitudinous needs of young people. the universities and the libraries provide the means of gaining full information as to the literature of any subject that may be selected. a few topic-clusters may, however, be of use here in the way of illustration. many examples will be found in baldwin's "the book lover." =the industrial question=.--suppose a young man desired to study the industrial question, which is one of the most important subjects of to-day, the proper method would be to go to one of the great libraries, or examine the catalogues of the large publishing-houses, to discover the names of recent books on the given topic, or on such subjects as labor and capital, socialism, co-operation, etc. such books usually refer to others, and name many kindred works on the last pages. thus the student's list will swell. i have myself investigated more than two hundred books on this topic and those it led me to. a few of the more important i will name as a starting-point for any one wishing to follow this research. labor, thornton. conflict of labor and capital, bolles; also, howell. political economy, mill. progress and poverty, george. profit-sharing, gilman. in darkest england, booth. wages and the wages class, walker. book of the new moral world, owen. communistic societies of the united states, nordhoff. dynamic sociology, ward. looking backward, bellamy. destinée sociale, considérant. more's "utopia." co-operative societies, watts. history of co-operation, holyoake. the margin of profits, atkinson. gronlund's "co-operative commonwealth." capital, karl marx. the state in relation to labor, jevons. organisation du travail, louis blanc. co-operative stores, morrison. labor and capital, jervis. newton's "co-operative production and co-operative distribution in the united states." property and progress, mallock. principles of sociology, spencer. mill on socialism. the progress of the working classes, giffen. ely's "french and german socialism," "problems of to-day," and "labor movement in america." dilke's "problems of greater britain." contemporary socialism, rae. outlines of an industrial science, symes. early history of land-holding among the germans, ross; etc. =malthusianism=.--to take a smaller example. suppose the student wishes to make a thorough study of the doctrine of malthusius in regard to population, he will have to refer to macaulay's "essay on sadler," and the works on political economy of ricardo, chalmers, roscher, etc., in support of malthus, and to george's "progress and poverty," spencer's "biology" (vol. ii.), sadler's "law of population," and the works of godwin, greg, rickards, doubleday, carey, alison, etc., against him. for an example of a very different kind, cluster about the myth of cupid the poems "cupid and my campaspe," by lilly; "the threat of cupid," translated by herrick; "cupid drowned," by leigh hunt; and "cupid stung," by moore. a great deal depends on selecting some department of thought and exhausting it. to know something of everything and everything of something is the true aim. if a child displays fine musical or artistic ability, among the books given it ought to be many that bear upon music and art,--the "autobiography of rubenstein;" the lives of beethoven, mozart, schubert, chopin, mendelssohn; and rocksho's "history of music," upton's "woman in music," clayton's "queens of song," lillie's "music and the musician," haweis' "music and morals," jameson's "lives of the painters," crowest's "tone poets," clement's "painting and sculpture," mereweather's "semele, or the spirit of beauty," etc. probably these examples, with those to be found in the notes to table i., are amply sufficient to show what is meant by grouping the lights of literature about a single point so as to illuminate it intensely; but one more specimen will be given, because of the interest the subject has for us now and is likely to have for many years. =the tariff question= may be studied in ely's "problems of to-day," greeley's "political economy," carey's "principles of social science," e. p. smith's "manual of political economy," byles's "sophisms of free trade," thompson's "social science and national economy," bastiat's "sophisms of protection," mill's "political economy," sumner's "lectures on the history of protection in the united states," fawcett's "free trade and protection," mongredien's "history of the free trade movement," butt's "protection free trade," walters' "what is free trade," "the gladstone-blaine debate," etc. table v. _showing the distribution of the best literature in time and space, with a parallel reference to some of the world's great events._ [it was impossible to get the writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries into the unit space. the former fills a space twice the unit width, and the latter, when it is complete, will require five units.] +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | | | | greece | b.c. | israel | | | homer | 1000 | david, the | | | hesiod | | psalms | | | | | | | +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ | | | | | | | 900 | | | | | | | | +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ | | | | | | | 800 | | rome founded | | | | | | +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ | | | | | | æsop | 700 | | | | | | | | +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ | | | | | | | 600 | india | nebuchadnezzar, | | | | buddha | king of babylon | | | | | | | | | | republic | | | | | established at | | | | | rome | | | | | | +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ | | | | | | the golden age of grecian | 500 | mahabharata | darius, king of | | literature | | ramayana | persia | | pindar æschylus herodotus | |(epics of india)| greece | | sophocles thucydides| | | battle of | | | | | marathon | | pericles euripides xenophon | | | " " thermopylæ | | aristophanes | | | " " salamis | | | | | cincinnatus at | | | | | rome | | socrates | | |ezra at jerusalem | | | | | | +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ | | | | | | plato | 400 | | alexander | | aristotle | | | the gauls burn | | demosthenes | | | rome | | | | | | +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ | | | | | | | 300 | | wars of rome | | | | | against carthage | | | | |hannibal in italy | | | | | | +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ | | | | | | | 200 | | greece becomes a | | | | | roman province | | | | | | | | | | rome | | | | | the gracchi, | | | | | marius, and | | | | | sylla | | | | | | +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ | | | | | |rome. augustan age, 31 | 100 | | rome | | b. c. to a. d. 14. | | | | | reatinus ovid | | | pompey | | sallust livy | | | civil war, | | cicero lucretius | | | empire | | virgil | | | established | | | | | | +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ | | | | | | tacitus | a.d. | | jerusalem taken | | | | | by titus | | plutarch juvenal | | | pompeii | | | | | overwhelmed | | pliny | | josephus | romans conquer | | | | | britain | | | | | | +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ | | | | | | epictetus | 100 | | church fathers | | marcus aurelius | | | | | | | | | +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ | | | | | | | 200 | | | | | | | aurelian conquers | | | | | zenobia | | | | | | +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ | | | | | | | 300 | | under constantine | | | | | christianity | | | | | becomes the | | | | | state religion | | | | | roman empire | | | | | divided | | | | | | +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ | | | | | | | 400 | | angles and saxons | | | | | drive out the | | | | | britons | | | | | huns under attila | | | | | invade the | | | | | roman empire | | | | | | +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ | | | | | | | 500 | | christianity | | | | | carried to | | | | | england by | | | | | augustine | | | | | | +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ | | | | | | english literature | 600 | arabia | | | cædmon | | mahomet | | | | | | | +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ | | | | | | bæda | 700 | | france | | cynewulf | | | charlemagne | | | | | founds the | | | | | empire of the | | | | | west | | | | | | +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ | | | | | | ælfred, 850-900 | 800 | | danes overrun | | | | | england | | | | | _ælfred's_ | | | | | _glorious | | | | | _reign_ | +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ | | | | | | | 900 | | chivalry begins | | | | | capetian kings in | | | | | france | | | | | england | | | | | saint dunstan | | | | | papal supremacy | | | | | | +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ | | | | | | | 1000 | persia | england | | | | firdusi's shah| canute the great| | | | nameh | 1066. | | | | | _norman_ | | | | | _conquest_ | | | | | peter the hermit | | | | | first crusade | +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ | | | | | | geoffrey of monmouth | 1100 |persia | england | | | | omar khayyám | plantagenets | | | |germany | richard i. | | | | nibelungenlied| | | | | spain | france | | | | chronicle of | second and third| | | | the cid | crusades | | | | | saint bernard | | | | | | +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ | | | | | | layamon | 1200 |persia | england | | roger bacon | | saadi | 1215. runnymede,| | | | | magna charta | | | | | edward i. | | | | | | +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ | | | | | | mandeville | 1300 | italy | england | | langland | | dante | chivalry at its | | wycliffe chaucer | | petrarch | height | | gower | | boccaccio | the black prince| | | | | _gunpowder_ | | | | | | | | |persia | france | | | | hafiz | battles of | | | | | crecy, | | | | | poictiers, and| | | | | agincourt | | | | | | +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ | | | | | | lydgate | 1400 |germany | england | | fortescue | | thomas à | henry viii. | | malory | | kempis | shook off the | | | | | pope | | | | arabian nights |_movable type_ | | | | (probably) |_discovery of_ | | | |persia |_america_ | | | | jami | joan of arc | | | | | wars of the roses | | | | | | +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ | | | | | | | | | _copernicus_ | | more ascham | 1500 | italy | _kepler_ | | lyly sackville | | ariosto | _the armada_ | | sidney | | tasso | england | | marlowe fox | | galileo | henry viii., | | spenser hooker | | | elizabeth | | | | | germany | | | |france | 1515. _luther's_ | | | | montaigne | _reformation_ | | | | | france | | | | | massacre of st. | | | | | bartholomew | | | | | | +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ | | | | | | jonson bacon herbert | 1600 |spain. | 1620. plymouth | | shakspeare newton j.taylor| | cervantes | rock and the | | chapman hobbes | | calderon | "mayflower" | | beaumont & walton | |germany | 1649 | | fletcher s. butler | | kepler | _cromwell_ | | milton locke | |france | 1660 restoration | | bunyan pepys | | descartes |1688 revolution | | dryden | | corneille | william and mary | | | | racine | france. | | | | molière | louis xiv. | | | | la fontain | | +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ | | | | | | addison cowper otis | 1700 |france | 1776. american | | steele burns jay | | montesquieu | revolution | | pope rogers adams | | le sage | 1789-94. french | | defoe hume hamilton | | rousseau | revolution | | swift edwards madison | | voltaire | england | | berkeley a. smith jefferson| | | marlborough | | j. butler bentham pitt | |germany | | | moore gibbon burke | | munchausen | | | thomson johnson fox | | lessing | | | young boswell erskine | | | | | gray malthus p. henry.| | | | | goldsmith mackintosh | | | | | sterne paine | | | | | | | | | +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ | | | | | | scott herschel dequincey| 1800 |germany | 1807. fulton's | | byron whewell whately | | schiller | steamboat | | bryant ricardo jeffrey | | goethe | wellington | | drake carey brougham | | kant | 1815. waterloo | | wordsworth faraday s. smith | | fichte | 1815. white wives | | keats lyell c. north | | hegel | sold in england | | shelley agassiz n. webster| | schelling | 1830. passenger | | payne whitney h. h. white| | niebuhr | railway | | keble a. gray d. webster| | schlosser | 1833. matches | | halleck hallam sparks | | heine | 1844. telegraph | | key prescott story | | haeckel | 1845. mexican war | | macaulay lewes gould | | helmholtz | | | hood milman cooper | | grimm | | | poe buckle disraeli | | froebel | | | read merivale dickens | | | | | tennyson hildreth thackeray| |france | 1860. rebellion | | browning freeman bronté | | la place | 1863. emancipation| | lowell draper hawthorne| | guizot | | | longfellow froude irving | | de tocqueville| | | carleton walpole hughes | | comte | | | ingelow lecky kingsley | | hugo | | | whittier parkman eliot | | dumas | 1870. franco | | mill bancroft collins | | balzac | german war | | spencer whipple macdonald| | renan | 1874. the | | ruskin twain hunt | | taine | telephone | | arnold jerrold wallace | | | emancipation of | | curtis choate clarke | |russia | serfs in | | holmes lincoln landor | | pushkin | russia | | mansel phillips tourgée | | lermontoff | | | carlyle everett holland | | bashkirtseff | | | emerson sumner howells | | tolstoi | | | darwin garfield mrs. whitney| | | | | huxley gladstone miss alcott| |denmark | | | dana a. d. white bellamy | | andersen | | | tyndall beecher gronlund | | | | | lubbock p. brooks gilman | |poland | | | proctor lamb holley | | sienkiewicz | | | davy hazlitt dodge | | | | | proctor lamb jewett | | | | | davy hazlitt burroughs| | | | | bright rives stowe | | | | | fiske aldrich hearn | | | | | curtin warner burnett | | | | | hale curtis | | | | | edwards higginson | | | | | | | | | | | 1900 | | | +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ remarks on table v. =definitions and divisions=.