BOOKS TO BE OWNED, TO BE READ, AND TO BE REREAD
"The first time I read an excellent book, it is to
me just as if I had gained a new friend. When I
read a book I have perused before, it resembles
the meeting with an old one."--GOLDSMITH.
JUST how far books and reading are questions of taste, or should be
looked on as questions of taste merely, is passing hard to say. That
there are prevailing fashions, local-colour variations, and a few more
or less permanent models is noticeable to such a degree that an observer
might conclude motley to be the only wear. The readers seem to be no
more able to agree in what they like than did the urchins over the
pease-porridge in the nursery rhyme:
Some like it hot,
Some like it cold,
Some like it in the pot
Nine days old.
So it goes in books with every one to his own liking, though the
particular likings are a very unsubstantial guide to the literary merits
of the books liked. A book may become a fashion based on conventional
acquiescence and appearances rather than on real worth. Let the
judgment of individualism, with courage and restraint, lay bare the
fashion, and where then is its habitation or what is its name? Such
judgment sets up more or less arbitrary lines of taste that run wide,
and it makes a guess at what is enduring literature, a hazardous kind of
guess. Yet the peculiar thing of it all is that in this guess pedantry
is as likely to play false as is the capricious fancy of the reading
public that takes the book of the hour, whatever it be. This makes a
kind of self-constituted division of readers, each satisfied with his
lot and each serving a purpose.
Some readers' tastes, however, are neither prudish nor slovenly. They
are very catholic and succeed in picking out what is good from both the
bookish and the popular kinds of books. They can read any book that is a
book. But you recall that Charles Lamb could not reckon directories,
scientific treatises, the works of Hume and Gibbon, and generally those
"volumes which no gentleman's library should be without" as being books.
If to these were added those books which no gentleman's library should
contain, we come to a field fairly easy of investigation. In other
words, we must get back to that field that includes the literature of
power rather than the literature of knowledge. Of course, if somebody
chooses to read blockheaded encyclopaedias, withering economic essays,
proper Sunday school books, sophomoric novels, or privately printed
verse, that is purely his own concern; but such reading is beyond the
pale of real books as they relate to well-regulated courses in the home
or in school life.
How far is a teacher to be influenced in his selection of books for
students by their lines of taste? That depends on how far the tastes of
readers in general indicate that books of their liking are to be classed
as books of power, as real literature. It is rash to say that a book has
real merit because it becomes the best seller of a season; nor is it to
be condemned for the very reason that it is a best seller. However, the
general praise of a hundred thousand readers is not so much an index to
the book's merit as the book is an index to the character of the readers
who praise it. Unqualified laudation of a new book, especially a novel,
is an annoying kind of hysteria that has failed to find any other
outlet. But the very fact that the book is opportune or spectacular
carries it along. It grows up and flourishes in a day, and in a day dies
out.
It is curious to note how times change in the reading world and with
them lines of taste. To-day the line most evident in the American
reading public, and the one most difficult to meet in the development of
a taste for good books, is the passion to be up-to-date, as its
commercial phraseology would have it. It is awakened by that wonderful
agent, the advertising appeal, that deals not with quality but with
quantity. In books it calls for a story, and that story must be the
latest or it is certain to be absolutely neglected. On being asked what
dish he preferred at a dinner, Thoreau said, "The nearest." That was in
keeping with his theory of cutting down the denominator; the theory of
the reader of the latest is one of multiplying the numerator. As the
proper thing, each new book is taken, horns, hide, and tallow. The
reader's reverence for the present grows apace, and he no longer has use
for old wine, old friends, and old books. This is a reflection of a
widespread impression in American life that up to the present time but
little truth of substantial value as to methods of living and thinking
has been found out. A wonderful industrial progress, working through
inventive skill, has given the notion that anything over a generation
old is scarcely worth a passing notice, a notion fatal to all art. Every
one must seize in a hurry the newest thing in the market, lest he be
branded as out of date. And it all looks as if everybody was trying to
do what Alice found them trying to do in Wonderland, running as fast as
they could to keep where they were.
This mad rush for the latest is largely aided and abetted by that
invention of the devil, the literary section of many Sunday newspapers.
Finding research a bit dull, the ambitious or needy doctor of philosophy
launches into literary criticism for the reading public. He at once
discovers that the college sophomore who wrote a particular story is
another Thackeray in style. Then in turn a Dickens or a Balzac is found
out. Finally the news is passed on the Rialto that there is being issued
a story combining the delightful characteristics of the three old
masters. And thus and thus it goes, with the whirligig of Sunday
newspaper criticism spinning out the tastes of the reading public.
