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THE:
WORLD'S BEST BOOKS
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A KEY TO THE
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TREASURES OF LITERATURE
· BV
FRANK PARSONS, F. E. CRAWFORD
AND
· H. T. RICHARDSON
man
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1889
Copyright, 1889,
By FRANK PARSONS.
anibersity Press :
JOHN WILSON AND Son, CAMBRIDGE.
orja o88,s.
DURING twenty years of earnest reading of the
finest literature, this book has been growing. It
aims to accomplish several things the need of
which has long been felt; especially to classify the
losophy, Religion, Morals, History, Wit, etc., —
indicating the importance of each great division in
relation to the rest, and what the rank of every
book must be, compared with others of the same
division, that the student may not only know the
hundred or four hundred greatest books, but may
see them in their true gradation, and have the
means of knowing where he should begin to study;
also to supply the tests by which each reader for
himself may judge the claims of any book on his
attention, and to give a list of brief selections of
the gravest, grandest, saddest, sweetest, wittiest, most
pathetic, solemn, and melodious passages in litera-
ture, naming the precise place in which each selec-
OSE 7
81 53:35
1
PREFACE.
tion may be found, the manner in which it should
be read, and its degree of difficulty, with the pur-
pose of building up a standard of taste and com-
parison for all after reading; and finally to picture
to the eye the relative positions of the greatest
writers of the world in time and space, and in re-
lation to the great events that history records, ac-
companying the picture with a bird's-eye view of
all the periods of English Literature, and of the
Golden Age in every other literature of any note,
which view, in fifteen minutes' reading, gives the
essence of the twenty-five or thirty books on litera-
ture and reading that are the most in use, so far
as they relate to choice of reading and the order
of selection.
FRANK PARSONS.
Boston, May, 1889.
CONTENTS.
·
·
· ..
·
·
·
·
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
PAGE
Purposes of the book briefly stated . . . . . . . I
System in reading.............
Purposes of reading ........
Its influence on health and mind .......
on character ......... .
on beauty and accomplishments . . . . 4
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 . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
useless books . . . . . . . . . . . II
good books . . . . . . . . . . . 12-15
ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THIS WORK . . . . . . . 16
THE FIRST Two SHELVES OF THE WORLD'S LIBRARY
(TABLE I.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17-19
REMARKS ON TABLE I.. ........... 20-67
Religion and Morals ........... 20–23
Poetry and the Drama ......24-38
Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39-43
·
·
·
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Biography · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 43-45
·
·
·
·
.
.
·
.
.
·
·
Philosophy. .............. 48–52
Essays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52–53
Fiction · · · · · ·
· 53-56
Oratory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Wit and Humor . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58–59
Fables and Fairy Tales .......... 60
Travel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61-62
Guides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62-63
Miscellaneous . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63-67
GLIMPSES OF THE GREAT FIELDS OF THOUGHT,
Arranged for the purpose of securing breadth of
mind (Table II.) . . . . . . . . . . . 68-69
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.) ............. 70–79
Groups I. and II., Poetry ......... 71-77
Group III., Prose ............ 77–78
Group IV., Wit and Humor ........ 79
A SHORT COURSE SUPPLEMENTARY TO THE LAST
(Table IV.) . . .
.
.
.
.
.
.
80-81
.
THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE WORLD'S GREAT AUTHORS
in time and space, with a parallel column of con-
temporaneous noted historic events (Table V.) 82-86
Definitions and divisions . . . . . . . . . . 87-89
Eight tests for the choice of books ...... 89-93
Periods of English Literature . . . . . . . . 94-104
The Pre-Shakspearian age. ....... 94-96
The Shakspearian age ......... 96-99
CONTENTS.
vii
PAGE
The Post-Shakspearian age ...... 99–104
Time of Milton . . . . . . . . . . . 99-100
Dryden . . . . . . . . . . 100-102
Pope . . . . . . . . . . . 102-103
The novelists, historians, and sci-
entists . . . . . . . . . . 103-104
The greatest names of other literatures :-
Greece, Rome, Italy, France, Spain, Ger-
many, Persia, Portugal, Denmark, Russia. 105-108
The fountains of national literatures :-
Homer, Nibelungenlied, Cid, Chansons, Morte
D’Arthur, etc. . . . . . . . . . . . 109-111
APPENDIX
THE BEST THOUGHTS OF GREAT MEN ABOUT
BOOKS AND READING . . . . . . . . . 115-134
THE WORLD'S BEST BOOKS.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
THIS book is the result of much reading and
I 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
THE WORLD'S BEST BOOKS.
1
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 citizen-
ship. Literature can aid the health, indirectly, by
imparting a knowledge of the means of its attain-
ment and preservation (as in works on physiology
and hygiene); and directly, by supplying that exer-
cise 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 philo-
sophy), and the imagination (especially the study of
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
3
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
of even the best in literature, so rapid and long con-
tinued that it cannot be properly absorbed and di-
gested. 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 writ-
ings 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 villany and rashness pulsing from
THE WORLD'S BEST BOOKS,
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 fic-
tion especially hold these treasures.
In the attainment and enrichment of beauty, litera-
ture 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 door-
ways 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 come-
liness, how crooked may be changed to straight,
and hollow cheeks to oval; frowns to smiles, and lean
or gross to pluinp; time-darkened teeth to ivory
white; sad spots and freckles to a natural peach and
cream, — 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
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
T
methods of acquiring any given art, but directly as
supplying the substance of some of the greatest of all
accomplishments, — those of inspiring eloquent con-
versation, 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. Who lives on literary
husks, intoxicants, and rice when corn and wheat
and milk are just as easily within his reach, is cer-
tainly no wiser than his brother who should treat in
this same way his physical receptacle, and will as
surely suffer from ill feeding in diminished vital force.
Indeed, he may be glad if he escapes acquiring in-
tellectual 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 assimi-
late is waste of time and energy. Besides the regu-
lation of the total quantity we read, with reference
to our powers of digestion, we must watch the rela-
tive amounts of all the various kinds of literary sus-
tenance we take. A due proportion ought to be
maintained by careful mixture of religious, scienti-
fic, poetic, philosophic, humorous, and other read-
THE WORLD'S BEST BOOKS.
ing. 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 com-
pletest harmony the fullest physical, emotional, and
intellectual life.
4. The Selection of books is of the utmost impor-
tance, in view of their influence upon character.
All the reasons for care that apply to the choice
of friends among the living men and women round
us, have an equal force in reference to the dead.
The same tests avail in one case as 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, how-
ever 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 inter-
ference with their equal friendship with all the world
11
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
beside. 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 Bos-
ton 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 entertain-
ments 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 at-
tended 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 culti-
vated mind who begins a course of systematic read-
ing may follow the order of absolute value; but a
child must be supplied with easy books in each de-
partment, 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
THE WORLD'S BEST BOOKS.
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 pro-
portion to your conquest of what is worthy in litera-
ture 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 com-
mitted. 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
ment of which the whole book is an expression; such
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
9
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. Adap-
tation 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, -
10
THE WORLD'S BEST BOOKS.
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 dif-
ference 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. When-
ever 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
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
II
them to our hearts. Books may be bad, not only
by imparting evil thoughts, awakening lust and gild-
ing 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 per-
son'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 see-
ing in the darkness of his prejudice.
9. Useless Books. Many books that are not posi-
tively 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?
I 2
THE WORLD'S BEST BOOKS.
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 work-
ers 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.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
13
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 neces-
sity. 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; astron-
omy with Galileo, Herschel, and Laplace; mathe-
matics with Newton or Leibnitz; natural history
with Cuvier or Agassiz; botany with Gray; geol-
ogy 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
TY
14
THE WORLD'S BEST BOOKS.
series of consequences. It is a most 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 beauti-
fully in his “ Bugle Song," —
!
“Blow, bugle, let us hear the purple glens replying :
Blow, bugle, blow; and answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.
“O love, they die in yon rich sky,
They faint on hill or field or river:
Our echoes roll froin soul to soul,
And grow forever and forever.”
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
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
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 mimić harbor. How
often are we all like these imprisoned straws, revolv-
ing 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.
16
THE WORLD'S BEST BOOKS.
II. 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 im-
pression 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 inedinin; 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 understand-
ing 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.