--literature is life pulsing through life upon life; but only when the middle life imparts new beauty to the first is literature produced in any true and proper sense. the last life is that of the reader; the middle one that of the author; the first that of the person or age he pictures. literature is the past pouring itself into the present. every great man consumes and digests his own times. shakspeare gives us the england of the 16th century, with the added qualities of beauty, ideality, and order. when we read gibbon's "rome," it is really the life of all those turbulent times of which he writes that is pouring upon us through the channels of genius. dante paints with his own sublime skill the portraits of italy in the 14th century, of his own rich, inner life, and of the universal human soul in one composite masterpiece of art. in one of munchausen's stories, a bugler on the stage-top in st. petersburg was surprised to find that the bugle stopped in the middle of the song. afterward, in italy, sweet music was heard, and upon investigation it was found that a part of the song had been frozen in the instrument in russia, and thawed in the warmer air of italy. so the music of river and breeze, of battle and banquet, was frozen in the verse of homer nearly three thousand years ago, and is ready at any time, under the heat of our earnest study, to pour its harmony into our lives. it is the fact that beauty is added by the author which distinguishes _literature_ from the pictures of life that are given to us by newspaper reporters, tables of statistics, etc. literature is not merely life,--it is life _crystallized in art_. this is the first great line dividing the literary from the non-literary. the first class is again divided into poetry and prose. in the first the form is measured, and the substance imagery and imagination. in the latter the form is unmeasured, and the substance direct. imagery is the heart of poetry, and rhythm its body. the thought must be expressed not in words merely, but in words that convey other thoughts through which the first shines. the inner life is pictured in the language of external nature, and nature is painted in the colors of the heart. the poet must dip his brush in that eternal paint-pot from which the forests and fields, the mountains, the sky, and the stars were painted. he must throw human life out upon the world, and draw the world into the stream of his own thought. sometimes we find the substance of the poetic in the dress of prose, as in emerson's and in ingersoll's lectures, and then we have the prose poem; and sometimes we find the form of poetry with only the direct expression, which is the substance of prose, or perhaps without even the substance of _literary_ prose, as in parts of wordsworth, pope, longfellow, homer, tennyson, and even sometimes in shakspeare; see, for example, tennyson's "dirge." =tests for the choice of books=.--in deciding which of those glorious ships that sail the ages, bringing their precious freight of genius to every time and people, we shall invite into our ports, we must consider the nature of the crew, the beauty, strength, and size of the vessel, the depth of our harbor, the character of the cargo, and our own wants. in estimating the value of a book, we have to note (1) the kind of life that forms its material; (2) the qualities of the author,--that is, of the life through which the stream comes to us, and whose spirit is caught by the current, as the breezes that come through the garden bear with them the perfume of flowers that they touch; (3) the form of the book, its music, simplicity, size, and artistic shape; (4) its merits, compared with the rest of the books in its own sphere of thought; (5) its fame; (6) our abilities; and (7) our needs. there result several tests of the claims of any book upon our attention. i. what effect will it have upon character? will it make me more careful, earnest, sincere, placid, sympathetic, gay, enthusiastic, loving, generous, pure, and brave by exercising these emotions in me, and more abhorrent of evil by showing me its loathsomeness; or more sorrowful, fretful, cruel, envious, vindictive, cowardly, and false, less reverent of right and more attracted by evil, by picturing good as coming from contemptible sources, and evil as clothed with beauty? is the author such a man as i would wish to be the companion of my heart, or such as i must study to avoid? ii. what effect will the book produce upon the mind? will it exercise and strengthen my fancy, imagination, memory, invention, originality, insight, breadth, common-sense, and philosophic power? will it make me bright, witty, reasonable, and tolerant? will it give me the quality of intellectual beauty? will it give me a deeper knowledge of human life, of nature, and of my business, or open the doorways of any great temple of science where i am as yet a stranger? will it help to build a standard of taste in literature for the guidance of myself and others? will it give me a knowledge of what other people are thinking and feeling, thus opening the avenues of communication between my life and theirs? iii. what will be the effect on my skills and accomplishments? will it store my mind full of beautiful thoughts and images that will make my conversation a delight and profit to my friends? will it teach me how to write with power, give me the art of thinking clearly and expressing my thought with force and attractiveness? will it supply a knowledge of the best means of attaining any other desired art or accomplishment? iv. is the book simple enough for me? is it within my grasp? if not, i must wait till i have come upon a level with it. v. will the book impart a pleasure in the very reading? this test alone is not reliable; for till our taste is formed, the trouble may not be in it but in ourselves. vi. has it been superseded by a later book, or has its truth passed into the every-day life of the race? if so, i do not need to read it. other things equal, the authors nearest to us in time and space have the greatest claims on our attention. especially is this true in science, in which each succeeding great book sucks the life out of all its predecessors. in poetry there is a principle that operates in the opposite direction; for what comes last is often but an imitation, that lacks the fire and force of the original. nature is best painted, not from books, but from her own sweet face. vii. what is the relation of the book to the completeness of my development? will it fill a gap in the walls of my building? other things equal, i had better read about something i know nothing of than about something i am familiar with; for the aim is to get a picture of the universe in my brain, and a full development of my whole nature. it is a good plan to read everything of something and something of everything. a too general reader seems vague and hazy, as if he were fed on fog; and a too special reader is narrow and hard, as if fed on needles. viii. is the matter inviting my attention of permanent value? the profits of reading what is merely of the moment are not so great as those accruing from the reading of literature that is of all time. to hear the gossip of the street is not as valuable as to hear the lectures of joseph cook, or the sermons of beecher and brooks. on this principle, most of our time should be spent on classics, and very little upon transient matter. there is a vast amount of energy wasted in this country in the reading of newspapers and periodicals. the newspaper is a wonderful thing. it brings the whole huge earth to me in a little brown wrapper every morning. the editor is a sort of travelling stage-manager, who sets up his booth on my desk every day, bringing with him the greatest performers from all the countries of the world, to play their parts before my eyes. yonder is an immense mass-meeting; and that mite, brandishing his mandibles in an excited manner, is the great mr. so-and-so, explaining his position amid the tumultuous explosions of an appreciative multitude. that puffet of smoke and dust to the right is a revolution. there in the shadow of the wood comes an old man who lays down a scythe and glass while he shifts the scenes, and we see a bony hand reaching out to snatch back a player in the midst of his part, and even trying to clutch the showman himself. for three dollars a year i can buy a season ticket to this great globe theatre, for which god writes the dramas, whose scene-shifter is time, and whose curtain is rung down by death.[1] but theatre-going, if kept up continuously, is very enervating. 't is better far to read the hand-bills and placards at the door, and only when the play is great go in. glance at the head-lines of the paper always; read the mighty pages seldom. the editors could save the nation millions of rich hours by a daily column of _brief but complete_ statements of the paper's contents, instead of those flaring head-lines that allure but do not satisfy, and only lead us on to read that mr. windbag nominated mr. darkhorse amid great applause, and that mr. darkhorse accepted in a three-column speech skilfully constructed so as to commit himself to nothing; or that mr. bondholder's daughter was married, and that mrs. so-and-so wore cream satin and point lace, with roses, etc. [1] adapted from lowell. =intrinsic merit=.--it must be noted that the tests of intrinsic merit are not precisely the same as the tests for the choice of books. the latter include the former and more. intrinsic merit depends on the character impressed upon the book by its subject-matter and the author; but in determining the claims of a book upon the attention of the ordinary english reader, it is necessary not only to look at the book itself, but also to consider the needs and abilities of the reader. one may not be able to read the book that is intrinsically the best, because of the want of time or lack of sufficient mental development. green's "short history of england" and dickens' "child's history of england" may not be the greatest works in their department, but they may have the _greatest claims on the attention_ of one whose time or ability is limited. a chief need of every one is to know what others are thinking and feeling. to open up avenues of communication between mind and mind is one of the great objects of reading. now it often happens that a book of no very high merit artistically considered--a book that can never take rank as a classic--becomes very famous, and is for a time the subject of much comment and conversation. in such cases all who would remain in thorough sympathy with their fellows must give the book at least a hasty reading, or in some way gain a knowledge of its contents. intrinsically "robert elsmere" and "looking backward" may not be worthy of high rank (though i am by no means so sure of this as many of the critics seem to be); but their fame, joined as it is with high motive, entitles them to a reading. it is always a good plan, however, to endeavor to ascertain the absolute or intrinsic merit of a book first, and afterward arrive at the relative value or claim upon the attention by making the correction required by the time and place, later publications in the same department, the peculiar needs and abilities of readers, etc. in testing intrinsic worth we must consider- motive. magnitude. unity. universality. suggestiveness. expression. =motive=.--the purpose of the author and the emotional character of the subject matter are of great importance. a noble subject nobly handled begets nobility in the reader, and a spirit of meanness brought into a book by its subject or author also impresses itself upon those who come in contact with it. kind, loving books make the world more tender-hearted; coarse and lustful books degrade mankind. the nobility of the sentiment in and underlying a work is therefore a test of prime importance. whittier's "voices of freedom," lowell's "vision of sir launfal," tennyson's "locksley hall," warner's "a-hunting of the deer," shakspeare's "coriolanus," macaulay's "horatius" and "virginia," æschylus' "prometheus," dickens' "christmas carol," sewell's "black beauty," chaucer's "griselda," browning's "ivan ivanovitch," arnold's "forsaken merman," and "the light of asia," are fine examples of high motive. =magnitude=.--the grander the subject, the deeper the impression upon us. in reading a book like "the light of asia," that reveals the heart of a great religion, or guizot's "civilization in europe," that deals with the life of a continent, or darwin's "origin of species," or spencer's "nebular hypothesis," that grapples with problems as wide as the world and as deep as the starry spaces,--in reading such books we receive into ourselves a larger part of the universe than when we devote ourselves to the history of the town we live in, or the account of the latest game of base ball. =unity=.--a book, picture, statue, play, or oratorio is an artistic unity when no part of it could be removed without injury to the whole effect. true art masses many forces to a single central purpose. the more complex a book is in its substance (not its expression),--that is to say, the greater the variety of thoughts and feelings compressed within its lids,--the higher it will rank, if the parts are good in themselves and are so related as to produce one tremendous effect. but no intrusion of anything not essentially related to the supreme purpose can be tolerated. a good book is like a soldier who will not burden himself with anything that will not increase his fighting power, because, if he did, its weight would _diminish_ his fighting force. in the same way, if a book contains unnecessary matter, a portion of the attention that should be concentrated upon the real purpose of the volume, is absorbed by the superfluous pages, rendering the effect less powerful than it would otherwise be. most of the examples of high motive named above, would be in place here, especially,- prometheus. the forsaken merman. the light of asia. other fine specimens of unity are,- holmes's "nautilus." hood's "bridge of sighs." gray's "elegy." hunt's "abou ben adhem." longfellow's "psalm of life." whittier's "barefoot boy." shelley's "ode to a skylark." shelley's "ode to the west wind." byron's "eve of waterloo." bryant's "thanatopsis." reed's "drifting." drake's "culprit fay." irving's "art of bookmaking," etc. (in "sketch book"). rives' "story of arnon." dante's "divine comedy." schiller's "veiled statue of truth." goethe's "erl king." humor alone has a right to violate unity even apparently; and although wit and humor produce their effects by displaying incongruities, yet underlying all high art, in this department as in others, there is always a deep unity,--a truth revealed and enforced by the destruction of its contradictories accomplished by the sallies of wit and humor. =universality=.--other things equal, the more people interested in the subject the more important the book. a matter which affects a million people is of more consequence than one which affects only a single person. national affairs, and all matters of magnitude, of course possess this quality; but magnitude is not necessary to universality,--the thoughts, feelings, and actions of an unpretentious person in a little village may be types of what passes in the life of every human being, and by their representativeness attain a more universal interest for mankind than the business and politics of a state. the rules of tennis are not of so wide importance as an english grammar, nor is the latter so universal as dante's "inferno" or "the meditations of marcus aurelius,"--these being among the books that in the highest degree possess the quality under discussion. other fine examples are- goethe's "faust." shakespeare's plays and sonnets. bunyan's "pilgrim's progress." arnold's "light of asia." bacon's and emerson's essays. "uncle tom's cabin." sewell's "black beauty." eliot's "romola." curtis' "prue and i." cooper's "last of the mohicans." tourgée's "hot plowshares." irving's "sketch book." plato, spencer, etc. in fact, all books that express love, longing, admiration, tenderness, sorrow, laughter, joy, victory over nature or man, or any other thought or feeling common to men, have the attribute of universality in greater or less degree. =suggestiveness=.