Now if these titled critics ever cease discovering great new books as
regularly as the day of rest comes around, or if the paper reading
public cease to take these critics as truthful, then the teacher may
hope to find a more sympathetic field in which to work. Of course the
teacher must shake off his pedantry and quit his foolishness in taking a
classic beyond the years of the boy whose veins are full of red blood,
and putting it on a dissecting table for the study of etymology and
syntax. He must know fairly well the boy's likes and dislikes and
remember that they are very strong. And he must also remember that the
boy is joined to his idols, and these are not to be broken until better
ones are substituted. Iconoclasm for its own sake is sheer waste. The
teacher himself must be wedded to good literature, or his efforts will
avail little. If he knows, from his own quiet reading, a few good books
well, that is enough. Sympathetic appreciation, like good nature, is
contagious. If the teacher does not appreciate the book, the boy will
not--unless he does it out of pardonable perversity.
The teacher has more to do with shaping the boy's reading than he at
first sees. He is apt to hesitate because the public library, ambitious
for a circulation record, gives the boy what he will be likely to read;
the Sunday school library, anxious to inculcate moral principles through
stories false to life, gives him what he does not want; the home, eager
to please him in every way, gives him anything he asks for. Yet in the
face of this threefold condition, the wise and sympathetic teacher can
direct an average course of reading that has in it more good than poor
books. To do this, he must work along two lines: discourage overreading
and encourage ownership in books. The practice of overreading is the
worst reading practice in modern life. Like all extremism, it is hard to
meet. It is as unpopular to oppose unlimited reading as it is to oppose
unlimited charity or unlimited education; yet they all need to be
carried out in moderation. The aim should be the mastery of a few good
books and the discouragement of the passion for constant variety that
indicates a lack of singleness of purpose through a lack of self-control
and the power of sustained attention. The greatest aid to this will be
the encouragement of small savings and the buying of good editions. When
this is done, encourage the boy to read out loud to his family at home
in the evenings the portions of his book he likes best. If he does
this, he and his book are friends as long as he continues reading. Soon
he will have a small, well-chosen, and much-used library. The boy who
will buy a book with his own money, will read aloud from it to his
family, will reread it, is safely started on the way to becoming a
well-read man.
After feeling the need of good books in the home where they can be
turned to as the fancy directs, and after feeling a desire to buy such
books, the boy will next need to know what titles to select. And that is
no easy question. Temperament, home circumstances, occupation, and many
other factors enter into it. But the thing that helps out is the fact
that the range of books of power is universal, embracing so many moods,
that enough good titles may be found for any one, however whimsical his
tastes may be. In fact the boy will find many more good books to his
liking than he will ever find time to read, or than he needs to read.
The problem will become one of exclusion. Two lists for two boys of
different dispositions may vary widely and yet both be good literature.
But in the range of English books there are a few that the common
judgment of readers and the praise of critics have so generally classed
as necessary to the shelves of a cultivated man, that they should be
given first place and in some way or other a reading and a rereading of
them be secured. It is not meant that reading is never to depart from
this seemingly arbitrary standard. That would be at least prudish, to
say nothing of its being impracticable. What is meant is that such
things as comic supplements, at once stupid, silly, and debauching to
both the intellectual and the artistic tastes, should be kept from all
boys. The daily newspaper with its sensational head-lines telling of
crimes is as bad, and the schoolboy has no business with it at all. But
maybe the practice most widespread and fatal to an appreciation of books
of real worth and power is the addiction to "juveniles" in the ever
issuing series. If he has drunk to excess of these, the boy will have
hopelessly weakened his ability ever to appreciate anything great. He
will never be able to warm to the powerful deeds of Odysseus, Hector, or
Joshua--he will be only a tolerable but proper grown-up. In the face of
these and many more hindrances, reading will have to be rigidly
directed, and in that directing, lines of appeal in the field of good
literature can be drawn out. Generally the reason for a boy's revolting
against a good book is the fact that whoever is in control of his
reading presupposes that very thing. The book is often timidly handed
out and with something of an apologetic air. By some peculiar piece of
judgment it is believed that the boy prefers the book that is both
insipid and stupid. This ineffectual effort arises from a lack of
courage on the part of preceptor and parent: the old, old story of
overindulgence. What may be sauce for the father should not always be
sauce for the son. The theory that what is good for the one ought to be
good for the other, even to food and drink, is only another sophism of a
falsely sentimental age that is over-tolerant of what is called personal
rights. The fact that Senator Hoar delighted in an occasional yellow
back, is no reason why a boy should have such a story when he should be
learning his catechism.
