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THE ART _of_
WRITING & SPEAKING
_The_ ENGLISH
LANGUAGE
SHERWIN CODY
HOW TO READ
AND
WHAT TO READ
_Literary Digest Edition_
The Old Greek
Press · _Chicago_
_New York_ · _Boston_
_Copyright, 1905_
BY SHERWIN CODY.
CONTENTS
PAGE
Preface 7
General Introduction to the Study of Literature 11
Chapter I. What Constitutes a Good Poem? 16
Chapter II. What Constitutes a Good Essay? 25
Chapter III. What Constitutes a Good Novel? 31
Chapter IV. Landmarks in Modern Literature 42
Chapter V. The Best Poetry and How to
Read It 51
Chapter VI. How to Study Shakspere 65
Chapter VII. The Best English Essays 73
Chapter VIII. Old Novels that Are Good 81
Chapter IX. The Romantic Novelists--Scott,
Hugo, Dumas 88
Chapter X. The Realistic Novelists--Dickens,
Thackeray, Balzac 102
Chapter XI. The Short Story--Poe, Hawthorne,
Maupassant 117
Chapter XII. Classic Stories for Young People 122
PREFACE
There are plenty of books telling what we should read if we were wise
and judicious scholars, with all the time in the world; and there are
lists of the Hundred Best Books, as if there were some magic in the
figures 100.
This little book is for the average man who reads the newspaper more
than he ought, and would like to know the really interesting books in
standard literature which he might take pleasure in reading and which
might be of some practical benefit to him.
I have begun by leaving out nearly all the ancient classics.
Demosthenes’s For the Crown is a great oration, but it is utterly dry
and uninteresting to the ordinary modern. Even the great Goethe, while
he may be the best of reading for a German, is not precisely adapted
to the needs of the average American or Englishman. His novels are too
sentimental; and his great poem Faust, like all poems, loses too much
in the translation.
And then to come down to our own literature, I must admit that I know
that all the conservative professors of English will be shocked at the
omission of Chaucer (but his language is too antiquated to be easily
understood), Pope (who is more quoted than any other English poet
except Shakspere, but ought to be read only in a book of quotations),
Samuel Richardson (who is important historically, but whose novels are
as dead as a door-nail), and some others.
Literature is not great absolutely, but it is useful and inspiring to
those who read it. What has been inspiring once may have served its
purpose, and when it is no longer inspiring it ought to be put away on
the library shelves.
But of the good and interesting books there are a great many more than
any one person can ever hope to read. We have but a little time in this
life, and in reading we ought to make the best of it. So what shall we
choose?
First of all a book must be interesting if it is going to help us; but
at the same time if it is a great book and can inspire us, our time is
spent to double or treble the advantage that it would be if it were
only a good book. If we can read the _best_ books and not merely
good books, we have actually added some years to our life, measuring
life by what we crowd into it.
But no man can be another’s sole guide and do his thinking for him.
Every man must have standards and principles, and be able to judge for
himself. Such standards for judgment I have tried in this book first of
all to give by simple illustrations.
So far as I know nearly every one who has written about books has
recommended volumes in the lump, as Wordsworth’s Poems, Lamb’s Essays,
Scott’s novels, etc., as if every collection between covers were good
all the way through.
The fact is, great books need to be sifted in themselves, as well
as great collections of books. Only a few poems of Wordsworth’s or
Coleridge’s or Keats’ or Shelley’s or Tennyson’s or Longfellow’s are
first rate, and all the others in their complete works would better
be left out as far as the average man I have in mind is concerned.
Even the great novels have to be skimmed, and it is not every one who
knows how to do that. I am therefore desirous of giving assistance not
only in the selection of volumes, but of the contents of each volume
recommended.
I have tried my hand already with some success as far as the public is
concerned in selecting “The Greatest Short Stories”, “The Best English
Essays”, “The World’s Great Orations” and the work of “The Great
English Poets.” It is now my hope to offer the public in convenient,
well printed, prettily bound volumes a Nutshell Library of the World’s
Best Literature for English Readers. Unlike other compilations of
this kind it will not be a collection of fragments and patchwork, so
comprehensive that it includes thousands of things one doesn’t care
for, and so selective that it leaves out four fifths of the things one
does want especially. In my library I shall make each volume complete
in itself and an interesting evening’s reading. The reader will be
pleasantly introduced to the author as man and man-of-letters, so that
he will know him the next time he meets him, and will get on terms of
something like familiarity with him.
It is now almost impossible for the ordinary business man or even the
busy woman of the house to read many books. Sometimes we get started on
the latest novel, recommended by a friend, and sacrifice enough time
to finish it; then we are usually sorry we did it. And yet we know that
the delicate enjoyment of life is in our cultivation of leisure in a
refined and noble way. For all of us life would be better worth living,
would be fuller of satisfaction and more complete in accomplishment, if
we could spend a certain amount of time every day or every week with
the world’s best society. This I hope to make it practically possible
for many to do.
