natural gift. If you have not got the faculty, seek for it with all your
might."
"Of Walter Scott one need as little speak as of Shakspeare. He belongs
to mankind,--to every age and race; and he certainly must be counted as
in the first line of the great creative minds of the world. His unique
glory is to have definitely succeeded in the ideal reproduction of
historical types, so as to preserve at once beauty, life, and truth,--a
task which neither Ariosto and Tasso, nor Corneille and Racine, nor
Alfieri, nor Goethe, nor Schiller,--no, nor even Shakspeare himself,
entirely achieved.... In brilliancy of conception, in wealth of
character, in dramatic art, in glow and harmony of color, Scott put
forth all the powers of a master poet.... The genius of Scott has raised
up a school of historical romance; and though the best work of
Chateaubriand, Manzoni, and Bulwer may take rank as true art, the
endless crowd of inferior imitations are nothing but a weariness to the
flesh.... Scott is a perfect library in himself.... The poetic beauty of
Scott's creations is almost the least of his great qualities. It is the
universality of his sympathy that is so truly great, the justice of his
estimates, the insight into the spirit of each age, his intense
absorption of self in the vast epic of human civilization."
=Hazlitt, William=. "Books let us into the souls of men, and lay open to
us the secrets of our own."
=Heinsius=. "I no sooner come into the library but I bolt the door to
me, excluding Lust, Ambition, Avarice, and all such vices, whose nurse
is Idleness, the Mother of Ignorance and Melancholy. In the very lap of
eternity, among so many divine souls, I take my seat with so lofty a
spirit and sweet content, that I pity all that know not this happiness."
=Herbert, George=. "This _book of stars_ [the Bible] lights to eternal
bliss."
=Herschel, Sir J=. "Give a man this taste [for good books] and the means
of gratifying it, and you can hardly fail of making a happy man. You
place him in contact with the best society in every period of
history,--with the wisest, the wittiest, the tenderest, the bravest, and
the purest characters who have adorned humanity. You make him a denizen
of all nations, a contemporary of all ages."
=Hillard, George S=. "Here we have immortal flowers of poetry, wet with
Castilian dew, and the golden fruit of Wisdom that had long ripened on
the bough.... We should any of us esteem it a great privilege to pass an
evening with Shakspeare or Bacon.... We may be sure that Shakspeare
never out-talked his 'Hamlet,' nor Bacon his 'Essays.'... To the gentle
hearted youth, far from his home, in the midst of a pitiless city,
'homeless among a thousand homes,' the approach of evening brings with
it an aching sense of loneliness and desolation. In this mood his best
impulses become a snare to him; and he is led astray because he is
social, affectionate, sympathetic, and warm-hearted. The hours from
sunset to bedtime are his hours of peril. Let me say to such young men
that books are the friends of the friendless, and that a library is the
home of the homeless."
=Holmes, O. W=. "Books are the 'negative' pictures of thought; and the
more sensitive the mind that receives the images, the more nicely the
finest lines are reproduced."
=Houghton, Lord=. "It [a book] is a portion of the eternal mind, caught
in its process through the world, stamped in an instant, and preserved
for eternity."
=Irving=. "The scholar only knows how dear these silent yet eloquent
companions of pure thoughts and innocent hours become in the season of
adversity."
=Johnson, Dr=. "No man should consider so highly of himself as to think
he can receive but little light from books, nor so meanly as to believe
he can discover nothing but what is to be learned from them."
=Jonson, Ben=. "A prince without letters is a pilot without eyes."
=King, Thomas Starr=. "By cultivating an interest in a few good books,
which contain the result of the toil or the quintessence of the genius
of some of the most gifted thinkers of the world, we need not live on
the marsh and in the mists; the slopes and the summits invite us."
=Kingsley, Charles=. "Except a living man, there is nothing more
wonderful than a book!--a message to us from the dead, from human souls
whom we never saw, who lived, perhaps, thousands of miles away; and yet
these, on those little sheets of paper, speak to us, amuse us, vivify
us, teach us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as to brothers."
=Lamb, Charles=. "Milton almost requires a solemn service of music to be
played before you enter upon him. But he brings his music, to which who
listens had need bring docile thoughts and purged ears."
=Landor, Walter Savage=. "The writings of the wise are the only riches
our posterity cannot squander."
=Langford=. "Strong as man and tender as woman, they welcome you in
every mood, and never turn from you in distress."