--every great work of art suggests far more than it expresses. this truth is illustrated by paintings like bierstadt's "yosemite" or his "drummer boy," millet's "angelus," or turner's "slave ship." statues like the "greek slave" or "the forced prayer;" speeches like those of phillips, fox, clay, pitt, bright, webster, and brooks; songs like "home, sweet home," "my country," "douglas," "annie laurie;" and books like emerson's essays. æschylus' "prometheus." goethe's "faust" and "wilhelm meister." dante's "divine comedy." "hamlet" and many other of shakspeare's plays. curtis' "prue and i." the meditations of marcus aurelius. the sermons of phillips brooks and robertson. "my summer in a garden," by warner; etc. a single sentence in emerson often suggests a train of thought that would fill a volume; and a single inflection of patti's voice in singing "home, sweet home" will fill the heart to overflowing. =expression=.--like a musician, an author must study technique. a book may possess high motive, artistic unity, universality, suggestiveness, magnitude of thought, and yet be lacking in clearness, purity, music, smoothness, force, finish, tone-color, or even in proper grammatical construction. the style ought to be carefully adapted to the subject and to the readers likely to be interested in it. _force_ and _beauty_ may be imparted to the subject by a good style. in poetry beauty is the supreme object, the projection of truth upon the _mind_ being subordinate. poetry expresses the truths of the soul. in prose, on the other hand, truth is the main purpose, and beauty is used as a helper. as a soldier studies his guns, and a dentist his tools, so a writer must study the laws of rhythm, accent, phrasing, alliteration, phonetic syzygy, run-on and double-ending lines, rhyme, and, last but not least, the melodies of common speech. the first three and the last are the most important, and should be thoroughly studied in shakspeare, addison, irving, and other masters of style by every one who wishes to write or to judge the work of others. except as to rhyme, the arts of writing prose and poetry are substantially the same. theoretically there is a fundamental difference in respect to rhythm,--that of a poem being limited to the repetition of some chosen type, that of prose being unlimited. a little study makes it clear, however, that the highest poetry, as that of shakspeare's later plays, crowds the type with the forms of common speech; while the highest efforts of prose, as that of addison, irving, phillips, ingersoll's oration over his dead brother, etc., display rhythms that approach the order and precision of poetry. in practice the best prose and the best poetry approach each other very closely, moving from different directions toward the same point. it is of great advantage to form the habit of noticing the _tunes_ of speech used by those around us; the study will soon become very pleasurable, and will be highly profitable by teaching the observer what mode of expression is appropriate to each variety of thought and feeling. there is a rhythm that of itself produces a comic effect, no matter how sober the words may be; and it is the same that we find in "pinafore," in the "mariner's duet" in the opera of "paul jones," and in the minstrel dance. for fifteen centuries all the great battle-songs have been written in the same rhythm; they fall into it naturally, because it expresses the movement of mighty conflict. see lanier's "science of english verse," pages 151 _et seq._, 231 _et seq._ this is the best book upon technique; but spencer's essay on the philosophy of style, and poe's essay on his composition of "the raven" should not be overlooked. franklin and many others have discovered the laws of style simply by careful study of the "spectator." of course it is not easy to decide the true rank of a book, even when we have tested it in respect to all the elements we have named. one book may be superior in expression, another in suggestiveness, and so on. then we have to take note of the relative importance of these various elements of greatness. a little superiority in motive or suggestiveness is worth far more than the same degree of superiority as to unity or magnitude. a book filled with noble sentiment, though lacking unity, should rank far above "don juan," or any other volume that expresses the ignoble part of human nature, however perfect the work may be from an artistic point of view. having now examined the tests of intrinsic merit, let me revert for a moment to my remark, a few pages back, to the effect that "looking backward" and "robert elsmere" deserve a high rank. they are books of _lofty aim_, great magnitude of subject and thought, fine unity, _wide universality_, _exhaustless suggestiveness_, and more than ordinary power of expression. doubtless they are not _absolute_ classics,--not books of all time,--for their subjects are transitional, not eternal. they deal with _doubts_, religious and industrial; when these have passed away, the mission of the books will be fulfilled, and their importance will be less. but they are _relative_ classics,--books that are of great value to their age, and will be great as long as their subjects are prominent. supreme books in the literatures of england, america, greece, rome, italy, france, spain, germany, persia, portugal, denmark, russia. periods of english literature. the highest summit of our literature--and indeed of the literature of the world--is shakspeare. he brings us life in the greatest force and volume, of the highest quality, and clothed in the richest beauty. his age, which was practically identical with the reign of elizabeth, is the golden age of english letters; and taking it for a basis of division, we have the pre-shakspearian age from 600 to 1559, the shakspearian age from 1559 to 1620, and the post-shakspearian age from 1620 to the present. =the first age= is divided into three periods. _first_, the early period, from 600 to the norman conquest in 1066, which holds the names of beowulf,[2] cædmon,[3] bæda,[4] cynewulf, and ælfred, the great king who did so much for the learning of his country, bringing many great scholars into england from all over the world, and himself writing the best prose that had been produced in english, and changing the "anglo-saxon chronicle"--till his time a mere record of noble births and deaths--into a valuable periodical, the progenitor of the vast horde that threatens to expel the classics in our day. the literature of this period has little claim upon us except on the ground of breadth. the _anglo-saxon chronicle_, and the poems of _beowulf_, _cædmon_, and _cynewulf_, should be glanced at to see what sort of people our ancestors were. [2] an epic poem, full of the life, in peace and war, of our saxon fathers before they came to england. [3] the writer of a paraphrase on the bible; a feeble milton. [4] a very learned man, who gathered many scholars about him, and who finished translating the gospel of john on his death-bed and with his latest breath. _second_, the period of chaucer, from 1066 to the death of chaucer in 1400. the great books of this period were _mandeville's travels_, langland's "piers the ploughman." wycliffe's translation of the bible (these two books, with wycliffe's tracts, went all over england among the common people, rousing them against the catholic church, and starting the reformation that afterward grew into puritanism, and gained control of the nation under cromwell), gower's poems, and _chaucer's canterbury tales_. those in italics are the only books that claim our reading. mandeville travelled thirty years, and then wrote all he saw and all he heard from the mouth of rumor. chaucer is half french and two-thirds italian. he drank in the spirit of the golden age of italy, which was in the early part of his own century. probably he met petrarch and boccaccio, and certainly he drew largely from their works as well as from dante's, and he dug into poor gower as into a stone quarry. he is still our best story-teller in verse, and one of our most musical poets; and every one should know something of this "morning star of english poetry," by far the greatest light before the elizabethan age, and still easily among the first five or six of our poets. _third_, the later period, from 1400 to 1559, in which _malory's morte d'arthur_, containing fragments of the stories about king arthur and the knights of his round table, which like a bed-rock crop out so often in english literature, should be read while reading tennyson's "idylls of the king," which is based upon malory; and _sir thomas more's utopia_ also claims some attention on the plea of breadth, as it is the work of a great mind, thoroughly and practically versed in government, and sets forth his idea of a perfect commonwealth. in this age of nine and a half centuries there were, then, ten noteworthy books and one great book; eight only of the eleven, however, have any claim upon our attention, the last three being all that are entitled to more than a rapid reading by the general student; and only chaucer for continuous companionship can rank high, and even he cannot be put on the first shelf. * * * * * =in the shakspearian age= the great books were (1) _roger ascham's schoolmaster_, which was a fine argument for kindness in teaching and nobility in the teacher, but has been superseded by spencer's "education." (2) _sackville's induction_ to a series of political tragedies, called "a mirror for magistrates." the poet goes down into hell like dante, and meets remorse, famine, war, misery, care, sleep, death, etc., and talks with noted englishmen who had fallen. this "mirror" was of great fame and influence in its day; and the "induction," though far inferior to both chaucer and spenser, is yet the best poetic work done in the time between those masters. (3) _john lyly's euphues_, a book that expressed the thought of ascham's "schoolmaster" in a style peculiar for its puns, antitheses, and floweriness,--a style which made a witty handling of language the chief aim of writing. lyly was a master of the art, and the ladies of the court committed his sentences in great numbers, that they might shine in society. the book has given a word to the language; that affected word-placing style is known as _euphuistic_. the book has no claims upon our reading. (4) _sir philip sidney's arcadia_, a romance in the same conceited style as the "euphues," and only valuable as a mine for poetic images. (5) _hooker's ecclesiastical polity_, which was a defence of the church system against the puritans. the latter said that no such system of church government could be found in the bible, and therefore should not exist. hooker answered that nature was a revelation from god as well as the bible; and if in nature and society there were good reasons for the existence of an institution, that was enough. the book is not of importance to the general reader to-day, for the truth of its principles is universally admitted. (6) _the plays of marlowe_, a very powerful but gross writer. his "dr. faustus" may very properly receive attention, but only after the best plays of shakspeare, jonson, calderon, racine, molière, corneille, æschylus, sophocles, euripides, and aristophanes have been carefully read. (7) _the plays of beaumont and fletcher_, which are filled with beauty and imagination, mingled with the immodesty and vulgarity that were natural to this age. the remark just made about marlowe applies here. (8) _fox's book of martyrs_, which for the sake of breadth should be glanced at by every one. the marvellous heroism and devotion to faith on one side, and cruelty on the other that come to us through the pages of this history, open a new world to the modern mind. (9) _edmund spenser's faerie queene_, which combines the poetry of a homer with the allegory of a bunyan. it presents moral truth under vast and beautiful imagery. in english poetry it claims our attention next to shakspeare and milton. (10) _ben jonson's plays_, which stand next to those of shakspeare in english drama. (11) _the plays of shakspeare_, which need no comment, as they have already been placed at the summit of all literature; and (12) _bacon's works_, including the _novum organum_, the _new atlantis_, and the _essays_, the first of which, though one of the greatest books of the world, setting forth the true methods of arriving at truth by experiment and observation and the collation of facts, we do not need to read, because the substance of it may be found in better form in mill's logic. the "essays," however, are world-famed for their condensed wit and wisdom on topics of never-dying interest, and stand among the very best books on the upper shelf. the "new atlantis" also should be read for breadth, with more's "utopia;" the subject being the same, namely, an ideal commonwealth. from this sixty-one years of prolific writing, in which no less than two hundred and thirty authors gathered their poems together and published them, to say nothing of all the scattered writings, twelve volumes have come down to us with a large measure of fame. only the last seven call for our reading; but two of them, shakspeare and bacon, are among the very most important books on the first shelf of the world's library. * * * * * =the post-shakspearian age= is divided into four times, or periods,--the time of milton; the time of dryden; the time of pope; and the time of the novelists, historians, and scientists. the time of milton, from 1620 to 1674, was contemporary with the golden age of literature in france. the great english books of this time were (1) _chapman's translation of homer_, which is superseded by pope's. (2) _hobbes's leviathan_, a discourse on government. hobbes taught that government exists for the people, and rests not on the divine right of kings, but on a compact or agreement of all the citizens to give up a portion of their liberties in order by social co-operation the better to secure the remainder. he is one of our greatest philosophers; but the general reader will find the substance of hobbes's whole philosophy better put in locke, mill, and herbert spencer. (3) _walton's complete angler_, the work of a retired merchant who combined a love of fishing with a poetic perception of the beauties of nature. it will repay a glance. (4) _s. butler's hudibras_, a keen satire on the puritans who went too far in their effort to compel all men to conform their lives to the puritan standard of abstinence from worldly pleasures. in spite of its vulgarity, the book stands very high in the literature of humor. (5) _george herbert's poems_, many of which are as sweet and holy as a flower upon a grave, and are beloved by all spiritually minded people. (6) _jeremy taylor's holy living and dying_, a book that in the strength of its claim upon us must rank close after the bible, shakspeare, and the science of physiology and hygiene. (7) _milton's poems_, of which the "paradise lost" and "comus," for their sublimity and beauty, rank next after shakspeare in english poetry. æschylus, dante, and milton are the three sublimest souls in history. from this time of fifty-four years seven great books have come to us, milton and taylor being among our most precious possessions. the time of dryden.