Chapter 3 of 7 · 26730 words · ~134 min read

Book VI

+---------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's note: Numbers 8 and 9 are missing in the | | original. | +---------------------------------------------------------+

GROUP II.--_Short Poetical Selections._

+-------------------------------------+-----+----------+---------------+ | | | Manner | | | | [*] | of | Where found. | | | | Reading. | | +-------------------------------------+-----+----------+---------------+ | 10. PAYNE. | | | | | Home, Sweet Home | e. | C. | | | | | | | | LONGFELLOW. | | | | | Psalm of Life. | | R.D.C. | Longfellow's | | Paul Revere's Ride | | | Poems. | | The Building of the Ship | e. | R. | | | (These may be found in most | | | | | of the reading-books.) | e. | | | | Suspiria, and the close of | | | | | Morituri Salutamus | m. | R.D. | | | | | | | | HOLMES. | | | | | Nautilus; the last stanza | | | Autocrat of | | commit | m. | R.D. | the | | The Stars and Flowers, a | | | Breakfast- | | lovely little poem,--the | | | Table. | | first verses in the | | | | | Autocrat of the | | | | | Breakfast-Table | e. | R.D. | | | | | | | | HUNT. | | | | | Abou Ben Adhem | e. | R.D. | Monroe. | | | | | | | CAREW. | | | | | The True Beauty | e. | R.D. | Palgrave, 87. | | | | | | | GRAY. | | | | | Elegy in a Country Churchyard | m. | R.D.C. | " 147. | | Hymn to Adversity | m. | R.D. | " 159. | | Progress of Poesy | m. | R.D. | " 140. | | The Bard | m. | R.D. | " 123. | | | | | | | SAXE. | | | | | The Blind Men and the Elephant| e. | R.D. | No. 4. | | | | | | | JACKSON. | | | Poems of | | The Release | m. | R.D. | H. H. Jackson.| | | | | | | 11. HOOD. | | | | | Bridge of Sighs | m. | R.D. | Palgrave, 231.| | Song of the Shirt | e. | R.D. | No. 2. | | | | | | | BURNS. | | | | | Ye Banks and Braes o' Bonnie | | | | | Doon | e. | R.D. | Palgrave, 139.| | To a Field-mouse | e. | R.D. | " 144.| | Mary Morrison | e. | R.D. | " 148.| | Bonnie Lesley | e. | R.D. | " 149.| | Jean | e. | R.D. | " 155.| | John Anderson | e. | R.D. | " 156.| | A Man's a Man for a' that | e. | R.D. | Burns's Poems.| | Auld Lang Syne | e. | R.D. | | | Robert Bruce's Address to his | | | | | Army | e. | R.D. | | | | | | | | MOORE. | | | | | The Light of other Days | e. | R.D. | Palgrave, 225.| | Come rest in this Bosom | e. | R.D. | Irish Melodies| | At the Mid Hour of Night | e. | R.D. | Irish Melodies| | Those Evening Bells | e. | R.D. | Monroe. | | | | | | | COLERIDGE. | | | | | Rime of the Ancient Mariner | d. | R.D.G. | Coleridge's | | Kubla Khan; a Picture of the | | | Poems. | | Stream of Life | d. | R.D.G. | | | Vale of Chamouni | e. | R. | Monroe. | | | | | | | WHITTIER. | | | | | The Farmer's Wooing, in Among | | | | | the Hills | m. | R.D.C. | Whittier's | | The Harp at Nature's Advent | | | Poems. | | Strung, etc., in Tent on | | | | | the Beach | m. | R.D.C. | | | Snow Bound, Centennial Hymn | | | | | (No. 13), and at least | | | | | glance athis Voices of | | | | | Freedom | m. | R.D.C. | | | Barefoot Boy | e. | R.D.C. | | | | | | | | TENNYSON. | | | | | "Break, break, break, on thy | | | Tennyson's | | cold gray Stones, O Sea" | m. | R.D.C. | Poems. | | "Ring out, wild Bells," in | | | | | the In Memoriam | m. | R.D.C. | | | Bugle Song, in The Princess | m. | R.D.C. | No. 2. | | Charge of the Light Brigade | e. | R.D.C. | No. 2. | | The Brook | e. | R.D.C. | Monroe. | | | | | | | CHAUCER. | | | | | The Clerk's Tale, or the | | | | | Story of Grisilde, in the | | | Chaucer's | | Canterbury Tales | m. | R. | Poems. | | | | | | | 12. KEY. | | | | | The Star-Spangled Banner | e. | C. | No. 4. | | | | | | | DRAKE. | | | | | The American Flag | e. | R. | No. 1. | | | | | | | SMITH. | | | | | "My Country, 'tis of thee" | e. | C. | | | | | | | | BOKER. | | | | | The Black Regiment | e. | R. | No. 1. | | | | | | | CAMPBELL, | | | | | full of fire | | | | | and martial music. | | | | | Ye Mariners of England | m. | R.D.C. | Palgrave, 206.| | Battle of the Baltic | m. | R.C. | " 207.| | Soldier's Dream | m. | R.C. | " 267.| | Hohenlinden | m. | R.C. | " 215.| | Lord Ullin's Daughter | m. | R.C. | " 181.| | Love's Beginning | m. | R.C. | " 183.| | Ode to Winter | m. | R.C. | " 256.| | | | | | | THOMSON. | | | | | Rule Britannia | m. | R.C. | Palgrave, 122.| | | | | | | LOWELL. | | | | | The Crisis | d. | R.D.C.G. | Lowell's | | Harvard Commemoration Ode | d. | R.D.C.G. | Poems. | | The Fountain | e. | R.D.C.G. | | | | | | | | HALLECK. | | | | | Marco Bozzaris | e. | R. | No. 1. | | | | | | | MACAULAY. | | | | | Lays of Ancient Rome, | | | | | especially Horatius, and | e. | R.D. | No. 2. | | Virginia, also the Battle of | | | | | Ivry | m. | R.D. | No. 5. | | | | | | | O'HARA. | | | | | The Bivouac of the Dead | | | | | | | | | | MITFORD. | | | | | Rienzi's Address | m. | R. | No. 1. | | | | | | | CROLY. | | | | | Belshazzar | m. | R. | No. 4. | | | | | | | 13. SHELLEY. | | | Shelley's | | | | | Poems. | | Ode to the West Wind | m. | R.D.C. | Palgrave, 275.| | Ode to a Skylark | m. | R.D.C. | " 241.| | To a Lady with a Guitar | m. | R.D.C. | " 252.| | Italy | m. | R.D.C. | " 274.| | Naples | m. | R.D.C. | " 227.| | The Poet's Dream | d. | R.D.C. | " 277.| | The Cloud, Sensitive Plant, | | | | | etc. | m. | R.D.C. | | | | | | | | BYRON. | | | Byron's Poems.| | All for Love | m. | R.D. | Palgrave, 169.| | Beauty | m. | R.D. | " 171.| | Apostrophe to the Ocean, and | | | | | The Eve of Waterloo | m. | R.D.C. | Monroe. | | The Field of Waterloo | m. | R.D.C. | No. 1. | | (These are among the most | | | | | magnificent poems in any | | | | | language.) | | | | | | | | | | BRYANT. | | | | | Thanatopsis | m. | R.C.G. | No. 1. | | | | | | | PRENTICE. | | | | | The Closing Year | m. | R.C.G. | No. 1. | | | | | | | POE. | | | | | The Bells; The Raven | m. | R.C.G. | No. 1. | | Annabel Lee | m. | R. | No. 5. | | | | | | | KEATS. | | | Keats's Poems.| | The Star | m. | R. | Palgrave, 198.| | Ode to a Nightingale | m. | R. | " 244.| | Ode to Autumn | m. | R. | " 255.| | Ode on the Poets | m. | R. | " 167.| | | | | | | WORDSWORTH. | | | | | A Beautiful Woman | e. | R.C. | Palgrave, 174.| | The Reaper | m. | R. | " 250.| | Simon Lee | m. | R. | " 219.| | Intimations of Immortality | | | " 367.| | | | | | | HERBERT. | | | | | Gifts of God | e. | R.D.C. | " 74.| | | | | | | READ. | | | | | Drifting | m. | R.D.C. | No. 1. | | Sheridan's Ride | e. | R. | " | | | | | | | FLETCHER. | | | | | Melancholy | e. | R. | Palgrave, 104.| | | | | | | POPE. | | | | | Rape of the Lock | m. | R. | Pope's Poems. | | | | | | | 14. INGELOW. | | | | | The Brides of Enderby | m. | R. | No. 2. | | High Tide, etc. | | | | | | | | | | COWPER. | | | | | Loss of the Royal George | e. | R. | Palgrave, 129.| | Solitude of Selkirk | m. | R. | " 160.| | | | | | | DRYDEN. | | | | | Alexander's Feast | d. | R. | " 116.| | | | | | | COLLINS. | | | | | The Passions | d. | R. | " 141.| | | | | | | JONSON. | | | | | Hymn to Diana | m. | R. | " 78.| | | | | | | ADDISON. | | | | | Cato's Soliloquy | m. | R. | No. 1. | | | | | | | LODGE. | | | | | Rosaline | m. | R. | Palgrave, 16.| | | | | | | HERRICK. | | | | | Counsel to Girls | e. | R. | " 82.| | The Poetry of Dress | e. | R. | " 92.| | | | | | | 15. GOETHE. | | | | | Raphael Chorus,--a wonderful | | | | | chorus of three stanzas in | | | | | Faust. Read Shelley's | | | | | translations, both literal | | | | | and free, in his Fragments | m. | R.C.G. | Shelley's | | | | | Poems. | | OMAR KHAYYAM. | | | | | Rubaiyat, especially the | | | | | "moving shadow-shape" and the | | | | | "phantom caravan" stanzas, | | | | | for their magnificent imagery | m. | R.C.G. | Fitzgerald's | | | | | Translation. | | EURIPIDES. | | | | | Chorus in Medea--Campbell's | | | | | translation | m. | R.C.G. | Campbell's | | | | | Poems. | | | | | | | CALDERON. | | | | | Read Shelley's Fragments | m. | R.C.G. | Shelley's | | | | | Poems. | | SCHILLER. | | | Schiller's | | The Battle | m. | R. | Poems. No. 4. | | The Song of the Bell | m. | R. | Publ. | | | | | separately. | | MOLIERE. | | | | | Tartuffe, or The Hypocrite | e. | R.D. | Moliere's | | Le Misanthrope, or The | | | Plays. | | Man-Hater | e. | R.D. | | +-------------------------------------+-----+----------+---------------+