Before venturing on a list of books that will serve the boy fairly well
as he passes through the primary and the grammar grades of school, a few
of the superior books that have stood the test of time must be noticed.
They are fundamental in school and in general reading. The arguments of
literary critics as to what constitutes this good literature have no
place in a work of this nature that aims to aid teachers and parents in
selecting books for their children. It is enough to know that the
verdict of time has been rendered in favour of such books as "The
Arabian Nights' Entertainments," "Robinson Crusoe," and "Gulliver's
Travels." A knowledge of such books is fundamental to any one who is
ambitious to master the elements of English literature. And the mere
fact that he knows them well will give him a conscious strength and
pardonable feeling of superiority that the unlettered youth cannot have.
After this he can be trusted to browse pretty much as he chooses. He may
occasionally find the bars down, or maybe later go over the fences; but
he has learned to judge of what is worth while, and will surely return
to the books that gave him happy hours, whatever other tasks were laid
on him.
In selecting this list for schoolboys there is a temptation to take
works too mature for school age. This may come from that lingering
instinct that supposes every one, no matter what the age, to be
interested in the same things in which you are interested. The very best
things for manhood are to be reserved for that time of life. Grammar
school boys cannot appreciate the playful humour of Lamb, the prophetic
scolding of Carlyle, or Thackeray's keen analysis of human weaknesses
and foibles; neither can a high school boy do it, and it is foolish to
insist that it be done. Schoolboys are not men, and they might be told
to reserve the greater part of Carlyle and Thackeray until two or three
years after they have cast their first vote. Neither author is adapted
to a beardless youth. But then we have that wonderful pair of
story-tellers, Scott and Stevenson! What boy can resist them or would
ever think of trying to do so? If Margaret Ogilvy would not lay down a
book of "that Stevenson man" until she had found out how the laddie got
out of the barrel, do you suppose that a boy with adventurous blood in
his veins could do so? Though the best test for a child's book is the
fact that it has charms for the grown-up, he would certainly be foolish
who would insist that the great books for mature men and women be read
in youth. It is after all school days are ended and the boy has become a
man well started in the actual affairs of life that he can read and
appreciate "Vanity Fair," "Adam Bede," "Tess of the D'Urbervilles," or
"Anna Karenina." The tendency to take great books for mature readers,
abridge and overedit them, and then present them to adventurous boys by
a laboratory method of minute dissection, is annoying and foolish. Boys
who still enjoy harnessing a dog to a wagon are neither university
students nor good literary critics. But they do like to find out how
Robinson Crusoe made a canoe, Tom Canty ate his first royal dinner, or
David Balfour helped Alan Breck defend the roundhouse.
Naturally, the first book to put into the hands of the primary school
child to be called his own is a good illustrated edition of the Mother
Goose rhymes. There is nothing to take the place of that accumulated
wisdom of the nursery that is so charming to the ear. He has learned
many of the jingles by word of mouth before his school age; but he now
needs to own the book himself, read the words, and look at the pictures.
The whole thing must be in one volume for him. But what volume? It is
hardly safe to presuppose the possession of these nursery rhyme books
before the school age, though that is exactly where they belong. Maybe
for this reason it is better to start with the edition of Kate Greenaway
that makes up in refinement and delicacy for what it lacks in power and
intensity. It is unfortunate that there is no available reprint of the
original edition of "Mother Goose's Melody" compiled by Oliver Goldsmith
for John Newbery about 1765, which contained the "most celebrated songs
and lullabies of the old British nurses, calculated to amuse children
and incite them to sleep." To own such a quaint edition would surely be
a delight. Nearly as quaint and delightful, especially the
illustrations, is the "Only True Mother Goose Melodies" now reprinted
from the Boston edition of 1839. Of the editions of recent years there
are many good ones, the one appearing under the title of "National
Rhymes of the Nursery" having superior illustrations by Leslie Brooke,
but being marred by an artificial arrangement. If some artist with the
genius of Cruikshank would give a few of the best years of his life to
illustrating a complete collection of these rhymes, he would become a
benefactor of childhood. And if such an edition were well made
mechanically, printed on good unglazed linen paper from large type and
good woodcuts, well sewed, and bound in linen or leather, the boy might
consider himself favoured of the gods if he could call such a book his
own. These "things that are old and pretty" deserve to be well arrayed.