NOTE OF EXPLANATION.
17.
TABLE I.
NOTE OF EXPLANATION.
TABLE I. contains a list of books which by both principle
and authority have the strongest claims upon our attention,
arranged from left to right in the order of the importance of
the divisions of the subject-matter regarded as wholes, and
to the highest standard in their own department.
The upper part of the table represents the first shelf of the
world's library, and contains the books having the very
which every one should endeavor to gain an acquaintance.
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. .
The numbers refer to remarks or 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.
TABLE I. — THE
[See explanation on

3
4.
5.
I
6.
Religion & Morals.
Poetry & the
Drama,
Science.
Biography.
History.
Philosophy.
Essays.
Green 152
Bancroft 153
Guizot 154
Buckle 154
Parkman 155
Emerson 209
Bacon 210
Montaigne 211
Ruskin 212
Carlyle 212
Bible i
Bunyan 2
Taylor 3
Kempis 4
Spencer 5
M. Aurelius 6
Plutarch 7
Seneca &
Epictetus 9
Brooks 10
Drummond 10
Shakspeare 20 Physiology and Plutarch 124
Homer 21 | Hygiene 85 Phillips 125
Dante 22 "Our Country: 86 Boswell 126
Goethe 23 Federalist 88 Lockhart 127
Milton 24
Bryce 89
Marshall 128
Æschylus 25 - Montesquieu go Carlyle 129
Fragments 26 Bagehot go
Renan 130
Mill 91
Farrar 131
Bain 92
Emerson 132
Spencer 93 roo Greatest
Darwin 94
Men 133
Herschel 95
Parton 134
Proctor 95
Hale 135
Lyell 96
Drake 136
Lubbock g6
Fox 137
Dawson g6 Grimm 738
Wood 97
Whewell 98
Spencer 186
Plato 187
Berkeley 188
Kant 189
Locke &
Hobbes 190
Comte 191
Lewes
or Ueberweg
or Schwegler
or Schlegel
on the
History of
Philosophy.
Milton 11
Keble 12
Cicero 13
Pascal 14
Channing 15
Aristotle 16
St. Augustine 19
Butler 18
Spinoza 19
Creasy 155 a Mill 192
Spenser 27 De Tocqueville 99 G. Smith 139
Lowell 28
Mansel 193
Von Holst 100
Bourrienne 140 Lecky 156
Whittier 29 Smith 101
Johnson 141
Büchner 194
Clarke 157
Waltou 142
Malthus 102
Moffat 158
Edwards 195
Tennyson 30
Stanley 143
Carey 103
Draper 159
Bentham 196
Burns 31
Scott 32
Cairnes 104
Irving 144
Hallam 160 Maurice 197
Byron 33
Freeman ros
Southey 145 May 161 Hume 198
Shelley 34 Jevons 106
Stanhope 146
Hamilton 199
Hume 162
Mulford 107
Keats 35
Moore 147 Macaulay 163 Aristotle 200
Campbell 36 Hobbes 108 Jameson 148 Froude 164 Descartes 201
Moore 37
Machiavelli 109 Baring-Gould Gibbon 165 Cousin 201
Thomson 38
Max Müller 110 149
Grote 166 Hegel &
Macaulay 39 Trench all
Field 150 Palfrey 167
Schelling 202
Dryden 40 Taylor 112
Hamilton 151 Prescott 168
Fichte 203
White 113
Motley 169
Collins 41
Erasmus 204
Ingelow 42
Fiske 205
Cuvier 114
Frothingham
Bryant 43
Hickok 206
Cook 115
169 a
Longfellow 44 Tyndall 116
Wilkinson 170 McCosh 207
Herbert 45
Niebuhr 171
Spinoza 208
Airy 117
Goldsmith 46 Faraday 118
Menzel 172
Coleridge 47 Helmholtz 119
Milman 173
Wordsworth 48 Huxley 120
Ranke 174
Pope 49
Gray 121
Sismondi 175
Southey 50
Agassiz 122
Michelet 176
Walton 51
Silliman 123
Carlyle 177
Thierry 178
Browning 52
Tacitus 179
Young 53
Livy 180
Jonson 54
Sallust 181
Beaumont
Herodotus 182
& F. 55
Xenophon 183
Marlowe 56
Thucydides 184
Sheridan 57
Josephus 185
Carleton 58
Virgil 60
Horace 61
Macaulay
Leigh Hunt
Arnold
Buckle
Hume
Froude
Addison
Steele
Browne
Johnson
De Quincey
Foster
Hazlitt
Lessing
Sparks
Disraeli
Whipple
Lamb
Schiller
Coleridge
Lucretius 62
Ovid 63
Sophocles 64
Euripides 65
Aristophanes 66
Pindar 67
Hesiod 68
Heine 69
Schiller 70
Corneille 71
Racine 72
Molière 73
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
WORLD'S BEST BOOKS.
the preceding page.]