This little volume lays down the principles and maps out the field. It
is entirely complete in itself; but at the same time it introduces an
undertaking which I hope may develop into wide usefulness.
I may add that only books that may properly be called “literature” are
here referred to, and even orations are omitted, because they are meant
to be heard and not read in a closet and most people will not find
them inspiring reading. Neither have I ventured into history, science,
philosophy, or economics.
I desire to thank Dr. E. Benj. Andrews, Chancellor of the University of
Nebraska, Mr. Fred. H. Hild, Librarian of the Chicago Public Library,
and Mr. W. I. Fletcher, editor of the American Library Association’s
Index to General Literature and Librarian of Amherst College, for
valuable assistance in preparing the list of books recommended.
SHERWIN CODY.
HOW TO READ AND WHAT TO READ
_GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF LITERATURE._
The best modern usage restricts the word _literature_ to that
which deals with the human heart and emotion, including intellectual
emotion. That into which no feeling can enter is not literature. So
a pure scientific treatise is not literature; neither is a simple
historical record literature, as for example the news in a newspaper.
Indeed, all histories, treatises, philosophical works, and textbooks
and handbooks are literature only in such cases as an appeal is made to
the universal heart or the emotions common to mankind.
A little psychology will help us to understand the matter better. The
mind has three aspects: the intellectual, which gives us truth; the
ethical, which gives us nobility; and the esthetic, which gives us
beauty. It is really impossible to separate one of these things from
the other entirely; but we may say that in science we have nothing but
the intellectual, or truth; in religion nothing but the ethical, or
nobility; and in art nothing but the esthetic, or beauty. But as a
religion without truth or beauty would be a very poor affair, so art
without truth or nobility would be almost inconceivable.
Literature is far more than art. Of course literature must be artistic:
it must have the esthetic element of beauty; but it must also have both
nobility and truth; and it must make its appeal through the emotions,
that is, its appeal must be human. Possibly we must admit that all
art is human, that its appeal is emotional; but this is not true of
all beauty, for a mathematical hyperbola or parabola is perfectly
beautiful, and it has its part in all drawing of artistic beauty; but
the parabola or hyperbola does not become art except when executed by
the human hand in making an appeal to human emotions.
Distinctions between truth, nobility, and beauty are merely for the
sake of helping our thought. That which is noble must be true and it
must be beautiful. That which is lacking in truth is lacking also in
beauty. This, however, we are not always able to discover without
analysing. Something may seem beautiful while we are thinking of beauty
alone; but let us test its nobility or its truth, and if these are
wanting we suddenly discover defects in the beauty we had not perceived
before.
Who of us has not seen a woman who seemed at first to be perfectly
beautiful, but whom we afterward found to be lacking in intellect
or character. On re-examining the beauty we discover a weak mouth,
inexpressive eyes, and other defects which may in time quite spoil the
perfection of form we had admired so much at first, and we wonder
how we could overlook these defects. The fact is, one supreme quality
is likely to blind us to all defects until we cease to gaze upon that
quality and hunt for others.
If we are literary critics, the first quality of literature that is
likely to attract our attention is that of artistic beauty, which
usually shows itself especially in the style. The musical flow of the
words, the aptness and grace of the images, the refinement in the
choice of words, make style, which, like charity, is a garment which
covers a multitude of sins. If we are students, we look at the truth of
the statements, their accuracy, their real significance, and talk about
the poem’s or the story’s “depth” or lack of depth. But the common
reader is more likely to judge the literary work by its nobility; in a
novel such a reader wants characters he can admire and imitate, in a
poem he wants thoughts that will inspire. Often to such a reader the
lack of truth and of beauty are not even perceived. We see that which
we look for, and fail to see that in which we have no interest.
But what part does amusement play in real literature? We hear that
the “star of the public amuser is in the ascendant.” Is the novel any
the less literature for being amusing? or may it amuse without being
literature?
But let us see what amusement is. An alternative term is
_recreation_, which means literally “being created anew.” Any
escape from the routine of life into an atmosphere which is harmonious
with our faculties for enjoyment is recreation. Amusement is the
antithesis of work. A book the reading of which contains no suggestion
of labour is a perfect recreation, since it allows our overworked
faculties to rest and calls into play those faculties which otherwise
would lie fallow and ultimately become stunted and dead. When we
speak of a book as “amusing” we mean that it affords a complete
relaxation to our faculties; but such complete relaxation is not
altogether necessary to perfect recreation, for we may exercise one
set of faculties while relaxing another. Literature is and should be
relaxing to those faculties that are worn out by the dull routine of
life; but any statement that a novel should be _merely_ amusing,
_merely_ relaxing, is decidedly untrue to the facts in the case.