Yet they deserve to be read for their own sake, an enduring charm of
sound. Professor Saintsbury has clearly pointed out that they should
never be twisted into an authentic meaning according to the spirit of
severest "scientism"; but they should be made "to serve as anthems and
doxologies to the goddess whom in this context it is not satirical to
call 'Divine Nonsensia,' who still in all lands and times condescends
now and then to unbind the burden of meaning from the backs and brains
of men, and lets them rejoice once more in pure, natural, senseless
sound."
After the nursery rhymes, the next volumes for the boy's book shelf will
be collections of fables and fairy tales. The animal fable is easiest to
start with, and children like it best as a rule. Talking beasts kindle
their imagination and stimulate their awakening powers. Fables are
direct, simple, wise, and have a universal appeal. In the delightful
first chapter of "The Newcomes," Thackeray tells us that long ages
before AEsop, asses under lions' manes roared in Hebrew, sly foxes
flattered in Etruscan, and wolves in sheep's clothing gnashed their
teeth in Sanscrit. They are a common inheritance for childhood. The
English-speaking child has a number of very good collections at his
command, among them being the one recently issued with illustrations by
Arthur Rackham and another in the New Cranford series illustrated by
Richard Heighway, and he should surely own the one or the other. But in
neither is the drawing quite so charming as is that of Boutet de Monvel
for the French fables of La Fontaine.
What a pity that there is no single volume of fairy tales to meet the
child's demands! It should contain the best of the English folk tales,
the best of Perrault, the brothers Grimm, Andersen, and others; should
have illustrations of the merit of Cruikshank's; should be artistically
printed and bound--and it should be a big book. Children love big books.
A child's book on thin paper and bound in limp leather would not be a
child's book. Coloured illustrations are not necessary; children like a
few lines in black and white; but it is necessary to have the book a
kind of "ponderous tome." Then it can be read on the floor while it
rests on the boy's knees as he sits cross-legged before the fire; or,
better still, while he lies on his belly, his chin in his hands and his
feet swaying in the air. While he is small, no real boy was ever
designed to sit upright on a chair and hold a small book ten inches from
his eyes, with the light coming over his left shoulder. Maybe some
philanthropic publisher will some day issue a big book of tales to be
owned by the boy and read at his ease. But the lack of it to-day
necessitates the building up of a fairy library.
The first book to be put into the fairy library might be the charming
"Golden Goose Book" of Leslie Brooke, followed by Cruikshank's "Fairy
Book." The Mother Goose tales as first collected by Perrault should now
be owned in a well-illustrated English translation. On account of their
humour and their common everyday tone, the English household and folk
tales will make a strong appeal. Scudder's "Folk Stories," S.
Baring-Gould's "Old English Fairy Tales," and "Fairy-Gold" by Ernest
Rhys are all good in their way; but "English Fairy Tales" by Joseph
Jacobs, with its amusing illustrations by John Batton, is told in the
simplest and most dramatic way, and it should be owned by every boy.
There is one collection of fairy tales that should come into the boy's
possession about the end of the third school year, and that book is the
excellent work of the brothers Grimm, whatever be the title. The one
superior translation is the one made by Edward Taylor about 1826, and a
reprint of it issued in 1878, with Cruikshank's etchings and Ruskin's
introduction. But there are many good and simple translations that are
well illustrated. After these highly imaginative tales of the German
fireside, there should be owned a good translation of the romantic and
refined tales of the North, the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen.
To these stories are many excellent illustrations, including those of
Stratton, Tegner, and Dulac. It may not be possible and maybe not
desirable to own editions of the tales of D'Aulnoy, Laboulaye, Hauff,
and others, for the best of their stories may be found in some
compilations. Among these are "Mother Goose Nursery Tales" issued by
Nister, Andrew Lang's "Blue Fairy Book," "Big Book of Fairy Tales"
collected by Walter Jerrold, "A Child's Book of Stories" illustrated by
Jessie Wilcox Smith and the recently issued attractive edition of "The
Fairy Book" by Dinah Maria Mulock. A distinct service could have been
rendered to children if Andrew Lang had selected the best of the stories
from his voluminous and unequally good colour fairy books and had issued
them in one large, well-made volume with artistic illustrations.
