von Donniges, but the minister had fled to Berne. Rustow then saw
Lassalle at the rooms of the Countess von Hatzfeldt. Lassalle mentioned
that he had that morning had his challenge accepted by von Racowitza,
whose seconds were Count Keyserling and Dr. Arndt. Rustow insisted, both
to Lassalle and to Racowitza's friends, that von Donniges should have
priority, but was overruled; and it was agreed that the duel should be
fought that very evening. Rustow protested that he could not find
another second in so short a time--General Becker does not seem to have
been available--but at length it was arranged that General Bethlem should
be asked to fill the office, and that the duel should take place on the
following morning, August 28. There seems to have been considerable
difficulty in finding suitable pistols, and at the last moment General
Bethlem declined to be a second, and Herr von Hofstetten consented to
act. Rustow called upon Lassalle at the Victoria Hotel at five o'clock.
At half-past six the party started for Carouge, a village in the
neighbourhood of Geneva, which they reached an hour later. Lassalle was
quite cheerful, and perfectly confident that he would come unharmed out
of the conflict. The opponents faced one another and Racowitza wounded
Lassalle, who was carried by Rustow and Dr. Seiler to a coach, and thence
to the Victoria Hotel, Geneva. He suffered dreadfully both then and
afterwards, and was only relieved by a plentiful use of opium. Three
days later, on Wednesday, August 31, 1864, he died.
Was it the chance shot of a delicate boy that killed one of the most
remarkable men of the nineteenth century, or was it a planned attack upon
one who loved the people? This last view was taken and is still taken by
many of his followers; but it is needless to say that it has no
foundation in fact. Lassalle was killed by a chance shot, and killed in
a duel which had not even the doubtful justification of hatred of his
opponent. "Count me no longer as a rival; for you I have nothing but
friendship," were the words written to Racowitza at the moment that he
challenged von Donniges, and he declared on his death-bed that he died by
his own hand.
The revolutionists of all lands assembled around his dead body, which was
embalmed by order of the Countess. This woman talked loudly of
vengeance, called not only von Racowitza but Helen a murderer, {218}
little thinking that posterity would judge her more hardly than Helen.
She proposed to take the corpse in solemn procession through Germany; but
an order from the Prussian Government disturbed her plans, and at
Breslau, Lassalle's native town, it was allowed to rest. Lassalle is
buried in the family vault in the Jewish Cemetery, and a simple monument
bears the inscription:
HERE RESTS WHAT IS MORTAL
OF
FERDINAND LASSALLE,
THE
THINKER AND THE FIGHTER.
To understand the whole tragedy and to justify its great victim is to
feel something of the strain which comes to every thinker and fighter
who, like Lassalle, writes and speaks persistently to vast audiences,
often against great odds, and always with the prospect of a prison before
him. That his nerves were utterly unstrung, that he was not his real
self in those last days, is but too evident. Armed, as he claimed, with
the entire culture of his century, a maker of history if ever there was
one, he became the victim of a love drama which I suppose that Mr.
Matthew Arnold would describe as of the surgeon's apprentice order: but
which, apart from his political creed, will always endear him to men and
women who have "lived and loved."
And what shall we say of Helen von Donniges? Her own story is surely one
of the most romantic ever written. In _My Relation to Ferdinand
Lassalle_, she tells how Yanko broke to her the news that he was going to
fight Lassalle, and how much she grieved. "Lassalle will inevitably kill
Yanko," she thought; and she pitied him, but her pity was not without
calculation. "When Yanko is dead and they bring his body here, there
will be a stir in the house," she said, "and I can then fly to Lassalle."