GROUP III.--_Short Prose Selections._

+-------------------------------------+-----+----------+---------------+ | | | Manner | | | | [*] | of | Where found. | | | | Reading. | | +-------------------------------------+-----+----------+---------------+ | | | | | | 16. LINCOLN. | | | | | Gettysburg Oration. Famous | | | | | for its calm, clear, simple | | | | | beauty, breadth, and power | m. | R.C. | No. 2. | | | | | | | IRVING | | | | | our greatest | | | | | master of style; | | | | | his prose is poetry. | | | | | Rip Van Winkle | e. | R.D.C. | Sketch Book. | | The Spectre Bridegroom | e. | R.D.C. | " " | | The Art of Book-Making | e. | R.D.C. | " " | | The Legend of Sleepy Hollow | e. | R.D.C. | " " | | | | | | | 17. BACON. | | | | | Essay on Studies. Note the | | | | | clearness and completeness | | | | | of Bacon, and his tremendous| | | | | condensation of thought | m. | R.D.C. | Bacon's | | | | | Essays. | | CARLYLE. | | | | | Apostrophe to Columbus, p. | | | | | 193 of Past and Present,-- | | | | | Carlyle's finest passage | m. | R.D.C. | | | Await the Issue | m. | R.D.C. | Monroe. | | The account of the | | | | | conversational powers of | | | | | Coleridge, given in | | | | | Carlyle's Life of Sterling | e. | R.D.C. | | | | | | | | 18. WEBSTER. | | | | | Liberty and Union,--a | | | | | selection from the answer to| | | | | Hayne in the United States | | | | | Senate, on the question of | | | | | the power of a State to | | | | | nullify the acts of | | | | | Congress, and to withdraw | | | | | from the Union,--the | | | | | greatest of American | | | | | orations, and worthy to | | | | | rank side by side with the | | | | | world's best | m. | R.D.C. | No. 1. | | | | | | | PHILLIPS. | | | | | Comparison of Toussaint | | | | | L'Ouverture with Napoleon, | | | Phillips's | | in his oration on Toussaint | m. | R.D.C. | Speeches. | | | | | | | 19. EVERETT. | | | | | Discoveries of Galileo | m. | R. | No. 1. | | | | | | | BURRITT. | | | | | One Niche the Highest | e. | R. | No. 7. | | | | | | | 20. HUGO. | | | | | The Monster Cannon, one of | | | | | the great Frenchman's master| | | | | strokes,--a very thrilling | | | | | scene, splendidly painted | e. | R. | No. 11. | | Rome and Carthage | m. | R. | No. 6. | | | | | | | DE QUINCEY. | | | | | Noble Revenge | m. | R. | No. 7. | | | | | | | 21. POE. | | | | | Murders in the Rue Morgue | d. | R. | Little | | | | | Classics. | | INGERSOLL. | | | | | Oration at the funeral of his | | | Ingersoll's | | brother | m. | R. | Prose Poems. | | | | | | | 22. SCOTT. | | | | | Thirty-sixth chapter of the | | | | | Heart of Midlothian | m. | R. | | | | | | | | CURTIS. | | | | | Nations and Humanity | m. | R. | No. 11. | | | | | | | 23. TAYLOR. | | | | | The sections on Temperance | | | | | and Chastity in the Holy | | | | | Living and Dying | m. | R.D. | | | | | | | | BROOKS. | | | | | Pamphlet on Tolerance,--the | | | | | best book in the world on a | | | | | most vital subject | m. | R.D. | | +-------------------------------------+-----+----------+---------------+

GROUP IV.--_Wit and Humor_--_Short List._

+-------------------------------------+-----+----------+---------------+ | | | Manner | | | | [*] | of | Where found. | | | | Reading. | | +-------------------------------------+-----+----------+---------------+ | | | | | | 24. LOWELL. | | | | | Biglow Papers | e. | R.D. | Lowell's | | Fable for Critics | d. | R.D. | Poems. | | The Courtin' | e. | R.D. | | | | | | | | HOLMES. | | | | | Autocrat of the | | | | | Breakfast-Table | m. | R.D. | | | | | | | | 25. CARLETON. | | | | | Farm Ballads, especially the | | | | | Visit of the School | | | | | Committee, and The Rivals | e. | S. | | | | | | | | STOWE. | | | | | Laughin' in Meetin' | e. | S. | No. 11. | | | | | | | TWAIN. | | | | | On New England Weather | e. | S. | No. 13. | | European Guides, and | | | Innocents | | Turkish Baths | e. | S. | Abroad. | | | | | | | 26. DICKENS. | | | | | Pickwick Papers | e. | S. | | | | | | | | JAMES DE MILLE. | | | Cumnock's | | A Senator Entangled | e. | S. | Choice | | | | | Readings. | | LOVER. | | | | | The Gridiron | e. | S. | " " | | | | | | | WHATELY. | | | | | Historic Doubts regarding | | | Publ. | | Napoleon | e. | S. | separately. | +-------------------------------------+-----+----------+---------------+

TABLE IV.

SUPPLEMENTARY GENERAL READING.

In addition to the short courses set forth in Tables II. and III., at the same time, if the reader has a sufficiency of spare hours, but always in subordination to the above courses, it is recommended that attention be given to the following books:--

Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. (e. R. D.)

Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. (e. S.)

Dickens' Christmas Carol (m. R. D.); Cricket on the Hearth. (m. R. D.)

Ruskin's Crown of Wild Olive (m. R. D.); Ethics of the Dust (m. R. D.); Sesame and Lilies. (m. R. D.)

Emerson's Essays (d. R. D. C.); especially those on Manners, Gifts, Love, Friendship, The Poet, and on Representative Men.

Demosthenes on the Crown. (m. R. D. C. G.)

Burke's Warren Hastings Oration. (m. R. D. C. G.)

Phillips' Speeches on Lovejoy and Garrison. (m. R. D. C. G.)

La Fontaine's Fables. (m. R. D.)

Short Biographies of the World's Hundred Greatest Men. (m. R. D.)

Marshall's Life of Washington. (m. R. D. G.)

Carlyle's Cromwell. (m. R. D. G.)

Tennyson's In Memoriam. (d. R. D. C.)

Byron's Childe Harold. (m. R. D. C.)

Burns' Cotter's Saturday Night. (m. R. D.)

Keats' Endymion. (d. R. D. C.)

Shelley's Prometheus Unbound. (d. R. D. C. G.)

Campbell's Pleasures of Hope. (m. R. D. C.)

Goldsmith's Deserted Village. (m. R. D. C.)

Pope's Essay on Man. (m. R. D. C.)

Thomson's Seasons. (m. R. D. C.)

CHILDREN.

So far we have spoken of reading for grown people. Now we must deal with the reading of young folks,--a subject of the utmost importance. For to give a child good habits of reading, to make him like to read and master strong, pure books,--books filled with wisdom and beauty,--and equally eager to shun bad books, is to do for him and the world a service of the highest possible character; and to neglect the right care of a child in this matter is to do him an injury far greater than to mutilate his face or cut off his arm.

WHAT TO GIVE THE CHILDREN.

Parents, teachers, and others interested in the welfare of young people have not only to solve the problem of selecting books for their own nourishment, but also the more difficult problem of providing the young folks with appropriate literary food. As literature may be made one of the most powerful influences in the development of a child, the greatest care should be taken to make the influence true, pure, and tender, and give it in every respect the highest possible character, which requires as much care to see that bad books do not come into the child's possession and use, as to see that good books do. The ability to read adds to life a wonderful power, but it is a power for evil as well as good. As Lowell says, "It is the key which admits us to the whole world of thought and fancy and imagination,--to the company of saint and sage, of the wisest and wittiest at their wisest and wittiest moments. It enables us to see with the keenest eyes, hear with the finest ears, and listen to the sweetest voices of all time. More than that, it annihilates time and space for us,--reviving without a miracle the Age of Wonder, and endowing us with the shoes of swiftness and the cap of darkness." Yes, but it opens our minds to the thoughts of the vile as well as to those of the virtuous; it unlocks the prisons and haunts of vice as well as the school and the church; it drags us through the sewer as well as gives us admission to the palace; it feeds us on filth as well as the finest food; it pours upon our souls the deepest degradation as well as the spirit of divinity. Parents will do well to keep from their children such books as Richardson's "Pamela" and "Clarissa Harlowe;" Fielding's "Joseph Andrews," "Jonathan Wild," and "Tom Jones;" Smollett's "Humphrey Clinker," "Peregrine Pickle," and "Adventures of an Atom;" Sterne's "Tristram Shandy;" Swift's "Gulliver," and their modern relatives. Many of these coarse pictures of depravity and microscopic analyses of filth I cannot read without feeling insulted by their vulgarity, as I do when some one tells an indecent story in my presence. Whatever the power or wit of a book, if its motive is not high and its expression lofty, it should not come into contact with any life, at least until its character is fixed and hardened in the mould of virtue beyond the period of plasticity that might receive the imprint of the badness in the book. There are plenty of splendid books that are pure and ennobling as well as strong and humorous,--more of them than any one person can ever read,--so that there is no necessity of contact with imperfect literature. If a boy comes into possession of a book that he would not like to read aloud to his mother or sister, he has something that is not good for him to read,--something that is not altogether the very best for anybody to read. Some liberty of choice, however, ought to be allowed the children. It will add much to the vigor and enthusiasm of a boy's reading if, instead of prescribing the precise volume he is to have at each step, he is permitted to make his own selection from a list of three or four chosen by the person who is guiding him. What these three or four should be, is the problem. I cannot agree with Lowell, when he says that young people ought to "confine themselves to the supreme books in whatever literature, or, still better, choose some one great author and make themselves thoroughly familiar with him." It is possible to know something of people in general about me without neglecting my best friends. It is possible to enjoy the society of Shakspeare, Goethe, AEschylus, Dante, Homer, Plato, Spencer, Scott, Eliot, Marcus Aurelius, and Irving, without remaining in ignorance of the power and beauty to be found in Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Byron, Burns, Goldsmith, Keats, Shelley, Tennyson, Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, and Lowell, Ingersoll, Omar, Arnold, Brooks, and Robertson, Curtis, Aldrich, Warner, Jewett, Burroughs, Bulwer, Tourgee, Hearn, Kingsley, MacDonald, Hawthorne, Dickens, Thackeray, Carlyle, Ruskin, Hugo, Bronte, Sienkiewicz, and a host of others. Scarcely a day passes that I do not spend a little time with Shakspeare, Goethe, AEschylus, Spencer, and Irving; but I should be sorry to have any one of those I have named beyond call at any time. There are parts of Holmes, Lowell, Brooks, Emerson, Omar, Arnold, Tourgee, and Hearn that are as dear to me as any passages of equal size in Goethe or Irving. So it does not seem best to me to _confine_ the attention to the supreme books; a just _proportion_ is the true rule. Let the supreme books have the supreme attention, absorb them, print them on the brain, carry them about in the heart, but give a due share of time to other books. I like the suggestion of Marietta Holley: "I would feed children with little sweet crumbs of the best of books, and teach them that a whole rich feast awaited them in the full pages," only taking care in each instance that the crumb is well rounded, the picture not torn or distorted. There are paragraphs and pages in many works of the second rank that are equal to almost anything in the supreme books, and superior to much the latter contain. These passages should be sought and cherished; and the work of condensing the thought and beauty of literature--making a sort of literary prayer-book--is an undertaking that ought not to be much longer delayed. Until it is done, however, there is no way but to read widely, adapting the speed and care to the value of the volume. Some things may be best read by deputy, as Mark Twain climbed the Alps by agent; newspapers, for example, and many of the novels that flame up like a haystack on fire, and fade like a meteor in its fall, striking the earth never to rise again. The time that many a young man spends upon newspapers would be sufficient to make him familiar with a dozen undying books every year. Newspapers are not to be despised, but they should not be allowed to crowd out more important things. I keep track of the progress of events by reading the "Outlook" in the "Christian Union" every week, and glancing at the head-lines of the "Herald" or "Journal," reading a little of anything specially important, or getting an abstract from a friend who always reads the paper. A good way to economize time is for a number of friends to take the same paper, the first page being allotted to one, the second to another, and so on, each vocally informing the others of the substance of his page. If time cannot be found for both the newspaper and the classic, the former, not the latter, should receive the neglect.