And yet there remains the greatest and most wonderful of all fairy
tales, the "Tales of a Thousand and One Nights," to be begun with the
easier tales now, but only to be enjoyed thoroughly in the upper grammar
grades. No other book is so romantic or so entrancing, nor does anybody
ever get too old to read it. It worked its spell on Coleridge, for he
wrote: "Give me the 'Arabian Nights' Entertainments' which I used to
watch, till the sun shining on the bookcase appeared, and, glowing full
upon it, gave me the courage to take it from the shelf." And was it not
this book that made wonderful little Marjorie Fleming willing to sleep
at the foot of the bed where she could continually read it? The
translation made by Edward William Lane in 1839 and illustrated by
William Harvey under his direction will never be surpassed; but Jonathan
Scott's translation is easier for the boy to read. Many well-illustrated
but not always well-edited editions may be found.
Will a boy read "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"? Should a boy read
"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"? Yes and yes! Any boy who cannot
enjoy the most delightful fooling that was ever put into a book deserves
the greatest of sympathy. He is certainly full of unmannerly sadness in
his youth. Where else was there ever such clever and curious nonsense?
What mathematician other than Dodgson ever put before boys and girls
such enduring work? It is a case where two and two does not always make
four, but it does always make the pleasing thing. Much that goes as
serious literature is not half so wise as is the playfulness of this
book, nor is it so worthy of being thoroughly known and appreciated. Of
course there are a few perpendicular people who see not that it has
abiding charms. They cannot double or shake to the mood of its
nonsense--nor do they find it grow "curiouser and curiouser" with each
reading. Yet it is a classic for children, and it is going to endure.
As a general rule, books for children are cast in a rather serious mood.
This is true of the myth and the romantic fairy tale. But the element of
humour creeps into the English and the German household tales, for
humour is necessary to all earnest living. How far this sense of humour
is to be developed is a question hard to answer. This much is true,
however: in mature years and under the full responsibility of life, a
keen sense of humour is about the only thing that will save a man from
himself at times, preserve his balance when he is nearing the borderland
of tragedy. Now what is to be the nature of this humour? Is it to be the
insipid burlesque that finds its pleasure in the medical almanac and the
comic supplement? Or is it to be the kind that wears the sock with
brains and taste, the kind that Touchstone has? The latter is the one
that sparkles and is worth while. It is the kind that the child starts
with in "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "The Rose and the Ring."
It is the product of men who possess qualities of mind and heart such as
Thackeray did. How Shakespeare must have doted on his jesters! And what
musical nonsense refrains he wrote.
All this bears out De Quincey's saying that only a man of extraordinary
talent can write nonsense. And nonsense literature is a test of the
ability of a reader. Pitt once exclaimed: "Don't tell me of a man's
being able to talk sense; every one can talk sense. Can he talk
nonsense?" Now a child will talk nonsense and delight in it, even if it
is nothing but a counting-out rhyme. Then he will come to prefer
nonsense of a refined type, innocent and fantastic verse. A book of
this kind that he will take a fancy to is Edward Lear's "Nonsense
Songs"; and if it is the edition illustrated by Leslie Brooke, he will
be grateful when a nonsense mood is on him. Ruskin called it the most
beneficent and innocent of all nonsense books. The boy might start with
this book, go to "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," and then try "The
Rose and the Ring." When he reaches the upper grammar grades, he will
then enjoy the splendid retelling of "The Adventures of Don Quixote," by
Judge Parry, with Walter Crane's illustrations. If he does this, on
reaching man's estate he will keep some favourite translation of this
wonderful book of Cervantes in a convenient pocket edition along with
his "Pickwick Papers."
Before going to the class of books based on myths, one brief work must
be mentioned, not only because it marks an epoch in the making of
children's books, but also because it is a child's classic with real
merit, and about the only one on such a theme. Nearly all others of this
kind are prudish, priggish, and inartistic. This one happens to have a
loftiness of tone. Its style is as charming as this whimsical title:
"The History of Little Goody Two Shoes, otherwise called Mrs. Marjory
Two Shoes, the means by which she acquired her learning and wisdom, and
in consequence thereof her estate; set forth at large for the benefit of
those
"Who from a state of Rags and Care,
And having Shoes but half a Pair;
Their Fortune and their Fame would fix,
And gallop in a Coach and Six."