--from the death of milton, in 1674, to the death of dryden, in 1700, the latter held undisputed kingship in the realm of letters. this and the succeeding time of pope were marked by the development of a classic style and a fine literary and critical taste, but were lacking in great creative power. the great books were (1) _newton's principia_, the highest summit in the region of astronomy, unless the "mécanique céleste" of laplace must be excepted. newton's discovery of the law of gravitation, and his theory of fluxions place him at the head of the mathematical thinkers of the world. his books, however, need not be read by the general student, for in these sciences the later books are better. (2) _locke's works_ upon government and the understanding are among the best in the world, but their results will all be found in the later works of spencer, mill, and bryce; and the only part of the writings of locke that claims our reading to-day is the little book upon the _conduct of the understanding_, which tells us how to watch the processes of our thought, to keep clear of prejudice, careless observation, etc., and should be in the hands of every one who ever presumes to do any thinking. (3) _dryden's translation of virgil_ is the best we have, and contains the finest writing of our great john. (4) _bunyan's pilgrim's progress_ picturing in magnificent allegory the journey of a christian soul toward heaven, and his "holy war," telling of the conflict between good and evil, and the devil's efforts to capture and hold the town of "mansoul," should be among the first books we read. the "progress" holds a place in the affections of all english-speaking peoples second only to the bible. (5) _sam pepys's diary_ is the greatest book of its kind in the world, and is much read for its vividness and interesting detail. it has, however, no claims to be read until all the books on the first shelf of table i. have been mastered, and a large portion of the second shelf pretty thoroughly looked into. of the five great works of these twenty-six years, bunyan and locke are far the most important for us. the time of pope, or the _time of the essayists and satirists_, covers a period of forty years, from 1700 to 1740, during which the great translator of homer held the sceptre of literary power by unanimous assent. the great works of this time were (1) _the essays of addison and steele_ in the "tatler" and "spectator," which, though of great merit, must rank below those of emerson, bacon, and montaigne. (2) _defoe's robinson crusoe_, the boy's own book. (3) _swift's satires_,--the "tale of a tub," "gulliver's travels," and the "battle of the books,"--all full of the strongest mixture of grossness, fierceness, and intense wit that the world has seen. the "battle of the books" may be read with great advantage by the general reader as well as by the student of humor. (4) _berkeley's human knowledge_, exceedingly interesting for the keenness of its confutation of any knowledge of the existence of matter. (5) _pope's poems_--the "rape of the lock" (which means the theft of a lock of hair), the "essay on man," and his translation of homer--must form a part of every wide course of reading. their mechanical execution, especially, is of the very finest. (6) _thomson's seasons_, a beautiful poem of the second class. (7) _butler's analogy_, chiefly noted for its proof of the existence of god from the fact that there is evidence of design in nature. of these writers, pope and defoe are far the most important for us. we have, down to this time of 1740, out of a literature covering eleven and a half centuries, recommended to the chief attention of the reader ten great authors,--chaucer and spenser, shakspeare and bacon, milton and taylor, bunyan and locke, pope and defoe. we now come to the time of novelists, historians, and scientists, a period in the history of our literature that is so prolific of great writers in all the vastly multiplied departments of thought, that it is no longer possible to particularize in the manner we have done in regard to the preceding ages. a sufficient illustration has been given of the methods of judging books and the results of their application. with the ample materials of table i. before him, the reader must now be left to make his own judgments in regard to the relative merits of the books of the modern period. we shall confine our remarks on this last time of english literature to the recommendation of ten great authors to match the ten great names of former times. in history, we shall name _parkman_, the greatest of american historians; in philosophy, _herbert spencer_, the greatest name in the whole list of philosophers; in poetry, _byron_ and _tennyson_, neither of them equal to shakspeare and milton, but standing in the next file behind them; in fiction, _scott_, _eliot_, and _dickens_; in poetic humor, _lowell_, the greatest of all names in this department; and in general literature, _carlyle_ and _ruskin_, two of the purest, wisest, and most forcible writers of all the past, and, curiously enough, both of them very eccentric and very wordy,--a sort of english double star, which will be counted in this list as a unit, in order to crowd in _emerson_, who belongs in this great company, and is not by any means the least worthy member of it. one more writer there is in this time greater than any we have named, except spencer and scott; namely, the author of "the origin of species." _darwin_ stands by the side of newton in the history of scientific thought; but, like his great compeer, the essence of his book has come to be a part of modern thought that floats in the air we breathe; and so his claims to being read are less than those of authors who cannot be called so great when speaking of intrinsic merit. having introduced the greatest ten of old, and ten that may be deemed the greatest of the new, in english letters, we shall pass to take a bird's-eye view of what is best in greece and rome, france, italy, and spain, and say a word of persia, germany, and portugal. the greatest names of other literatures. =greece=, in her thirteen centuries of almost continuous literary productiveness from homer to longus, gave the world its greatest epic poet, _homer_; the finest of lyric poets, _pindar_; the prince of orators, _demosthenes_; aside from our own bacon and spencer, the greatest philosophers of all the ages, _plato_ and _aristotle_; the most noted of fabulists, _æsop_; the most powerful writer of comedy, _aristophanes_ (molière, however, is much to be preferred for modern reading, because of his fuller applicability to our life); and the three greatest writers of pure tragedy, _æschylus_, _sophocles_, and _euripides_,--the first remarkable for his gloomy grandeur and gigantic, dark, and terrible sublimity; the second for his sweet majesty and pathos; and third for the power with which he paints men as they are in real life. euripides was a great favorite with milton and fox. to one who is not acquainted with these ten great greeks, much of the sweetest and grandest of life remains untasted and unknown. begin with homer, plato's "phædo" and "republic," æschylus' "prometheus bound," sophocles' "oedipus," and demosthenes' "on the crown." a liberal reading must also include the greek historians herodotus, thucydides, and xenophon. =rome= taught the world the art of war, but was herself a pupil in the halls of grecian letters. only three writers--_plutarch_, _marcus aurelius_ (who both wrote in greek), and _epictetus_--can claim our attention in anything like an equal degree with the authors of athens named just above. its literature as a whole is on a far lower plane than that of greece or england. a liberal education must include virgil's "æneid," the national epic of rome (which, however, must take its place in our lives and hearts far after homer, shakspeare, milton, dante, and goethe), for its elegance and imagination; horace, for his wit, grace, sense, and inimitable witchery of phrase; lucretius, for his depth of meditation; tacitus, for knowledge of our ancestors; ovid and catullus, for their beauty of expression; juvenal, for the keenness of his satire; and plautus and terence, for their insight into the characters of men. but these books should wait until at least the three first named in this paragraph, with the ten greek and twenty english writers spoken of in the preceding paragraphs, have come to be familiar friends. =italy=, in chaucer's century, produced a noble literature. _dante_ is the shakspeare of the latin races. he stands among the first creators of sublimity. æschylus and milton only can claim a place beside him. _petrarch_ takes lofty rank as a lyric poet, breathing the heart of love. boccaccio may be put with chaucer. ariosto and tasso wrote the finest epics of italian poetry. a liberal education must neglect no one of these. every life should hold communion with the soul of dante, and get a taste at least of petrarch. =france= has a glorious literature; in science, the best in the world. in history, _guizot_; in jurisprudence, in its widest sense, _montesquieu_; and in picturing the literary history of a nation, _taine_, stand unrivalled anywhere. among essayists, _montaigne_; among writers of fiction, _le sage_, _victor hugo_, and _balzac_; among the dramatists, _corneille_ the grand, _racine_ the graceful and tender, and _molière_ the creator of modern comedy; and among fabulists, the inimitable poet of fable, _la fontaine_, demand a share of our time with the best. descartes, pascal, rousseau, voltaire, and comte belong in every liberal scheme of culture and to every student of philosophy. =spain= gives us two most glorious names, _cervantes_ and _pedro calderon de la barca_,--the former one of the world's very greatest humorists, the brother spirit of lowell; the latter, a princely dramatist, the brother of shakspeare. =germany= boasts one summit on which the shadow of no other falls. _goethe's_ "faust" and "wilhelm meister" and his minor poems cannot be neglected if we want the best the world affords; _schiller_, too, and _humboldt_, _kant_ and _heine_, _helmholtz_ and _haeckel_ must be read. in science and history, the list of german greatness is a very long and bright one. =persia= calls us to read her magnificent astronomer-poet, _omar khayyám_; her splendid epic, the _shah nameh of firdusi_, the story of whose labors, successes, and misfortunes is one of the most interesting passages in the history of poetry; and taste at least of her extravagant singer of the troubles and ecstasies of love, hafiz. =portugal= has given us _camoens_, with his great poem the "luciad." =denmark= brings us her charming _andersen_; and =russia= comes to us with her byronic pushkin and her schiller-hearted poet, lermontoff, at least for a glance. we have thus named as the chiefs, twenty authors in english, ten in greek, three of rome, two of italy, ten of france, two of spain, seven of germany, three of persia, one of portugal, one of denmark, and two of russia,--sixty-one in all,--which, if read in the manner indicated, will impart a pretty thorough knowledge of the literary treasures of the world. the fountains of national literatures. in the early history of every great people there has grown up a body of songs celebrating the heroism of their valiant warriors and the charms of their beautiful women. these have, generation after generation, been passed by word of mouth from one group of singers to their successors,--by each new set of artists somewhat polished and improved,--until they come to us as homer's iliad, the "nibelungenlied" of the germans, the "chronicle of the cid" of the spanish, the "chansons de gestes," the "romans," and the "fabliaux" of the french, and "beowulf" and the "morte d'arthur" of english literature. these great poems are the sources of a vast portion of what is best in subsequent art. from them virgil, boccaccio, chaucer, rabelais, molière, shakspeare, calderon, and a host of others have drawn their inspiration. malory has wrought the arthurian songs into a mould of the purest english. the closing books, in their quiet pathos and reserved strength,--in their melody, winged words, and inimitable turns of phrase,--rank with the best poetry of europe. southey called the "cid" the finest poem in the spanish language, and prescott said it was "the most remarkable performance of the middle ages." this may be going rather too far; but it certainly stands in the very front rank of national poems. it has been translated by lockhart in verse, by southey in prose, and there is a splendid fragment by frere. of the french early epics, the "chanson de roland" and the "roman du renart" are the best. the "nibelungenlied" is the embodiment of the wild and tragic,--the highest note of the barbaric drama of the north. that last terrific scene in the hall of etzel will rest forever in the memory of every reader of the book. carlyle has given a sketch of the poem in his "miscellanies," vol. iii., and there exists a complete but prolix and altogether miserable translation of the great epic, but we sadly need a condensed version of the myth of "siegfried" the brave, and "chriemhild" the beautiful, in the stirring prose of malory or southey. no reader will regret a perusal of these songs of the people; it is a journey to the head-waters of the literary nile. the reader of this little book we hope has gained an inspiration--if it were not his before--that, with a strong and steady step, will lead him into all the paths of beauty and of truth. each glorious emotion and each glowing thought that comes to us, becomes a centre of new growth. each wave of pathos, humor, or sublimity that pulses through the heart or passes to the brain, sets up vibrations that will never die, but beautify the hours and years that follow to the end of life. these waves that pass into the soul do not conceal their music in the heart, but