The public does want recreation; we all want it; we all need it; it is
one of the highest offices of literature to give it; but _mere_
relaxation of wearied faculties will never create us anew. For true
re-creation we must have that in literature which has been named
_creative_,--something positive, vital, strong, and human. It
is the duty of all great literature to be interesting. That which
has ceased to be interesting is dead, and the quicker it is buried
the better. The fact is, however, that no efforts at embalming or
preservation on the part of critics will keep before the public that
which the public chooses to bury.
And this brings us to another question. What part has popularity in
true literature? Some swear only by that which is very popular; and
others curse the masses of the people, declaring that they like
that which is bad for its very badness, wallowing in filth and the
commonplace, loving sentimentality in preference to true sentiment,
and seeking in fiction only excitement of their passions. Such a view
is libellous. As Lincoln once said in regard to other matters, You can
deceive all the people part of the time and part of the people all
the time, but you cannot deceive all the people all the time. We must
confess that the public is always wandering after a will-o’-the-wisp;
but at all times the public as a whole, we must believe, is seeking
the good. It does not love the bad merely because it is bad; but it
swallows the bad because it wants the grain of good it can get in no
other way. And with the element of time added, it is the public that
makes “the verdict of posterity” which all reverence. We must not
forget, however, the element in the equation called Time; for that Time
may reduce the equation to zero and prove that our unknown quantity is
nothing.
And now let us ask what relation any work of literary art ought to have
to our lives of toil. If it merely gives us a picture of our actual
lives it cannot be interesting or amusing, since we want to get away
from ourselves and exercise new faculties and have new experiences. On
the other hand, we understand only what we live, and if we get too far
away from our own experiences we are equally at a loss. The fact is, a
work of literature should give us ourselves idealized and in a dream,
all we wished to be but could not be, all we hoped for but missed.
True literature rounds out our lives, gives us consolation for our
failures, rebuke for our vices, suggestions for our ambition, hope, and
love, and appreciation. To do that it should have truth, nobility, and
beauty in a high degree, and our first test of a work of literature
should be to ask the three questions, Is it beautiful? Is it true? Is
it noble?
CHAPTER I.
_WHAT CONSTITUTES A GOOD POEM?_
We may consider literature under three heads--Pure Poetry, the Prose
Essay, and Fiction.
Poetry is unquestionably the oldest form of literature. Matthew Arnold
once queried whether a people ought not to be barbarous to be really
poetic. Perhaps it originated in the chant of the priests as they
offered sacrifices to their gods; but the chanted tale recounting the
deeds of glorious war must have come very soon after.
Mechanically, poetry consists in words arranged in measured feet and
lines, corresponding almost exactly to the time element in music. Rhyme
is a modern invention and in no way essential to poetry. Originally
anything that could be chanted or sung was regarded as poetry. Now the
song element has largely disappeared, but the requirement of measured
feet and lines remains, and we may almost say that no poetry can be
fully appreciated till it is read aloud.
Poetry was invented to express lofty sentiments, sentiments of
religion and the noble sentiments of patriotism and brave deeds, and
finally the sentiments of passionate love. It is still the loftiest
form of literature, and if we would seize at a grasp all the length and
breadth of the highest literary art, we should begin with the study of
poetry.
True literature should express equally Truth, Nobility, and Beauty, the
intellectual, the ethical, and the esthetic. Of course one poem will be
pre-eminent for its beauty, another for its nobility, a third for its
truth. Let us examine various types, that we may see with our own eyes
and feel with our own hearts what these words mean.
Read aloud this lullaby from Tennyson’s _Princess_:
Sweet and low, sweet and low,
Wind of the western sea,
Low, low, breathe and blow,
Wind of the western sea!
Over the rolling waters go,
Come from the dying moon, and blow,
Blow him again to me;
While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps.
Sleep and rest, sleep and rest,
Father will come to thee soon;
Rest, rest, on mother’s breast,
Father will come to thee soon;
Father will come to his babe in the nest,
Silver sails all out of the west
Under the silver moon;
Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep.
The first thing we notice, besides the pleasing rhythm, is the musical
quality of the words. There can be no melody, as melody is known in
music, but in the repetition of sounds and their enchanting variations
we find something that very strongly suggests musical melody.
Then we are attracted by the beauty of the images. The words come
tripping like fairy forms, and we feel a picture growing out of the
_camera obscura_ of our minds.
The appeal is almost wholly to our feelings; for if we stop to analyse
the words and interpret their strict sense, we seem to see nothing but
nonsense. The poem exists for the soothing, enchanting, dreamy beauty
that seems rather to breathe in the words than to be expressed by them
as words express thoughts in prose.