This matter of the use of time is one concerning which parents should strive to give their children good habits from the first. If you teach a child to economize time, and fill him with a love of good books, you ensure him an education far beyond anything he can get in the university,--an education that will cease only with his life. The creation of a habit of industrious study of books that will improve the character, develop the powers, and store the mind with force and beauty,--that is the great object.

A good example is the best teacher. It is well for parents to keep close to the child until he grows old enough to learn how to determine for himself what he should read (which usually is not before fifteen or twenty, and in many cases never); for children, and grown folks too for that matter, crave intellectual as much as they do physical companionship.

The methods of guiding the young in the paths of literature fall naturally into two groups,--the first being adapted to childhood not yet arrived at the power of reading alone, the second adapted to later years. There is no sharp line of division or exclusion, but only a general separation; for the methods peculiarly appropriate to each period apply to some extent in the other. Some children are able to read weighty books at three or four years of age, but most boys and girls have to plod along till they are eight or ten before they can read much alone. I will consider the periods of child life I have referred to, each by itself.

=The Age of Stories=.--It is not necessary or proper to wait until a child can read, before introducing it to the best literature. Most of the books written for children have no permanent value, and most of the reading books used in primary and grammar schools contain little or no genuine literature, and what they do contain is in fragments. Portions of good books are useful, if the story of each part is complete, but children do not like the middle of a story without the beginning and end; they have the sense of entirety, and it should be satisfied. And it is not difficult to do this. Literature affords a multitude of beautiful stories of exceeding interest to children, and of permanent attractiveness through all the after years of their lives. Such literature is as available, as a means of teaching the art of reading, as is the trash in dreary droning over which the precious years of childhood are spent in our public schools. The development of the child mind follows the same course as the development of the mind of the race. The little boy loves the wonderful and the strong, and nearly everything is wonderful to him except himself. Living things especially interest him. Every child is a born naturalist; his heart turns to birds and beasts, flowers and stars. He is hungry for stories of animals, giants, fairies, etc. Myths and fairy tales are his natural food. His power of absorbing and retaining them is marvellous. One evening a few weeks ago a little boy who is as yet scarcely able to read words of two and three letters asked me for a story. I made an agreement with him that whatever I told him, he should afterward repeat to me, and then gave him the story of the elephant who squirted muddy water over the cruel tailor that pricked his trunk with a needle. No sooner had I finished than he threw his arms around my neck and begged for another story. I told him eight in rapid succession, some of them occupying three or four minutes, and then asked him to tell me about the elephants, dogs, bears, etc., that I had spoken of. He recited every story with astonishing accuracy and readiness, and apparently without effort, and would have been ready for eight more bits of Wood or Andersen, if his bedtime had not intervened. If parents would take as much pains to satisfy the mind hunger of their children as they do to fulfil their physical wants, and give them the best literature as well as the best beef and potatoes, the boys and girls would have digested the greater part of mythology, natural science, and the best fiction by the time they are able to read. Children should be fed with the literature that represents the childhood of the race. Out of that literature has grown all literature. Give a child the contents of the great books of the dawn, and you give him the best foundation for subsequent literary growth, and in after life he will be able to follow the intricate interweaving of the old threads throughout all modern thought. He has an immense affinity for those old books, for they are full of music and picturesqueness, teeming with vigorous life, bursting with the strange and wonderful. In the following list parents and teachers will find abundant materials for the culture of the little ones, either by reading aloud to them, or still better by telling them the substance of what they have gathered by their own reading of these famous stories and ditties. Pictures are always of the utmost value in connection with books and stories, as they impart a vividness of conception that words alone are powerless to produce. One plea for sincerity I must make,--truth and frankness from the cradle to the grave. Do not delude the children. Do not persuade them that a fairy tale is history. I have a sad memory of my disgust and loss of confidence in human probity when I discovered the mythical character of Kriss Kringle, and I believe many children are needlessly shocked in this way.

_List of Materials for Story-telling and for the Instruction and Amusement of Childhood._

"Mother Goose," "Jack and the Bean-Stalk," "Jack the Giant-Killer," "Three Bears," "Red Riding-Hood," "The Ark," "Hop o' my Thumb," "Puss in Boots," "Samson," "Ugly Duckling," "The Horse of Troy" (Virgil), "Daniel in the Lion's Den," etc.

Andersen's "Fairy Tales." Delightful to all children.

Grimm's "Fairy Tales."

De Garmo's "Fairy Tales."

Craik's "Adventures of a Brownie."

"Parents' Assistant," by Maria Edgeworth, recommended by George William Curtis, Mary Mapes Dodge, Charles Dudley Warner, etc.

"Zigzag Journeys," a series of twelve books, written by Hezekiah Butterworth, one of the editors of the "Youth's Companion." As might be supposed, they are among the very best and most enduringly popular books ever written for young people.

Wood's books of Anecdotes about Animals, and many other works of similar character, that may be obtained from the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, 19 Milk Street, Boston. The literature distributed by this Society is filled with the spirit of love and tenderness for all living things, and is one of the best influences that can come into a child's life.

Mary Treat's "Home Book of Nature." One of the best books of science for young people.

Bulfinch's "Age of Fable." A book that is exhaustive of Greek and Roman mythology, but meant for grown folks.

Bulfinch's "Age of Chivalry."

Fiske's "Myths and Myth Makers." Brief, deep, and suggestive.

Hawthorne's "Wonder Book" and "Tanglewood Tales." Books that no house containing children should lack.

Cox's "Tales of Ancient Greece."

Baldwin's "Stories of the Golden Age."

Forestier's "Echoes from Mist Land." An interesting study of the Nibelungenlied.

Lucian's "Dialogues of the Gods." Written to ridicule ancient superstitions.

Curtin's "Folk Lore of Ireland."

Stories of Greek Heroes, Kingsley.

Stories from Bryant's Odyssey.

Stories from Church's "Story of the Iliad."

Stories from Church's "Story of the AEneid."

Stories from Herodotus, Church.

Stories from the Greek Tragedians, Church.

Stories of Charlemagne, Hanson.

Stories from "Arabian Nights," Bulfinch.

Stories from "Munchausen," and Maundeville.

Stories from Chaucer, especially "Griselda." (From Chaucer, or from Mrs. Haweis' book.)

Stories told to a Child, by Jean Ingelow.

Stories from the "Morte D'Arthur," Malory or Lanier.

Stories from Lanier's "Froissart."

Stories from Shakspeare.

Stories of the Revolution, Riedesel.

Stories from American and English History about the Magna Charta, Henry VIII., Queen Elizabeth, Cromwell, Pitt, Gladstone, Boston Tea Party, Declaration of Independence, Washington, Rebellion, Lincoln, etc.

Stories of American life, from "Oldtown Folks," "Sam Lawson's Fireside Stories," and from the best novels.

Stories from the "Book of Golden Deeds," Miss Yonge.

Stories from Bolton's "Poor Boys who became Famous," and "Girls who became Famous."

Stories from Smiles's "Self-Help." Full of brief, inspiring stories of great men.

Stones from Todd's "Students' Manual."

Stories from Irving's "Sketch Book," Rip Van Winkle, etc.

Stories from Green's "Short History of the English People."

Stories from Doyle's "History of the United States." One of the very best brief histories.

Stories from Mackenzie's "History of the Nineteenth Century."

Stories from Coffin's "Story of Liberty."

Stories from Freeman's "General Sketch of History."

Stories from the "Stories of the Nations." (Putnam's Series.)

Stories from the books of Columns 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 12, and 14 of Table I.

The story of Christ and his Apostles. (It is scarcely needful to mention Bible stories in general. Every child born into a civilized family is saturated with them; but the simple story of Christ's life as an entirety is too seldom told them.)

The story of Buddha, from the "Light of Asia."

The story of Mahomet, Irving.

The story of Confucius.

The story of Socrates drinking the hemlock, from Plato, or from Fenelon's "Lives of the Philosophers," which contains many splendid Greek stories.

The story of Prometheus, from AEschylus.

The story of Diogenes in his Tub.

The story of Thermopylae and other battles, from Cressy.

The story of Carthage, from Putnam's series of the "Stories of the Nations." (Nine to eleven years.)

The story of Roland, Baldwin.

The story of the Cid, Southey.

The story of the Nibelungenlied. (See Baldwin's "Story of Siegfried.")

The story of Faust, from "Zigzag Journeys."

The story of "Reynard the Fox," Goethe.

The story of Pythagoras and the transmigration of souls.

The story of Astronomy, from Herschel, Proctor, etc.

The story of Geology, from Lyell, Dawson, Miller, etc., or from Dana's "The Geological Story, Briefly Told."