=Lowell=. "Have you ever rightly considered what the mere ability to
read means? That it is the key that admits us to the whole world of
thought and fancy and imagination, to the company of saint and sage, of
the wisest and the wittiest at their wisest and wittiest moments? That
it enables us to see with the keenest eyes, hear with the finest ears,
and listen to the sweetest voices of all time?... One is sometimes asked
by young people to recommend a course of reading. My advice would be
that they should confine themselves to the supreme books in whatever
literature, or, still better, to choose some one great author, and make
themselves thoroughly familiar with him."
=Luther=. "To read many books produceth confusion, rather than learning,
like as those who dwell everywhere are not anywhere at home."
=Lyly, John=. "Far more seemly were it ... to have thy study full of
books than thy purse full of money."
=Lytton, Lord=.
"Laws die, books never."
"Beneath the rule of men entirely great
The pen is mightier than the sword."
"Ye ever-living and imperial Souls,
Who rule us from the page in which ye breathe."
"The Wise
(Minstrel or Sage) _out_ of their books are clay;
But _in_ their books, as from their graves, they rise,
Angels--that, side by side, upon our way,
Walk with and warn us!"
"We call some books immortal! _Do they live?_
If so, believe me, TIME hath made them pure.
In Books the veriest wicked rest in peace,--
God wills that nothing evil should endure;
The grosser parts fly off and leave the whole,
As the dust leaves the disembodied soul!"
=Macaulay=. "A great writer is the friend and benefactor of his
readers."
=Milton=. "As good almost kill a man as kill a good book. Who kills a
man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good
book kills reason itself,--kills the image of God, as it were, in the
eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the
precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on
purpose to a life beyond."
=Montaigne=. "To divert myself from a troublesome fancy, 'tis but to run
to my books."
"As to what concerns my other reading, that mixes a little more profit
with the pleasure, and from whence I learn how to marshal my opinions
and qualities, the books that serve me to this purpose are Plutarch and
Seneca,--both of which have this great convenience suited to my humor,
that the knowledge I seek is discoursed in loose pieces that do not
engage me in any great trouble of reading long, of which I am
impatient.... Plutarch is frank throughout. Seneca abounds with brisk
touches and sallies. Plutarch, with things that heat and move you more;
this contents and pays you better. As to Cicero, those of his works that
are most useful to my design are they that treat of philosophy,
especially moral; but boldly to confess the truth, his way of writing,
and that of all other long-winded authors, appears to me very tedious."
=Morley, John=. "The consolation of reading is not futile nor imaginary.
It is no chimera of the recluse or the bookworm, but a potent reality.
As a stimulus to flagging energies, as an inspirer of lofty aim,
literature stands unrivalled."
=Morris, William=. "The greater part of the Latins I should call _sham_
classics. I suppose that they have some good literary qualities; but I
cannot help thinking that it is difficult to find out how much. I
suspect superstition and authority have influenced our estimate of them
till it has become a mere matter of convention. Of modern fiction, I
should like to say here that I yield to no one, not even Ruskin, in my
love and admiration for Scott; also that, to my mind, of the novelists
of our generation, Dickens is immeasurably ahead."
=Mueller, Max=. "I know few books, if any, which I should call good from
beginning to end. Take the greatest poet of antiquity, and if I am to
speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, I must say
that there are long passages, even in Homer, which seem to me extremely
tedious."
=Parker, Theodore=. "What a joy is there in a good book, writ by some
great master of thought, who breaks into beauty, as in summer the meadow
into grass and dandelions and violets, with geraniums and manifold
sweetness.... The books which help you most are those which make you
think most.... A great book ... is a ship of thought deep freighted with
thought, with beauty too. It sails the ocean, driven by the winds of
heaven, breaking the level sea of life into beauty where it goes,
leaving behind it a train of sparkling loveliness, widening as the ship
goes on. And what treasures it brings to every land, scattering the
seeds of truth, justice, love, and piety, to bless the world in ages yet
to come."
=Peacham, Henry=. "To desire to have many books and never to use them,
is like a child that will have a candle burning by him all the while he
is sleeping."
=Petrarch=. "I have friends whose society is extremely agreeable to me;
they are of all ages and of every country. They have distinguished
themselves both in the cabinet and in the field, and obtained high
honors for their knowledge of the sciences. It is easy to gain access to
them, for they are always at my service; and I admit them to my company
and dismiss them from it whenever I please. They are never troublesome,
but immediately answer every question I ask them. Some relate to me the
events of past ages, while others reveal to me the secrets of Nature.