If any one is in doubt as to who wrote this book, the inscription "to
all young gentlemen and ladies who are good, or intend to be good" ought
to convince him. Intend to be good, was not that Goldsmith--and the rest
of us? An edition of this historic story with pictures after the
original woodcuts of 1765 should be in the hands of every child.
Though America's contribution to children's literature of an enduring
type has been limited, it is gratifying to know that America's most
finished artist, Nathaniel Hawthorne, has given to that literature two
books that every boy must know, "Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys" and
"Tanglewood Tales for Girls and Boys; a Second Wonder-Book." That every
boy who is going to become a mature reader of good books needs to know
the myths of Greece and Rome, goes without saying. Now he had better
learn these from a book having a literary touch than from the ordinary
telling of text-books. For this reason he should completely master these
two books by Hawthorne. The illustrated edition of the former by Walter
Crane and George Wharton Edwards' illustrations of the latter are both
fine. Not so good as these two, yet necessary, is Charles Kingsley's
"Heroes; or, Greek Fairy Tales for My Children." And the telling of the
story of the Odyssey by Charles Lamb in his "Adventures of Ulysses" is
good to read, but rather difficult before the last year of the grammar
grades. The wonderful exploits of the heroes in the Iliad should be
familiar to every boy, and he can get them about all in Bulfinch's "Age
of Fable" as well as anywhere else. This book he must surely own, and
whether it is called merely a text-book or not, it is the best work that
has yet appeared on the mythology of the world as it is found in
classical allusions of English books. If he learns the story of the
siege of Troy and the return to Ithaca from this book, he may want to
hear Chapman speak out loud and bold a few years later.
Does any schoolboy from a home other than one in which Puritan notions
yet prevail read "Pilgrim's Progress"? If he does not, the fault is not
in the book. It is as interesting as it is vitally true, and has been
positively helpful. According to Macaulay, it has been loved by those
too simple to admire it. There is really no such thing as an
uninteresting great book. There are uninterested people, though there
should not be an uninterested normal boy. If there is, he is a victim of
the emasculating process of sugar-coated teaching, parental indulgence,
and vaudeville amusement. Or maybe he has the habit of the boy's series,
that cuts all characters to the same fashion, the fashion of prudery. In
either case he will never be a pilgrim. Of course it would be foolish
to insist on a boy's reading many such books, even if there were more
like it written. You might as well insist on seven sermons a week for a
man. One in seven days seems often enough to be effective; and one great
book like this one, if well mastered, is all that the boy needs. In
mature years he can again read it and marvel at its intrinsic greatness
and find it something of a reflection of his own experiences in life.
And by having done this he may chance to read such great poetical
allegories as the "Faerie Queene" and the "Divine Comedy."
As this allegory of Bunyan's represented the spiritual experiences of
life as the Puritan saw it, so does "Robinson Crusoe" represent the
Puritan view of the practical virtues in experience, such as the virtues
of prudence, ingenuity, and patience. But for all this it is one of the
most fascinating and typical of English stories, and one of the really
great ones. Every lad must know this book. Stevenson tells of a Welsh
blacksmith who learned to read that he might add this hero to his
possibilities of experience.
The third book of that great half-century following the Restoration is
one of the few books written to be read by men that has become a child's
classic. No wonder Swift afterwards exclaimed, "What a genius I had when
I wrote that book!" Yet children read it with pleasure without seeing
anything in it but the interesting adventures of Gulliver. Of course,
the voyages to Lilliput and to Brobdingnag are the only ones to be given
to the boy, and it is unfortunate that publishers have not generally
recognized this in issuing "Gulliver's Travels" for children. It is less
necessary to read the other two voyages than it is to read the second
part of "Pilgrim's Progress" and the "Further Adventures of Robinson
Crusoe."
There is a field of reading very much akin to the field of mythology in
which there is no single book that the boy can read that is so permanent
in its form as is the "Wonder-Book," yet it is a field in which the boy
should feel at home. That is the field that includes the Arthurian
legends and the Robin Hood stories. Among the many books that have
appeared, the excellent work done by the poet Lanier in his "Boy's King
Arthur" and by the late artist Howard Pyle should surely find a place on
every boy's book shelf. Much of Malory is retained in the former, and
the conventional drawings in the latter make a strong appeal despite the
widespread mania for colour. The boy who has become attached to his "Age
of Fable" might satisfy his curiosity in this romantic field by the
almost equally good "Age of Chivalry" and "The Legends of Charlemagne."
At what age should a boy turn to Shakespeare? That depends on the boy.