8.
10.
12.
13.
14.
11.
Fables & Fairy
Tales.
Fiction.
Oratory.
Wit & Humor,
Travel
Guides.
Miscellaneous.
Lowell 244
Andersen 263 Cook 274
Holmes 245.
La Fontaine 264 Humboldt 275
Dickens 246 Æsop 265 Darwin 276
Cervantes 247 (Grimm 266
Goethe 267
Defoe 213 Demosthenes
Goldsmith 214 Burke
Scott 215 Fox
Dickens 216
Pitt
Eliot 217
Webster
Bulwer 218
Clay
Le Sage 219
Phillips
Hugo 220
Lincoln
Hughes 221 Everett
Kingsley 222
Austen 223
Macdonald 224
Thackeray 225
Mulock 226
Balzac 227
Fielding 228
Foster 293 Smiles
Pall Mall 294
| Self-Help 310
Morley 295
Irving's Sketch
Welsh 296
Book 311
Taine 297
Bacon's New
Botta 298
Atlantis 312
Allibone 299 Bellamy 313
Bartlett 300 Arabian Nights
Ballou 301
- 314
Bryant 302
Munchausen 315
Palgrave 302 Beowulf 316
Roget's |Anglo-Saxon
Thesaurus. Chronicle 317
Dictionaries, Froissart 318
Encyclopædias. Nibelungenlied 319
Icelandic Sagas
320
Elder Edda 321
The Cid 322
Morte D'Arthur
323
Bulfinch 268
Saxe 269
Florian 270
Indian Fables
Babrius 271
Hauff 272
Ovid 273
Wallace 229
Sumner
Bronté 230
Henry
Cooper 231
Otis
Alcott 233
Jay
Stowe 234
Madison
Boccaccio 235
Jefferson
Tourjee 237 Beecher
Dumas 238
Brooks
Rousseau 239 Choate
Richardson 240 Garne
Garfield
Ward 241 Ingersoll
Marryat 242
Erskine
Reade 243 Sheridan
Gladstone
Cicero
Quintilian
Bossuet
Saint
Chrysostom
Ingersoll 248
Voltaire 249
Byron 250
Butler 251
Swift 252
Rabelais 253
Sterne 254
Jerrold 255
Curtis 256
Naseby 257
Twain 258
Holly 259
Ward 260
Juvenal 261
Lucian 262
Marco Polo 277
Kane 278
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
Brook 303
Sheking 324
Leypoldt 304 Analects of
Richardson 305 Confucius 325
Harrison 306
Mesnevi 326
Ruskin 307
Buddhism 327
Bright 308 Mahabharata 328
Dunlop 309
Ramayana 329
Vedas 330
Koran 331
Talmud 332
Hooker 333
Swedenborg 333
Newton 333
Kepler 333
Copernicus 333
Laplace 333
20
REMARKS ON TABLE I.
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 i by no means exhaust
these subjects, for they run like threads of gold
through the whole warp and woof of poetry. Phi-
losophy, 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 às broad-
minded in our religious views as we seek to be
in other matters, we must become somewhat ac-
quainted with the worship of races other than our
own. This may be done through Homer, Hesiod,
Ovid, Confucius, Buddha, the Vedas, Koran, Tal-
mud, 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."
I. 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.)
RELIGION AND MORALS.
21
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 Christi-
anity 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, humil-
ity, 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, writ-
ten 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 impor-
tant books in literature, having to the science of ethics much
the same relation as Newton's "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 Princi-
ples" is also necessary to an understanding of the scientific
religious thinking of the day. In connection with Spencer's
22
REMARKS ON TABLE I.
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, ad 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, ist 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 im-
port, set out in clear and forceful language. The Camelot
Library contains a very good selection from his ethical trea-
tises and his delightful letters, which are really moral essays.
(Rome, ist 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 circum-
stance and passion, have the greatest popularity accorded
to any ethical works. Epictetus was a Roman slave in the
ist 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.
۱
RELIGION AND MORALS.
23
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.
(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 under-
lying principles are of eternal value, and its arrangement is
admirable. Dr. Peabody's translation is the best. (Rome,
Ist 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.)
REMARKS ON TABLE I.
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 imagi-
nation. It lies at the bottom of intellect and char-
acter. 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 peo-
ples, 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 representa-
tions 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
1
POETRY AND THE DRAMA.
25
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 an-
cient 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 mul-
tiplicity 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 begin-
ning 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
26
REMARKS ON TABLE I.
drama rapidly rose to its summit in Shakspeare's rich-
est 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 be-
came the greatest drama that the world has ever seen.
The manner of reading all good poetry should
be: R. D. C. G.
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, exhaus-
tive imagination that 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.
POETRY AND THE DRAMA.
27
It is simple nonsense to suppose that Bacon wrote the dra-
mas that bear the name of Shakspeare. They were pub-
lished 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 Shak-
speare'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.
21. Homer is the world's greatest epic poet. He is the
brother of Shakspeare, full of sublimity and pathos, tender-
ness, 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. Flax-
man'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. 28.
23. Goethe is unquestionably the greatest German, and
one of the first six names in literature. His “Faust” is a
28
REMARKS ON TABLE I.
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. 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 sweet-
ness 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 concep-
tion 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 loath-
someness of sin. (Eng., 17th cent.) See Table III. No. 2.
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
POETRY AND THE DRAMA.
29
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.
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.
27. Edmund Spenser is the third name in English litera-
ture. No modern poet is more like Homer. · He is sim-
ple, 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 trans-
lucent 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 for-
mer 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.
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.
30
REMARKS ON TABLE I.
29. Whittier is America's greatest lyric poet. Read what
Lowell says of him in the “Fable for Critics," and get ac-
quainted 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 Ill. No. II.
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 ad-
miration. Read his “In Memoriam," “ Princess," " Idylls of
the King," etc. (Eng., 19th cent.) See Table III. No. II.
31. Burns is like a whiff of the pure sea air. He is a
sprig of arbutus under the snow; full of tenderness and gen-
uine 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 litera-
ture if it were not for his moral aberration. Read his “ Childe
Harold.” (Eng., 1783-1824.) 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
Table III. No. 13. (Eng., 19th cent.)
POETRY AND THE DRAMA.
31
ing of the title “ marvellous boy" in a far higher degree than
Chatterton. If the lives of Shakspeare, Milton, and Words-
worth had ended at twenty, 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 opportu-
nity 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. II.
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.” “Hora-
tius” cannot fail to make the reader pulse with all the hero-
ism 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.
32
REMARKS ON TABLE I.
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
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 prom-
ise 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 inves-
tigate for ourselves his merits. (Amer., 19th cent.) See
Table III. No. 1o.
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
POETRY AND THE DRAMA.
33
“ 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 6 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. II.
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 keen-
est dissection of the follies of fashionable life, the finest grace
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
34
REMARKS ON TABLE I.
“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 au-
thors 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," “ Cati-
line,” “The Devil as an Ass,” 6 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.
POETRY AND THE DRAMA.
35
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 ex-·
ceedingly 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, ist 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, ist 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 pas-
sages from Lucretius. (Rome, ist cent. B. C.)
63. Ovid is gross but fertile, and his “Metamorphoses."
and “Epistles" have been great favorites. (Rome, ist
cent. B. C.)
36
REMARKS ON TABLE I.
64. The “Antigone” and “Edipus at Colonus” of Soph-
ocles 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 ; in-
deed, as a lover of men and as a poet of exquisite fancy,
he far excels Goethe. He was a great philosopher, his-
torian, and critic. Read his “ Song of the Bell," and his
drama of “Wallenstein,” translated by Coleridge. (Ger-
many, 18th cent.)
71, 72, 73. 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 Shak-
spearean 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.
POETRY AND THE DRAMA.
37
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
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 cen-
tury, and is a great favorite with those who can enjoy charm-
ing 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 magnifi-
cent 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-Work-
ing 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 beau-
tiful 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).
38
REMARKS ON TABLE I.
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 De-
livered," 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, Politi-
cal Economy, Sociology and the Science of Gov-
ernment, 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 Inter-
national Scientific Series is very helpful in giving the
brief comprehensive treatment of such subjects that
is needed for those who are not specialists.
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 procure-
ment and preservation. This matter has far too little atten-
tion. 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,” Blackie's “ How to get Strong,"
and Duncan's “How to be Plump," Beard's “Eating and
40
REMARKS ON TABLE I.
Drinking," Bellows' “Philosophy of Eating," Smith on Foods,
Holbrook's “Eating for Strength,” “ Fruit and Bread," "Hy-
giene 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 “ Trans-
mission 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 hy 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 Politi-
cal 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, cli-
mate, religion, and commerce. It is the greatest book of
the 18th century. Read with it Bagehot's “ Physics and
Politics."
SCIENCE.
41
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 philo-
sophic 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 beau-
tiful generalizations. Read his “First Principles," “ Data
of Ethics," “ Education,” and “ Classification of the Sci-
ences," 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 beau-
tiful conceptions of this most poetic of the sciences. Proc-
tor'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
42
REMARKS ON TABLE I.
man was when he first set up housekeeping here, and how
long ago that was, read Lyell's “Geology;" Lubbock's
“ Prehistoric Times," “ Primitive Condition of Man," and
“The Antiquity of Man" (Eng., 19th cent.); and Daw-
son'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 cele-
brated of books. (Eng., 18th cent.)
103. “Principles of Social Philosophy.” (Eng., 19th cent.)
104. “Essays on Political Economy,” “ Leading Princi-
ples 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.)
itical Ec
he Na!8, 19th
BIOGRAPHY.
43
110. “Chips from a German Workshop," and various
works on Philology. (Ger., 19th cent.)
III. “Study of Words," etc. , (Erg., 19th cent.)
112. “Words and Places.” (Eng., 19th cent.)
13. “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 sub-
ject 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. Ruin that befell a
brother we may by his word of warning easily es-
cape. The heroes that have gone can tell us, if we
listen, how to gain with ease and certainty and quick-
ness the wealth of soul and mind, the fame and
worldly goods they had to struggle for so long and
hard while travelling in the dark. 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
44
REMARKS ON TABLE I.
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 be-
come 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,
Ist cent.)
125. In Wendell Phillips's oration on “Toussaint L'Ouver-
ture,” 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. (U. S., 19th cent.)
129. Read Carlyle's “ Life of Sterling," “ Life of Crom-
well,” and “Heroes and Hero Worship.” (Eng., 19th cent.)
BIOGRAPHY.
45
130. Renan's “ Life of Christ." (France, 19th cent.)
131. Canon Farrar's little “Life of Dante” is, consider-
ing 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 “Michael