But the hours flew by, and finally Yanko came to tell her that he had
wounded his opponent. For the moment, and indeed until after Lassalle's
death, she hated her successful lover; but a little later his undoubted
goodness, his tenderness and patience, won her heart. They were married,
but he died within a year, of consumption. Being disowned by her
relations, Helen then settled in Berlin, and studied for the stage. She
herself relates how at Breslau on one occasion, when acting a boy's part
in one of Moser's comedies, some of Lassalle's oldest friends being
present remarked upon her likeness to Lassalle in his youth, a
resemblance on which she and Lassalle had more than once prided
themselves. At a later date Frau von Racowitza married a Russian
Socialist, S. E. Shevitch, then resident in America. M. Shevitch
returned to Russia a few years after this and lived with his wife at
Riga. Those who have seen Madame Shevitch describe her as one of the
most fascinating women they have ever met. She and her husband were very
happy in their married life. Madame Shevitch is now living in Munich.
Our great novelist and poet George Meredith has immortalized her in his
_Tragic Comedians_.
VIII. LORD ACTON'S LIST OF THE HUNDRED BEST BOOKS
Every one has heard of Lord Avebury's (Sir John Lubbock's) Hundred Best
Books, not every one of Lord Acton's. It is the privilege of the _Pall
Mall Magazine_ {225} to publish this latter list, the final impression as
to reading of one of the most scholarly men that England has known in our
time. The list in question is, as it were, an omitted chapter of a book
that was one of the successes of its year--_The Letters of Lord Acton to
Miss Mary Gladstone_--published by Mr. George Allen. That series of
letters made very pleasant reading. They showed Lord Acton not as a
Dryasdust, but as a very human personage indeed, with sympathies
invariably in the right place.
Nor can his literary interests be said to have been restricted, for he
read history and biography with avidity, and probably knew more of
theology than any other layman of modern times. In imaginative
literature, however, his critical instinct was perhaps less keen. He
called Heine "a bad second to Schiller in poetry," which is absurd; and
he thought George Eliot the greatest of modern novelists. In arriving at
the latter judgment he had the excuse of personal friendship and
admiration for a woman whose splendid intellectual gifts were undeniable.
In one letter we find Lord Acton discussing with Miss Gladstone the
eternal question of the hundred best books. Sir John Lubbock had
complained to her of the lack of a guide or supreme authority on the
choice of books. Lord Acton had replied that, "although he had something
to learn on the graver side of human knowledge," Sir John would execute
his own scheme better than almost anybody. We all know that Sir John
Lubbock attempted this at a lecture delivered at the Great Ormond Street
Working Men's College; that that lecture has been reprinted again and
again in a book entitled _The Pleasures of Life_, and that the publishers
have sold more than two hundred thousand copies--a kind of success that
might almost make some of our popular novelists turn green with envy.
Later on in the correspondence Lord Acton quoted one of the popes, who
said that "fifty books would include every good idea in the world."
"But," continued Lord Acton, "literature has doubled since then, and it
would be hard to do without a hundred."
Lord Acton was possessed of the happy thought that he would like some of
his friends and acquaintances each to name his ideal hundred best
books--as for example Bishop Lightfoot, Dean Church, Dean Stanley, Canon
Liddon, Professor Max Muller, Mr. J. R. Lowell, Professor E. A. Freeman,
Mr. W. E. H. Lecky, Mr. John Morley, Sir Henry Maine, the Duke of Argyll,
Lord Tennyson, Cardinal Newman, Mr. Gladstone, Matthew Arnold, Professor
Goldwin Smith, Mr. R. H. Hutton, Mr. Mark Pattison, and Mr. J. A.
Symonds. Strange to say, he thought there would be a surprising
agreement between these writers as to which were the hundred best books.
I am all but certain, however, that there would not have been more than
twenty books in common between rival schools of thought--the secular and
the ecclesiastical--between, let us say, Mr. John Morley and Cardinal
Newman. But it is probable that not one of these eminent men would have
furnished a list with any similarity whatever to the remainder. Each
would have written down his own hundred favourites, and herein may be
admitted is an evidence of the futility of all such attempts. The best
books are the books that have helped us most to see life in all its
complex bearings, and each individual needs a particular kind of mental
food quite unlike the diet that best stimulates his neighbour. Writing
more than a year later, Lord Acton said that he had just drawn out a list
of recommended authors for his son, as being the company he would like
him to keep; but this list is not available--it is not the one before me.