The story of Athena, Pluto, Neptune, Apollo, Juno, Mars, Jupiter, Mercury, Charon, Vulcan, Zeus, Io, Orpheus, and Eurydice, Phaeton, Arachne, Ariadne, Iphigenia, Ceres, Vesta, Herakles, Minerva, Venus, Scylla and Charybdis, Hercules, Ulysses, Helen, Achilles, AEneas, etc., from Bulfinch's "Age of Fable," "Zigzag Journeys," etc.

The story of William Tell, the Man in the Moon, etc., from S. Baring Gould's "Curious Myths."

The story of the Courtship of Miles Standish.

The story of the Nuernburg Stove, from Ouida's "Bimbi."

The story of Robert Bruce.

The story of Circe's Palace, from "Tanglewood Tales."

The story of Pandora's Box, from the "Wonder Book."

The story of Little Nell, from "The Old Curiosity Shop."

The story of the Boy in "Vanity Fair."

Many other books might be placed on the list of parent-helpers. Indeed, the perfect guidance of youth would require a perfect knowledge of literature throughout its breadth and depth; but the above suggestions, if followed in any large degree, will result in a far better training than most children now receive.

THE FORMATION OF A GOOD READING HABIT.

As the child learns to read by itself, the books from which were drawn the stones it has heard may be given to it, care being taken that every gift shall be adapted to the ability of the little one. The fact that the boy has heard the story of Horatius at the Bridge does not diminish, but vastly increases, his desire to read the "Lays of Ancient Rome." When he comes to the possession of the book, it seems to him like a discovery of the face of a dear friend with whose voice he has long been familiar. I well remember with what delight I adopted the "Sketch Book" as one of my favorites on finding Rip Van Winkle in it.

Below will be found a list of books intended as a suggestion of what should be given to children of various ages. The larger the number of good books the child can be induced to read each year, the better of course, so long as his powers are not overtaxed, and the reading is done with due thoroughness. But if only four or five are selected from each year's list, the boy will know more of standard literature by the time he is sixteen, than most of his elders do. Each book enters the list at the earliest age an ordinary child would be able to read it with ease, and it may be used then or at any subsequent age; for no books are mentioned which are not of everlasting interest and profit to childhood, manhood, and age. Many of the volumes named below may also be used by parents and teachers as story-mines. There is no sharp line between the periods of story-telling and of reading. Most children read simple English readily at eight or ten years of age; many do a large amount of reading long before that, and nearly all do some individual work in the earlier period. The change should be gradual. For the stimulus that comparison gives, story-telling and reading aloud should be continued long after the child is able to read alone; in truth, it ought never to cease. Story-telling ought to be a universal practice. Stories should be told to and _by_ everybody. One of the best things grown folks can do is to tell each other the substance of their experience from day to day; and probably no finer means of education exists than to have the children give an account at supper or in the hour or two following, of what they have seen, heard, read, thought, and felt during the day. In the same way reading _solus_ should lap over into the early period as far as possible. One of the greatest needs of the day is a class of books that shall put _solid sense_ into _very_ simple words. A child can grasp the wonderful, strong, loving, pathetic, and even the humorous and critical, long before it can overcome the mechanical difficulties of reading. By so much as we diminish these, we push education nearer to the cradle. Charles Dudley Warner says, "As a general thing, I do not believe in books written for children;" and Phillips Brooks, Marietta Holley, Brooke Herford, and others express a similar feeling. But the trouble is not with the _plan_ of writing for children, but with the execution. If the highest _thoughts_ and feelings were written in the simplest words,--written as a wise parent _tells_ them to his little ones,--then we should have a juvenile literature that could be recommended. As it is, most writers for babies seem to have far less sense than the babies. Their books are filled with unnatural, make-believe emotions, and egregious nonsense in the place of ideas. The best prose for young people will be found in the works of Hawthorne, Curtis, Warner, Holmes, Irving, Addison, Goldsmith, Burroughs, and Poe; and the best poets for them are Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier, Burns, and Homer. Books that flavor sense with fun, as do those of Curtis, Holmes, Lowell, Holley, Stowe, Irving, Goldsmith, Warner, Addison, and Burroughs, are among the best means of creating in any heart, young or old, a love for fine, pure writing. P. T. Barnum, a man whose great success is largely due to his attainment of that serenity of mind which Lowell calls the highest result of culture, says: "I should, above almost everything else, try to cultivate in the child a kindly sense of humor. Wherever a pure, hearty laugh rings through literature, he should be permitted and taught to enjoy it." This judgment comes from a knowledge of the sustaining power a love of humor gives a man immersed in mental cares and worriments. Lincoln is, perhaps, the best example of its power.

It is often an inspiration to a boy to know that a book he is reading has helped and been beloved by some one whose name is to him a synonym of greatness,--to know, for example, that Franklin got his style from the "Spectator," which he studied diligently when a boy; that Francis Parkman from fifteen to twenty-one obtained more pleasure and profit from Scott than from any other writer; that Darwin was very fond of Mark Twain's "Treatise on the Frog;" that Marietta Holley places Emerson, Tennyson, and Eliot next to the Bible in her list of favorites; that Senator Hoar writes Emerson, Wordsworth, and Scott next after the Bible and Shakspeare; that Robert Collyer took great delight in Irving's "Sketch Book," when a youth; that the great historian Lecky is said to be in the habit of taking Irving with him when he goes to bed; that Phillips Brooks read Jonson many times when a boy, and that Lockhart's Scott was a great favorite with him, though the Doctor attaches no special significance to either of these facts; that Susan Coolidge thinks "Hans Brinker" is the best of all American books for children, etc. Similar facts may be found in relation to very many of the best books, and will aid much in arousing an interest in them.

Plato, Bacon, Goethe, Spencer, Emerson, and many others of the best are for the most part too difficult to be properly grasped until the mind is more mature than it usually is at sixteen. No precise rules, however, can be laid down on this subject, I have known a boy read Spencer's "First Principles" and Goethe's "Faust" and "Wilhelm Meister" at sixteen, and gain a mastery of them. All I have attempted to do is to make broad suggestions; experiment in each case must do the rest.

_Literature adapted to a Child Six or Eight Years of Age and upward._

Little Lord Fauntleroy. A book that cannot fail to delight and improve every reader.

King of the Golden River, Ruskin.

"Rosebud," from "Harvard Sophomore Stories."

Christmas all the Year round, Howells.

Mrs. Stowe's "Laughin' in Meetin'." An exceedingly funny story.

"Each and All" and "Seven Little Sisters," by Jane Andrews. Used in the Boston Public Schools as supplementary reading.

Classics in Babyland, Bates.

Scudder's "Fables and Folk Stories." Fine books for little ones.

AEsop.

Rainbows for Children, Lydia Maria Child.

Black Beauty, by Anna Sewell. The autobiography of a splendid horse, and the best teacher of kindness to animals we know of.

Burroughs' "Birds and Bees." In fact, all his beautiful and simple stories of Nature--"Pepacton," "Fresh Fields," "Wake Robin," "Winter Sunshine," "Signs and Seasons," etc.--are the delight of children as soon as they can read.

Winslow's "Fairy Geography."

By Sea-side and Wayside, Wright.

_Literature adapted to a Child Eight to Nine Years of Age and upward._

Sandford and Merton, Day. One of the very best of children's books.

Play Days, Sarah Orne Jewett.

Andersen's "Fairy Tales." Cannot be too highly praised.

Stories from King Arthur, Hanson. A good foundation for the study of Malory, Tennyson, etc.

"Winners in Life's Race," and "Life and her Children," by Miss Arabella Buckley. Books that charm many children of eight or nine.

Fairy Frisket; or, Peeps at Insect Life. Nelson & Sons.

Physiology, with pictures.

Queer Little People, Mrs. Stowe.

Kingsley's "Water Babies." A beautiful book, as indeed are all of Kingsley's.

Longfellow's "Building of the Ship."

The Fountain, Lowell.

Ye Mariners of England, Campbell.

Carleton's "Farm Ballads and Farm Legends." Humorous, pathetic, sensible.

_Literature adapted to a Child Nine to Ten Years of Age and upward._

Story of a Bad Boy, Aldrich. A splendid book for boys.

Boys of '76, Coffin. An eight-year-old boy read it five times, he was so pleased with it.

New Year's Bargain, Coolidge.

Pussy Willow, Stowe.

Hanson's "Homer and Virgil." Brief, clear, simple, clean.

Stories from Homer, Hanson.

Stories from Pliny, White.

Grimm's "Fairy Tales."

Legend of Sleeping Beauty.

Clodd's "The Childhood of the World." A splendid book to teach children the development of the world.

"Friends in Feathers and Fur," "Wings and Fins," "Paws and Claws," by Johonnot. Books much liked by the little ones.

First Book of Zoology, Morse.

Halleck's "Marco Bozzaris."

Wordsworth's "Peter Bell."

Mary, Queen of Scots, Strickland.

The Prince and the Pauper, Twain. A book that mingles no small amount of sense with its abounding fun and occasional tragedy.

_Literature adapted to a Child Ten or Eleven Years of Age and upward._

Being a Boy, Warner.

Little Women, Alcott. One of the most popular books of the day.

A Dog's Mission, Stowe.

Two Years before the Mast, Dana. Recommended by Sarah Orne Jewett, George William Curtis, and others.

Ten Boys on the Road, Andrews. A great favorite with the boys.

Jan of the Windmill, Ewing. The story of a poor boy who becomes a famous painter.

Hawthorne's "Celestial Railroad."

Little People of Asia, Miller.

Hawthorne's "Tanglewood Tales" and "Wonder Book" should belong to every child old enough to read ordinary English.

Adventures of a Brownie, Craik.

Stories from Chaucer, Seymour.

Stories from Livy, Church.

Lives of the Philosophers, Fenelon. An excellent book.

What Darwin saw in his Trip round the World in the Ship Beagle.

Fairy Land of Science, Miss Buckley. An author who writes for children to perfection.

Animal Life in the Sea and on the Land, Cooper. Very fine indeed.

Darwin's chapter on the "Habits of Ants" (in the "Origin of Species") is very interesting and amusing to little ones, and together with Burroughs' books prepares them to read such works as Lubbock's "Ants, Bees, and Wasps."

Ragozin's "Chaldea." One of the indispensable books for children.

Longfellow's "Psalm of Life."

Longfellow's "Hiawatha."

Lowell's "Under the Old Elm."

Wordsworth's "White Doe of Rylstone."

Lamb's Essay on Roast Pig. A piece of fun always enjoyed by boys and girls.

_Literature adapted to a Child Eleven to Twelve Years of Age and upward._

Shakspeare's "Merchant of Venice."

