|A correspondent asked me the other day to make him out a list of Twelve
Books that he ought to read. I declined the task in that form. I did not
know what he had read, and I did not know what his tastes or his needs
were, and even with that knowledge I should hesitate to prescribe for
another. But I compromised with him by prescribing for myself. I assumed
that for some offence against D.O.R.A. I was to be cast ashore on a
desert island out in the Pacific, where I was to be left in solitude for
twelve months, or perhaps never to be called for at all, and that as a
mitigation of the penalty I was to be permitted to carry with me twelve
books of my own choosing. On what principles should I set about so
momentous a choice?
In the first place I decided that they must be books of the
inexhaustible kind. Rowland Hill said that “the love of God was like a
generous roast of beef--you could cut and come again.” That must be the
first quality of my Twelve Books. They must be books that one could
go on reading and re-reading as interminably as the old apple-woman in
Borrow went on reading “Moll Flanders.” If only her son had known that
immortal book, she said, he would never have got transported for life.
That was the sort of book I must have with me on my desert island. But
my choice would be different from that of the old apple-woman of Old
London Bridge. I dismissed all novels from my consideration. Even the
best of novels are exhaustible, and if I admitted novels at all my
bundle of books would be complete before I had made a start with the
essentials, for I should want “Tristram Shandy” and “Tom Jones,” two
or three of Scott's, Gogol's “Dead Souls,” “David Copperfield,” “Evan
Harrington,” “The Brothers Karamazoff,” “Père Goriot,” “War and Peace,”
“The Three Musketeers,” all of Hardy's, “Treasure Island,” “Robinson
Crusoe,” “Silas Marner,” “Don Quixote,” the “Cloister and the Hearth,”
“Esmond”--no, no, it would never do to include novels. They must be left
behind.
The obvious beginning would have been the Bible and Shakespeare, but
these had been conceded not as a luxury but as a necessity, and did not
come in the scope of my Twelve. History I must have on the grand scale,
so that I can carry the story of the past with me into exile. I have
no doubt about my first choice here. Thucydides (I) is as easily first
among the historians as Sirius is first among the stars. To read him
by the lightnings of to-day is to read him with a freshness and
understanding that have the excitement of contemporary comment. The gulf
of twenty-three centuries is miraculously bridged, and you pass to and
fro, as it were, from the mighty European drama of to-day to the mighty
drama of ancient Greece, encountering the same emotions and agonies, the
same ambitions, the same plots and counter-plots, the same villains, and
the same heroes. Yes, Thucydides of course.
And Plutarch (2) almost equally of course. What portrait gallery is
there to compare with his? What a mine of legend and anecdote, history
and philosophy, wisdom and superstition. I am less clear when I come
to the story of Rome. Shall I put in the stately Gibbon, the learned
Mommsen, or the lively, almost journalistic Ferrero? It is a hard
choice. I shut my eyes and take pot luck. Ferrero (3) is it? Well,
I make no complaint. And then I will have those three fat volumes of
Motley's, “Rise of the Dutch Republic” (4) put in my boat, please,
and--yes, Carlyle's “French Revolution” (5), which is history and drama
and poetry and fiction all in one. And, since I must take the story of
my own land with me, just throw in Green's “Short History” (6). It is
lovable for its serene and gracious temper as much as for its story.
That's as much history as I can afford, for I must leave room for the
more personal companions who will talk to me like old friends and keep
the fires of human contact ablaze on my solitary isle. First, of course,
there is Boswell (7), and next there is Pepys (8), (Wheatley's edition,
for there only is the real Samuel revealed “wart and all”). I should
like to take “Elia” and that rascal Benvenuto Cellini; but I must limit
my personal following to three, and on the whole I think the third place
must be reserved for old Montaigne (9), for I could not do without that
frank, sagacious, illuminated mind in my little fellowship. Akin to
these good fellows I must have the picaresque Borrow to lend the quality
of open-air romance to the comradeship, and shutting my eyes once more
I choose indifferently from the pile, for I haven't the heart to make a
choice between the “Bible in Spain,” “The Romany Rye,” “Lavengro,” and
“Wild Wales.” But I rejoice when I find that “Lavengro” (10) is in the
boat.
I can have only one poet, but that makes the choice easy. If I could
have had half a dozen the choice would have been hard; but when it is
Wordsworth (11) _contra mundum_, I have no doubt. He is the man who will
“soothe and heal and bless.” My last selection shall be given to a
work of travel and adventure. I reduce the area of choice to Hakluyt's
“Voyages” and the “Voyage of the Beagle,” and while I am balancing their
claims the “Beagle” (12) slips out of my hand into the boat. My library
is complete. And so, spread the sails to the wind and away for the
Pacific.
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