That was compiled yet another twelve months afterwards, when we find Lord
Acton sending to Miss Mary Gladstone (Mrs. Drew) his own ideal "hundred
best books." This list is now printed for the first time. Evidently
Miss Gladstone remonstrated with her friend over the character of the
list; but Lord Acton defended it as being in his judgment really the
hundred _best books_, apart from works on physical science--that it
treated of principles that every thoughtful man ought to understand, and
was calculated, in fact, to give one a clear view of the various forces
that make history. "We are not considering," he adds, "what will suit an
untutored savage or an illiterate peasant woman, who would never come to
an end of the _Imitation_."
However, here is Lord Acton's list, which Mrs. Drew has been kind enough
to place in the hands of the Editor of the _Pall Mall Magazine_. I give
also Lord Acton's comment with which it opens, and I add in footnotes one
or two facts about each of the authors:
* * * * *
"In answer to the question: Which are the hundred best books in the
world?
"Supposing any English youth, whose education is finished, who knows
common things, and is not training for a profession.
"To perfect his mind and open windows in every direction, to raise him to
the level of his age so that he may know the (20 or 30) forces that have
made our world what it is and still reign over it, to guard him against
surprises and against the constant sources of error within, to supply him
both with the strongest stimulants and the surest guides, to give force
and fullness and clearness and sincerity and independence and elevation
and generosity and serenity to his mind, that he may know the method and
law of the process by which error is conquered and truth is won,
discerning knowledge from probability and prejudice from belief, that he
may learn to master what he rejects as fully as what he adopts, that he
may understand the origin as well as the strength and vitality of systems
and the better motive of men who are wrong, to steel him against the
charm of literary beauty and talent; so that each book, thoroughly taken
in, shall be the beginning of a new life, and shall make a new man of
him--this list is submitted":--
1. Plato--_Laws_--Steinhart's _Introduction_. {230a}
2. Aristotle--_Politics_--Susemihl's _Commentary_. {230b}
3. Epictetus--_Encheiridion_--_Commentary_ of Simplicius. {230c}
4. St. Augustine--_Letters_. {230d}
5. St. Vincent's _Commonitorium_. {231a}
6. Hugo of S. Victor--_De Sacramentis_. {231b}
7. St. Bonaventura--_Breviloquium_. {231c}
8. St. Thomas Aquinas--_Summa contra Gentiles_. {231d}
9. Dante--_Divina Commedia_. {232a}
10. Raymund of Sabunde--_Theologia Naturalis_. {232b}
11. Nicholas of Cusa--_Concordantia Catholica_. {232c}
12. Edward Reuss--_The Bible_. {232d}
13. Pascal's Pensees--_Havet's Edition_. {233a}
14. Malebranche, _De la Recherche de la Verite_. {233b}
15. Baader--_Speculative Dogmatik_. {233c}
16. Molitor--_Philosophie der Geschichte_. {233d}
17. Astie--_Esprit de Vinet_. {233e}
18. Punjer--_Geschichte der Religions-philosophie_. {234a}
19. Rothe--_Theologische Ethik_. {234b}
20. Martensen--_Die Christliche Ethik_. {234c}
21. Oettingen--_Moralstatistik_. {234d}
22. Hartmann--_Phanomenologie des sittlichen Bewusstseins_. {234e}
23. Leibniz--_Letters_ edited by Klopp. {235a}
24. Brandis--_Geschichte der Philosophie_. {235b}
25. Fischer--_Franz Bacon_. {235c}
26. Zeller--_Neuere Deutsche Philosophie_. {235d}
27. Bartholomess--_Doctrines Religieuses de la Philosophie Moderns_.