echo back upon the world in waves of kindred power; and these return forever from the world into the heart that gave them forth. it is as on the evening river, where the boatman bends his homeward oar. each lusty call that leaves his lips, or song, or bugle blast that slips the tensioned bars, and wings the breeze, to teach its rhythm to the trees that crown the rocky twilight steep o'er which the lengthening shadows creep, returns and enters, softened, sweet, and clear, the waiting portal of the sender's ear. the man who fills his being with the noblest books, and pours their beauty out in word and deed, is like the merry singers on the placid moonlit lake. backward the ripples o'er the silver sheet come on the echoes' winged feet; the hills and valleys all around gather the gentle shower of sound, and pour the stream upon the boat in which the happy singers float, chanting the hymns they loved of yore, shipping the glistening wave-washed oar, to hear reflected from the shore their every charmèd note. oh, loosen from _thy_ lip, my friend, no tone thine ear would with remorseful sorrow hear, hurling it back from far and near, the listening landscape oft repeat! rather a melody send to greet the mountains beyond the silver sheet. life's the soul's song; sing sweetly, then, that when the silence comes again, and ere it comes, from every glen the echoes shall be sweet. appendix. the best thoughts of great men about books and reading. appendix i. the best thoughts of great men about books and reading. =addison=. "books are the legacies that genius leaves to mankind." "knowledge of books is a torch in the hands of one who is willing and able to show those who are bewildered the way which leads to prosperity and welfare." =alcott, a. b=. "my favorite books have a personality and complexion as distinctly drawn as if the author's portrait were framed into the paragraphs, and smiled upon me as i read his illustrated pages." "next to a friend's discourse, no morsel is more delicious than a ripe book,--a book whose flavor is as refreshing at the thousandth tasting as at the first." "next to a personal introduction, a list of one's favorite authors were the best admittance to his character and manners." "a good book perpetuates its fame from age to age, and makes eras in the lives of its readers." =atkinson, w. p=. "who can over-estimate the value of good books,--those ships of thought, as bacon so finely calls them, voyaging through the sea of time, and carrying their precious freight so safely from generation to generation?" =arnott, dr=. "books,--the miracle of all possessions, more wonderful than the wishing-cap of the arabian tales; for they transport instantly, not only to all places, but to all times." =bacon=. "studies serve for pastimes, for ornaments, for abilities. their chief use for pastimes is in privateness and retiring; for ornaments, in discourse; and for ability, in judgment.... to spend too much time in them is sloth; to use them too much for ornament is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules is the humor of a scholar. they perfect nature, and are themselves perfected by experience. crafty men contemn them, wise men use them, simple men admire them; for they teach not their own use, but that there is a wisdom without them and above them won by observation. read not to contradict, nor to believe, but to weigh and consider.... reading maketh a full man, conference a ready, and writing an exact man. therefore, if a man write little, he had need of a great memory; if he confer little, he hath need of a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning to seem to know that he doth not know. histories make men wise, poets witty, the mathematicians subtile, natural philosophy deep, moral grave, logic and rhetoric able to contend." =barrow=. "he who loveth a book will never want a faithful friend, a wholesome counsellor, a cheerful companion, or an effectual comforter." =bartholin=. "without books god is silent, justice dormant, natural science at a stand, philosophy lame, letters dumb, and all things involved in cimmerian darkness." =beaconsfield, lord=. "the idea that human happiness is dependent on the cultivation of the mind and on the discovery of truth is, next to the conviction of our immortality, the idea the most full of consolation to man; for the cultivation of the mind has no limits, and truth is the only thing that is eternal." "knowledge is like the mystic ladder in the patriarch's dream. its base rests on the primeval earth, its crest is lost in the shadowy splendor of the empyrean; while the great authors, who for traditionary ages have held the chain of science and philosophy, of poesy and erudition, are the angels ascending and descending the sacred scale, and maintaining, as it were, the communication between man and heaven." =beecher, henry ward=. "a book is good company. it seems to enter the memory, and to hover in a silvery transformation there until the outward book is but a body, and its soul and spirit are flown to you, and possess your memory like a spirit." "books are the windows through which the soul looks out. a home without books is like a room without windows...." =bright, john=. "what is a great love of books? it is something like a personal introduction to the great and good men of all past time." =brooks, phillips=. "is it not a new england for a child to be born in since shakspeare gathered up the centuries and told the story of humanity up to his time? will not carlyle and tennyson make the man who begins to live from them the 'heir of all ages' which have distilled their richness into the books of the sage and the singer of the nineteenth century?" =browning, elizabeth barrett=. "when we gloriously forget ourselves and plunge soul forward, headlong into a book's profound, impassioned for its beauty, and salt of truth- 'tis then we get the right good from a book." =bruyère=. "when a book raises your spirit, and inspires you with noble and courageous feelings, seek for no other rule to judge the event by; it is good, and made by a good workman." =bury, richard de=. "you, o books! are golden urns in which manna is laid up; rocks flowing with honey, or rather, indeed, honeycombs; udders most copiously yielding the milk of life, store-rooms ever full; the four-streamed river of paradise, where the human mind is fed, and the arid intellect moistened and watered; fruitful olives, vines of engaddi, fig-trees knowing no sterility; burning lamps to be ever held in the hand." "in books we find the dead, as it were, living.... the truth written in a book ... enters the chamber of intellect, reposes itself upon the couch of memory, and there congenerates the eternal truth of the mind." =carlyle=. "evermore is _wisdom_ the highest of conquests to every son of adam,--nay, in a large sense, the one conquest; and the precept to every one of us is ever, 'above all thy gettings get understanding.'" "of all the things which man can do or make here below, by far the most momentous, wonderful, and worthy are the things we call books." "all that mankind has done, thought, gained, and been, is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books." =channing, dr. wm. e=. "god be thanked for books! they are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. books are the true levellers. they give to all who will faithfully use them the society, the spiritual presence, of the best and greatest of our race. no matter how poor i am; no matter though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling: if the sacred writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof,--if milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of paradise; and shakspeare, to open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of the human heart; and franklin, to enrich me with his practical wisdom,--i shall not pine for want of intellectual companionship, and i may become a cultivated man, though excluded from what is called the best society in the place where i live." =chaucer=. "and as for me, though that i know but lyte[5] on bokès for to rede i me delyte, and to them give i (feyth[6]) and ful credence, and in myn herte have them in reverence so hertily that there is pastime noon,[7] that from my bokès maketh me to goon but yt be seldom on the holy day, save, certeynly, whan that the monethe of may is comen, and i here the foulès synge, and that the flourès gynnen for to sprynge; farewell my boke, and my devocioun." [5] little. [6] faith. [7] none. =cicero=. "studies are the aliment of youth, the comfort of old age, an adornment of prosperity, a refuge and a solace in adversity, and a delight in our home." =clarke, james freeman=. "when i consider what some books have done for the world, and what they are doing,--how they keep up our hope, awaken new courage and faith, give an ideal life to those whose homes are hard and cold, bind together distant ages and foreign lands, create new worlds of beauty, bring down truths from heaven,--i give eternal blessings for this gift, and pray that we may use it aright, and abuse it not." =coleridge=. "some readers are like the hour-glass. their reading is as the sand; it runs in and runs out, but leaves not a vestige behind. some, like a sponge, which imbibes everything, and returns it in the same state, only a little dirtier. some, like a jelly-bag, which allows all that is pure to pass away, and retains only the refuse and dregs. the fourth class may be compared to the slave of golconda, who, casting away all that is worthless, preserves only the pure gems." =collyer, robert=. "do you want to know how i manage to talk to you in this simple saxon? i will tell you. i read bunyan, crusoe, and goldsmith when i was a boy, morning, noon, and night; all the rest was task work. these were my delight, with the stories in the bible, and with shakspeare, when at last the mighty master came within our doors. these were like a well of pure water; and this is the first step i seem to have taken of my own free will toward the pulpit. from the days when we used to spell out crusoe and old bunyan, there had grown up in me a devouring hunger to read books.... i could not go home for the christmas of 1839, and was feeling very sad about it all, for i was only a boy; and sitting by the fire, an old farmer came in and said, 'i notice thou's fond o' reading, so i brought thee summat to read.' it was irving's 'sketch book.' i had never heard of the work. i went at it, and was 'as them that dream.' no such delight had touched me since the old days of crusoe." =curtis, g. w=. "books are the ever-burning lamps of accumulated wisdom." =de quincey=. "every one owes to the impassioned books he has read many a thousand more of emotions than he can consciously trace back to them.... a great scholar depends not simply on an infinite memory, but also on an infinite and electrical power of combination,--bringing together from the four winds, like the angel of the resurrection, what else were dust from dead men's bones into the unity of breathing life." =diodorus=. "books are the medicine of the mind." =emerson=. "the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader." =erasmus=. "a little before you go to sleep read something that is exquisite and worth remembering, and contemplate upon it till you fall asleep; and when you awake in the morning call yourself to an account for it." =farrar, canon=. "if all the books of the world were in a blaze, the first twelve which i should snatch out of the flames would be the bible, the imitation of christ, homer, æschylus, thucydides, tacitus, virgil, marcus aurelius, dante, shakspeare, milton, wordsworth. of living writers i would save, first, the works of tennyson, browning, and ruskin." =fénelon=. "if the crowns of all the kingdoms of the empire were laid down at my feet in exchange for my books and my love of reading, i would spurn them all." =freeman, e. a=. (the historian). "i feel myself quite unable to draw up a list (of the best books), as i could not trust my own judgment on any matters not bearing on my special studies, and i should be doubtless tempted to give too great prominence to them." =fuller, thomas=. "it is thought and digestion which make books serviceable, and give health and vigor to the mind." =gibbon=. "a taste for books is the pleasure and glory of my life. i would not exchange it for the glory of the indies." =gladstone=. "when i was a boy i used to be fond of looking into a bookseller's shop; but there was nothing to be seen there that was accessible to the working-man of that day. take a shakspeare, for example. i remember very well that i gave £2 16_s._ 0_d._ for my first copy; but you can get any one of shakspeare's plays for seven cents. those books are accessible now which were formerly quite inaccessible. we may be told that you want amusement, but that does not include improvement. there are a set of worthless books written now and at times which you should avoid, which profess to give amusement; but in reading the works of such authors as shakspeare and scott there is the greatest possible amusement in its best form. do you suppose when you see men engaged in study that they dislike it? no!... i want you to understand that multitudes of books are constantly being prepared and placed within reach of the population at large, for the most part executed by writers of a high stamp, having subjects of the greatest interest, and which enable you, at a moderate price, not to get cheap literature which is secondary in its quality, but to go straight into the very heart,--if i may so say, into the sanctuary of the temple of literature,--and become acquainted with the greatest and best works that men of our country have produced." =godwin, william=. "it is impossible that we can be much accustomed to such companions without attaining some resemblance to them." =goldsmith=. "an author may be considered as a merciful substitute to the legislature. he acts not by punishing crimes, but by preventing them." =hale, sir matthew=. "read the bible reverently and attentively, set your heart upon it, and lay it up in your memory, and make it the direction of your life; it will make you a wise and good man." =hamerton, p. h=. "the art of reading is to skip judiciously." =harrison, frederic=. "the best authors are never dark horses. the world has long ago closed the great assize of letters, and judged the first places everywhere." "the reading of great books is usually an acquired faculty, not a natural gift. if you have not got the faculty, seek for it with all your might." "of walter scott one need as little speak as of shakspeare. he belongs to mankind,--to every age and race; and he certainly must be counted as in the first line of the great creative minds of the world. his unique glory is to have definitely succeeded in the ideal reproduction of historical types, so as to preserve at once beauty, life, and truth,--a task which neither ariosto and tasso, nor corneille and racine, nor alfieri, nor goethe, nor schiller,--no, nor even shakspeare himself, entirely achieved.... in brilliancy of conception, in wealth of character, in dramatic art, in glow and harmony of color, scott put forth all the powers of a master poet.... the genius of scott has raised up a school of historical romance; and though the best work of chateaubriand, manzoni, and bulwer may take rank as true art, the endless crowd of inferior imitations are nothing but a weariness to the flesh.... scott is a perfect library in himself.... the poetic beauty of scott's creations is almost the least of his great qualities. it is the universality of his sympathy that is so truly great, the justice of his estimates, the insight into the spirit of each age, his intense absorption of self in the vast epic of human civilization." =hazlitt, william=. "books let us into the souls of men, and lay open to us the secrets of our own." =heinsius=. "i no sooner come into the library but i bolt the door to me, excluding lust, ambition, avarice, and all such vices, whose nurse is idleness, the mother of ignorance and melancholy. in the very lap of eternity, among so many divine souls, i take my seat with so lofty a spirit and sweet content, that i pity all that know not this happiness." =herbert, george=. "this _book of stars_ [the bible] lights to eternal bliss." =herschel, sir j=. "give a man this taste [for good books] and the means of gratifying it, and you can hardly fail of making a happy man. you place him in contact with the best society in every period of history,--with the wisest, the wittiest, the tenderest, the bravest, and the purest characters who have adorned humanity. you make him a denizen of all nations, a contemporary of all ages." =hillard, george s=. "here we have immortal flowers of poetry, wet with castilian dew, and the golden fruit of wisdom that had long ripened on the bough.... we should any of us esteem it a great privilege to pass an evening with shakspeare or bacon.... we may be sure that shakspeare never out-talked his 'hamlet,' nor bacon his 'essays.'