Marcus Aurelius. In a school where the book was at their call children from ten to thirteen carried it to and from school, charmed with its beautiful thoughts.

Hans Brinker, Mary Mapes Dodge. One of the very best stories for children.

Dickens' "Christmas Carol."

Hawthorne's "Great Stone Face." Highly appreciated by the young folks.

Uncle Tom's Cabin, Mrs. Stowe. A book that every child should have as soon as he is able to read it.

Another Flock of Girls, Nora Perry.

At the Back of the North Wind, Macdonald. A beautiful story, with a high motive.

A Hunting of the Deer, Warner.

Crusade of the Children, Gray. A thrilling story.

Bryant's translation of the Odyssey.

Story of the Iliad, Church.

Stories from Herodotus, Church.

Mary Treat's "Home Book of Nature."

Half Hours with the Stars, Proctor.

Guyot's "Earth and Man." A most excellent book.

First Book in Geology, Shaler.

First Steps in Chemistry, Brewster.

First Steps in Scientific Knowledge, Best.

Abou Ben Adhem, Hunt.

Scott's "Lady of the Lake."

Macaulay's "Lays of Ancient Rome."

Longfellow's "Tales of a Wayside Inn."

Whittier's "Snow Bound."

How they Brought the Good News to Aix, Browning.

Wordsworth's "We are Seven."

Franklin's Autobiography.

Lincoln's Gettysburg Speech.

Samantha at the Centennial.

_Literature adapted to a Child Twelve to Thirteen Years of Age and upward._

Shakspeare's "Julius Caesar."

Pilgrim's Progress, Bunyan. Indispensable.

Meditation of Thomas a Kempis. A strong influence for sweetness and purity.

Vicar of Wakefield, Goldsmith. Full of fun and good feeling; one of the most indispensable of books.

Cooper's novels, especially "The Spy" and the "Last of the Mohicans." Books that are fascinating and yet wholesome.

"My Summer in a Garden," and "In the Wilderness," Warner. Very humorous.

"The Dog of Flanders," from "Little Classics."

Picciola, Saintine. A great favorite.

The Story of Arnon, Amelie Rives.

Drake's "Culprit Fay."

Dr. Brown's "Rab and his Friends."

"The Man without a Country," "My Double and How He Undid Me," etc., by E. E. Hale. The cast is extremely funny.

The Hoosier Schoolmaster, Eggleston.

Boots and Saddles, Mrs. Custer.

Story of the AEneid, Church.

Stories from Greek Tragedians, Church.

Plumptre's "Sophocles."

Ruskin's "Athena."

Boys and Girls in Biology, Stevenson.

Other Worlds than Ours, Proctor.

Captains of Industry, Parton.

Lowell's "Vision of Sir Launfal." One of the great poet's finest productions.

Byron's "Eve of Waterloo."

Longfellow's "Evangeline."

Scott's "Marmion."

Milton's "Comus."

"The Two Runaways," "The Born Inventor," "Idyl of Sinkin' Mountain," etc., by Edwards. Very funny.

_Literature adapted to a Child Thirteen to Fourteen Years of Age and upward._

Shakspeare's "Coriolanus" and "Taming of the Shrew."

Scott's "Ivanhoe," "Heart of Midlothian," "Guy Mannering," etc. It is the making of a boy if he learns to love Scott. He will make a gentleman of him, and give him an undying love of good literature.

Journal of Eugenie de Guerin. Full of delicacy and quiet strength.

Tom Brown, Hughes. An universal favorite.

Curtis' "Prue and I." One of the very choicest books, both in substance and expression,--especially remarkable for its moral suggestiveness.

Craddock's "Floating down Lost Creek." Most excellent.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Stevenson. A story with a powerful moral,--if we give scope to our evil nature, it will master us.

Goldsmith's "Good-Natured Man."

Carlyle's "Heroes and Hero Worship."

Ben Hur, Wallace.

The Fool's Errand, Tourgee.

The Boys' King Arthur, Lanier.

Epictetus.

Physiology for Girls, Shepard.

Physiology for Boys, Shepard.

What Young People should Know, Wilder. A book that no boy or girl should be without.

How Plants Behave, Gray.

Goethe's "Erl King."

Browning's "Ivan Ivanovitch." A favorite.

The Forsaken Merman, Matthew Arnold. An exquisite poem.

Longfellow's "Miles Standish."

Scott's "Lay of the Last Minstrel."

The Veiled Statue of Truth, Schiller.

Guetenburg, and the Art of Printing.

Doyle's "United States History."

John Bright's "Speeches on the American Question."

Backlog Studies, Warner.

"Encyclopaedia of Persons and Places," and "Encyclopaedia of Common Things," by Champlin, should be within the reach of every child over twelve or thirteen years of age.

_Literature adapted to a Child Fourteen to Fifteen Years of Age._

Shakespeare's "Henry Fourth" and "Henry Fifth."

Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, Holmes; and Irving's "Sketch Book." Two of the best books in all the world.

George Eliot's novels, especially "Silas Marner," "The Mill on the Floss," "Romola," and "Adam Bede."

The Wit and Wisdom of George Eliot.

Our Best Society, Curtis.

Bulwer's "Rienzi."

The Marble Faun, Hawthorne.

Sad Little Prince, Fawcett.

Chita, or Youma, by Hearn, a master of English style.

Grande Pointe, Cable.

La Fontaine's Fables.

Plutarch's "Morals."

Ethics of the Dust, Ruskin.

Lady How and Madam Why, Kingsley.

Sketches of Creation, Winchell. Very interesting to children of fourteen or fifteen.

The Geological Story, Briefly Told, Dana.

Ready for Business, or Choosing an Occupation, Fowler and Wells.

Ode to a Skylark, Shelley.

Birds of Aristophanes, Frere.

Alfred the Great, Hughes.

Plutarch's "Lives."

Green's "Short History of the English People."

Demosthenes on the Crown. The finest of all orations.

The Biglow Papers, Lowell. The best of fun and sense.

Sweet Cicely, Holley. Quiet humor and unfailing wisdom.

Higginson's "Vacations for Saints." A splendid example of humorous writing.

_Literature adapted to a Child Fifteen to Sixteen Years of Age and upward._

Shakspeare's "Hamlet" and "The Tempest."

Dante's "Inferno."

Dickens' "Pickwick Papers," "David Copperfield," "Old Curiosity Shop," etc.

Thackeray's "Vanity Fair."

Tourgee's "Hot Plowshares," and "With Fire and Sword," by Sienkiewicz. Two of the greatest historical novels.

Carlyle's "Past and Present."

Arnold's "Sweetness and Light."

Ruskin's "Crown of Wild Olive."

Emerson's Essays on "Manners," "Self-Reliance," "Eloquence," "Friendship," "Representative Men," etc.

Mrs. Whitney's "Sights and Insights." A book that is filled with beautiful thoughts and unselfish actions.

Spencer's "Data of Ethics." Indispensable to a complete understanding of ethical subjects.

"The Light of Asia." A book that cannot fail to broaden and deepen every life it touches.

Ten Great Religions, Clarke.

Omar. Superb poetry.

Bryant's "Thanatopsis."

Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner." A lesson of the awfulness of cruelty.

Auld Lang Syne, Burns.

Toilers of the Sea, Hugo.

Huxley's "Man's Place in Nature."

Tyndall's "Forms of Water."

Our Country, Strong. A book that ought to be in the hands of every young person.

Bryce's "American Commonwealth."

Guizot's "History of Civilization."

Mill's "Logic." No young man can afford to remain unacquainted with this book.

The Hand and Ring, Green. One of the finest examples of reasoning in the language.

Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue" is another such example, and his "Gold Bug" is another.

Phillips' Speeches

Webster's "Liberty and Union."

Golden Treasury, Palgrave.

The Spectator. One of the very best books to study, in order to form a good style. Franklin and others attribute their success largely to reading it carefully in boyhood.

The Fable for Critics, Lowell.

The Yankee at the Court of King Arthur, Twain. Fun and sense welded together to make the most delightful book the author has written.

SPECIAL STUDIES.

Next in value to a love of good reading is a habit of concentrating the attention upon one subject through a long course of reading. In this way only can any thorough mastery be obtained. The child should be taught not to be satisfied with the thought of any one writer, but to investigate the ideas of all upon the topic in hand, and then form his own opinion. Thus he will gain breadth, depth, tolerance, independence, and scientific method in the search for truth. Of course it is impossible in a work of this kind to map out lines of study for the multitudinous needs of young people. The universities and the libraries provide the means of gaining full information as to the literature of any subject that may be selected. A few topic-clusters may, however, be of use here in the way of illustration. Many examples will be found in Baldwin's "The Book Lover."

=The Industrial Question=.--Suppose a young man desired to study the industrial question, which is one of the most important subjects of to-day, the proper method would be to go to one of the great libraries, or examine the catalogues of the large publishing-houses, to discover the names of recent books on the given topic, or on such subjects as Labor and Capital, Socialism, Co-operation, etc. Such books usually refer to others, and name many kindred works on the last pages. Thus the student's list will swell. I have myself investigated more than two hundred books on this topic and those it led me to. A few of the more important I will name as a starting-point for any one wishing to follow this research.

Labor, Thornton.

Conflict of Labor and Capital, Bolles; also, Howell.

Political Economy, Mill.

Progress and Poverty, George.

Profit-Sharing, Gilman.

In Darkest England, Booth.

Wages and the Wages Class, Walker.

Book of the New Moral World, Owen.

Communistic Societies of the United States, Nordhoff.

Dynamic Sociology, Ward.

Looking Backward, Bellamy.

Destinee Sociale, Considerant.

More's "Utopia."

Co-operative Societies, Watts.

History of Co-operation, Holyoake.

The Margin of Profits, Atkinson.

Gronlund's "Co-operative Commonwealth."

Capital, Karl Marx.

The State in relation to Labor, Jevons.

Organisation du Travail, Louis Blanc.

Co-operative Stores, Morrison.

Labor and Capital, Jervis.

Newton's "Co-operative Production and Co-operative Distribution in the United States."

Property and Progress, Mallock.

Principles of Sociology, Spencer.

Mill on Socialism.

The Progress of the Working Classes, Giffen.

Ely's "French and German Socialism," "Problems of To-day," and "Labor Movement in America."

Dilke's "Problems of Greater Britain."

Contemporary Socialism, Rae.

Outlines of an Industrial Science, Symes.

Early History of Land-holding among the Germans, Ross; etc.