{236a}
28. Guyon--_Morale Anglaise_. {236b}
29. Ritschl--_Entstehung der Altkatholischen Kirche_. {236c}
30. Loening--_Geschichte des Kirchenrechts_. {236d}
31. Baur--_Vorlesungen uber Dogmengeschichte_. {237a}
32. Fenelon--_Correspondence_. {237b}
33. Newman's _Theory of Development_. {237c}
34. Mozley's _University Sermons_. {237d}
35. Schneckenburger--_Vergleichende Darstellung_. {238a}
36. Hundeshagen--_Kirckenvorfassungsgeschichte_. {238b}
37. Schweizer--_Protestantische Centraldogmen_. {238c}
38. Gass--_Geschichte der Lutherischen Dogmatik_. {238d}
39. Cart--_Histoire du Mouvement Religieux dans le Canton de Vaud_.
{238e}
40. Blondel--_De la Primaute_. {239a}
41. Le Blanc de Beaulieu--_Theses_. {239b}
42. Thiersch.--_Vorlesungen uber Katholizismus_. {239c}
43. Mohler--_Neue Untersuchungen_. {239d}
44. Scherer--_Melanges de Critique Religieuse_. {240a}
45. Hooker--_Ecclesiastical Polity_. {240b}
46. Weingarten--_Revolutionskirchen Englands_. {240c}
47. Kliefoth--_Acht Bucher von der Kirche_. {240d}
48. Laurent--_Etudes de l'Histoire de l'Humanite_. {240e}
49. Ferrari--_Revolutions de l'ltalie_. {241a}
50. Lange--_Geschichte des Materialismus_. {241b}
51. Guicciardini--_Ricordi Politici_. {241c}
52. Duperron--_Ambassades_. {241d}
53. Richelieu--_Testament Politique_. {242a}
54. Harrington's Writings. {242b}
55. Mignet--_Negotiations de la Succession d'Espagne_. {242c}
56. Rousseau--_Considerations sur la Pologne_. {243a}
57. Foncin--_Ministere de Turgot_. {243b}
58. Burke's _Correspondence_. {243c}
59. Las Cases--_Memorial de Ste. Helene_. {243d}
60. Holtzendorff--_Systematische Rechtsenzyklopadie_. {244a}
61. Jhering--_Geist des Romischen Rechts_. {244b}
62. Geib--_Strafrecht_. {244c}
63. Maine--_Ancient Law_. {245a}
64. Gierke--_Genossenschaftsrecht_. {245b}
65. Stahl--_Philosophie des Rechts_. {245c}
66. Gentz--_Briefwechsel mit Adam Muller_. {246a}
67. Vollgraff--_Polignosie_. {246b}
68. Frantz--_Kritik aller Parteien_. {246c}
69. De Maistre--_Considerations sur la France_. {246d}
70. Donoso Cortes--_Ecrits Politiques_. {247a}
71. Perin--_De la Richesse dans les Societes Chretiennes_. {247b}
72. Le Play--_La Reforme Sociale_. {247c}
73. Riehl--_Die Burgerliche Sociale_. {247d}
74. Sismondi--_Etudes sur les Constitutions des Peuples Libres_. {248a}
75. Rossi--_Cours du Droit Constitutionnel_. {248b}
76. Barante--_Vie de Royer Collard_. {248c}
77. Duvergier de Hauranne--_Histoire du Gouvernement Parlementaire_.
{249a}
78. Madison--_Debates of the Congress of Confederation_. {249b}
79. Hamilton--_The Federalist_. {249c}
80. Calhoun--_Essay on Government_. {249d}
81. Dumont--_Sophismes Anarchiques_. {250a}
82. Quinet--_La Revolution Francaise_. {250b}
83. Stein--_Sozialismus in Frankreich_. {250c}
84. Lassalle--_System der Erworbenen Rechte_. {251a}
85. Thonissen--_Le Socialisme depuis l'Antiquite_. {251b}
86. Considerant--_Destines Sociale_. {251c}
87. Roscher--_Nationalokonomik_. {251d}
89. Mill--_System of Logic_. {251e}
90. Coleridge--_Aids to Reflection_. {252a}
91. Radowitz--_Fragmente_. {252b}
92. Gioberti--_Pensieri_. {252c}
93. Humboldt--_Kosmos_. {253a}
94. De Candolle--_Histoire des Sciences et des Savants_. {253b}
95. Darwin--_Origin of Species_. {253c}
96. Littre--_Fragments de Philosophie_. {253d}
97. Cournot--_Enchainements des Idees fondamentales_. {253e}
98. _Monatschriften der wissenschaftlichen Vereine_. {254}
This list, written in 1883 in Miss Gladstone's (Mrs. Drew's) Diary, must
always have an interest in the history of the human mind.