... to the gentle hearted youth, far from his home, in the midst of a pitiless city, 'homeless among a thousand homes,' the approach of evening brings with it an aching sense of loneliness and desolation. in this mood his best impulses become a snare to him; and he is led astray because he is social, affectionate, sympathetic, and warm-hearted. the hours from sunset to bedtime are his hours of peril. let me say to such young men that books are the friends of the friendless, and that a library is the home of the homeless." =holmes, o. w=. "books are the 'negative' pictures of thought; and the more sensitive the mind that receives the images, the more nicely the finest lines are reproduced." =houghton, lord=. "it [a book] is a portion of the eternal mind, caught in its process through the world, stamped in an instant, and preserved for eternity." =irving=. "the scholar only knows how dear these silent yet eloquent companions of pure thoughts and innocent hours become in the season of adversity." =johnson, dr=. "no man should consider so highly of himself as to think he can receive but little light from books, nor so meanly as to believe he can discover nothing but what is to be learned from them." =jonson, ben=. "a prince without letters is a pilot without eyes." =king, thomas starr=. "by cultivating an interest in a few good books, which contain the result of the toil or the quintessence of the genius of some of the most gifted thinkers of the world, we need not live on the marsh and in the mists; the slopes and the summits invite us." =kingsley, charles=. "except a living man, there is nothing more wonderful than a book!--a message to us from the dead, from human souls whom we never saw, who lived, perhaps, thousands of miles away; and yet these, on those little sheets of paper, speak to us, amuse us, vivify us, teach us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as to brothers." =lamb, charles=. "milton almost requires a solemn service of music to be played before you enter upon him. but he brings his music, to which who listens had need bring docile thoughts and purged ears." =landor, walter savage=. "the writings of the wise are the only riches our posterity cannot squander." =langford=. "strong as man and tender as woman, they welcome you in every mood, and never turn from you in distress." =lowell=. "have you ever rightly considered what the mere ability to read means? that it is the key that admits us to the whole world of thought and fancy and imagination, to the company of saint and sage, of the wisest and the wittiest at their wisest and wittiest moments? that it enables us to see with the keenest eyes, hear with the finest ears, and listen to the sweetest voices of all time?... one is sometimes asked by young people to recommend a course of reading. my advice would be that they should confine themselves to the supreme books in whatever literature, or, still better, to choose some one great author, and make themselves thoroughly familiar with him." =luther=. "to read many books produceth confusion, rather than learning, like as those who dwell everywhere are not anywhere at home." =lyly, john=. "far more seemly were it ... to have thy study full of books than thy purse full of money." =lytton, lord=. "laws die, books never." "beneath the rule of men entirely great the pen is mightier than the sword." "ye ever-living and imperial souls, who rule us from the page in which ye breathe." "the wise (minstrel or sage) _out_ of their books are clay; but _in_ their books, as from their graves, they rise, angels--that, side by side, upon our way, walk with and warn us!" "we call some books immortal! _do they live?_ if so, believe me, time hath made them pure. in books the veriest wicked rest in peace,- god wills that nothing evil should endure; the grosser parts fly off and leave the whole, as the dust leaves the disembodied soul!" =macaulay=. "a great writer is the friend and benefactor of his readers." =milton=. "as good almost kill a man as kill a good book. who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, god's image; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself,--kills the image of god, as it were, in the eye. many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond." =montaigne=. "to divert myself from a troublesome fancy, 'tis but to run to my books." "as to what concerns my other reading, that mixes a little more profit with the pleasure, and from whence i learn how to marshal my opinions and qualities, the books that serve me to this purpose are plutarch and seneca,--both of which have this great convenience suited to my humor, that the knowledge i seek is discoursed in loose pieces that do not engage me in any great trouble of reading long, of which i am impatient.... plutarch is frank throughout. seneca abounds with brisk touches and sallies. plutarch, with things that heat and move you more; this contents and pays you better. as to cicero, those of his works that are most useful to my design are they that treat of philosophy, especially moral; but boldly to confess the truth, his way of writing, and that of all other long-winded authors, appears to me very tedious." =morley, john=. "the consolation of reading is not futile nor imaginary. it is no chimera of the recluse or the bookworm, but a potent reality. as a stimulus to flagging energies, as an inspirer of lofty aim, literature stands unrivalled." =morris, william=. "the greater part of the latins i should call _sham_ classics. i suppose that they have some good literary qualities; but i cannot help thinking that it is difficult to find out how much. i suspect superstition and authority have influenced our estimate of them till it has become a mere matter of convention. of modern fiction, i should like to say here that i yield to no one, not even ruskin, in my love and admiration for scott; also that, to my mind, of the novelists of our generation, dickens is immeasurably ahead." =müller, max=. "i know few books, if any, which i should call good from beginning to end. take the greatest poet of antiquity, and if i am to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, i must say that there are long passages, even in homer, which seem to me extremely tedious." =parker, theodore=. "what a joy is there in a good book, writ by some great master of thought, who breaks into beauty, as in summer the meadow into grass and dandelions and violets, with geraniums and manifold sweetness.... the books which help you most are those which make you think most.... a great book ... is a ship of thought deep freighted with thought, with beauty too. it sails the ocean, driven by the winds of heaven, breaking the level sea of life into beauty where it goes, leaving behind it a train of sparkling loveliness, widening as the ship goes on. and what treasures it brings to every land, scattering the seeds of truth, justice, love, and piety, to bless the world in ages yet to come." =peacham, henry=. "to desire to have many books and never to use them, is like a child that will have a candle burning by him all the while he is sleeping." =petrarch=. "i have friends whose society is extremely agreeable to me; they are of all ages and of every country. they have distinguished themselves both in the cabinet and in the field, and obtained high honors for their knowledge of the sciences. it is easy to gain access to them, for they are always at my service; and i admit them to my company and dismiss them from it whenever i please. they are never troublesome, but immediately answer every question i ask them. some relate to me the events of past ages, while others reveal to me the secrets of nature. some teach me how to live, and others how to die. some, by their vivacity, drive away my cares and exhilarate my spirits; while others give fortitude to my mind, and teach me the important lesson how to restrain my desires and to depend wholly on myself. they open to me, in short, the various avenues of all the arts and sciences, and upon their information i safely rely in all emergencies." =phelps, e. j=. (united states minister to the court of st. james). "i cannot think the _finis et fructus_ of liberal reading is reached by him who has not obtained in the best writings of our english tongue the generous acquaintance that ripens into affection. if he must stint himself, let him save elsewhere." =plato=. "books are the immortal sons deifying their sires." =plutarch=. "we ought to regard books as we do sweetmeats,--not wholly to aim at the pleasantest, but chiefly to respect the wholesomest." =potter, dr=. "it is nearly an axiom that people will not be better than the books they read." =raleigh, walter=. "we may gather out of history a policy no less wise than eternal, by the comparison and application of other men's fore-passed miseries with our own like errors and ill-deservings." =richardson, c. f=. "no book, indeed, is of universal value and appropriateness.... here, as in every other question involved in the choice of books, the golden key to knowledge, a key that will only fit its own proper doors, is _purpose_." =ruskin=. "all books are divisible into two classes,--the books of the hour and the books of all time." books of the hour, though useful, are, "strictly speaking, not books at all, but merely letters or newspapers in good print," and should not be allowed "to usurp the place of true books." "of all the plagues that afflict mortality, the venom of a bad book to weak people, and the charms of a foolish one to simple people, are without question the deadliest; and they are so far from being redeemed by the too imperfect work of the best writers, that i never would wish to see a child taught to read at all, unless the other conditions of its education were alike gentle and judicious." ruskin says a well-trained man should know the literature of his own country and half a dozen classics thoroughly; but unless he wishes to travel, the language and literature of modern europe and of the east are unnecessary. to read fast any book worth reading is folly. ruskin would not have us read grote's "history of greece," for any one could write it if "he had the vanity to waste his time;" "confessions of saint augustine," for it is not good to think so much about ourselves; john stuart mill, for his day is over; charles kingsley, for his sentiment is false, his tragedy frightful. hypatia is the most ghastly story in christian tradition, and should forever have been left in silence; darwin, for we should know what _we are_, not what _our embryo was_, or _our skeleton will be_; gibbon, for we should study the growth and standing of things, not the decline and fall (moreover, he wrote the worst english ever written by an educated englishmen); voltaire, for his work is to good literature what nitric acid is to wine, and sulphuretted hydrogen to air. ruskin also crosses out marcus aurelius, confucius, aristotle (except his "politics"), mahomet, saint augustine, thomas à kempis, pascal, spinoza, butler, keble, lucretius, the nibelungenlied, malory's morte d'arthur, firdusi, the mahabharata, and ramayana, the sheking, sophocles, and euripides, hume, adam smith, locke, descartes, berkeley, lewes, southey, longfellow, swift, macaulay, emerson, goethe, thackeray, kingsley, george eliot, and bulwer. his especial favorites are scott, carlyle, plato, and dickens. æschylus, taylor, bunyan, bacon, shakspeare, milton, dante, spenser, wordsworth, pope, goldsmith, defoe, boswell, burke, addison, montaigne, molière, sheridan, æsop, demosthenes, plutarch, horace, cicero, homer, hesiod, virgil, aristophanes, herodotus, xenophon, thucydides, and tacitus, he condescends to admit as proper to be read. =schopenhauer=. "recollect that he who writes for fools finds an enormous audience." =seneca=. "if you devote your time to study, you will avoid all the irksomeness of this life." "it does not matter how many, but how good, books you have." "leisure without study is death, and the grave of a living man." =shakspeare=. "a book! oh, rare one! be not, as in this fangled world, a garment nobler than it covers." "my library was dukedom large enough." =sidney, sir philip=. "nature never set forth the earth in so rich tapestry as divers poets have done." =smiles, sam=. "men often discover their affinity to each other by the mutual love they have for a book." =smith, alexander=. "we read books not so much for what they say as for what they suggest." =socrates=. "employ your time in improving yourselves by other men's documents; so shall you come easily by what others have labored hard to win." =solomon=. "he that walketh with wise men shall