and a half centuries, recommended to the chief attention of the reader
ten great authors,--Chaucer and Spenser, Shakspeare and Bacon, Milton
and Taylor, Bunyan and Locke, Pope and Defoe. We now come to the TIME OF
NOVELISTS, HISTORIANS, AND SCIENTISTS, a period in the history of our
literature that is so prolific of great writers in all the vastly
multiplied departments of thought, that it is no longer possible to
particularize in the manner we have done in regard to the preceding
ages. A sufficient illustration has been given of the methods of judging
books and the results of their application. With the ample materials of
Table I. before him, the reader must now be left to make his own
judgments in regard to the relative merits of the books of the modern
period. We shall confine our remarks on this last time of English
literature to the recommendation of ten great authors to match the ten
great names of former times. In history, we shall name _Parkman_, the
greatest of American historians; in philosophy, _Herbert Spencer_, the
greatest name in the whole list of philosophers; in poetry, _Byron_ and
_Tennyson_, neither of them equal to Shakspeare and Milton, but standing
in the next file behind them; in fiction, _Scott_, _Eliot_, and
_Dickens_; in poetic humor, _Lowell_, the greatest of all names in this
department; and in general literature, _Carlyle_ and _Ruskin_, two of
the purest, wisest, and most forcible writers of all the past, and,
curiously enough, both of them very eccentric and very wordy,--a sort of
English double star, which will be counted in this list as a unit, in
order to crowd in _Emerson_, who belongs in this great company, and is
not by any means the least worthy member of it. One more writer there is
in this time greater than any we have named, except Spencer and Scott;
namely, the author of "The Origin of Species." _Darwin_ stands by the
side of Newton in the history of scientific thought; but, like his great
compeer, the essence of his book has come to be a part of modern thought
that floats in the air we breathe; and so his claims to being read are
less than those of authors who cannot be called so great when speaking
of intrinsic merit.
Having introduced the greatest ten of old, and ten that may be deemed
the greatest of the new, in English letters, we shall pass to take a
bird's-eye view of what is best in Greece and Rome, France, Italy, and
Spain, and say a word of Persia, Germany, and Portugal.
THE GREATEST NAMES OF OTHER LITERATURES.
=Greece=, in her thirteen centuries of almost continuous literary
productiveness from Homer to Longus, gave the world its greatest epic
poet, _Homer_; the finest of lyric poets, _Pindar_; the prince of
orators, _Demosthenes_; aside from our own Bacon and Spencer, the
greatest philosophers of all the ages, _Plato_ and _Aristotle_; the most
noted of fabulists, _AEsop_; the most powerful writer of comedy,
_Aristophanes_ (Moliere, however, is much to be preferred for modern
reading, because of his fuller applicability to our life); and the three
greatest writers of pure tragedy, _AEschylus_, _Sophocles_, and
_Euripides_,--the first remarkable for his gloomy grandeur and gigantic,
dark, and terrible sublimity; the second for his sweet majesty and
pathos; and third for the power with which he paints men as they are in
real life. Euripides was a great favorite with Milton and Fox.
To one who is not acquainted with these ten great Greeks, much of the
sweetest and grandest of life remains untasted and unknown. Begin with
Homer, Plato's "Phaedo" and "Republic," AEschylus' "Prometheus Bound,"
Sophocles' "OEdipus," and Demosthenes' "On the Crown."
A liberal reading must also include the Greek historians Herodotus,
Thucydides, and Xenophon.
=Rome= taught the world the art of war, but was herself a pupil in the
halls of Grecian letters. Only three writers--_Plutarch_, _Marcus
Aurelius_ (who both wrote in Greek), and _Epictetus_--can claim our
attention in anything like an equal degree with the authors of Athens
named just above. Its literature as a whole is on a far lower plane than
that of Greece or England. A liberal education must include Virgil's
"AEneid," the national epic of Rome (which, however, must take its place
in our lives and hearts far after Homer, Shakspeare, Milton, Dante, and
Goethe), for its elegance and imagination; Horace, for his wit, grace,
sense, and inimitable witchery of phrase; Lucretius, for his depth of
meditation; Tacitus, for knowledge of our ancestors; Ovid and Catullus,
for their beauty of expression; Juvenal, for the keenness of his satire;
and Plautus and Terence, for their insight into the characters of men.
But these books should wait until at least the three first named in this
paragraph, with the ten Greek and twenty English writers spoken of in
the preceding paragraphs, have come to be familiar friends.