Angelo.” 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.)
46
REMARKS ON TABLE I.
HISTORY.
REMARKS may be made about History very similar
1
The field is too vast for an ordinary life, and there is
no book that will give in brief compass the net re-
sults 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
The manner of reading the best history should be:
R. D. G.
152. Green's “History of the English People” has 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.)
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 ma-
jority 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
HISTORY.
47
his “France and England in America,” “ Conspiracy of
Pontiac,” and “The Oregon Trail."
155 a. “Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World.” (Eng.,
19th cent.)
156. “History of England in the 18th Century,” “ His-
tory of European Morals.” (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." (U.S., 19th
cent.)
160. “Middle Ages." (Eng., 19th cent.)
161. “ Constitutional History of England.” (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. (U. S., 19th cent.)
169. “Rise of the Dutch Republic.” (U. S., 19th cent.)
169 a. “Rise of the Republic of the United States."
(U. S., 19th cent.)
170.“ Ancient Egyptians." (Eng., 19th cent.)
71. “ 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 Cen-
turies." (Ger., 19th cent.)
48
REMARKS ON TABLE I.
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 Eng-
land.” (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, ist cent.)
180. “History of Rome.” (Rome, ist cent. B.C.)
181. “The War of Catiline." (Rome, ist 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, ist cent.)
CD
PHILOSOPHY.
THERE have been, since the waters of thought be-
gan 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 correspond-
ing to the outer world, and to arrive at a belief in
God by climbing the stairway of induction and anal-
ogy. The tendency of the other is to start with the
PHILOSOPHY.
49
affirmed nature of God, arrived at, the thinker knows
not how, and deduce the universe from the concep-
tion 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 them-
selves 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 be-
lieves 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 re-
solve. 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 ful-
ness. Considering the times in which he lived, the grandeur
of his thought, the power of his imagination, and the no-
bility, 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
50
REMARKS ON TABLE I.
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.
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 “ Cri-
tique 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
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.)
PHILOSOPHY.
51
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 knowl-
edge 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 Iden-
tity," 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.)
52
REMARKS ON TABLE I.
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 discrim-
inating 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 Mon-
taigne is a liberal education in itself.
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 sub-
stance as well as in title, are well worthy of reading for the
FICTION.
intellectual stimulus afforded by their breadth of view, novelty
of expression and illustration, and the intense force --- al-
most 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.)
FICTION
IN modern times much that is best in literature has
gone into the pages of the novel, because of the rule
of the purse. The men and women of genius who
would in other days have been great poets, philoso-
phers, 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 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 Eliot, Macdonald, Kingsley, Hugo,
etc. Fielding, Richardson, Goldsmith, Sterne, and
De Foe, Miss Edgeworth, Miss Austen, Cooper, and
Marryat, all claim our loving attention.
France has a glorious army, led by Victor Hugo,
George Sand, Balzac, Dumas, Gautier, Mérimée, etc.
54
REMARKS ON TABLE I.
But the magnificent powers of these artists are com-
bined 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 mo-
notony of wickedness. George Sand is prone to
idealize lust. “Notre Dame” and “Les Misé-
rables," " Le Père Goriot” and “Eugénie Grandet,"
“Consuelo" and “La Mare au Diable," “ Capitaine
Fracasse ” and “Vingt Ans Après,” are great books;
but he who would rank even the best of them with
immortal masterpieces like “Tom Jones” and the
“ Vicar of Wakefield” is a traitor to art.
Germany, Italy, and Spain have no fiction that
compares with ours.
The best fiction should be read: R. D. G.
213. “Robinson Crusoe.” There are few persons who
do not get delight and inspiration from this wonderful story.
(Eng., 1661–1731.)
214. “Vicar of Wakefield.” One of Goethe's earliest
favorites. (Eng., 18th cent.)
215. “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.)
216. “ Pickwick," " David Copperfield,” “ Bleak House,"'
FICTION
55
“ Martin Chuzzlewit,” etc. Dickens needs no comment.
His fame is in every house. (Eng., 19th cent.)
217. “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.)
218. “Rienzi,". “ Last Days of Pompeii," “ Last of the
Barons," etc. Most powerful, delightful, and broadening
books. (Eng., 19th cent.)
259. “Gil Blas." One of the most famous and widely
read books in the world. (France, 1668–1747.)
220. “ 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.)
221. “Tom Brown at Rugby and at Oxford.” Delight-
ful books for boys. (Eng., 19th cent.)
222. “Westward, Ho !” “Two Years Ago," etc. Among
the best and most famous pictures of true English character.
(Eng., 19th cent.)
| 223. “ Emma,” “ Pride and Prejudice.” Noble books.
(Eng., 19th cent.)
224. “Malcolm," " Marquis o' Lossie,” “David Elgin-
brod,” etc. Books of marvellous spiritual helpfulness. (Eng.,
19th cent.)
225. “Esmond,” “ Vanity Fair," etc. Very famous books.
(Eng., 19th cent.)
226. “John Halifax, Gentleman.” (Eng., 19th cent.)
227. “Le Père Goriot” (and especially the magnificent
preface to this book), “ La Recherche de l'Absolu,” “ Eu-
génie Grandet," “ La Peau de Chagrin,” etc. (France, 19th
cent.)
56
REMARKS ON TABLE I.
228. “Tom Jones.” By many considered the best novel
in existence. (Eng., 18th cent.)
229. “Ben Hur.” This book has been placed close to
the Bible and Bunyan. (U. S., 19th cent.)
230. “Jane Eyre.” (Eng., 19th cent.)
231. “The Spy," “ The Pilot," “ Leather Stocking,"
“ Deerslayer," " Pathfinder,” etc. Books that interfere with
food and sleep, and chain us to their pages. (U. S., 19th
cent.)
233. “Little Women.” A lovely story of simple life.
(U. S., 19th cent.)
234. “Uncle Tom's Cabin.” God's bugle-call to the war
against slavery. (U. S., 19th cent.)
235. “ Decameron.” A series of splendidly told stories,
from which Chaucer drew more than his inspiration. (Italy,
14th cent.)
237. “The Fool's Errand,” “The Invisible Empire,”
“ Appeal to Cæsar," etc. Books widely known, but whose
great merit is not fully recognized. (U. S., 19th cent.)
238. “Monte Cristo,” “ The Three Musketeers," " Twenty
Years After,” “The Vicomte de Bragelonne,” etc. Some
think no characters in Shakspeare are better drawn than those
of Dumas. His wit, good sense, and literary skill never fail.
(France, 19th cent.)
239. “Confessions,” etc. (France, 18th cent.)
240. “Pamela," “ Clarissa Harlowe.” (Eng., 1689–1761.)
241. “Robert Elsmere.” Famous because it pictures the
struggle in the religious mind to-day. (Eng., 19th cent.)
242. “Peter Simple," " Midshipman Easy.” (Eng., 19th
cent.)
243. “Hard Cash.” A very fascinating book. (Eng.,
19th cent.)
ORATORY.
ORATORY.
GREAT and successful oratory requires deep knowl-
edge 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 in-
terest, and fight their way to the throne of the will.
Oratory is religion, science, philosophy, biography,
history, wit, pathos, and poetry in action. This de-
partment 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. Espe-
cially read and study Demosthenes on the Crown,
Burke's “Warren Hastings' Oration,” Webster's “Re-
ply to Hayne,” Phillips's “Lovejoy” and “Toussaint
L'Ouverture," and Lincoln's "Gettysburg," his de-
bates 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 Ora-
tions 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).
58
REMARKS ON TABLE I.
WIT AND HUMOR.
IN what wit consists, and why it is we laugh, are
questions hard to answer (read on that subject Spen-
cer 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 pal-
atable, 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.
ing 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
249. Voltaire was the Ingersoll of France, only more so.
His “Dictionnaire " is full of stinging sarcasm and fierce wit.
(France, 18th cent.)
250. “ English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.” The sharp-
est edge of Byron's keen mind. (Eng., 1788–1824.)
WIT AND HUMOR.
59
251. “Hudibras."
A tirade against the Puritans. (Eng.,
252. “Gulliver's Travels,” “ Tale of a Tub,” etc. Coarse
raillery. (Eng., 18th cent.)
253. “Gargantua and Pantagruel.” Immense coarse wit.
(France, 16th cent.)
254. “Tristram Shandy.” Not delicate, but full of humor.
(Eng., 18th cent.)
255. “ Caudle Lectures,” “ Catspaw,” etc. One of the
keenest of wits. (U. S., 19th cent.)
256. “Potiphar Papers.” Refined humor. (U. S., 19th
cent.)
257. “Ekoes from Kentucky,” “Swingin' round the Cir-
cle," etc. (U. S., 19th cent.)
258.“ Innocents Abroad,” “Roughing It," etc. The
reader is conscious of a continued effort to be funny, but
has to laugh in spite of himself sometimes. (U. S., 19th
cent.)
259. “Samantha at the Centennial,” “Betsey Bobbet,”
“ My Wayward Pardner," “ Samantha at Saratoga," etc.
words seventy parts. (U. S., 19th cent.)
260. “ Artemus Ward, his Book." Funny, and that 's
about all. (U. S., 19th cent.)
261. Juvenal is one of the world's greatest satirists.
(Rome, ist cent.)
262. Lucian is the Voltaire of the Old World. (Greek
Lit., ad cent. A. D.)
60
REMARKS ON TABLÉ I.
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 lan-
guage the deepest lessons that mankind have learned;
and one who wishes to gather to himself the intellect-
ual wealth of the nations must not neglect them.
263. “Fairy Tales," “Shoes of Fortune,” etc. (Den-
mark, 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." (German, early 19th cent.)
267. “Reineke Fox.” (Bohn Lib.) (German, early 19th
cent.)
268. " Age of Fables," " 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, ist cent. B. C.)
TRAVEL.
TRAVEL.
NOTHING favors breadth more than travel and con-
tact 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 cheap-
ness and rapidity of steam transportation. Even a
wider view of the world comes to us through the lit-
erature 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 pro-
cess, and would be so to us if we had to rely on
personal observation. Voyages and travels there-
fore 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. (Germany, 1762–1832.)
276. Naturalist on the Beagle. (Eng., 19th cent.)
62
REMARKS ON TABLE I.
277. Travels. (Venice, 14th cent.)
278. Arctic Explorations. (U. S., 19th cent.)
279. South Africa. (Eng., 19th cent.)
280. Through the Dark Continent. (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 lit-
erature and authors, in determining what to read, and
in our own literary efforts.
293. “What to Read on the Subject of Reading," 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.
MISCELLANEOUS.
63
294. The “Pall Mall Extra," containing Sir John Lub-
bock'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 gen-
eral 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.”
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,
64
REMARKS ON TABLE I.
1
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 Rus-
kin, 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 indus-
trial democracy, bearing more or less analogy to the political
MISCELLANEOUS.
65
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. (Eng., 16th 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 Eng-
lish history and development. (gth-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
66
REMARKS ON TABLE I.
the “ Heimskringla,” Njal's Saga, and Grettir's Saga. (gth-
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.”
324. A collection of Chinese odes.
325. This and the last are recommended, not for intrinsic
ing of and sympathy with four hundred millions of mankind
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 fountain 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, 329. These are epitomized by Talboys Wheeler in
his “History of India.” Very interesting and broadening.
(Very ancient.)
330-332. Not valuable reading intrinsically, but as open-
GUIDES.
67
ing 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 pecul-
iarities (visual and tactual impressions are more easily remem-
bered than others as a rule), glance through its contents,
and read a passage or two.
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 Wash-
ington'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 an-
ecdotes 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 Bri-
tannica,” 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.).
TABLE II.
69
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. I, No. 2, etc., refer to the
numbers of the “100 Choice Selections.” Monroe's
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.
TABLE III.
71
GROUP I. — Poetry.