If he is an average child, he should have something of the plays read to
him at a fairly young age; but it is doubtful if he can do much on his
own account before the high school age is reached. He might, however, be
urged to attempt "A Midsummer-Night's Dream," "The Tempest," and "King
Henry V." At about the age of twelve or fourteen years he should own a
good illustrated edition in one volume such as the one done by Sir John
Gilbert. But be this as it may, he has a right to get something of a
glimpse of the wonderful things in these plays through that admirable
telling of some of them in Lamb's "Tales from Shakespeare." Though it
may be Lamb instead of Shakespeare, there is no better book of retold
stones in English than this work of Thackeray's "Dear Saint Charles" and
his sister Mary.
This brings up the question of the boy's reading of poetry and the books
that he should own. As suggested in a former chapter, the one good
collection is Palgrave's "Children's Treasury of English Song." There is
no second one in this class; for all others seem to have some fatal
defects of judgment, though they are usually printed in more attractive
form. The publishers of this anthology need to issue a well printed,
well illustrated, and well bound edition, and the book stores need to
put it on their shelves, where it is now almost a total stranger. But
the approach to such a collection should be gradual. It might start in
the second grade with Kate Greenaway's edition of "Dame Wiggins of Lee
and Her Seven Wonderful Cats; a Humorous Tale Written Principally by a
Lady of Ninety," and Caldecott's "John Gilpin's Ride." This could be
followed with Kate Greenaway's or Hope Dunlap's "Pied Piper of Hamelin."
And all children must have Stevenson's "A Child's Garden of Verses" with
illustrations by either Florence Edith Storer or Jessie Wilcox Smith.
Eugene Field's "Poems of Childhood," illustrated by Maxfield Parrish,
deserves a place, as does the dainty volume of Blake's "Songs of
Innocence," illustrated by Geraldine Morris. If on reaching the upper
grammar grades the boy has found pleasure in his "Children's Treasury of
English Song," he might be urged to own complete editions of a few of
the poets. The first volume should be the poems of Longfellow, not
because of his greatness but because he is the best loved of our noted
poets and the easiest one for the boy to read. The next volume should be
one of Tennyson, where he will find things actually great. If he comes
to prefer "The Passing of Arthur" to "Enoch Arden," he is developing
taste and judgment and will later enjoy Milton and Wordsworth.
There are two books of recent years, "The Jungle Book" and "The Second
Jungle Book," that have intrinsic worth and charm and should be owned by
every boy about his fifth school year. The superior tales are the Mowgli
stories, and it is a pity they are not issued in a single volume. Where
was there ever a more intense or dramatic story written than "Red Dog"?
How does it happen that teachers seldom give these stories to children,
but manage to waste plenty of good time on insipid, made-to-order
stories designed to teach mercy to animals? These animal stories for a
purpose are like most verse for an occasion--an offence against literary
art. Let the boy learn of the charms and the tragedies of animal life in
the jungle.
When the boy's reading shifts toward the romance and the novel, he needs
to guard against overreading, indiscriminate reading, and being
bewildered by the multitude of books from which to choose. For a while
he had better keep to such books as "The Prince and the Pauper" and
"Treasure Island." If he is not at once interested in that plot based on
the universal desire to change lots with some one else, or the universal
longing to find a hidden treasure, he either has perverted tastes or is
without any tastes at all. From these it is an easy step to the forest
life of "The Last of the Mohicans" and the life of chivalry presented in
"Ivanhoe." He will then surely like that charming story of romantic home
life, "Lorna Doone."
Some teacher may wonder if books other than stories and verse are not to
be read. Of course they are, and they will be anyhow. Yet they are not
books of power, fundamental to the growth of personality; they are
books of knowledge of one kind or another. Just where the division line
is to be drawn and which is the right class for this book and that, is
hard to say, and matters little when it is determined; but the place of
a few has been definitely fixed by experience, and they happen to be
stories. That great literary field of comfort to men, the personal
essay, is beyond the schoolboy. And so is much of biography and history.
But there can be found for him to read many books, such as "Tales of a
Grandfather," "A Child's History of England," Southey's "Life of
Nelson," "Two Years Before the Mast," "The Oregon Trail," Franklin's
"Autobiography," and some good abridgment of "Plutarch's Lives," that
make an order of books different from "Robinson Crusoe," "Pilgrim's
Progress," and "Arabian Nights' Entertainments"; yet they ought to be
read after a few of the greater ones have been mastered. Many a boy may
be greatly helped and inspired to honest effort by Samuel Smiles'
"Self-Help," yet no one would think of classing it as great literature.