If there is any truth or any nobility in this poem of Tennyson’s, it
would be hard to say just what they are. There is nothing ignoble;
there is nothing untrue. But it seems as if we had a perfect type of
beauty pure and simple.
Now let us read this little thing from Shelley:
LOVE’S PHILOSOPHY.
The fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean;
The winds of heaven mix forever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one another’s being mingle;--
Why not I with thine?
See the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister flower would be forgiven,
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?
Once more we observe the rhythm and the music, though not so perfect or
real as in Tennyson’s song; and we see the beauty of images, almost as
beautiful as the images in Sweet and Low; but we observe that there is
a new element: a thought is expressed. Beauty has come to the aid of
truth; and while we are uncertain whether we care most for the beauty
or for the truth, we cannot but perceive how they aid each other.
But we have not yet found the moral or ethical element. Neither
Tennyson nor Shelley inspires in us nobler sentiments, or gives us
courage to do and dare loftier deeds.
For the purely ethical type we might turn to the psalms of David, or
that noble poem Job. But we find the same element in a simple and
modern form in a poem of Longfellow’s.
A PSALM OF LIFE.
WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN SAID TO THE PSALMIST.
Tell me not in mournful numbers,
“Life is but an empty dream!”
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real, life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
“Dust thou art, to dust returnest,”
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,--act in the living Present,
Heart within and God o’er head.
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labour and to wait.
Once more we observe how the musical flow of the language charms our
ear, and how the poem makes us _feel_ that which it would teach.
We miss the vibrating melody of words which we found in Tennyson and
even in Shelley; and the rarely beautiful images of both the preceding
poems are almost entirely absent. There is another element, however,
which we could not perceive at all in those verses, and that is the
element of nobility, of moral inspiration. The poem does not teach us
any moral truth with which we were before unfamiliar, as a treatise on
philosophy might; but it makes us _feel_ as nothing else ever has
the reality of that which we know already. It actually breathes courage
into us,--not the courage for heroic deeds in battle, but the heroism
of living nobly the common life that is ours.
It is not fair to condemn this almost perfect poem, as some critics do,
because it is lacking in the Beauty and fresh Truth that make the poems
of other poets immortal; for in the whole range of poetic literature
it will be difficult to find a more perfect example of nobility and
heroic courage.
It will be interesting now to turn to Browning’s _Rabbi Ben Ezra_
and find the philosophy, the Truth that corresponds to this Nobility.
VI.
Then, welcome each rebuff
That turns earth’s smoothness rough,
Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go!
Be our joy three parts pain!
Strive, and hold cheap the strain;
Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!
VII.
For thence,--a paradox
Which comforts while it mocks,--
Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail:
What I aspired to be,
And was not, comforts me:
A brute I might have been, but would not sink i’ the scale.
* * * * *
XXIII.
Not on the vulgar mass
Called “work,” must sentence pass,
Things done that took the eye and had the price;
O’er which, from level stand,
The low world laid its hand,
Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice:
XXIV.
But all the world’s coarse thumb
And finger failed to plumb,
So passed in making up the main account:
All instincts immature,
All purposes unsure,
That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man’s amount:
XXV.
Thoughts hardly to be packed
Into a narrow act,
Fancies that broke through language and escaped;
All I could never be,
All men ignored in me,
This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.
The subject is almost precisely that of Longfellow’s Psalm of Life, but
the object is not so much to give us courage as to confirm our courage
by philosophy. The appeal is intellectual, not ethical.
Yet this is very different from a treatise by Kant or Hegel. Browning
the poet makes us _feel_ the truth. It is emotion that his
philosophy, his Truth, arouses in us--an intellectual emotion, but none
the less an emotion. We find the measured rhythm of poetry, but it
is as far as possible from the songlike music of Tennyson’s lullaby.
The mechanical limits and restrictions seem an excuse for unusual and
almost strained images, but images that nevertheless carry conviction
to our minds. There is, too, a beauty in the conception. This poetry is
philosophy, but impassioned and inspired philosophy.
Let us now read a poem still more lofty, a poem in which rare beauty,
lofty nobility, and profound philosophy are mingled in almost equal
proportions. I refer to Wordsworth’s Lines Written a Few Miles Above
Tintern Abbey:
These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye:
But oft in lonely rooms, and ’mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even unto my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration....
... that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,--
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul;
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things....
And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.
The sweet melody of Tennyson’s lullaby has here given away to a deep,
organ-like harmony, that swells and reverberates, while the words
seem to be making the simplest and most direct of statements. Image
and plain statement so mingle that we cannot distinguish them, Truth
suddenly seems radiant with a rare and angelic Beauty, and the very
atmosphere breathes the loftiness of Noble Purity. Unexpectedly almost
we find ourselves in the presence of Divinity itself, and the humblest
meets the loftiest on common ground.