be wise." =spencer, herbert=. "my reading has been much more in the direction of science than in the direction of general literature; and of such works in general literature as i have looked into, i know comparatively little, being an impatient reader, and usually soon satisfied." =stanley, henry m=. "i carried [across africa] a great many books,--three loads, or about one hundred and eighty pounds' weight; but as my men lessened in numbers,--stricken by famine, fighting, and sickness,--one by one they were reluctantly thrown away, until finally, when less than three hundred miles from the atlantic, i possessed only the bible, shakspeare, carlyle's sartor resartus, norie's navigation, and the nautical almanac for 1877. poor shakspeare was afterwards burned by demand of the foolish people of zinga. at bonea, carlyle and norie and the nautical almanac were pitched away, and i had only the old bible left." =swinburne, a. c=. "it would be superfluous for any educated englishman to say that he does not question the pre-eminence of such names as bacon and darwin." =taylor, bayard=. "not many, but good books." =thoreau=. "books that are books are all that you want, and there are but half a dozen in any thousand." =trollope, anthony=. "the habit of reading is the only enjoyment i know in which there is no alloy; it lasts when all other pleasures fade." =waller, sir william=. "in my study i am sure to converse with none but wise men; but abroad, it is impossible for me to avoid the society of fools." =whateley, richard=. "if, in reading books, a man does not choose wisely, at any rate he has the chance offered him of doing so." =whipple, edwin p=. "books,--lighthouses erected in the sea of time." =white, andrew d=., president of cornell, speaking of scott, says: "never was there a more healthful and health-ministering literature than that which he gave to the world. to go back to it from flaubert and daudet and tolstoi is like listening to the song of the lark after the shrieking passion of the midnight pianoforte; nay, it is like coming out of the glare and heat and reeking vapor of a palace ball into a grove in the first light and music and breezes of the morning.... so far from stimulating an unhealthy taste, the enjoyment of this fiction created distinctly a taste for what is usually called 'solid reading,' and especially a love for that historical reading and study which has been a leading inspiration and solace of a busy life." =whitman, walt=. "for us, along the great highways of time, those monuments stand,--those forms of majesty and beauty. for us those beacons burn through all the night." =wolseley, gen. lord=. "during the mutiny and china war i carried a testament, two volumes of shakspeare that contained his best plays; and since then, when in the field, i have always carried a book of common prayer, thomas à kempis, soldier's pocket book, depending on a well-organized postal service to supply me weekly with plenty of newspapers." =wordsworth=. "these hoards of wealth you can unlock at will." appendix ii. books for supplementary reading. boys' latin school. moss' first greek reader. tomlinson's latin for sight reading. walford's extracts from cicero (part i.). jackson's manual of astronomical geography. ritchie's fabulae faciles. girls' latin school. sheldon's greek and roman history. ritchie's fabulae faciles. latin and high schools. books required for admission to harvard college. a list of suitable books, carefully prepared under the direction of the committee on text-books, is presented to the board for adoption. after this list has been adopted, a master may make requisition on the committee on supplies for one set (of not more than thirty-five copies) of a book. this committee, after the approval of the committee on text-books has been obtained, will purchase the books and send them to the school for permanent use. no book will be purchased until called for in the manner described. _english._--barnes's history of ancient peoples; church's stories from the east, from herodotus; church's story of the persian war, from herodotus; church's stories from the greek tragedians; kingsley's greek heroes; abbott's lives of cyrus and alexander; froude's cæsar; forsythe's life of cicero; ware's aurelian; cox's crusades; masson's abridgment of guizot's history of france; scott's abbot; scott's monastery; scott's talisman; scott's quentin durward; scott's marmion (rolfe's student series); scott's lay of the last minstrel (rolfe's student series); kingsley's hereward; kingsley's westward ho; melville's holmby house; macaulay's essay on frederic; macaulay's essay on clive; macaulay's essay on dr. johnson; motley's essay on peter the great; thackeray's henry esmond; thackeray's the virginians; thackeray's the four georges; dickens' tale of two cities; george eliot's silas marner; irving's alhambra; irving's bracebridge hall; miss buckley's life and her children; miss buckley's winners in life's race; bulfinch's age of fable (revised edition); the boy's froissart; ballads and lyrics; vicar of wakefield; essays of elia; tennyson's selected poems (rolfe's student series); tennyson's elaine; tennyson's in memoriam; byron's prisoner of chillon; goldsmith's deserted village; goldsmith's traveller; coleridge's ancient mariner; wordsworth's excursion; monroe's sixth reader; webster--section 2 [annotated english classics, ginn & co.]; wordsworth's poems--section 2 [annotated english classics, ginn & co.]; sheldon's greek and roman history; monroe's fifth reader (old edition). _french._--st. german's pour une épingle; achard's le clos pommier; feuillet's roman d'un homme pauvre; dumas's la tulipe noire; vigny's cinq mars; lacombe's la petite histoire du peuple français. _german._--andersen's märchen; simmondson's balladenbuch; krurnmacher's parabeln; goethe's iphigenie auf tauris; goethe's prose; schiller's jungfrau von orleans; schiller's prose; boisen's german prose; bernhardt's novellen bibliothek. grammar schools. class vi. (_about ten years old_). seven little sisters, first half-year. each and all, second half-year. this is simple, interesting class-reading, which will aid the geography, and furnish material for both oral and written language lessons. hooker's child's book of nature; those chapters of parts i. and ii., which will supplement properly the observational studies of plants and animals, and those chapters of part iii., on air, water, and heat, which will aid the instruction in geography. our world reader, no. 1. our world, no. 1; the reading to be kept parallel with the instruction in geography through the year. poetry for children; selections appropriate for reading and recitation. class v. (_about eleven years old_). stories of american history; for practice in reading at sight, and for material for language lessons. guyot's introduction to geography; the reading to be kept parallel with the instruction in geography through the year. hooker's child's book of nature, and poetry for children; as in class vi. robinson crusoe. class iv. (_about twelve years old_). the wonder book and tanglewood tales, as collateral to the oral instruction in stories in mythology. hooker's child's book of nature, and poetry for children; as in classes vi. and v. readings from nature's book (revised edition). robinson crusoe. class iii. (_about thirteen years old_). hooker's child's book of nature; as supplementary to oral lessons. american poems, with biographical sketches and notes; appropriate selections therefrom. class ii. (_about fourteen years old_). selections from american authors; as in part collateral to the united states history. american poems; appropriate selections therefrom. class i. (_about fifteen years old_). selections from american authors. early england--harper's half-hour series, nos. 6 and 14. american poems; selections therefrom. green's readings from english history. phillips's historical readers, nos. 1, 2, 3, 4. any class. six stories from the arabian nights. holmes' and longfellow leaflets, published by houghton, mifflin, & co. book of golden deeds. jackson's manual of astronomical geography. parkman leaflets, published by little, brown, & co. circulating library for grammar schools. zigzag journeys in europe (revised edition); zigzag journeys in the orient (revised edition); scudder's boston town; drake's the making of new england; towle's pizarro; towle's vasco da gama; towle's magellan; fairy land of science; hawthorne's true stories; higginson's young folks' book of explorers; scott's ivanhoe; longfellow's evangeline; little folks in feathers and fur; what mr. darwin saw in his voyage around the world in the ship beagle; muloch's a noble life; m. e. dodge's hans brinker; lambert's robinson crusoe; lamb's tales from shakspeare (revised edition, houghton, mifflin, & co.); abbott's jonas on a farm in summer; smiles' robert dick, geologist and botanist; eyes right; alcott's little men; alcott's little women; stoddard's dab kinzer; scott's kenilworth; tom brown's school-days at rugby; abbott's mary queen of scots; abbott's charles i.; taylor's boys of other countries; how marjory helped; little people in asia; gilman's magna charta stories; overhead; yonge's lances of linwood; memory gems; geographical plays; ten boys who lived on the road from long ago till now; scott's tales of a grandfather; hayes' cast away in the cold; sharp eyes and other papers; lessons on practical subjects; stories of mother nature; play days; jackanapes; children's stories of american progress; little lord fauntleroy; gilman's historical readers (three volumes); pilgrims and puritans; the patriotic reader; ballou's footprints of travel. primary schools. permanent supplementary reading. easy steps for little feet. popular tales (first and second series.) parker & marvel's supplementary reading (first book). tweed's graded supplementary reading. modern series primary reading, part i. an illustrated primer (d. c. heath & co.). circulating supplementary reading. _first readers._--monroe's, monroe's advanced first, appleton's, harvey's, eclectic, sheldon's, barnes' new national, sheldon & co.'s, harper's, the nursery primer, parker & marvel's supplementary reading (second book), wood's first natural history reader, stickney's first reader, stickney's first reader (new edition), mcguffey's alternate first reader. _second readers._--monroe's, monroe's advanced second, appleton's, harvey's, lippincott's, sheldon & co.'s, barnes' new national, analytical, macmillan's, swinton's, new normal, stickney's second reader (new edition), harper's easy book (published by shorey), turner's stories for young children, our little ones, golden book of choice reading, when i was a little girl, johonnot's friends in feathers and fur, woodward's number stories, wood's second natural history reader, young folks' library, nos. 5 and 6 (silver, burdett, & co.). supplementary reading in one building, november, 1890. grammar school. class i. (_about fifteen years old_). longfellow's poems. class ii. (_about fourteen years old_). hans brinker. mary mapes dodge. how marjory helped. m. caroll. magellan's voyages. ivanhoe. scott. class iii. (_about thirteen years old_). american explorers. higginson. class iv. (_about twelve years old_). playdays. sarah o. jewett. water babies. kingsley. physiology. a child's book of nature. w. hooker. class v. (_about eleven years old_). stories of american history. n. s. dodge. guyot's geography. class vi. (_about ten years old_). the arabian nights' entertainments. six stories by samuel eliot. our world. mary l. hall. the seven little sisters. jane andrews. each and all. jane andrews. poetry for children. samuel eliot. text-books. primary schools. _third class._--franklin primer and advanced first reader. munroe's primary reading charts. _second class._--franklin second reader. franklin advanced second reader. first music reader. _first class._--franklin third reader. [8]new franklin third reader. first music reader. [8] to be furnished at the discretion of the committee on supplies. _upper classes._--[9]franklin primary arithmetic. first lessons in natural history and language, parts i. and ii. child's book of language, nos. 1, 2, 3. [by j. h. stickney.] [9] each primary-school building occupied by a first or second class to be supplied with one set of the franklin primary arithmetic; the number in a set to be sixty, or, if less be needed, less than sixty; the committee on supplies are authorized to supply additional copies of the book at their discretion, if needed. _all the classes._--american text-books of art education. first primary music chart. prang's natural history series, one set for each building. magnus & jeffries's color chart; "color blindness," by dr. b. joy jeffries.