=Malthusianism=.--To take a smaller example. Suppose the student wishes to make a thorough study of the doctrine of Malthusius in regard to population, he will have to refer to Macaulay's "Essay on Sadler," and the works on Political Economy of Ricardo, Chalmers, Roscher, etc., in support of Malthus, and to George's "Progress and Poverty," Spencer's "Biology" (Vol. II.), Sadler's "Law of Population," and the works of Godwin, Greg, Rickards, Doubleday, Carey, Alison, etc., against him.

For an example of a very different kind, cluster about the myth of Cupid the poems "Cupid and my Campaspe," by Lilly; "The Threat of Cupid," translated by Herrick; "Cupid Drowned," by Leigh Hunt; and "Cupid Stung," by Moore.

A great deal depends on selecting some department of thought and exhausting it. To know something of everything and everything of something is the true aim. If a child displays fine musical or artistic ability, among the books given it ought to be many that bear upon music and art,--the "Autobiography of Rubenstein;" the Lives of Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, Chopin, Mendelssohn; and Rocksho's "History of Music," Upton's "Woman in Music," Clayton's "Queens of Song," Lillie's "Music and the Musician," Haweis' "Music and Morals," Jameson's "Lives of the Painters," Crowest's "Tone Poets," Clement's "Painting and Sculpture," Mereweather's "Semele, or the Spirit of Beauty," etc.

Probably these examples, with those to be found in the notes to Table I., are amply sufficient to show what is meant by grouping the lights of literature about a single point so as to illuminate it intensely; but one more specimen will be given, because of the interest the subject has for us now and is likely to have for many years.

=The Tariff Question= may be studied in Ely's "Problems of To-day," Greeley's "Political Economy," Carey's "Principles of Social Science," E. P. Smith's "Manual of Political Economy," Byles's "Sophisms of Free Trade," Thompson's "Social Science and National Economy," Bastiat's "Sophisms of Protection," Mill's "Political Economy," Sumner's "Lectures on the History of Protection in the United States," Fawcett's "Free Trade and Protection," Mongredien's "History of the Free Trade Movement," Butt's "Protection Free Trade," Walters' "What is Free Trade," "The Gladstone-Blaine Debate," etc.

TABLE V.

_Showing the Distribution of the Best Literature in Time and Space, with a Parallel Reference to some of the World's Great Events._

[It was impossible to get the writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries into the unit space. The former fills a space twice the unit width, and the latter, when it is complete, will require five units.]

REMARKS ON TABLE V.

=Definitions and Divisions=.--Literature is life pulsing through life upon life; but only when the middle life imparts new beauty to the first is literature produced in any true and proper sense. The last life is that of the reader; the middle one that of the author; the first that of the person or age he pictures. Literature is the past pouring itself into the present. Every great man consumes and digests his own times. Shakspeare gives us the England of the 16th century, with the added qualities of beauty, ideality, and order. When we read Gibbon's "Rome," it is really the life of all those turbulent times of which he writes that is pouring upon us through the channels of genius. Dante paints with his own sublime skill the portraits of Italy in the 14th century, of his own rich, inner life, and of the universal human soul in one composite masterpiece of art. In one of Munchausen's stories, a bugler on the stage-top in St. Petersburg was surprised to find that the bugle stopped in the middle of the song. Afterward, in Italy, sweet music was heard, and upon investigation it was found that a part of the song had been frozen in the instrument in Russia, and thawed in the warmer air of Italy. So the music of river and breeze, of battle and banquet, was frozen in the verse of Homer nearly three thousand years ago, and is ready at any time, under the heat of our earnest study, to pour its harmony into our lives.

It is the fact that beauty is added by the author which distinguishes _Literature_ from the pictures of life that are given to us by newspaper reporters, tables of statistics, etc. Literature is not merely life,--it is life _crystallized in art_. This is the first great line dividing the Literary from the Non-Literary. The first class is again divided into Poetry and Prose. In the first the form is measured, and the substance imagery and imagination. In the latter the form is unmeasured, and the substance direct. Imagery is the heart of poetry, and rhythm its body. The thought must be expressed not in words merely, but in words that convey other thoughts through which the first shines. The inner life is pictured in the language of external Nature, and Nature is painted in the colors of the heart. The poet must dip his brush in that eternal paint-pot from which the forests and fields, the mountains, the sky, and the stars were painted. He must throw human life out upon the world, and draw the world into the stream of his own thought. Sometimes we find the substance of the poetic in the dress of prose, as in Emerson's and in Ingersoll's lectures, and then we have the prose poem; and sometimes we find the form of poetry with only the direct expression, which is the substance of prose, or perhaps without even the substance of _literary_ prose, as in parts of Wordsworth, Pope, Longfellow, Homer, Tennyson, and even sometimes in Shakspeare; see, for example, Tennyson's "Dirge."

=Tests for the Choice of Books=.--In deciding which of those glorious ships that sail the ages, bringing their precious freight of genius to every time and people, we shall invite into our ports, we must consider the nature of the crew, the beauty, strength, and size of the vessel, the depth of our harbor, the character of the cargo, and our own wants. In estimating the value of a book, we have to note (1) the kind of life that forms its material; (2) the qualities of the author,--that is, of the life through which the stream comes to us, and whose spirit is caught by the current, as the breezes that come through the garden bear with them the perfume of flowers that they touch; (3) the form of the book, its music, simplicity, size, and artistic shape; (4) its merits, compared with the rest of the books in its own sphere of thought; (5) its fame; (6) our abilities; and (7) our needs. There result several tests of the claims of any book upon our attention.

I. What effect will it have upon character? Will it make me more careful, earnest, sincere, placid, sympathetic, gay, enthusiastic, loving, generous, pure, and brave by exercising these emotions in me, and more abhorrent of evil by showing me its loathsomeness; or more sorrowful, fretful, cruel, envious, vindictive, cowardly, and false, less reverent of right and more attracted by evil, by picturing good as coming from contemptible sources, and evil as clothed with beauty? Is the author such a man as I would wish to be the companion of my heart, or such as I must study to avoid?

II. What effect will the book produce upon the mind? Will it exercise and strengthen my fancy, imagination, memory, invention, originality, insight, breadth, common-sense, and philosophic power? Will it make me bright, witty, reasonable, and tolerant? Will it give me the quality of intellectual beauty? Will it give me a deeper knowledge of human life, of Nature, and of my business, or open the doorways of any great temple of science where I am as yet a stranger? Will it help to build a standard of taste in literature for the guidance of myself and others? Will it give me a knowledge of what other people are thinking and feeling, thus opening the avenues of communication between my life and theirs?

III. What will be the effect on my skills and accomplishments? Will it store my mind full of beautiful thoughts and images that will make my conversation a delight and profit to my friends? Will it teach me how to write with power, give me the art of thinking clearly and expressing my thought with force and attractiveness? Will it supply a knowledge of the best means of attaining any other desired art or accomplishment?

IV. Is the book simple enough for me? Is it within my grasp? If not, I must wait till I have come upon a level with it.

V. Will the book impart a pleasure in the very reading? This test alone is not reliable; for till our taste is formed, the trouble may not be in it but in ourselves.

VI. Has it been superseded by a later book, or has its truth passed into the every-day life of the race? If so, I do not need to read it. Other things equal, the authors nearest to us in time and space have the greatest claims on our attention. Especially is this true in science, in which each succeeding great book sucks the life out of all its predecessors. In poetry there is a principle that operates in the opposite direction; for what comes last is often but an imitation, that lacks the fire and force of the original. Nature is best painted, not from books, but from her own sweet face.

VII. What is the relation of the book to the completeness of my development? Will it fill a gap in the walls of my building? Other things equal, I had better read about something I know nothing of than about something I am familiar with; for the aim is to get a picture of the universe in my brain, and a full development of my whole nature. It is a good plan to read everything of something and something of everything. A too general reader seems vague and hazy, as if he were fed on fog; and a too special reader is narrow and hard, as if fed on needles.

VIII. Is the matter inviting my attention of permanent value? The profits of reading what is merely of the moment are not so great as those accruing from the reading of literature that is of all time. To hear the gossip of the street is not as valuable as to hear the lectures of Joseph Cook, or the sermons of Beecher and Brooks. On this principle, most of our time should be spent on classics, and very little upon transient matter. There is a vast amount of energy wasted in this country in the reading of newspapers and periodicals. The newspaper is a wonderful thing. It brings the whole huge earth to me in a little brown wrapper every morning. The editor is a sort of travelling stage-manager, who sets up his booth on my desk every day, bringing with him the greatest performers from all the countries of the world, to play their parts before my eyes. Yonder is an immense mass-meeting; and that mite, brandishing his mandibles in an excited manner, is the great Mr. So-and-So, explaining his position amid the tumultuous explosions of an appreciative multitude. That puffet of smoke and dust to the right is a revolution. There in the shadow of the wood comes an old man who lays down a scythe and glass while he shifts the scenes, and we see a bony hand reaching out to snatch back a player in the midst of his part, and even trying to clutch the showman himself. For three dollars a year I can buy a season ticket to this great Globe theatre, for which God writes the dramas, whose scene-shifter is Time, and whose curtain is rung down by Death.[1] But theatre-going, if kept up continuously, is very enervating. 'T is better far to read the hand-bills and placards at the door, and only when the play is great go in. Glance at the head-lines of the paper always; read the mighty pages seldom. The editors could save the nation millions of rich hours by a daily column of _brief but complete_ statements of the paper's contents, instead of those flaring head-lines that allure but do not satisfy, and only lead us on to read that Mr. Windbag nominated Mr. Darkhorse amid great applause, and that Mr. Darkhorse accepted in a three-column speech skilfully constructed so as to commit himself to nothing; or that Mr. Bondholder's daughter was married, and that Mrs. So-and-So wore cream satin and point lace, with roses, etc.

[1] Adapted from Lowell.

=Intrinsic Merit=.--It must be noted that the tests of intrinsic merit are not precisely the same as the tests for the choice of books. The latter include the former and more. Intrinsic merit depends on the character impressed upon the book by its subject-matter and the author; but in determining the claims of a book upon the attention of the ordinary English reader, it is necessary not only to look at the book itself, but also to consider the needs and abilities of the reader. One may not be able to read the book that is intrinsically the best, because of the want of time or lack of sufficient mental development. Green's "Short History of England" and Dickens' "Child's History of England" may not be the greatest works in their department, but they may have the _greatest claims on the attention_ of one whose time or ability is limited. A chief need of every one is to know what others are thinking and feeling. To open up avenues of communication between mind and mind is one of the great objects of reading. Now it often happens that a book of no very high merit artistically considered--a book that can never take rank as a classic--becomes very famous, and is for a time the subject of much comment and conversation. In such cases all who would remain in thorough sympathy with their fellows must give the book at least a hasty reading, or in some way gain a knowledge of its contents. Intrinsically "Robert Elsmere" and "Looking Backward" may not be worthy of high rank (though I am by no means so sure of this as many of the critics seem to be); but their fame, joined as it is with high motive, entitles them to a reading.