Manner
Degree of
Difficulty.
of
Where found.
Reading.
m.
1. SHAKSPEARE.
Hamlet, especially noting Hamlet's
Shakspeare's
conversations with the Ghost, with
Plays are pub-
his mother and Ophelia, his advice
lished separately,
to the players, his soliloquy,and his
and also together,
discourse on the nobleness of man | d. R.D.C.G. | Richard Grant
Merchant of Venice, especially not-
White's edition
ing the scene in court, and the
being the best.
parts relating to Portia . . . . e. | R.D.C.G.
Julius Cæsar, especially noting the
speeches of Brutusand Antony,and
the quarrel of Brutus and Cassius m.) R.D.C.G.
Taming of the Shrew . . . . .
R.G.
Henry the Eighth . . .
R.D.
Henry the Fourth, read for the wit
of Falstaff
R.D.
Henry the Fifth, noting especially
the wooing . .
m. R.D.
Coriolanus, noting, especially the
grand fire and force and frankness
of Coriolanus . . . . . . . R.D.C.G.
Sonnets in Palgrave's Golden Treas-
ury, Nos. 3, 6, 11, 12, 13, 14, 18,
36, 46. . . . . . . . . . m.
R.D.C.
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" . . . . . . R.D.G. | Milton's Poems. |
Satan's Throne, ten lines at the be-
ginning of Book II.:::
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 III. . . m. | R.D.G.
72
POETRY. :
GROUP I. continued. — Poetry,