=Italy=, in Chaucer's century, produced a noble literature. _Dante_ is
the Shakspeare of the Latin races. He stands among the first creators of
sublimity. AEschylus and Milton only can claim a place beside him.
_Petrarch_ takes lofty rank as a lyric poet, breathing the heart of
love. Boccaccio may be put with Chaucer. Ariosto and Tasso wrote the
finest epics of Italian poetry. A liberal education must neglect no one
of these. Every life should hold communion with the soul of Dante, and
get a taste at least of Petrarch.
=France= has a glorious literature; in science, the best in the world.
In history, _Guizot_; in jurisprudence, in its widest sense,
_Montesquieu_; and in picturing the literary history of a nation,
_Taine_, stand unrivalled anywhere. Among essayists, _Montaigne_; among
writers of fiction, _Le Sage_, _Victor Hugo_, and _Balzac_; among the
dramatists, _Corneille_ the grand, _Racine_ the graceful and tender, and
_Moliere_ the creator of modern comedy; and among fabulists, the
inimitable poet of fable, _La Fontaine_, demand a share of our time with
the best. Descartes, Pascal, Rousseau, Voltaire, and Comte belong in
every liberal scheme of culture and to every student of philosophy.
=Spain= gives us two most glorious names, _Cervantes_ and _Pedro
Calderon de la Barca_,--the former one of the world's very greatest
humorists, the brother spirit of Lowell; the latter, a princely
dramatist, the brother of Shakspeare.
=Germany= boasts one summit on which the shadow of no other falls.
_Goethe's_ "Faust" and "Wilhelm Meister" and his minor poems cannot be
neglected if we want the best the world affords; _Schiller_, too, and
_Humboldt_, _Kant_ and _Heine_, _Helmholtz_ and _Haeckel_ must be read.
In science and history, the list of German greatness is a very long and
bright one.
=Persia= calls us to read her magnificent astronomer-poet, _Omar
Khayyam_; her splendid epic, the _Shah Nameh of Firdusi_, the story of
whose labors, successes, and misfortunes is one of the most interesting
passages in the history of poetry; and taste at least of her extravagant
singer of the troubles and ecstasies of love, Hafiz.
=Portugal= has given us _Camoens_, with his great poem the "Luciad."
=Denmark= brings us her charming _Andersen_; and =Russia= comes to us
with her Byronic Pushkin and her Schiller-hearted poet, Lermontoff, at
least for a glance.
We have thus named as the chiefs, twenty authors in English, ten in
Greek, three of Rome, two of Italy, ten of France, two of Spain, seven
of Germany, three of Persia, one of Portugal, one of Denmark, and two of
Russia,--sixty-one in all,--which, if read in the manner indicated, will
impart a pretty thorough knowledge of the literary treasures of the
world.
THE FOUNTAINS OF NATIONAL LITERATURES.
In the early history of every great people there has grown up a body of
songs celebrating the heroism of their valiant warriors and the charms
of their beautiful women. These have, generation after generation, been
passed by word of mouth from one group of singers to their
successors,--by each new set of artists somewhat polished and
improved,--until they come to us as Homer's Iliad, the "Nibelungenlied"
of the Germans, the "Chronicle of the Cid" of the Spanish, the "Chansons
de Gestes," the "Romans," and the "Fabliaux" of the French, and
"Beowulf" and the "Morte D'Arthur" of English literature. These great
poems are the sources of a vast portion of what is best in subsequent
art. From them Virgil, Boccaccio, Chaucer, Rabelais, Moliere,
Shakspeare, Calderon, and a host of others have drawn their inspiration.
Malory has wrought the Arthurian songs into a mould of the purest
English. The closing books, in their quiet pathos and reserved
strength,--in their melody, winged words, and inimitable turns of
phrase,--rank with the best poetry of Europe. Southey called the "Cid"
the finest poem in the Spanish language, and Prescott said it was "the
most remarkable performance of the Middle Ages." This may be going
rather too far; but it certainly stands in the very front rank of
national poems. It has been translated by Lockhart in verse, by Southey
in prose, and there is a splendid fragment by Frere. Of the French early
epics, the "Chanson de Roland" and the "Roman du Renart" are the best.