It is always a good plan, however, to endeavor to ascertain the absolute or intrinsic merit of a book first, and afterward arrive at the relative value or claim upon the attention by making the correction required by the time and place, later publications in the same department, the peculiar needs and abilities of readers, etc.

In testing intrinsic worth we must consider--

Motive. Magnitude. Unity. Universality. Suggestiveness. Expression.

=Motive=.--The purpose of the author and the emotional character of the subject matter are of great importance. A noble subject nobly handled begets nobility in the reader, and a spirit of meanness brought into a book by its subject or author also impresses itself upon those who come in contact with it. Kind, loving books make the world more tender-hearted; coarse and lustful books degrade mankind. The nobility of the sentiment in and underlying a work is therefore a test of prime importance.

Whittier's "Voices of Freedom," Lowell's "Vision of Sir Launfal," Tennyson's "Locksley Hall," Warner's "A-Hunting of the Deer," Shakspeare's "Coriolanus," Macaulay's "Horatius" and "Virginia," AEschylus' "Prometheus," Dickens' "Christmas Carol," Sewell's "Black Beauty," Chaucer's "Griselda," Browning's "Ivan Ivanovitch," Arnold's "Forsaken Merman," and "The Light of Asia,"

are fine examples of high motive.

=Magnitude=.--The grander the subject, the deeper the impression upon us. In reading a book like "The Light of Asia," that reveals the heart of a great religion, or Guizot's "Civilization in Europe," that deals with the life of a continent, or Darwin's "Origin of Species," or Spencer's "Nebular Hypothesis," that grapples with problems as wide as the world and as deep as the starry spaces,--in reading such books we receive into ourselves a larger part of the universe than when we devote ourselves to the history of the town we live in, or the account of the latest game of base ball.

=Unity=.--A book, picture, statue, play, or oratorio is an artistic unity when no part of it could be removed without injury to the whole effect. True art masses many forces to a single central purpose. The more complex a book is in its substance (not its expression),--that is to say, the greater the variety of thoughts and feelings compressed within its lids,--the higher it will rank, if the parts are good in themselves and are so related as to produce one tremendous effect. But no intrusion of anything not essentially related to the supreme purpose can be tolerated. A good book is like a soldier who will not burden himself with anything that will not increase his fighting power, because, if he did, its weight would _diminish_ his fighting force. In the same way, if a book contains unnecessary matter, a portion of the attention that should be concentrated upon the real purpose of the volume, is absorbed by the superfluous pages, rendering the effect less powerful than it would otherwise be. Most of the examples of high motive named above, would be in place here, especially,--

Prometheus. The Forsaken Merman. The Light of Asia.

Other fine specimens of unity are,--

Holmes's "Nautilus." Hood's "Bridge of Sighs." Gray's "Elegy." Hunt's "Abou Ben Adhem." Longfellow's "Psalm of Life." Whittier's "Barefoot Boy." Shelley's "Ode to a Skylark." Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind." Byron's "Eve of Waterloo." Bryant's "Thanatopsis." Reed's "Drifting." Drake's "Culprit Fay." Irving's "Art of Bookmaking," etc. (in "Sketch Book"). Rives' "Story of Arnon." Dante's "Divine Comedy." Schiller's "Veiled Statue of Truth." Goethe's "Erl King."

Humor alone has a right to violate unity even apparently; and although wit and humor produce their effects by displaying incongruities, yet underlying all high art, in this department as in others, there is always a deep unity,--a truth revealed and enforced by the destruction of its contradictories accomplished by the sallies of wit and humor.

=Universality=.--Other things equal, the more people interested in the subject the more important the book. A matter which affects a million people is of more consequence than one which affects only a single person. National affairs, and all matters of magnitude, of course possess this quality; but magnitude is not necessary to universality,--the thoughts, feelings, and actions of an unpretentious person in a little village may be types of what passes in the life of every human being, and by their representativeness attain a more universal interest for mankind than the business and politics of a state.

The rules of tennis are not of so wide importance as an English grammar, nor is the latter so universal as Dante's "Inferno" or "The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius,"--these being among the books that in the highest degree possess the quality under discussion. Other fine examples are--

Goethe's "Faust." Shakespeare's Plays and Sonnets. Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress." Arnold's "Light of Asia." Bacon's and Emerson's Essays. "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Sewell's "Black Beauty." Eliot's "Romola." Curtis' "Prue and I." Cooper's "Last of the Mohicans." Tourgee's "Hot Plowshares." Irving's "Sketch Book." Plato, Spencer, etc.

In fact, all books that express love, longing, admiration, tenderness, sorrow, laughter, joy, victory over nature or man, or any other thought or feeling common to men, have the attribute of universality in greater or less degree.

=Suggestiveness=.--Every great work of art suggests far more than it expresses. This truth is illustrated by paintings like Bierstadt's "Yosemite" or his "Drummer Boy," Millet's "Angelus," or Turner's "Slave Ship." Statues like the "Greek Slave" or "The Forced Prayer;" speeches like those of Phillips, Fox, Clay, Pitt, Bright, Webster, and Brooks; songs like "Home, Sweet Home," "My Country," "Douglas," "Annie Laurie;" and books like

Emerson's Essays. AEschylus' "Prometheus." Goethe's "Faust" and "Wilhelm Meister." Dante's "Divine Comedy." "Hamlet" and many other of Shakspeare's Plays. Curtis' "Prue and I." The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. The Sermons of Phillips Brooks and Robertson. "My Summer in a Garden," by Warner; etc.

A single sentence in Emerson often suggests a train of thought that would fill a volume; and a single inflection of Patti's voice in singing "Home, Sweet Home" will fill the heart to overflowing.

=Expression=.--Like a musician, an author must study technique. A book may possess high motive, artistic unity, universality, suggestiveness, magnitude of thought, and yet be lacking in clearness, purity, music, smoothness, force, finish, tone-color, or even in proper grammatical construction. The style ought to be carefully adapted to the subject and to the readers likely to be interested in it. _Force_ and _beauty_ may be imparted to the subject by a good style. In poetry beauty is the supreme object, the projection of truth upon the _mind_ being subordinate. Poetry expresses the truths of the soul. In prose, on the other hand, truth is the main purpose, and beauty is used as a helper. As a soldier studies his guns, and a dentist his tools, so a writer must study the laws of rhythm, accent, phrasing, alliteration, phonetic syzygy, run-on and double-ending lines, rhyme, and, last but not least, the melodies of common speech. The first three and the last are the most important, and should be thoroughly studied in Shakspeare, Addison, Irving, and other masters of style by every one who wishes to write or to judge the work of others. Except as to rhyme, the arts of writing prose and poetry are substantially the same. Theoretically there is a fundamental difference in respect to rhythm,--that of a poem being limited to the repetition of some chosen type, that of prose being unlimited. A little study makes it clear, however, that the highest poetry, as that of Shakspeare's later plays, crowds the type with the forms of common speech; while the highest efforts of prose, as that of Addison, Irving, Phillips, Ingersoll's oration over his dead brother, etc., display rhythms that approach the order and precision of poetry. In practice the best prose and the best poetry approach each other very closely, moving from different directions toward the same point.

It is of great advantage to form the habit of noticing the _tunes_ of speech used by those around us; the study will soon become very pleasurable, and will be highly profitable by teaching the observer what mode of expression is appropriate to each variety of thought and feeling. There is a rhythm that of itself produces a comic effect, no matter how sober the words may be; and it is the same that we find in "Pinafore," in the "Mariner's Duet" in the opera of "Paul Jones," and in the minstrel dance. For fifteen centuries all the great battle-songs have been written in the same rhythm; they fall into it naturally, because it expresses the movement of mighty conflict. See Lanier's "Science of English Verse," pages 151 _et seq._, 231 _et seq._ This is the best book upon technique; but Spencer's Essay on the Philosophy of Style, and Poe's Essay on his composition of "The Raven" should not be overlooked. Franklin and many others have discovered the laws of style simply by careful study of the "Spectator."

Of course it is not easy to decide the true rank of a book, even when we have tested it in respect to all the elements we have named. One book may be superior in expression, another in suggestiveness, and so on. Then we have to take note of the relative importance of these various elements of greatness. A little superiority in motive or suggestiveness is worth far more than the same degree of superiority as to unity or magnitude. A book filled with noble sentiment, though lacking unity, should rank far above "Don Juan," or any other volume that expresses the ignoble part of human nature, however perfect the work may be from an artistic point of view. Having now examined the tests of intrinsic merit, let me revert for a moment to my remark, a few pages back, to the effect that "Looking Backward" and "Robert Elsmere" deserve a high rank. They are books of _lofty aim_, great magnitude of subject and thought, fine unity, _wide universality_, _exhaustless suggestiveness_, and more than ordinary power of expression. Doubtless they are not _absolute_ classics,--not books of all time,--for their subjects are transitional, not eternal. They deal with _doubts_, religious and industrial; when these have passed away, the mission of the books will be fulfilled, and their importance will be less. But they are _relative_ classics,--books that are of great value to their age, and will be great as long as their subjects are prominent.

SUPREME BOOKS

IN THE LITERATURES OF ENGLAND, AMERICA, GREECE, ROME, ITALY, FRANCE, SPAIN, GERMANY, PERSIA, PORTUGAL, DENMARK, RUSSIA.

PERIODS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.

The highest summit of our literature--and indeed of the literature of the world--is Shakspeare. He brings us life in the greatest force and volume, of the highest quality, and clothed in the richest beauty. His age, which was practically identical with the reign of Elizabeth, is the golden age of English letters; and taking it for a basis of division, we have the Pre-Shakspearian Age from 600 to 1559, the Shakspearian Age from 1559 to 1620, and the Post-Shakspearian Age from 1620 to the present.

=The first age= is divided into three periods.