But my readers will, I imagine, for the most part, agree with me that
there are others besides untutored savages and illiterate peasant women
to whom such a list is entirely impracticable. It indicates the enormous
preference which on the whole Lord Acton gave to the Literature of
Knowledge over the Literature of Power, to use De Quincey's famous
distinction. With the exception of Dante's _Divine Comedy_ there is
practically not a single book that has any title whatever to a place in
the Literature of Power, a literature which many of us think the only
thing in the world of books worth consideration. Great philosophy is
here, and high thought. Who would for a moment wish to disparage St.
Bonaventure, the Seraphic Doctor, or Aquinas the Angelic? Plato and
Pascal, Malebranche and Fenelon, Bossuet and Machiavelli are all among
the world's immortals. Yet now and again we are bewildered by finding
the least important book of a well-known author--as for example
Rousseau's _Poland_ instead of the _Confessions_ and Coleridge's _Aids to
Reflection_ instead of the _Poems_ or the _Biographia Literaria_. Think
of an historian whose ideal of historical work was so high that he
despised all who worked only from printed documents, selecting the
_Memorial of St. Helena_ of Las Casas in preference not only to a hundred-
and-one similar compilations concerning Napoleon's exile, but in
preference to Thucydides, Herodotus and Gibbon.
Sometimes Lord Acton names a theologian who is absolutely out-of-date, at
others a philosopher who is in the same case. But on the whole it is a
fascinating list as an index to what a well-trained mind thought the
noblest mental equipment for life's work. At the best, it is true, it
would represent but one half of life. But then Lord Acton recognized
this when he asked that men should be "steeled against the charm of
literary beauty and talent," and he was assuming in any case that all the
books in aesthetic literature, the best poetry and the best history had
already been read, as he undoubtedly had read them.
"The charm of literary beauty and talent!" There is the whole question.
Nothing really matters for the average man, so far as books are
concerned, but this charm, and I am criticizing Lord Acton's list for the
average man. The student who has got beyond it need not worry himself
about classified lists. He may read his Plato, and Aristotle, his Pascal
and Newman, his Christian apologists and German theologians, as he wills;
or he may read in some other quite different direction. Guidance is
impossible to a mind at such a stage of cultivation as Lord Acton had in
view.
Only minds at a more primitive stage of culture than this most learned
and most accomplished man seemed able to conceive of, could be bettered
by advice as to reading. Given, indeed, contact with some superior mind,
which out of its rich equipment of culture should advise as to the books
that might be most profitably read, I could imagine advice being helpful.
It would be of no value, it is true, to an untutored savage or illiterate
peasant, but to a youth fresh from school-books and much modern fiction,
to a young girl about to enter upon life in its more serious aspects, it
would be immensely serviceable. It was of such as these that Mr. Ruskin
thought when he wrote of "King's Treasures" in _Sesame and Lilies_, and
the same idea was doubtless in Sir John Lubbock's mind when he lectured
on the "Hundred Best Books." But Lord Avebury's list had its
limitations, it seems to me, for any one who has an interest in good
literature and guidance to the reading thereof. To give "Scott" as one
book and "Shakspere" as another was I suggest to shirk much
responsibility of selection. Scott is a whole library, Shakspere is yet
another. One may give "Keats" or "Shelley" because they are more limited
in quantity. Even to name novels by Charles Kingsley and Bulwer Lytton
in this select hundred was to demonstrate to men of this generation that
Lord Avebury being of an earlier one had a bias in favour of the books
that we are all outgrowing. To include Mill's _Logic_ is to ignore the
Time Spirit acting on philosophy; to include Tennyson's _Idylls_ its
action on poetry. Mill and Tennyson will always live in literature but
not I think by these books.