Some teach me how to live, and others how to die. Some, by their
vivacity, drive away my cares and exhilarate my spirits; while others
give fortitude to my mind, and teach me the important lesson how to
restrain my desires and to depend wholly on myself. They open to me, in
short, the various avenues of all the arts and sciences, and upon their
information I safely rely in all emergencies."
=Phelps, E. J=. (United States Minister to the Court of St. James). "I
cannot think the _finis et fructus_ of liberal reading is reached by him
who has not obtained in the best writings of our English tongue the
generous acquaintance that ripens into affection. If he must stint
himself, let him save elsewhere."
=Plato=. "Books are the immortal sons deifying their sires."
=Plutarch=. "We ought to regard books as we do sweetmeats,--not wholly
to aim at the pleasantest, but chiefly to respect the wholesomest."
=Potter, Dr=. "It is nearly an axiom that people will not be better than
the books they read."
=Raleigh, Walter=. "We may gather out of history a policy no less wise
than eternal, by the comparison and application of other men's
fore-passed miseries with our own like errors and ill-deservings."
=Richardson, C. F=. "No book, indeed, is of universal value and
appropriateness.... Here, as in every other question involved in the
choice of books, the golden key to knowledge, a key that will only fit
its own proper doors, is _purpose_."
=Ruskin=. "All books are divisible into two classes,--the books of the
hour and the books of all time." Books of the hour, though useful, are,
"strictly speaking, not books at all, but merely letters or newspapers
in good print," and should not be allowed "to usurp the place of true
books."
"Of all the plagues that afflict mortality, the venom of a bad book to
weak people, and the charms of a foolish one to simple people, are
without question the deadliest; and they are so far from being redeemed
by the too imperfect work of the best writers, that I never would wish
to see a child taught to read at all, unless the other conditions of its
education were alike gentle and judicious."
Ruskin says a well-trained man should know the literature of his own
country and half a dozen classics thoroughly; but unless he wishes to
travel, the language and literature of modern Europe and of the East are
unnecessary. To read fast any book worth reading is folly. Ruskin would
not have us read Grote's "History of Greece," for any one could write it
if "he had the vanity to waste his time;" "Confessions of Saint
Augustine," for it is not good to think so much about ourselves; John
Stuart Mill, for his day is over; Charles Kingsley, for his sentiment is
false, his tragedy frightful. Hypatia is the most ghastly story in
Christian tradition, and should forever have been left in silence;
Darwin, for we should know what _we are_, not what _our embryo was_, or
_our skeleton will be_; Gibbon, for we should study the growth and
standing of things, not the Decline and Fall (moreover, he wrote the
worst English ever written by an educated Englishmen); Voltaire, for his
work is to good literature what nitric acid is to wine, and sulphuretted
hydrogen to air.
Ruskin also crosses out Marcus Aurelius, Confucius, Aristotle (except
his "Politics"), Mahomet, Saint Augustine, Thomas a Kempis, Pascal,
Spinoza, Butler, Keble, Lucretius, the Nibelungenlied, Malory's Morte
D'Arthur, Firdusi, the Mahabharata, and Ramayana, the Sheking,
Sophocles, and Euripides, Hume, Adam Smith, Locke, Descartes, Berkeley,
Lewes, Southey, Longfellow, Swift, Macaulay, Emerson, Goethe, Thackeray,
Kingsley, George Eliot, and Bulwer.
His especial favorites are Scott, Carlyle, Plato, and Dickens. AEschylus,
Taylor, Bunyan, Bacon, Shakspeare, Milton, Dante, Spenser, Wordsworth,
Pope, Goldsmith, Defoe, Boswell, Burke, Addison, Montaigne, Moliere,
Sheridan, AEsop, Demosthenes, Plutarch, Horace, Cicero, Homer, Hesiod,
Virgil, Aristophanes, Herodotus, Xenophon, Thucydides, and Tacitus, he
condescends to admit as proper to be read.
=Schopenhauer=. "Recollect that he who writes for fools finds an
enormous audience."
=Seneca=. "If you devote your time to study, you will avoid all the
irksomeness of this life."
"It does not matter how many, but how good, books you have."
"Leisure without study is death, and the grave of a living man."
=Shakspeare=. "A book! oh, rare one! be not, as in this fangled world, a
garment nobler than it covers."
"My library was dukedom large enough."
=Sidney, Sir Philip=. "Nature never set forth the earth in so rich
tapestry as divers poets have done."