_First_, the Early Period, from 600 to the Norman Conquest in 1066, which holds the names of Beowulf,[2] Caedmon,[3] Baeda,[4] Cynewulf, and AElfred, the great king who did so much for the learning of his country, bringing many great scholars into England from all over the world, and himself writing the best prose that had been produced in English, and changing the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle"--till his time a mere record of noble births and deaths--into a valuable periodical, the progenitor of the vast horde that threatens to expel the classics in our day. The literature of this period has little claim upon us except on the ground of breadth. The _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_, and the poems of _Beowulf_, _Caedmon_, and _Cynewulf_, should be glanced at to see what sort of people our ancestors were.

[2] An epic poem, full of the life, in peace and war, of our Saxon fathers before they came to England.

[3] The writer of a paraphrase on the Bible; a feeble Milton.

[4] A very learned man, who gathered many scholars about him, and who finished translating the Gospel of John on his death-bed and with his latest breath.

_Second_, the Period of Chaucer, from 1066 to the death of Chaucer in 1400. The great books of this period were _Mandeville's Travels_, Langland's "Piers the Ploughman." Wycliffe's translation of the Bible (these two books, with Wycliffe's tracts, went all over England among the common people, rousing them against the Catholic Church, and starting the reformation that afterward grew into Puritanism, and gained control of the nation under Cromwell), Gower's Poems, and _Chaucer's Canterbury Tales_. Those in italics are the only books that claim our reading. Mandeville travelled thirty years, and then wrote all he saw and all he heard from the mouth of rumor. Chaucer is half French and two-thirds Italian. He drank in the spirit of the Golden Age of Italy, which was in the early part of his own century. Probably he met Petrarch and Boccaccio, and certainly he drew largely from their works as well as from Dante's, and he dug into poor Gower as into a stone quarry. He is still our best story-teller in verse, and one of our most musical poets; and every one should know something of this "morning star of English poetry," by far the greatest light before the Elizabethan age, and still easily among the first five or six of our poets.

_Third_, the Later Period, from 1400 to 1559, in which _Malory's Morte D'Arthur_, containing fragments of the stories about King Arthur and the knights of his round table, which like a bed-rock crop out so often in English Literature, should be read while reading Tennyson's "Idylls of the King," which is based upon Malory; and _Sir Thomas More's Utopia_ also claims some attention on the plea of breadth, as it is the work of a great mind, thoroughly and practically versed in government, and sets forth his idea of a perfect commonwealth.

In this age of nine and a half centuries there were, then, ten noteworthy books and one great book; eight only of the eleven, however, have any claim upon our attention, the last three being all that are entitled to more than a rapid reading by the general student; and only Chaucer for continuous companionship can rank high, and even he cannot be put on the first shelf.

* * * * *

=In the Shakspearian Age= the great books were (1) _Roger Ascham's Schoolmaster_, which was a fine argument for kindness in teaching and nobility in the teacher, but has been superseded by Spencer's "Education." (2) _Sackville's Induction_ to a series of political tragedies, called "A Mirror for Magistrates." The poet goes down into hell like Dante, and meets Remorse, Famine, War, Misery, Care, Sleep, Death, etc., and talks with noted Englishmen who had fallen. This "Mirror" was of great fame and influence in its day; and the "Induction," though far inferior to both Chaucer and Spenser, is yet the best poetic work done in the time between those masters. (3) _John Lyly's Euphues_, a book that expressed the thought of Ascham's "Schoolmaster" in a style peculiar for its puns, antitheses, and floweriness,--a style which made a witty handling of language the chief aim of writing. Lyly was a master of the art, and the ladies of the court committed his sentences in great numbers, that they might shine in society. The book has given a word to the language; that affected word-placing style is known as _euphuistic_. The book has no claims upon our reading. (4) _Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia_, a romance in the same conceited style as the "Euphues," and only valuable as a mine for poetic images. (5) _Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity_, which was a defence of the church system against the Puritans. The latter said that no such system of church government could be found in the Bible, and therefore should not exist. Hooker answered that Nature was a revelation from God as well as the Bible; and if in Nature and society there were good reasons for the existence of an institution, that was enough. The book is not of importance to the general reader to-day, for the truth of its principles is universally admitted. (6) _The Plays of Marlowe_, a very powerful but gross writer. His "Dr. Faustus" may very properly receive attention, but only after the best plays of Shakspeare, Jonson, Calderon, Racine, Moliere, Corneille, AEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes have been carefully read. (7) _The Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher_, which are filled with beauty and imagination, mingled with the immodesty and vulgarity that were natural to this age. The remark just made about Marlowe applies here. (8) _Fox's Book of Martyrs_, which for the sake of breadth should be glanced at by every one. The marvellous heroism and devotion to faith on one side, and cruelty on the other that come to us through the pages of this history, open a new world to the modern mind. (9) _Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene_, which combines the poetry of a Homer with the allegory of a Bunyan. It presents moral truth under vast and beautiful imagery. In English poetry it claims our attention next to Shakspeare and Milton. (10) _Ben Jonson's Plays_, which stand next to those of Shakspeare in English drama. (11) _The Plays of Shakspeare_, which need no comment, as they have already been placed at the summit of all literature; and (12) _Bacon's Works_, including the _Novum Organum_, the _New Atlantis_, and the _Essays_, the first of which, though one of the greatest books of the world, setting forth the true methods of arriving at truth by experiment and observation and the collation of facts, we do not need to read, because the substance of it may be found in better form in Mill's Logic. The "Essays," however, are world-famed for their condensed wit and wisdom on topics of never-dying interest, and stand among the very best books on the upper shelf. The "New Atlantis" also should be read for breadth, with More's "Utopia;" the subject being the same, namely, an ideal commonwealth.

From this sixty-one years of prolific writing, in which no less than two hundred and thirty authors gathered their poems together and published them, to say nothing of all the scattered writings, twelve volumes have come down to us with a large measure of fame. Only the last seven call for our reading; but two of them, Shakspeare and Bacon, are among the very most important books on the first shelf of the world's library.

* * * * *

=The Post-Shakspearian Age= is divided into four times, or periods,--the Time of Milton; the Time of Dryden; the Time of Pope; and the Time of the Novelists, Historians, and Scientists.

THE TIME OF MILTON, from 1620 to 1674, was contemporary with the Golden Age of literature in France. The great English books of this time were (1) _Chapman's Translation of Homer_, which is superseded by Pope's. (2) _Hobbes's Leviathan_, a discourse on government. Hobbes taught that government exists for the people, and rests not on the divine right of kings, but on a compact or agreement of all the citizens to give up a portion of their liberties in order by social co-operation the better to secure the remainder. He is one of our greatest philosophers; but the general reader will find the substance of Hobbes's whole philosophy better put in Locke, Mill, and Herbert Spencer. (3) _Walton's Complete Angler_, the work of a retired merchant who combined a love of fishing with a poetic perception of the beauties of Nature. It will repay a glance. (4) _S. Butler's Hudibras_, a keen satire on the Puritans who went too far in their effort to compel all men to conform their lives to the Puritan standard of abstinence from worldly pleasures. In spite of its vulgarity, the book stands very high in the literature of humor. (5) _George Herbert's Poems_, many of which are as sweet and holy as a flower upon a grave, and are beloved by all spiritually minded people. (6) _Jeremy Taylor's Holy Living and Dying_, a book that in the strength of its claim upon us must rank close after the Bible, Shakspeare, and the Science of Physiology and Hygiene. (7) _Milton's Poems_, of which the "Paradise Lost" and "Comus," for their sublimity and beauty, rank next after Shakspeare in English poetry. AEschylus, Dante, and Milton are the three sublimest souls in history.

From this time of fifty-four years seven great books have come to us, Milton and Taylor being among our most precious possessions.

THE TIME OF DRYDEN.--From the death of Milton, in 1674, to the death of Dryden, in 1700, the latter held undisputed kingship in the realm of letters. This and the succeeding time of Pope were marked by the development of a classic style and a fine literary and critical taste, but were lacking in great creative power. The great books were (1) _Newton's Principia_, the highest summit in the region of astronomy, unless the "Mecanique Celeste" of Laplace must be excepted. Newton's discovery of the law of gravitation, and his theory of fluxions place him at the head of the mathematical thinkers of the world. His books, however, need not be read by the general student, for in these sciences the later books are better. (2) _Locke's Works_ upon Government and the Understanding are among the best in the world, but their results will all be found in the later works of Spencer, Mill, and Bryce; and the only part of the writings of Locke that claims our reading to-day is the little book upon the _Conduct of the Understanding_, which tells us how to watch the processes of our thought, to keep clear of prejudice, careless observation, etc., and should be in the hands of every one who ever presumes to do any thinking. (3) _Dryden's Translation of Virgil_ is the best we have, and contains the finest writing of our great John. (4) _Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress_ picturing in magnificent allegory the journey of a Christian soul toward heaven, and his "Holy War," telling of the conflict between good and evil, and the devil's efforts to capture and hold the town of "Mansoul," should be among the first books we read. The "Progress" holds a place in the affections of all English-speaking peoples second only to the Bible. (5) _Sam Pepys's Diary_ is the greatest book of its kind in the world, and is much read for its vividness and interesting detail. It has, however, no claims to be read until all the books on the first shelf of Table I. have been mastered, and a large portion of the second shelf pretty thoroughly looked into.

Of the five great works of these twenty-six years, Bunyan and Locke are far the most important for us.

THE TIME OF POPE, or the _Time of the Essayists and Satirists_, covers a period of forty years, from 1700 to 1740, during which the great translator of Homer held the sceptre of literary power by unanimous assent. The great works of this time were (1) _The Essays of Addison and Steele_ in the "Tatler" and "Spectator," which, though of great merit, must rank below those of Emerson, Bacon, and Montaigne. (2) _Defoe's Robinson Crusoe_, the boy's own book. (3) _Swift's Satires_,--the "Tale of a Tub," "Gulliver's Travels," and the "Battle of the Books,"--all full of the strongest mixture of grossness, fierceness, and intense wit that the world has seen. The "Battle of the Books" may be read with great advantage by the general reader as well as by the student of humor. (4) _Berkeley's Human Knowledge_, exceedingly interesting for the keenness of its confutation of any knowledge of the existence of matter. (5) _Pope's Poems_--the "Rape of the Lock" (which means the theft of a lock of hair), the "Essay on Man," and his translation of Homer--must form a part of every wide course of reading. Their mechanical execution, especially, is of the very finest. (6) _Thomson's Seasons_, a beautiful poem of the second class. (7) _Butler's Analogy_, chiefly noted for its proof of the existence of God from the fact that there is evidence of design in Nature.

Of these writers, Pope and Defoe are far the most important for us.

We have, down to this time of 1740, out of a literature covering eleven 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."

"The reading of great books is usually an acquired faculty, not a 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 (