Manner
Degree of
Difficulty.
of
Where found.
Reading
MILTON. -- Continued.
Comus, a masque, and one of the
masterpieces of English literature d. R.D.C.G. Milton's Poems.
L' Allegro, a short poem on mirth. R.D.C.G. The last three of
Il Penseroso, a short poem on mel-
this list are in
ancholy . . .
R.D.C.G. Palgrave.
Lycidas, a celebrated elegy.. . d. | R.G.
3. HOMER.
Homer has had
Pope's translation. At least the
many translators,
first book of the Iliad. A simple,
Pope, Derby,
clear story of battles and quarrels,
Worsley, Chap-
loves and counsels, charming in its
man, Flaxman,
sublimity, pathos, vigor, and natu-
Lang, Bryant, etc.
ralness. The world's greatest epice. R.D.C.G.
ÆSCHYLUS.
Potter, Morshead,
Prometheus Bound, the sublimest of
Swanwick, Mil-
the sublime. Be sure to reach
man, and Brown-
and grasp the grand picture of the
ling have translated
human race and its troubles which
Æschylus. The
underlies this most magnificent
first two are the
poem . . . . .
. .
d. R.D.C.G. best. Flaxman's
Agamemnon, the grandest trag
designs add much.
in the world . . . . . . m. R.D.G.
5. DANTE.
Divine Comedy. Read Farrar's lit-
Translated by
tle Life of Dante (John Alden,
Longfellow,
N. Y.), and then take the Comedy
Carey, John Car-
and read the thirty-third canto,
lyle, Butler, and
the portions relating to the Hells
Dean Church.
of Incontinence and of Fraud, the
picture of Satan, and the whole of
the Purgatorio. . . . . . .
16. SPENSER.
Faerie Queen, noting specially the
first book and the book of Brito-
mart, endeavoring to grasp and
apply to your own life the truths
that underlie the rich and beautiful
imagery. . . . . . . . . d. R.D.G. Spenser's Poems.
Hymn in Honor of his own Wedding R.D.G. The Calendar is
Fable of the Oak and the Briar, in
Ipublished sepa-
Shepherd's Calendar, February .
rately.
7. Scott.
Lady of the Lake . . . . . .
R. Scott's Poems,
Marmion . . . . . . . . .
or separate.
O
ن
ع
نه نه
TABLE III.
73
GROUP II. - Short Poetical Selections.

Manner
of
Reading
Where found.
Dire
o
R.D.C.
| Longfellow's
Poems.
o
R.
o
R.D.
R.D.
Autocrat of the
Breakfast-Table.
R.D.
R.D.
R.D.
Monroe.
Palgrave, 87.
L
16
10. PAYNE.
Home, Sweet Home . . . . .
LONGFELLOW.
Psalm of Life. Paul Revere's Ride
Launch of the Ship . . . . .
(These may be found in most of
the reading-books.)
Suspiria, and the close of Morituri
Salutamus. . . . . . . .
HOLMES.
Nautilus; the last stanza commit. m.
The Stars and Flowers, a lovely
little poem, the first verses in
the Autocrat of the Breakfast-
Table . . . . . . . . .
HUNT.
Abou Ben Adhem. .....
CAREW.
The True Beauty.....
GRAY.
Elegy in a Country Churchyard |
Hymn to Adversity. . .
Progress of Poesy . . . . .
The Bard . . . . . . . .
SAXE.
The Blind Men and the Elephant
JACKSON.
The Release . . . . . . . .
1. HOOD.
Bridge of Sighs. .....
Song of the Shirt ......
Burns.
Ye Banks and Braes o'Bonnie Doon
To a Field-mouse . . .
Mary Morrison . . . .
Bonnie Lesley . . . .
Tean . . . . . . .
John Anderson . . . .
A Man's a Man for a' that
Auld Lang Syne ..
Robert Bruce's Address to his Army
MOORE.
The Light of other Days. . . .
Come rest in this Bosom . . .
147.
R.D.C.
R.D.
R.D.
R.D.
147.
159.
1
66
(
140.
122.
123.
o
R.D.
No. 4.
Poems of
H. H. Jackson.
R.D.
R.D.
R.D.
Palgrave, 231.
No. 2.
o
R.D.
Palgrave, 139.
144.
148.
149
o o o o o o o o o
R.D.
R.D.
R.D.
R.D.
R.D.
R.D.
R.D.
R.D.
Burns's Poems
o o
R.D.
R.D.
Palgrave, 225.
Irish Melodies.
SHORT POETICAL SELECTIONS.
GROUP II. continued. - Short Poetical Selections. ·

Manner
Degree of
Difficulty.
of
Where found.
Reading
RI
R.D.
Irish Melodies.
Monroe.
R.D.G.
R.D.G.
Coleridge's
Poems.
.
R.
R.D.C. Whittier's Poems.
Moore. - Continued.
At the Mid Hour of Night ... e.
Those Evening Bells . . . . .
COLERIDGE
Rime of the Ancient Mariner .il
Kubla Khan; a Picture of the
Stream of Life . . . . . .
Vale of Chamouni . . . . . . e.
WHITTIER.
The Farmer's Wooing, in Among
the Hills . .
m.
The Harp at Nature's Advent
Strung, etc., in Tent on the
Beach . . . . .
m.
Snow Bound, Centennial Hymn
(No. 13), and at least glance at
his Voices of Freedom . . . .
Barefoot Boy . . . . . . .e.
TENNYSON.
“ Break, break, break, on thy cold
gray Stones, Sea" .
« Ring out, wild Bells," in the In
Menioriam : ::.. . · ·
Bugle Song, in The Princess ..
Charge of the Light Brigade .. e.
R.D.C.
R.D.C.
R.D.C.
R.D.C.
Tennyson's
į
į s voi
.R.D.C.
R.D.C.
R.D.C.
R.D.C.
No. 2.
Monroe.
i
Chaucer's Poems.
No. 4.
o
o
No. I.
o
CHAUCER.
The Clerk's Tale, or the Story of
Grisilde, in the Canterbury
Tales . . .
. . .
12. KEY.
The Star-Spangled Banner . . .
DRAKE.
The American Flag ....
SMITH.
“My Country, 'tis of thee"...
BOKER.
The Black Regiment ..
CAMPBELL, full of fire and martial
music.
Ye Mariners of England.
Battle of the Baltic . . . .
Soldier's Dream
Hohenlinden. . . . .
Lord Ullin's
Love's Beginning . . .
Ode to Winter . . . .
o
No. I.
.
R.D.C.
R.C.
Palgrave, 206.
207
267.
.
R.C.
.
R.C.
.
.
.
B
.
TABLE III.
75
GROUP II. continued. — Short Poetical Selections.

Degree of
Difficulty.
Mapper
of
Reading
Where found.
m.
R.D.C.G. | Lowell's Poems.
R.D.C.G.
R.D.C.G.
R.
No. 1.
R.D.
R.D.
THOMSON.
Rule Britannia .......
LOWELL.
The Crisis . . . . . .
Harvard Commemoration
The Fountain . . . . .
HALLECK.
Marco Bozzaris . . . . . . . e.
MACAULAY.
Lays of Ancient Rome, especially
Horatius, and Virginia, also the / e.
Battle of Ivry . . . . . . m.
O'HARA.
The Bivouac of the Dead ...
MITFORD.
Rienzi's Address.....
CROLY.
Belshazzar .......
13. SHELLEY.
Ode to the West Wind ..
Ode to a Skylark . . . .
Lady with a Guitar . . .
Italy . . . . . . . . .
Naples . . . . . . . .
No. 2.
No. 5.
R.
No. 4:
Shelley's Poems.
Palgrave, 275.
241.
R.D.C.
R.D.C.
R.D.C.
R.D.C.
R.D.C.
R.D.C.
R.D.C.
274.
227.
277.
R.D.
R.D.
Byron's Poems.
Palgrave, 169.
171.
R.D.C.
R.D.C.
Monroe.
No. I.
· The Cloud, Sensitive Plant, etc. . m.
BYRON.
All for Love . . . . . . . m.
Beauty . . . . . . .. .
Apostrophe to the Ocean, and The
Eve of Waterloo. . . . . . m.
The Field of Waterloo . . . .lm.
(These are among the most mag-
nificent poems in any language.)
BRYANT.
Thanatopsis . . . . . . i .m.
PRENTICE.
The Closing Year . . . . .
Ров.
The Bells; The Raven..
Annabel Lee. . . . . .
No. 1.
R.C.G.
R.C.G.
R.C.G.
NO. I.
No. 1.
No. 5.
•
•
Keats's Poems.
Palgrave, 198.
244.
255.
167.
The Star . . . .
.
Ode to a Nightingale ...
Ode to Autumn. . . . .
Ode on the Poets ....
•
•
•
76
SHORT POETICAL SELECTIONS.
GROUP II. continued. -- Short Poetical Selections.