The "Nibelungenlied" is the embodiment of the wild and tragic,--the
highest note of the barbaric drama of the North. That last terrific
scene in the Hall of Etzel will rest forever in the memory of every
reader of the book. Carlyle has given a sketch of the poem in his
"Miscellanies," vol. iii., and there exists a complete but prolix and
altogether miserable translation of the great epic, but we sadly need a
condensed version of the myth of "Siegfried" the brave, and "Chriemhild"
the beautiful, in the stirring prose of Malory or Southey. No reader
will regret a perusal of these songs of the people; it is a journey to
the head-waters of the literary Nile.
The reader of this little book we hope has gained an inspiration--if it
were not his before--that, with a strong and steady step, will lead him
into all the paths of beauty and of truth. Each glorious emotion and
each glowing thought that comes to us, becomes a centre of new growth.
Each wave of pathos, humor, or sublimity that pulses through the heart
or passes to the brain, sets up vibrations that will never die, but
beautify the hours and years that follow to the end of life. These waves
that pass into the soul do not conceal their music in the heart, but
echo back upon the world in waves of kindred power; and these return
forever from the world into the heart that gave them forth. It is as on
the evening river, where the boatman bends his homeward oar. Each lusty
call that leaves his lips, or song, or bugle blast that slips the
tensioned bars, and wings the breeze, to teach its rhythm to the trees
that crown the rocky twilight steep o'er which the lengthening shadows
creep, returns and enters, softened, sweet, and clear, the waiting
portal of the sender's ear. The man who fills his being with the noblest
books, and pours their beauty out in word and deed, is like the merry
singers on the placid moonlit lake. Backward the ripples o'er the silver
sheet come on the echoes' winged feet; the hills and valleys all around
gather the gentle shower of sound, and pour the stream upon the boat in
which the happy singers float, chanting the hymns they loved of yore,
shipping the glistening wave-washed oar, to hear reflected from the
shore their every charmed note. Oh, loosen from _thy_ lip, my friend, no
tone thine ear would with remorseful sorrow hear, hurling it back from
far and near, the listening landscape oft repeat! Rather a melody send
to greet the mountains beyond the silver sheet. Life's the soul's song;
sing sweetly, then, that when the silence comes again, and ere it comes,
from every glen the echoes shall be sweet.
APPENDIX.
THE BEST THOUGHTS OF GREAT MEN ABOUT BOOKS AND READING.
APPENDIX I.
THE BEST THOUGHTS OF GREAT MEN ABOUT BOOKS AND READING.
=Addison=. "Books are the legacies that genius leaves to mankind."
"Knowledge of books is a torch in the hands of one who is willing and
able to show those who are bewildered the way which leads to prosperity
and welfare."
=Alcott, A. B=. "My favorite books have a personality and complexion as
distinctly drawn as if the author's portrait were framed into the
paragraphs, and smiled upon me as I read his illustrated pages."
"Next to a friend's discourse, no morsel is more delicious than a ripe
book,--a book whose flavor is as refreshing at the thousandth tasting as
at the first."
"Next to a personal introduction, a list of one's favorite authors were
the best admittance to his character and manners."
"A good book perpetuates its fame from age to age, and makes eras in the
lives of its readers."
=Atkinson, W. P=. "Who can over-estimate the value of good books,--those
ships of thought, as Bacon so finely calls them, voyaging through the
sea of time, and carrying their precious freight so safely from
generation to generation?"
=Arnott, Dr=. "Books,--the miracle of all possessions, more wonderful
than the wishing-cap of the Arabian tales; for they transport instantly,
not only to all places, but to all times."
=Bacon=. "Studies serve for pastimes, for ornaments, for abilities.
Their chief use for pastimes is in privateness and retiring; for
ornaments, in discourse; and for ability, in judgment.... To spend too
much time in them is sloth; to use them too much for ornament is
affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules is the humor of a
scholar. They perfect nature, and are themselves perfected by
experience. Crafty men contemn them, wise men use them, simple men
admire them; for they teach not their own use, but that there is a
wisdom without them and above them won by observation. Read not to
contradict, nor to believe, but to weigh and consider.... Reading maketh
a full man, conference a ready, and writing an exact man. Therefore, if
a man write little, he had need of a great memory; if he confer little,
he hath need of a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have
much cunning to seem to know that he doth not know. Histories make men
wise, poets witty, the mathematicians subtile, natural philosophy deep,
moral grave, logic and rhetoric able to contend."
=Barrow=. "He who loveth a book will never want a faithful friend, a
wholesome counsellor, a cheerful companion, or an effectual comforter."
=Bartholin=. "Without books God is silent, justice dormant, natural
science at a stand, philosophy lame, letters dumb, and all things
involved in Cimmerian darkness."