This, together with books on travel and the wonders of science and
invention will take care of themselves, and the average boy will pick up
enough of them of his own accord. What he needs is a book that by its
imaginative power lifts him above the commonplace facts of everyday
life. If the foundation be laid in the enduring work of a few great
books, what is built thereon will abundantly reward the early effort of
mastering them.
There is yet one book of powerful and pure English that must be
mentioned. The boy should have early heard it read aloud, learned
passages from it by heart, and have read parts of it on his own account.
In proportion as he has gathered the richness of this book will he have
a grasp on clear language and clear understanding. That book is the
version of the Bible authorized by King James. It gave to our fathers
not only their faith but also that grip on racy, clear, and vigorous
English that made many an artisan a better talker and writer than the
man trained in the halls of higher learning. It has had a power above
all other books in English to stir the imagination and move the soul,
and this without regard to any particular religious belief. No book has
ever told stories with the ease, directness, and intensity of this one.
Its style expresses the strongest and deepest feelings of
English-speaking men. And this style has been caught by such masters of
prose in their own centuries as Bunyan and Lincoln. Yet it is evident to
teachers that the great stories of the Scriptures are not known by
children. The Bible needs to be dusted and read, even if it is brought
about by the strong hand of authority in the home and in the school.
Taste in books can be directed, or at least modified, and the authority
to direct must be about its business with the urchins at school. The
aphorism that you can lead a horse to the water but you cannot make him
drink, is only half true. If the water is kept under his nose and there
is a good grip on the halter, he will be drinking before he is aware of
it. In fact, he may need to be led away at times to keep him from
drinking too much. The business of the school teacher is to get the boy
to the trough and then see that he does not drink too much. This will be
a thing of effort, for at every turn there are the springs of juvenile
series, Sunday School Pharisees, comic supplements, and penny-dreadfuls
that flow as if they would never cease. The boy needs to develop a sort
of anchorite spirit and seek out a secluded place with an armful of
books that are really worth while.
The armful which he needs to own and be friends with might be something
like the following, if such a list can be ventured without offence to
that strong spirit of individualism that will call it wooden and
lock-step; yet that in its iconoclasm and mental anarchy gets nowhere
and does nothing. This is the list by grades: First grade--"Mother Goose
Rhymes," Brooke's "The Golden Goose Book," "Dame Wiggins of Lee and Her
Seven Wonderful Cats"; second grade--"AEsop's Fables," "The Cruikshank
Fairy Book," Goldsmith's "The History of Little Goody Two Shoes"; third
grade--Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," Jacobs' "English
Fairy Tales," Stevenson's "A Child's Garden of Verses," Scudder's "The
Children's Book"; fourth grade--Grimm's "Fairy and Household Tales,"
Andersen's "Fairy Tales," Browne's "Granny's Wonderful Chair,"
Thackeray's "The Rose and the Ring"; fifth grade--Hawthorne's "The
Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys" and "Tanglewood Tales for Girls and
Boys; a Second Wonder-Book," Kingsley's "Heroes; or, Greek Fairy Tales
for My Children," Swift's "Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote
Nations of the World," Kipling's "The Jungle Book" and "The Second
Jungle Book"; sixth grade--"Arabian Nights' Entertainments," Lamb's
"Adventures of Ulysses," Defoe's "The Life and Strange Adventures of
Robinson Crusoe," Pyle's "The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood,"
Palgrave's "The Children's Treasury of English Song"; seventh
grade--Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress," Lanier's "The Boy's King
Arthur," Twain's "The Prince and the Pauper," Cervantes' "The Adventures
of Don Quixote of the Mancha," Stevenson's "Treasure Island"; eighth
grade--Lamb's "Tales from Shakespeare," Cooper's "The Last of the
Mohicans," Scott's "Ivanhoe," Blackmore's "Lorna Doone," Bulfinch's "The
Age of Fable; or, the Beauties of Mythology."
The savings necessary to buy these books, the time spent in reading and
rereading them, the power and taste that will come from both of these
efforts,--these will serve the boy when he comes to man's estate. For no
work in a finishing school or in college English can ever give him what
he will get of his own accord by having good books as his companions
during his public school life. Let him try the list with the hope that
it will meet Ruskin's comment: "Of course you must or will read other
books for amusement, once or twice; but you will find that these have an
element of perpetuity in them."