Manner
Degree of
Difficulty.
of
Where found.
Reading
R
.C.
Palgrave, 174
250.
219.
367.
367.
oss og ci o
1
74
ci
NO: I.
No. 1.
Palgrave, 104.
Pope's Poems.
No. 2.
Palgrave, 122
116.
WORDSWORTH.
A Beautiful Woman . . . .
The Reaper . . . . . . .
Simon Lee . .
Intimations of Immortality ...
HERBERT.
Gifts of God. .......
READ.
Drifting,
Sheridan's Ride.
FLETCHER
Melanc)
POPE.
Rape of the Lock. .....
14. INGELOW.
The Brides of Enderby ...
High Tide, etc. . . . . . . .
COWPER.
Loss of the Royal George ...
Solitude of Selkirk . . .
DRYDEN.
Alexander's Feast . . . . . .
COLLINS.
The Passions ......
JONSON.
Hymn to Diana .....
ADDISON.
Cato's Soliloquy ..
LODGE.
Rosaline . . . . . .
HERRICK.
Counsel to Girls .....
The Poetry of Dress . . . . .
15. GOETHE.
Raphael Chorus, a wonderful
chorus of three stanzas in
Faust. Read Shelley's trans-
lations, both literal and free, in
his Fragments . . . . . . m.
OMAR.
Rubaiyát, especially the “moving
shadow-shape" and the "phan-
tom caravan” stanzas, for their
6
141.
j s šs so
6 78.
No. 1.
Palgrave 16.
16
16
82.
92.
R.C.G. | Shelley's Poems.
Fitzgerald's
Translation.
magnificent imagery . . . . m.
EURIPIDES.
Chorus in Medea - Campbell's
translation. . . . . . . .lm.
R.C.G.
R.C.G.
Campbell's
Poems.
TABLE 77
TABLE :
.
III.
IIIGROUP II. continued.— Short Poetical Selections.

ee of
Degr
Difficulty.
Manner
of
Reading
Manner
Where found.
Where found.
R.C.G.
CALDERON.
Read Shelley's Fragments ...
SCHILLER.
The Battle
The Song of the Bell . . . . . m.
MOLIÈRE. .
Tartuffe, or The Hypocrite . . .
Le Misanthrope, or The Man-
Hater . . . . . . . . e.
Rise
Shelley's Poems.
Schiller's Poems.
No. 4.
Publ. separately.
Molière's Plays.
o
R.D.
R.D.
GROUP III. - Short Prose Selections.

Degree of
Diffieulty.
Manner
of
Reading.
Where found.
R.C.
No. 2.
Sketch Book.
نه نه نه نه
R.D.C.
R.D.C.
R.D.C.
R.D.C.
66
66
16. LINCOLN.
Gettysburg Oration. Famous for
its calm, clear, simple beauty,
breadth, and power . . . . . / m.
m.
IRVING, our greatest master of style;
his prose is poetry.
Rip Van Winkle . . . . . .
The Spectre Bridegroom. ...le.
The Art of Book-Making . . .
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. :)
17. BACON.
Essay on Studies. Note the clear-
ness and completeness of Bacon,
and his tremendous condensation
of thought. . . . . . . . m. 1
CARLYLE.
Apostrophe to Columbus, p. 193
of Past and Present, -- Carlyle's
finest passage . . . . . . m. |
Await the Issue
m.
The account of the conversational
powers of Coleridge, given in
Carlyle's Life of Sterling ...le.
R.D.C.
Bacon's Essays.
R.D.C.
R.D.C.
Monroe.
R.D.C.
78
SHORT PROSE SELECTIONS.
GROUP III. continued. — Short Prose Selections.

Manner
Degree of
Difficulty.
of
Where found.
Reading
R.D.C
No. 1.
R.D.C.
Phillips's
Speeches.
No. I.
No.7.
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 ora-
tions, and worthy to rank side by
side with the world's best. . . m.
PHILLIPS.
Comparison of Toussaint L'Ou-
verture with Napoleon, in his
oration on Toussaint . . . .
19. EVERETT.
Discoveries of Galileo ...m.
BURRITT.
One Niche the Highest . . . . e.
20. HUGO.
The Monster Cannon, one of
the great Frenchman's master
strokes,-a very thrilling scene,
splendidly painted . . . . .
Rome and Carthage . . . . .
DE QUINCEY.
Noble Revenge . ......
21. POE.
Murders in the Rue Morgue .. d.
INGERSOLL.
Oration at the funeral of his brother
22. SCOTT.
Thirty-sixth chapter of the Heart
of Midlothian. .. . . . . . .
Curtis.
Nations and Humanity ....m.
23. TAYLOR.
The sections on Temperance and
Chastity in the Holy Living and
Dying . . . . . . .
BROOKS.
Pamphlet on Tolerance, – the best
book in the world on a most vital
subject . . . . . . . . m.
No. II.
No. 6.
No.n.
Little Classics.
Ingersoll's
Prose Poems.
NO. II.
m.
R.D.
R.D.
TABLE III.
79
GROUP IV. - Wit and Humor - Short List.

Degree of
Difficulty.
Manner
of
Reading
Where found.
1
R.D.
| Lowell's Poems.
ooo
R.D.
R.D.
R.D.
o
'No. 11.
o
24. LOWELL.
Biglow Papers . . . . . . .
Fable for Critics . . . . . .
The Courtin' . . . . . . . e.
HOLMES.
Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table .m.
25. CARLETON.
Farm Ballads, especially the Visit
of the School Committee, and
The Rivals . . . . . . .
STOWE.
Laughin' in Meetin'. . . . .
TWAIN.
On New England Weather . . .
European Guides, and Turkish
Baths . . . . . . . . .
26. DICKENS.
Pickwick Papers . . . . . .
JAMES DE MILLE.
A Senator Entangled . ....
LOVER.
The Gridiron .......
WHATELY.
Historic Doubts regarding Napo-
leon . . . . . . . . . . e.
o
No. 13.
Innocents
Abroad.
o
i i vi u v w
o
Cumnock's
Choice Readings.
o
o
Publ. separately.
i
80
SUPPLEMENTARY GENERAL READING.
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 subordina-
tion to the above courses, it is recommended that at-
tention 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 Olives (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 Repre-
sentative 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.)
TABLE IV.
81
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.)
82
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.]

GREECB
Homer
Hesiod
B. C. ISRAEL
1000! David, The
Psalms
900
800
Rome founded
Æsop
600 INDIA
Buddha
Nebuchadnezzar, king of
Babylon
Republic established at
Rome
THE GOLDEN AGE OF GRECIAN LITERATURE | 500
Pindar Æschylus Herodotus
Thu
Mahabharata Darius, king of Persia
Ramayana GREECE
(Epics of India) | Battle of Marathon
Sophocles Thucydides
Pericles Euripides Xenophon
Aristophanes
6 " Thermopylæ
06.16 Salamis
Cincinnatus at Rome
Ezra at Jerusalem
Socrates
DISTRIBUTION OF THE BEST LITERATURE.
83
1

400
Plato
Aristotle
Demosthenes
300
200
100
ROME. AUGUSTAN AGE, 31 B. C TO A. D 14.
Reatinus Ovid
Sallust Livy
Cicero
Lucretius
Virgil
A
Tacitus
Juvenal
Plutarch
Pliny
Josephus
Epictetus
Marcus Aurelius
200
Alexander
The Gauls burn Rome
Wars of Rome against Car-
thage
Hannibal in Italy
Greece becomes a Roman
Province
ROME
The Gracchi, Marius, and
Sylla
ROME
Julius Cæsar
Pompey
Civil War, Empire estab-
lished
Jerusalem taken by Titus
Pompeii overwhelmed
Romans conquer Britain
Church Fathers
Aurelian conquers Zenobia
TABLE V.

300
500
ENGLISH LITERATURE
Cædmon
600 ARABIA
Mahomet
MY00
Bæda
Cynewulf
Ælfred, 850-900
800
9001
Under Constantine Christian-
ity becomes the State re-
ligion
Roman Empire divided
Angles and Saxons drive out
| the Britons
Huns under Attila invade the
Roman Empire
Christianity carried to Eng-
land by Augustine
FRANCE
Charlemagne founds the
Empire of the West
Danes overrun England
Ælfred's glorious reign
Chivalry begins
Capetian kivgs in France
ENGLAND
Saint Dunstan
Papal supremacy
DISTRIBUTION OF THE BEST LITERATURE.
85

1000 PERSIA
Firdusi's Shah
Nameh
ENGLAND
Capute the Great
1066. Norman Conquest
Peter the Hermit
First Crusade
Geoffrey of Monmouth
1100 PERSIA
ENGLAND
Omar Khayyam | Plantagenets
GERMANY
Richard I.
Nibelungenlied
SPAIN
FRANCE
Chronicle of the Second and Third Crusades
Cid
Saint Bernard
Layamon
Roger Bacon
1200 PERSIA
Saadi
ENGLAND
1215. Runnymede, Magna
Charta
Edward I.
Mandeville
Langland
Wycliffe
Gower
1300 ITALY
· Dante
Petrarch
Boccaccio
ENGLAND
Chivalry at its height
The Black Prince
Gunpowder
Chaucer
PERSIA
Hafiz
FRANCE
Battles of Crecy, Poictiers,
and Agincourt
Lydgate
Fortescue
Malory
1400 GERMANY
Thomas à Kem-
pis
Arabian Nights
(probably)
PERSIA
Jami
ENGLAND
| Henry VIII. shook off the
Pope
Movable Types
Discovery of America
Joan of Arc
Wars of the Roses
Ascham
Sackville
More
Lyly
Sidney
Marlowe
Spenser
Fox
Hooker
Copernicus
1500 ITALY
Kepler
Ariosto
The Armiada
Tasso
ENGLAND
Galileo
Henry VIII., Elizabeth
GerMANY
FRANCE
Montaigne
1515. Luther's Reformation
FRANCE
MassacreofSt. Bartholomew
1600 SPAIN. Cervantes 1620. Plymouth Rock and the
Calderon
"Mayflower"
GERMANY. Kepler 1649 Croniwell
FRANCE, Descartes 1660 Restoration
Corneille
1688 Revolution
Racine
William and Mary
Molière
FRANCE. Louis XIV.
La Fontaine
Bacon
Newton
Jonson
Shakspeare
Chapman
Beaumont &
Fletcher
Milton
Bunyan
Dryden
Herbert
J. Taylor
Hobbes
Walton
S. Butler
Locke
Pepys
86
TABLE V.