=Beaconsfield, Lord=. "The idea that human happiness is dependent on the
cultivation of the mind and on the discovery of truth is, next to the
conviction of our immortality, the idea the most full of consolation to
man; for the cultivation of the mind has no limits, and truth is the
only thing that is eternal."
"Knowledge is like the mystic ladder in the patriarch's dream. Its base
rests on the primeval earth, its crest is lost in the shadowy splendor
of the empyrean; while the great authors, who for traditionary ages have
held the chain of science and philosophy, of poesy and erudition, are
the angels ascending and descending the sacred scale, and maintaining,
as it were, the communication between man and heaven."
=Beecher, Henry Ward=. "A book is good company. It seems to enter the
memory, and to hover in a silvery transformation there until the outward
book is but a body, and its soul and spirit are flown to you, and
possess your memory like a spirit."
"Books are the windows through which the soul looks out. A home without
books is like a room without windows...."
=Bright, John=. "What is a great love of books? It is something like a
personal introduction to the great and good men of all past time."
=Brooks, Phillips=. "Is it not a new England for a child to be born in
since Shakspeare gathered up the centuries and told the story of
humanity up to his time? Will not Carlyle and Tennyson make the man who
begins to live from them the 'heir of all ages' which have distilled
their richness into the books of the sage and the singer of the
nineteenth century?"
=Browning, Elizabeth Barrett=.
"When we gloriously forget ourselves and plunge
Soul forward, headlong into a book's profound,
Impassioned for its beauty, and salt of truth--
'Tis then we get the right good from a book."
=Bruyere=. "When a book raises your spirit, and inspires you with noble
and courageous feelings, seek for no other rule to judge the event by;
it is good, and made by a good workman."
=Bury, Richard de=. "You, O Books! are golden urns in which manna is
laid up; rocks flowing with honey, or rather, indeed, honeycombs; udders
most copiously yielding the milk of life, store-rooms ever full; the
four-streamed river of Paradise, where the human mind is fed, and the
arid intellect moistened and watered; fruitful olives, vines of Engaddi,
fig-trees knowing no sterility; burning lamps to be ever held in the
hand."
"In books we find the dead, as it were, living.... The truth written in
a book ... enters the chamber of intellect, reposes itself upon the
couch of memory, and there congenerates the eternal truth of the mind."
=Carlyle=. "Evermore is _Wisdom_ the highest of conquests to every son
of Adam,--nay, in a large sense, the one conquest; and the precept to
every one of us is ever, 'Above all thy gettings get understanding.'"
"Of all the things which man can do or make here below, by far the most
momentous, wonderful, and worthy are the things we call books."
"All that mankind has done, thought, gained, and been, is lying as in
magic preservation in the pages of books."
=Channing, Dr. Wm. E=. "God be thanked for books! They are the voices of
the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of
past ages. Books are the true levellers. They give to all who will
faithfully use them the society, the spiritual presence, of the best and
greatest of our race. No matter how poor I am; no matter though the
prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling: if the
sacred writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof,--if
Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of Paradise; and
Shakspeare, to open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of
the human heart; and Franklin, to enrich me with his practical
wisdom,--I shall not pine for want of intellectual companionship, and I
may become a cultivated man, though excluded from what is called the
best society in the place where I live."
=Chaucer=.
"And as for me, though that I know but lyte[5]
On bokes for to rede I me delyte,
And to them give I (feyth[6]) and ful credence,
And in myn herte have them in reverence
So hertily that there is pastime noon,[7]
That from my bokes 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 foules synge,
And that the floures gynnen for to sprynge;
Farewell my boke, and my devocioun."
[5] Little.
[6] Faith.
[7] None.
=Cicero=. "Studies are the aliment of youth, the comfort of old age, an
adornment of prosperity, a refuge and a solace in adversity, and a
delight in our home."
=Clarke, James Freeman=. "When I consider what some books have done for
the world, and what they are doing,--how they keep up our hope, awaken
new courage and faith, give an ideal life to those whose homes are hard
and cold, bind together distant ages and foreign lands, create new
worlds of beauty, bring down truths from Heaven,--I give eternal
blessings for this gift, and pray that we may use it aright, and abuse
it not."
=Coleridge=. "Some readers are like the hour-glass. Their reading is as
the sand; it runs in and runs out, but leaves not a vestige behind.
Some, like a sponge, which imbibes everything, and returns it in the
same state, only a little dirtier. Some, like a jelly-bag, which allows
all that is pure to pass away, and retains only the refuse and dregs.