--one copy of the chart and one copy of the book for use in each primary-school building. normal music course in the rice training school and in the schools of the third and sixth divisions. national music course (revised edition) in the schools of the first and second divisions. grammar schools. _sixth class._--franklin advanced third reader. [10]warren's primary geography. intermediate music reader. franklin elementary arithmetic. [11]greenleaf's manual of mental arithmetic. worcester's spelling-book. [10] swinton's introductory geography allowed in charlestown schools. [11] to be used in the manner recommended by the board of supervisors in school document no. 14, 1883; one set of sixty copies to be supplied for the classes on each floor of a grammar-school building occupied by pupils in either of the four lower classes, and for each colony of a grammar school. _fifth class._--franklin intermediate reader. [12] new franklin fourth reader. franklin elementary arithmetic. [13]greenleaf's manual of mental arithmetic. [14]warren's primary geography. intermediate music reader. worcester's spelling-book. [12] to be furnished at the discretion of the committee on supplies. [13] to be used in the manner recommended by the board of supervisors in school document no. 14, 1883; one set of sixty copies to be supplied for the classes on each floor of a grammar-school building occupied by pupils in either of the four lower classes, and for each colony of a grammar school. [14] the revised edition to be furnished at the discretion of the committee on supplies to schools where this book is used. swinton's grammar-school geography allowed in charlestown schools. _fourth class._--franklin fourth reader. [15]new franklin fourth reader. worcester's comprehensive dictionary. franklin written arithmetic. [16]greenleaf's manual of mental arithmetic. [17]warren's common-school geography. intermediate music reader. worcester's spelling-book. [18]blaisdell's how to keep well. [15] to be furnished at the discretion of the committee on supplies. [16] to be used in the manner recommended by the board of supervisors in school document no. 14, 1883; one set of sixty copies to be supplied for the classes on each floor of a grammar-school building occupied by pupils in either of the four lower classes, and for each colony of a grammar school. [17] the revised edition to be furnished at the discretion of the committee on supplies to schools where this book is used. swinton's grammar-school geography allowed in charlestown schools. [18] one set of not more than sixty copies, or, if determined by the committee on supplies to be necessary, more than one set, be placed in each grammar school, for use as collateral reading in the third and fourth classes. _third class._--franklin fifth reader. [19]new franklin fifth reader. franklin written arithmetic. [20]greenleaf's manual of mental arithmetic. [21]warren's common-school geography. swinton's new language lessons. worcester's comprehensive dictionary. higginson's history of the united states. [22]fourth music reader. [revised edition.] [23]blaisdell's how to keep well. [19] to be furnished at the discretion of the committee on supplies. [20] to be used in the manner recommended by the board of supervisors in school document no. 14, 1883; one set of sixty copies to be supplied for the classes on each floor of a grammar-school building occupied by pupils in either of the four lower classes, and for each colony of a grammar school. [21] the revised edition to be furnished at the discretion of the committee on supplies to schools where this book is used. swinton's grammar-school geography allowed in charlestown schools. [22] the revised edition to be supplied as new books are needed. [23] one set of not more than sixty copies, or, if determined by the committee on supplies to be necessary, more than one set, be placed in each grammar school, for use as collateral reading in the third and fourth classes. _second class._--franklin fifth reader. [24]new franklin fifth reader. franklin written arithmetic. [25]warren's common-school geography. tweed's grammar for common schools. worcester's comprehensive dictionary. higginson's history of the united states. [26]fourth music reader. [revised edition.] smith's elementary physiology and hygiene. [24] to be furnished at the discretion of the committee on supplies. [25] the revised edition to be furnished at the discretion of the committee on supplies to schools where this book is used. swinton's grammar-school geography allowed in charlestown schools. [26] the revised edition to be supplied as new books are needed. _first class._--franklin sixth reader. franklin written arithmetic. meservey's book-keeping, single entry. [27]warren's common school geography. tweed's grammar for common schools. worcester's comprehensive dictionary. stone's history of england. cooley's elements of philosophy. [28]fourth music reader. [revised edition.] [27] the revised edition to be furnished at the discretion of the committee on supplies to schools where this book is used. swinton's grammar-school geography allowed in charlestown schools. [28] the revised edition to be supplied as new books are needed. _fifth and sixth classes._--first lessons in natural history and language. parts iii. and iv. _all classes._--american text-books of art education. writing-books: duntonian series; payson, dunton, and scribner's; harper's copy-books; appleton's writing-books. child's book of language; and letters and lessons in language, nos. 1, 2, 3, 4. [by j. h. stickney.] prang's aids for object teaching, "trades," one set for each building. normal music course in the rice training school and the schools of the third and sixth divisions. national music course (revised edition) in the schools of the first and second divisions. high schools. _english._--abbott's how to write clearly. hill's _or_ kellogg's rhetoric. meiklejohn's english language. scott's lady of the lake. selections from addison's papers in the spectator, with macaulay's essay on addison. irving's sketch-book. trevelyan's selections from macaulay. hales' longer english poems. shakspeare,--rolfe's _or_ hudson's selections. selections from chaucer. selections from milton. [clarendon press edition. vol. i.] worcester's comprehensive dictionary. _latin._--allen & greenough's latin grammar. [roxbury, w. roxbury, and brighton high schools.] harkness' latin grammar. [english, girls', dorchester, charlestown, and east boston high schools.] harkness' complete course in latin for the first year. gildersleeve's latin primer. collar & daniell's beginners' latin book. [roxbury, west roxbury, and brighton high schools.] harkness' cæsar. lindsey's cornelius nepos. chase's, frieze's, _or_ greenough's virgil, or any edition approved by the committee on text-books. greenough's _or_ harkness' cicero. chase's _or_ lincoln's horace, or any edition approved by the committee on text-books. _history._--[29]anderson's new general history. martin's civil government. [29] to be dropped from list of authorized text-books, july 1, 1890. _mythology._--berens's hand-book of mythology. _mathematics._--meservey's book-keeping. bradbury & emery's academic algebra. [30]wentworth & hill's exercises in algebra. bradbury's elementary geometry, _or_ chauvenet's geometry, _or_ wells's geometry. greenleaf's trigonometry. [31]metric apparatus. [30] this book is not intended to, and does not in fact displace any text-book now in use, but is intended merely to furnish additional problems in algebra. [31] not exceeding $15 for each school. _physics._--cooley's new text-book of physics. avery's physics, _or_ gage's introduction to physical science. _astronomy._--sharpless & phillips' astronomy. _chemistry._--williams's chemistry. williams's laboratory manual. eliot & storer's elementary manual of chemistry, edited by nichols. eliot & storer's qualitative analysis. hill's lecture notes on qualitative analysis. tables for the determination of common minerals. [girls' high school.] white's outlines of chemical theory. _botany._--gray's school and field book of botany. _zoölogy._--morse's zoölogy and packard's zoölogy. _physiology._--hutchinson's physiology. blaisdell's our bodies and how we live. _drawing._--american text-books of art education. _music._--eichberg's high-school music reader. eichberg's girls' high-school music reader. [girls' high school.] latin schools. _latin._--white's abridged lexicon. harkness' grammar. harkness' reader. harkness' complete course in latin for the first year. harkness' prose composition, _or_ allen's latin composition. harkness' cæsar. lindsey's cornelius nepos. greenough's catiline of sallust. lincoln's ovid. greenough's ovid. greenough's virgil. greenough's _or_ harkness' orations of cicero. smith's principia latina, part ii. _greek._--liddell & scott's abridged lexicon. goodwin's grammar. white's lessons. jones' prose composition. goodwin's reader. the anabasis of xenophon. boise's homer's iliad. beaumlein's edition of homer's iliad. _english._--soule's hand-book of pronunciation. hill's general rules for punctuation. tweed's grammar for common schools (in fifth and sixth classes). hawthorne's wonder book. hawthorne's tanglewood tales. plutarch's lives of famous greeks and romans. macaulay's lays of ancient rome. higginson's history of the united states. hughes' tom brown's school-days at rugby. dana's two years before the mast. charles and mary lamb's tales from shakspeare. [revised edition, houghton, mifflin, & co.] scott's ivanhoe. hawthorne's true stories. greene's readings from english history. [32]church's stories from homer. [32]church's stories of the old world. selections from american authors,--franklin, adams, cooper, and longfellow. american poems, with biographical sketches and notes. irving's sketch-book. selections from addison's papers in the spectator. ballads and lyrics. hales' longer english poems. three plays of shakspeare,--rolfe's _or_ hudson's selections. [32] no more copies of church's stories from homer to be purchased, but as books are worn out their place to be supplied with church's stories of the old world. _history._--leighton's history of rome. smith's smaller history of greece. long's _or_ ginn & heath's classical atlas. smith's smaller classical dictionary,--student's series. _mythology._--bulfinch's age of fable. _geography._--geikie's primer of physical geography. warren's common-school geography. _physiology._--macé's history of a mouthful of bread. foster's physiology (science primer). blaisdell's our bodies and how we live. _botany._--gray's school and field book of botany. _zoölogy._--morse's zoölogy and packard's zoölogy. _mineralogy._--tables for the determination of common minerals. [girls' latin school.] _mathematics._--the franklin written arithmetic. bradbury's eaton's algebra. [33]wentworth & hill's exercises in algebra. chauvenet's geometry. lodge's elementary mechanics. [33] this book is not intended to, and does not in fact, displace any text-book now in use, but is intended merely to furnish additional problems in algebra. _physics._--arnott's _or_ avery's physics, _or_ gage's physics. _drawing._--american text-books of art education. _music._--eichberg's high-school music reader. eichberg's girls' high-school music reader. [girls' latin school] latin and high schools. _french._--keetel's elementary grammar. keetel's analytical french reader. super's french reader. [34]sauveur's petites causeries. hennequin's lessons in idiomatic french. gasc's french dictionary. erckmann-chatrian's le conscrit de 1813. erckmann-chatrian's madame thérèse. bôcher's college series of french plays. nouvelles genevoises. souvestre's au coin du feu. racine's andromaque. racine's iphigénie. racine's athalie. molière's bourgeois gentilhomme. molière's precieuses ridicules. corneille's les horaces. corneille's cid. herrig's la france littéraire. roemer's french course, vol. ii. ventura's peppino. halévy's l'abbé constantin. la fontaine's fables. about's la mère de la marquise. daudet's siège de berlin. daudet's extraits. daudet's la belle nivarnaise. [34] to be furnished as new french readers are needed. the use of the book confined for this year to the english, charlestown, roxbury, and west roxbury high schools. _german._--whitney's german dictionary. whitney's grammar. collar's eysenbach. otto's _or_ whitney's reader. der zerbrochene krug. schiller's wilhelm tell. schiller's maria stuart. goethe's hermann und dorothea. putlitz's das herz vergessen. grimm's märchen. goethe's prose. schiller's prose. stein's german exercises. heine's die harzreise. im zwielicht. vols. i. and ii. traumerein. buckheim's german poetry for repetition. normal school text-books. the text-books used in this school shall be such of the text-books used in the other public schools of the city as are needed for the course of study, and such others as shall be authorized by the board. normal music course. horace mann school text-books. such text-books shall be supplied to the horace mann school as the committee on that school shall approve. evening high school text-books. benn pitman's manual of phonography. reporter's companion. the phonographic reader. the reporter's first reader. bradbury's elementary geometry. the text-books used in this school shall be such of the text-books authorized in the other public schools as are approved by the committee on evening schools and the committee on supplies. _east boston branch._--graded lessons in shorthand. parts 1 and 2, by mrs. mary a. chandler. evening elementary school text-books. munroe's charts. franklin primer. franklin reader. stories of american history. harper's introductory geography. the franklin elementary arithmetic. the franklin written arithmetic. [35]andersen's märchen. writing-books, plain copy-books; and such of the text-books authorized in the other public schools as are approved by the committee on evening schools and the committee on supplies. [35] in schools in which the english language is taught to german pupils. schools of cookery. boston school kitchen text-book, by mrs. d. a. lincoln. reference-books. primary schools. worcester's comprehensive dictionary. national music teacher. munroe's vocal gymnastics. lessons in color (one copy for each primary-school teacher's desk). white's oral lessons in number (one copy for each primary-school teacher's desk). smith's primer of physiology and hygiene (one copy for each primary-school teacher's desk). observation lessons in the primary schools, by mrs. l. p. hopkins (one copy for each primary-school teacher's desk). simple object lessons (two series), by w. hewitt beck. natural history object lessons, by g. ricks (one set of books of each title for each primary-school teacher's desk). grammar schools. appleton's american encyclopædia _or_ johnson's encyclopædia. chambers's encyclopædia. anthon's classical dictionary. thomas's dictionary of biography and mythology. worcester's quarto unabridged dictionary. webster's quarto unabridged dictionary. webster's national pictorial dictionary. lippincott's gazetteer. johnson's atlas. reclus' earth. reclus' ocean. flammarion's atmosphere. weber's universal history. bancroft's history of the united states. battle maps of the revolution. palfrey's history of new england. martin's civil government. frothingham's rise of the republic. lossing's field-book of the revolution. shurtleff's topographical history of boston. frothingham's siege of boston. lingard's history of england. smith's primer of physiology and hygiene (one copy for the desk of each teacher of the fifth and sixth classes). goold-brown's grammar of english grammars. wilson's punctuation. philbrick's union speaker. methods of teaching geography (one copy for each teacher of geography). _first classes._--physiography (longmans & co.). copies for teachers' desks. _second classes._--harper's cyclopædia of united states history. _maps and globes._--cutter's physiological charts. charts of the human body (milton bradley & co.). white's manikin. cornell's series maps, _or_ guyot's series maps, nos. 1, 2, 3. (not exceeding one set to each floor.) hughes's series of maps. joslyn's fifteen-inch terrestrial globe, on tripod (one for each grammar school). nine-inch hand globe, loring's magnetic (one for each grammar school room). cosmograph. o. w. gray & son's atlas. (to be furnished as new atlases are needed.) latin and high schools. lingard's history of england. harper's latin lexicon. liddell & scott's greek lexicon, unabridged. eugène's french grammar. labberton's historical atlas and general history (one book for the desk of each teacher). guyot's and cameron's maps of the roman empire, greece, and italy. strang's english lessons (for use on teachers' desks). normal school. observation lessons in primary schools, by mrs. l. p. hopkins (one set). normal and high schools. charts of life. wilson's human anatomical and physiological charts. hough's american woods. 