Otis
1776. American Revolution
1789-94. French Revolution
1700 FRANCE
Montesquieu
Le Sage
Rousseau
Voltaire
ENGLAND
Marlborough
Addison
Steele
Pope
Defoe
Swift
Berkeley
J. Butler
Moore
Thomson
Young
Gray
Goldsmith
Sterne
Cowper
Burns
Rogers
Hume
Edwards
A. Smith
Bentham
Gibbon
Johuson
Boswell
Malthus
Mackintosh
Paine
Jay
Adams
Hamilton
Madison
Jefferson
Pitt
Burke
Fox
Erskine
P. Henry.
GERMANY
Munchausen
Lessing
C
1800 GERMANY
Schiller
Goethe
Kant
Fichte
Hegel
Schelling
Niebuhr
Schlosser
Heine
Haeckel
Helmholtz
Grimm
Froebel
1807. Fulton's Steamboat
Wellington
1815. Waterloo
White wives sold in
Whitney
Scott
Herschel De Quincey
Byron
Whewell Whately
Bryant Ricardo
Jeffrey
Drake
Carey
Brougham
| Wordsworth Faraday S. Smith
Keats
Lyell
C. North
Shelley Agassiz N. Webster
Payne
H. H. White
Keble
A. Gray D. Webster
Halleck Hallam
Sparks
Key
Prescott Story
-Macaulay Lewes Gould
Hood
Milman Cooper
Poe
Buckle Disraeli
Read
Merivale - Dickens
Tennyson Hildreth Thackeray
Browning Freeman ---- Bronté
Lowell
Draper
Hawthorne
-Longfellow Froude
Irving
Carleton Walpole Hughes
Ingelow Lecky
Kingsley
-Whittier ~ Parkman Eliot
Mill
Bancroft Collins
Spencer Whipple Macdonald
· Ruskin , Twain
Hunt
Arnold
Jerrold Wallace
Curtis
Choate Clarke
Holmes Lincoln Landor
Mansel Phillips Tourjee
Carlyle Everett Holland
Emerson
Sumner Howells
Darwin Garfield Mrs. Whitney
Huxley Gladstone Miss Alcott
Dana
A. D. White Bellamy
Tyndall Beecher Gronlund
Lubbock P. Brooks Gilman
Proctor - Lamb
Hazlitt
FRANCE
La Place
Guizot
De Tocqueville
Comte
Hugo
Balzac
Renan
Taine
England
1830. Passenger railway
1833. Matches
1844. Telegraph
1845. Mexican War
1860. Rebellion
(1863. Emancipation
72. Franco-German War
1874. The Telephone
Emancipation of serfs
in Russia
RUSSIA
Pushkin
Lermontoff
DENMARK
Andersen
Davy
1900
REMARKS ON TABLE V.
87
REMARKS ON TABLE V.
TYA
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 pro-
duced 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 pic-
tures. 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 sub-
lime 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
88
REMARKS ON TABLE V.
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 for-
ests 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 sub-
stance of prose, or perhaps without even the sub-
stance of literary prose, as in parts of Wordsworth,
REMARKS ON TABLE V.
89
TY
Pope, Longfellow, Homer, Tennyson, and even some-
times 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 cur-
rent, 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, sim-
plicity, size, and artistic shape; (4) its merits, com-
pared with the rest of the books in its own sphere of
our needs.
There result several tests of the claims
1. 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 loathsome-
ness; or more sorrowful, fretful, cruel, envious, vin-
dictive, cowardly, and false, less reverent of right
and more attracted by evil, by picturing good as
90
REMARKS ON TABLE V.
1
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 tol-
erant? 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 ave-
nues of communication between my life and theirs ?
III. What will be the effect on my skills and accom-
plishments? 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 knowl-
edge of the best means of attaining any other de-
sired 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.
REMARKS ON TABLE V.
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 imita-
tion, that lacks the fire and force of the original. Na-
ture is best painted, not from books, but from her
own sweet face.
VII. What is the relation of the book to the com-
pleteness 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 perma-
nent value? The profits of reading what is merely of
the moment are not so great as those accruing from
92
REMARKS ON TABLE V.
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 news-
papers and periodicals. The newspaper is a wonder-
ful 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, brandish-
ing his mandibles in an excited manner, is the great
Mr. So-and-So, explaining his position amid the tu-
multuous explosions of an appreciative multitude.
That puffet of smoke and dust to the right is a revo-
lution. 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 cur-
tain is rung down by Death.) But theatre-going,
if kept up continuously, is very enervating. 'T is
1 Adapted from Lowell.
REMARKS ON TABLE V.
93
.
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 buit
complete statements of the paper's contents, instead
of those flaring head-lines that allure but do not sat-
isfy, 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.; or that “Mr. Snow's
horse pulled the plug out of a barrel of water and
slaked his thirst at the bung-hole;” or otherwise
waste our time, uselessly tearing off the coupons
from the tickets we hold for this journey of life.
If Mr. Snow's horse had pulled the bung-hole out of
the barrel and slaked his thirst with the plug, or if
he had pulled the slake out of his thirst and plugged
the bung-hole with the barrel, or if he had plugged
his thirst-hole with the bung and barrelled his slake;
or if any one of the similar events that result from
these elements under the application of the principle
of combinations and permutations had occurred,
there might be something of sufficient interest to call
for investigation; but as it is, it is sorrowful to see
a whole nation pouring its time and energy into the
waste-basket instead of the fountains of genius.
94
PERIODS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.
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 let-
ters; 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 Beo-
wulf,1 Cædmon, Bæda,3 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 chang-
ing the “ Anglo-Saxon Chronicle” — till his time a
1 An epic poem, full of the life, in peace and war, of our
Saxon fathers before they came to England.
2 The writer of a paraphrase on the Bible; a feeble Milton.
8 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.
PERIODS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.
95
mere record of noble births and deaths — into a val-
uable 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 ex-
cept 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.
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, rous-
ing 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 Ital-
ian. 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 cer-
tainly 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
V
96
PERIODS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.
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 frag-
ments 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 en-
titled to more than a rapid reading by the general
student; and only Chaucer for continuous compan-
ionship 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 se-
ries of political tragedies, called “A Mirror for Mag-
istrates.” The poet goes down into hell like Dante,
IN THE SHAKSPEARIAN AGE.
97
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 Ecclesi-
astical 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 prin-
ciples is universally admitted. (6) The Plays of
Marlowe, a very powerful but gross writer. His
A
98
PERIODS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.
“Dr. Faustus" may very properly receive attention,
but only after the best plays of Shakspeare, Jonson,
Calderon, Racine, Moliere, Corneille, Æschylus, Soph-
ocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes have been care-
fully read. (7) The Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher,
which are filled with beauty and imagination, min-
gled with the immodesty and vulgarity that were
natural to this age. The remark just made about
Marlowe applies here. (8) Fox's Book of Mar-
tyrs, 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) Ba-
coii'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, set-
ting 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 POST-SHAKSPEARIAN AGE.
99
The" Essays," however, are world-famed for their con-
terest, 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 six 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,
den; the Time of Pope; and the Time of the Novel-
ists, 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 su-
perseded by Pope's. (2) Hobbes's Leviathan, a
discourse on government. Hobbes taught that gov-
ernment exists for the people, and rests not on the
divine right of kings, but on a compact or agree-
ment of all the citizens to give up a portion of their
liberties in order by social co-operation the better
100
LITERATURE.
A
PERIODS OF ENGLISH 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 per-
ception of the beauties of Nature. It will repay
a glance. (4) S. Butler's Hudibras, a keen satire
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
Poeins, many of which are as sweet and holy as a
flower upon a grave, and are beloved by all spirit-
ually minded people. (6) Feremy 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 Mil-
ton, in 1674, to the death of Dryden, in 1700, the lat-
ter held undisputed kingship in the realm of letters.
THE POST-SHAKSPEARIAN AGE,
IOI
This and the succeeding time of Pope were marked
by the development of a classic style and a fine lit-
erary and critical taste, but were lacking in great cre-
ative power. The great books were (1) Newton's
Principia, the highest summit in the region of as-
tronomy, 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 gen-
eral 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 Under-
standing, 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) Brizyan's Pilgrim's Progress picturing in mag-
nificent allegory the journey of a Christian soul to-
ward 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
102
PERIODS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.
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 de-
tail. 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 unani-
mous assent. The great works of this time were
(1) The Essays of Addison and Steele in the “Tat-
ler" 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 gross-
ness, 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 exist-
ence 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
THE POST-SHAKSPEARIAN AGE
103
T
- 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, dowri to this time of 1740, out of a lit-
erature covering eleven and a half centuries, recom-
mended to the chief attention of the reader ten great
authors, — Chaucer and Spenser, Shakspeare and Ba-
con, Milton and Taylor, Bunyan and Locke, Pope
and Defoe. We now come to the TIME OF NOVEL-
ISTS, 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
ing 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
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
104
PERIODS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.
2
in the whole list of philosophers; in poetry, Burnis,
Byron, and Tennyson, none of them equal to Shak-
speare and Milton, but standing in the next file be-
hind them; in fiction, Scott and Dickens ; in poetic
humor, Lowell, the greatest of all names in this de-
partment; and in general literature, Carlyle and Rus-
kin, two of the purest, wisest, and most forcible writers
of all the past, and, curiously enough, both of them
very eccentric and very wordy. 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 Eng-
lish 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.
GREATEST NAMES OF OTHER LITERATURES. 105
THE GREATEST NAMES OF OTHER
LITERATURES.
UTI
Greece, in her thirteen centuries of almost contin-
uous literary productiveness from Homer to Longus,
gave the world its greatest epic poet, Homer; the
finest of lyric poets, Pindar; the prince of orators,
Deinosthenes ; aside from our own Bacon and Spen-
cer, the greatest philosophers of all the ages, Plato
and Aristotle ; the most noted of fabulists, Æsop;
the most powerful writer of comedy, Aristophanes
(Molière is much to be preferred for modern read-
ing, because of his fuller applicability to our life);
and the three greatest writers of pure tragedy, Æs-
chylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, - the first remark-
able 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 re-
mains untasted and unknown. Begin with Homer,
Plato's “Phædo” and “Republic," Æschylus's “ Pro-
metheus Bound," Sophocles' “ Edipus," and Demos-
thenes' “On the Crown."
106 GREATEST NAMES OF OTHER LITERATURES.
A liberal reading must also include the Greek his-
torians Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon.
Rome taught the world the art of war, but was her-
self 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 Eng-
land. A liberal education must include Virgil's
“Æneid,” the national epic of Rome (which, how-
ever, 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 in-
sight 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 Eng-
lish writers spoken of in the preceding paragraphs,
have come to be familiar friends.
Italy, in Chaucer's century, produced a noble liter-
ature. Dante is the Shakspeare of the Latin races.
He stands among the first creators of sublimity.
Æschylus and Milton only claim a place beside him.
Petrarch takes lofty rank as a lyric poet, breathing
the heart of love. Boccaccio may be put with Chau-
1
U
GREATEST NAMES OF OTHER LITERATURES. 107
cer. 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 jurispru-
dence, in its widest sense, Montesquieli; and in
picturing the literary history of a nation, Taine,
stand unrivalled anywhere. Among essayists, Mon-
taigne ; among writers of fiction, Le Sage, Victor
Hugo, and Balzac; among the dramatists, Corneille
the grand, Racine the graceful and tender, and Mo-
lière 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
108 GREATEST NAMES OF OTHER LITERATURES.
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, suc-
cesses, 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 ecsta-
sies of love, Hafiz.
Portugal has given us Camoens, with his great poem
the “ Luciad.” Denmark brings us her charming An-
dersen ; 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 knowl-
edge of the literary treasures of the world.
FOUNTAINS OF NATIONAL LITERATURES. 109
THE FOUNTAINS OF NATIONAL
LITERATURES.
LI
IN the early history of every great people there
has grown up a body of songs celebrating the hero-
ism of their valiant warriors and the charms of their
beautiful women. These have, generation after gen-
eration, been passed by word of mouth from one
group of singers to their successors, — by each new
set of artists somewhat polished and improved, -- un-
til they come to us as Homer's Iliad, the “Nibelun-
genlied” of the Germans, the “ Chronicle of the Cid”
of the Spanish, the “ Chansons de Gestes," the “ Ro-
mans," and the “Fabliaux " of the French, and “Beo-
wulf” 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, Boc-
caccio, Chaucer, Rabelais, Molière, Shakspeare, Calde-
ron, 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 perform-
LIO FOUNTAINS OF NATIONAL LITERATURES.
QUI
ance 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 embodi-
ment 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
FOUNTAINS OF NATIONAL LITERATURES. III
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 sing-
ers 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
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 sor-
row hear, hurling it back from far and near, the listen-
ing 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 si-
lence 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.
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 favor-
ite 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?"
116
THE BEST THOUGHTS OF GREAT MEN
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
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 expe-
rience. 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,
grave, logic and rhetoric able to contend.”
Barrow. “He who loveth a book will never want a faith-
ful friend, a wholesome counsellor, a cheerful companion, or
an effectual comforter."
Bartholin. “Without books God is silent, justice dor-
mant, 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 dis-
covery of truth is, next to the conviction of our immortality,
ABOUT BOOKS AND READING.
117
the idea the most full of consolation to man; for the cultiva-
tion 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 trans-
formation there until the outward book is but a body, and
its soul and spirit are flown to you, and possess your mem-
ory 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
'T is then we get the right good from a book."
118
THE BEST THOUGHTS OF GREAT MEN
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 congen-
erates 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 con-
. quest; 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 dwell-
ABOUT BOOKS AND READING.
119
ing: 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 froin what is
called the best society in the place where I live."
Chaucer.
5. And as for me, though that I know but lyte 1
On bokès for to rede I me delyte,
And to them give I (feyth 2) and ful credence,
· And in myn herte have them in reverence
So hertily that there is pastime noon,
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.”
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.”
i Little.
% Faith.
8 None.
120
THE BEST THOUGHTS OF GREAT MEN
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
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 Shak-
speare, 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 to-
ward the pulpit. From the days when we used to spell out
Crusoe and old Bunyan, there had grown up in me a de-
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 ac-
cumulated 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 de-
ABOUT BOOKS AND READING.
12I
pends not simply on an infinite memory, but also on an infi-
nite 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 sen-
sibility of the reader.”
Erasmus. “A little before you go to sleep read some-
thing that is exquisite and worth remembering, and contem-
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, Æschy-
lus, 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 em-
pire 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 un-
able 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
Indies."
122
THE BEST THOUGHTS OF GREAT MEN
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 16s. od. 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 inacces-
sible. 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 con-
stantly being prepared and placed within reach of the popu-
lation 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 merci-
ful substitute to the legislature. He acts not by punishing
crimes, but by preventing them."
Hale, Sir Matthew. “Read the Bible reverently and at-
tentively, set your heart upon it, and lay it up in your mem-
ABOUT BOOKS AND READING.
123
ory, 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 judi-
ciously.”
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 Shak-
speare. 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 his-
torical types, so as to preserve at once beauty, life, and
truth, —- a task which neither Ariosto and Tasso, nor Cor-
neille 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 crea-
tions is almost the least of his great qualities. It is the
universality of his sympathy that is so truly great, the jus-
tice of his estimates, the insight into the spirit of each age,
his intense absorption of self in the vast epic of human
civilization."
124
THE BEST THOUGHTS OF GREAT MEN
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 char-
acters who have adorned humanity. You make him a deni-
zen 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 Wis-
dom 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 ap-
proach 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."
ABOUT BOOKS AND READING.
125
1
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 eter-
nal 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 with-
out 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 think-
ers 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 noth-
ing 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 ser-
vice 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.”
126
THE BEST THOUGHTS OF GREAT MEN
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 wit-
tiest 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 them-
selves 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 !".
ABOUT BOOKS AND READING.
127
“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,
't is 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."
128
THE BEST THOUGHTS OF GREAT MEN
Morley, John. “The consolation of reading is not futile
nor imaginary. It is no chimera of the recluse or the book-
worm, but a potent reality. As a stimulus to flagging ener-
gies, 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 lit-
erary qualities; but I cannot help thinking that it is difficult
to find out how much. I suspect superstition and author-
ity 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 do one, not even Ruskin, in
the novelists of our generation, Dickens is immeasurably
ahead."
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 pas-
sages, 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 spark-
ling 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."
ABOUT BOOKS AND READING.
129
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 then. 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 impor-
tant 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 read-
ing is reached by him who has not obtained in the best writ-
ings 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 sweet-
meats, — 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.”
130
THE BEST THOUGHTS OF GREAT MEN
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 ; ” “ Confes-
sions 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 tra-
ABOUT BOOKS AND READING.
131
dition, 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 hydro-
gen to air.
Ruskin also crosses out Marcus Aurelius, Confucius, Aris-
totle (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, Berke-
ley, Lewes, Southey, Longfellow, Swift, Macaulay, Emer-
son, 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, De-
mosthenes, Plutarch, Horace, Cicero, Homer, Hesiod, Virgil,
Aristophanes, Herodotus, Xenophon, Thucydides, and Taci-
tus, 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."
132
THE BEST THOUGHTS OF GREAT MEN
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 lite-
rature; 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 Navi-
gation, and the Nautical Almanac for 1877. Poor Shak-
speare 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 edu-
ABOUT BOOKS AND READING.
133
cated 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 con-
verse 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 pas-
sion 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 morn-
ing. . . . So far from stimulating an unhealthy taste, the en-
joyment 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 inspi-
ration 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."
134
THE BEST THOUGHTS OF GREAT MEN.
Wolseley, Gen. Lord. “During the mutiny and China war
I carried a Testament, two volumes of Shakspeare that con-
tained 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."

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
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