The fourth class may be compared to the slave of Golconda, who, casting
away all that is worthless, preserves only the pure gems."
=Collyer, Robert=. "Do you want to know how I manage to talk to you in
this simple Saxon? I will tell you. I read Bunyan, Crusoe, and Goldsmith
when I was a boy, morning, noon, and night; all the rest was task work.
These were my delight, with the stories in the Bible, and with
Shakspeare, when at last the mighty master came within our doors. These
were like a well of pure water; and this is the first step I seem to
have taken of my own free will toward the pulpit. From the days when we
used to spell out Crusoe and old Bunyan, there had grown up in me a
devouring hunger to read books.... I could not go home for the Christmas
of 1839, and was feeling very sad about it all, for I was only a boy;
and sitting by the fire, an old farmer came in and said, 'I notice
thou's fond o' reading, so I brought thee summat to read.' It was
Irving's 'Sketch Book.' I had never heard of the work. I went at it, and
was 'as them that dream.' No such delight had touched me since the old
days of Crusoe."
=Curtis, G. W=. "Books are the ever-burning lamps of accumulated
wisdom."
=De Quincey=. "Every one owes to the impassioned books he has read many
a thousand more of emotions than he can consciously trace back to
them.... A great scholar depends not simply on an infinite memory, but
also on an infinite and electrical power of combination,--bringing
together from the four winds, like the Angel of the Resurrection, what
else were dust from dead men's bones into the unity of breathing life."
=Diodorus=. "Books are the medicine of the mind."
=Emerson=. "The profit of books is according to the sensibility of the
reader."
=Erasmus=. "A little before you go to sleep read something that is
exquisite and worth remembering, and contemplate upon it till you fall
asleep; and when you awake in the morning call yourself to an account
for it."
=Farrar, Canon=. "If all the books of the world were in a blaze, the
first twelve which I should snatch out of the flames would be the Bible,
the Imitation of Christ, Homer, AEschylus, Thucydides, Tacitus, Virgil,
Marcus Aurelius, Dante, Shakspeare, Milton, Wordsworth. Of living
writers I would save, first, the works of Tennyson, Browning, and
Ruskin."
=Fenelon=. "If the crowns of all the kingdoms of the empire were laid
down at my feet in exchange for my books and my love of reading, I would
spurn them all."
=Freeman, E. A=. (the historian). "I feel myself quite unable to draw up
a list (of the best books), as I could not trust my own judgment on any
matters not bearing on my special studies, and I should be doubtless
tempted to give too great prominence to them."
=Fuller, Thomas=. "It is thought and digestion which make books
serviceable, and give health and vigor to the mind."
=Gibbon=. "A taste for books is the pleasure and glory of my life. I
would not exchange it for the glory of the Indies."
=Gladstone=. "When I was a boy I used to be fond of looking into a
bookseller's shop; but there was nothing to be seen there that was
accessible to the working-man of that day. Take a Shakspeare, for
example. I remember very well that I gave L2 16_s._ 0_d._ for my first
copy; but you can get any one of Shakspeare's Plays for seven cents.
Those books are accessible now which were formerly quite inaccessible.
We may be told that you want amusement, but that does not include
improvement. There are a set of worthless books written now and at times
which you should avoid, which profess to give amusement; but in reading
the works of such authors as Shakspeare and Scott there is the greatest
possible amusement in its best form. Do you suppose when you see men
engaged in study that they dislike it? No!... I want you to understand
that multitudes of books are constantly being prepared and placed within
reach of the population at large, for the most part executed by writers
of a high stamp, having subjects of the greatest interest, and which
enable you, at a moderate price, not to get cheap literature which is
secondary in its quality, but to go straight into the very heart,--if I
may so say, into the sanctuary of the temple of literature,--and become
acquainted with the greatest and best works that men of our country have
produced."
=Godwin, William=. "It is impossible that we can be much accustomed to
such companions without attaining some resemblance to them."
=Goldsmith=. "An author may be considered as a merciful substitute to
the legislature. He acts not by punishing crimes, but by preventing
them."
=Hale, Sir Matthew=. "Read the Bible reverently and attentively, set
your heart upon it, and lay it up in your memory, and make it the
direction of your life; it will make you a wise and good man."
=Hamerton, P. H=. "The art of reading is to skip judiciously."
=Harrison, Frederic=. "The best authors are never dark horses. The world
has long ago closed the great assize of letters, and judged the first
places everywhere."