=Smiles, Sam=. "Men often discover their affinity to each other by the
mutual love they have for a book."
=Smith, Alexander=. "We read books not so much for what they say as for
what they suggest."
=Socrates=. "Employ your time in improving yourselves by other men's
documents; so shall you come easily by what others have labored hard to
win."
=Solomon=. "He that walketh with wise men shall be wise."
=Spencer, Herbert=. "My reading has been much more in the direction of
science than in the direction of general literature; and of such works
in general literature as I have looked into, I know comparatively
little, being an impatient reader, and usually soon satisfied."
=Stanley, Henry M=. "I carried [across Africa] a great many
books,--three loads, or about one hundred and eighty pounds' weight; but
as my men lessened in numbers,--stricken by famine, fighting, and
sickness,--one by one they were reluctantly thrown away, until finally,
when less than three hundred miles from the Atlantic, I possessed only
the Bible, Shakspeare, Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, Norie's Navigation,
and the Nautical Almanac for 1877. Poor Shakspeare was afterwards burned
by demand of the foolish people of Zinga. At Bonea, Carlyle and Norie
and the Nautical Almanac were pitched away, and I had only the old Bible
left."
=Swinburne, A. C=. "It would be superfluous for any educated Englishman
to say that he does not question the pre-eminence of such names as Bacon
and Darwin."
=Taylor, Bayard=. "Not many, but good books."
=Thoreau=. "Books that are books are all that you want, and there are
but half a dozen in any thousand."
=Trollope, Anthony=. "The habit of reading is the only enjoyment I know
in which there is no alloy; it lasts when all other pleasures fade."
=Waller, Sir William=. "In my study I am sure to converse with none but
wise men; but abroad, it is impossible for me to avoid the society of
fools."
=Whateley, Richard=. "If, in reading books, a man does not choose
wisely, at any rate he has the chance offered him of doing so."
=Whipple, Edwin P=. "Books,--lighthouses erected in the sea of time."
=White, Andrew D=., President of Cornell, speaking of Scott, says:
"Never was there a more healthful and health-ministering literature than
that which he gave to the world. To go back to it from Flaubert and
Daudet and Tolstoi is like listening to the song of the lark after the
shrieking passion of the midnight pianoforte; nay, it is like coming out
of the glare and heat and reeking vapor of a palace ball into a grove in
the first light and music and breezes of the morning.... So far from
stimulating an unhealthy taste, the enjoyment of this fiction created
distinctly a taste for what is usually called 'solid reading,' and
especially a love for that historical reading and study which has been a
leading inspiration and solace of a busy life."
=Whitman, Walt=. "For us, along the great highways of time, those
monuments stand,--those forms of majesty and beauty. For us those
beacons burn through all the night."
=Wolseley, Gen. Lord=. "During the mutiny and China war I carried a
Testament, two volumes of Shakspeare that contained his best plays; and
since then, when in the field, I have always carried a Book of Common
Prayer, Thomas a Kempis, Soldier's Pocket Book, depending on a
well-organized postal service to supply me weekly with plenty of
newspapers."
=Wordsworth=. "These hoards of wealth you can unlock at will."
APPENDIX II.
BOOKS FOR SUPPLEMENTARY READING.
BOYS' LATIN SCHOOL.
Moss' First Greek Reader. Tomlinson's Latin for Sight Reading. Walford's
Extracts from Cicero (Part I.). Jackson's Manual of Astronomical
Geography. Ritchie's Fabulae Faciles.
GIRLS' LATIN SCHOOL.
Sheldon's Greek and Roman History. Ritchie's Fabulae Faciles.
LATIN AND HIGH SCHOOLS.
Books required for admission to Harvard College.
A list of suitable books, carefully prepared under the direction of the
Committee on Text-Books, is presented to the Board for adoption. After
this list has been adopted, a master may make requisition on the
Committee on Supplies for one set (of not more than thirty-five copies)
of a book. This committee, after the approval of the Committee on
Text-Books has been obtained, will purchase the books and send them to
the school for permanent use. No book will be purchased until called for
in the manner described.