But the fact is that there is no possibility of naming the hundred best
books. No one could quarrel with Lord Avebury if he had named these as
his hundred own favourites among the books of the world. Still, it might
have been _his_ hundred; it could not possibly have been any one else's
hundred because every man of education must make his own choice. No! the
naming of the hundred best books for any large, general audience is quite
impossible. All that is possible in such a connexion is to state
emphatically that there are very few books that are equally suitable to
every kind of intellect. Temperament as well as intellectual endowment
make for so much in reading. Take, for example, the _Imitation_ of
_Christ_. George Eliot, although not a Christian, found it
soul-satisfying. Thackeray, as I think a more robust intellect, found it
well nigh as mischievous as did Eugene Sue, whose anathematizations in
his novel _The Wandering Jew_ are remembered by all. Other books that
have been the outcome of piety of mind leave less room for difference of
opinion. Surely Dante's _Divine Comedy_, and Bunyan's _Pilgrim's
Progress_, make an universal appeal. That universal appeal is the point
at which alone guidance is possible. There are great books that can be
read only by the few, but surely the very greatest appeal alike to the
educated and the illiterate, to the man of rich intellectual endowment
and to the man to whom all processes of reasoning are incomprehensible.
_Hamlet_ is a wonderful test of this quality. It "holds the boards" at
the small provincial theatre, it is enacted by Mr. Crummles to an
illiterate peasantry, and it is performed by the greatest actor to the
most select city audience. It is made the subject of study by learned
commentators. It is world-embracing.
Are there in the English language, including translations, a hundred
books that stand the test as _Hamlet_ stands it? No two men would make
the same list of books that answer to this demand of an universal appeal,
and obviously each nation must make its own list. Mine is for English
boys and girls just growing into manhood and womanhood, or for those who
have had no educational advantages in early years. I exclude living
writers, and I give the hundred in four groups.
POETRY.
1. The Bible. {260a}
2. _The Odyssey_, translated by Butcher and Lang. {260b}
3. The _Iliad_, translated by Lang, Leaf and Myers. {260b}
4. Aeschylus, translated by George Warr. {261a}
5. Sophocles, translated by J. S. Phillimore. {261a}
6. Euripides, translated by Gilbert Murray. {261a}
7. Virgil, translated by Dryden. {261b}
8. Catullus, translated by Theodore Martin. {261c}
9. Horace, translated by Theodore Martin. {261d}
10. Dante, translated by Cary. {262a}
11. Shakspere, _Hamlet_. {262b}
12. Chaucer, _Canterbury Tales_. {262c}
13. FitzGerald, _Omar Khayyam_. {263a}
14. Goethe, _Faust_. {263b}
15. Shelley. {263c}
16. Byron. {263d}
17. Wordsworth. {264a}
18. Keats. {264b}
19. Burns. {264c}
20. Coleridge. {264d}
21. Cowper. {264e}
22. Crabbe. {265a}
23. Tennyson. {265b}
24. Browning. {265c}
25. Milton. {265d}
FICTION.
1. _The Arabian Nights Entertainment_. {266a}
2. _Don Quixote_, by Cervantes. {266b}
3. _Pilgrim's Progress_, by Bunyan. {266c}
4. _Robinson Crusoe_, by Defoe. {266d}
5. _Gulliver's Travels_, by Swift. {267a}
6. _Clarissa_, by Richardson. {267b}
7. _Tom Jones_, by Fielding. {267c}
8. _Rasselas_, by Johnson. {267d}
9. _Vicar of Wakefield_, by Goldsmith. {268a}
10. _Sentimental Journey_, by Sterne. {268b}
11. _Nightmare Abbey_, by Peacock. {268c}
12. _Kenilworth_, by Walter Scott. {268d}
13. _Pere Goriot_, by Balzac. {268e}
14. _The Three Musketeers_, by Dumas. {269a}
15. _Vanity Fair_, by Thackeray. {269b}
16. _Villette_, by Charlotte Bronte. {269c}
17. _David Copperfield_, by Charles Dickens. {269d}
18. _Barchester Towers_, by Anthony Trollope. {269e}
19. Boccaccio's _Decameron_. {269f}
20. _Wuthering Heights_, by Emily Bronte. {270a}