_English._--Barnes's History of Ancient Peoples; Church's Stories from
the East, from Herodotus; Church's Story of the Persian War, from
Herodotus; Church's Stories from the Greek Tragedians; Kingsley's Greek
Heroes; Abbott's Lives of Cyrus and Alexander; Froude's Caesar;
Forsythe's Life of Cicero; Ware's Aurelian; Cox's Crusades; Masson's
Abridgment of Guizot's History of France; Scott's Abbot; Scott's
Monastery; Scott's Talisman; Scott's Quentin Durward; Scott's Marmion
(Rolfe's Student series); Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel (Rolfe's
Student series); Kingsley's Hereward; Kingsley's Westward Ho; Melville's
Holmby House; Macaulay's Essay on Frederic; Macaulay's Essay on Clive;
Macaulay's Essay on Dr. Johnson; Motley's Essay on Peter the Great;
Thackeray's Henry Esmond; Thackeray's The Virginians; Thackeray's The
Four Georges; Dickens' Tale of Two Cities; George Eliot's Silas Marner;
Irving's Alhambra; Irving's Bracebridge Hall; Miss Buckley's Life and
her Children; Miss Buckley's Winners in Life's Race; Bulfinch's Age of
Fable (revised edition); The Boy's Froissart; Ballads and Lyrics; Vicar
of Wakefield; Essays of Elia; Tennyson's Selected Poems (Rolfe's Student
series); Tennyson's Elaine; Tennyson's In Memoriam; Byron's Prisoner of
Chillon; Goldsmith's Deserted Village; Goldsmith's Traveller;
Coleridge's Ancient Mariner; Wordsworth's Excursion; Monroe's Sixth
Reader; Webster--Section 2 [Annotated English Classics, Ginn & Co.];
Wordsworth's Poems--Section 2 [Annotated English Classics, Ginn & Co.];
Sheldon's Greek and Roman History; Monroe's Fifth Reader (old edition).
_French._--St. German's Pour une Epingle; Achard's Le Clos Pommier;
Feuillet's Roman d'un Homme Pauvre; Dumas's La Tulipe Noire; Vigny's
Cinq Mars; Lacombe's La Petite Histoire du Peuple Francais.
_German._--Andersen's Maerchen; Simmondson's Balladenbuch; Krurnmacher's
Parabeln; Goethe's Iphigenie auf Tauris; Goethe's Prose; Schiller's
Jungfrau von Orleans; Schiller's Prose; Boisen's German Prose;
Bernhardt's Novellen Bibliothek.
GRAMMAR SCHOOLS.
CLASS VI. (_about Ten Years old_).
Seven Little Sisters, first half-year. Each and All, second half-year.
This is simple, interesting class-reading, which will aid the geography,
and furnish material for both oral and written language lessons.
Hooker's Child's Book of Nature; those chapters of Parts I. and II.,
which will supplement properly the observational studies of plants and
animals, and those chapters of Part III., on air, water, and heat, which
will aid the instruction in Geography. Our World Reader, NO. 1. Our
World, NO. 1; the reading to be kept parallel with the instruction in
Geography through the year. Poetry for Children; selections appropriate
for reading and recitation.
CLASS V. (_about Eleven Years old_).
Stories of American History; for practice in reading at sight, and for
material for language lessons. Guyot's Introduction to Geography; the
reading to be kept parallel with the instruction in Geography through
the year. Hooker's Child's Book of Nature, and Poetry for Children; as
in Class VI. Robinson Crusoe.
CLASS IV. (_about Twelve Years old_).
The Wonder Book and Tanglewood Tales, as collateral to the oral
instruction in Stories in Mythology. Hooker's Child's Book of Nature,
and Poetry for Children; as in Classes VI. and V. Readings from Nature's
Book (revised edition). Robinson Crusoe.
CLASS III. (_about Thirteen Years old_).
Hooker's Child's Book of Nature; as supplementary to oral lessons.
American Poems, with Biographical Sketches and Notes; appropriate
selections therefrom.
CLASS II. (_about Fourteen Years old_).
Selections from American authors; as in part collateral to the United
States History. American Poems; appropriate selections therefrom.
CLASS I. (_about Fifteen Years old_).
Selections from American authors. Early England--Harper's Half-Hour
Series, Nos. 6 and 14. American Poems; selections therefrom. Green's
Readings from English History. Phillips's Historical Readers, Nos. 1, 2,
3, 4.
ANY CLASS.
Six Stories from the Arabian Nights. Holmes' and Longfellow Leaflets,
published by Houghton, Mifflin, & Co. Book of Golden Deeds. Jackson's
Manual of Astronomical Geography. Parkman Leaflets, published by Little,
Brown, & Co.
CIRCULATING LIBRARY FOR GRAMMAR SCHOOLS.