The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose Volume I - Greece Part 1

The Best of the World's Cla.s.sics, Restricted to prose.

Volume I - Greece.

by Various.

Vol. I

GREECE

INTRODUCTION

Ever since civilized man has had a literature he has apparently sought to make selections from it and thus put his favorite pa.s.sages together in a compact and convenient form. Certain it is, at least, that to the Greeks, masters in all great arts, we owe this habit. They made such collections and named them, after their pleasant imaginative fashion, a gathering of flowers, or what we, borrowing their word, call an anthology. So to those austere souls who regard anthologies as a labor-saving contrivance for the benefit of persons who like a smattering of knowledge and are never really learned, we can at least plead in mitigation that we have high and ancient authority for the practise. In any event no amount of scholarly deprecation has been able to turn mankind or that portion of mankind which reads books from the agreeable habit of making volumes of selections and finding in them much pleasure, as well as improvement in taste and knowledge.

With the spread of education and with the great increase of literature among all civilized nations, more especially since the invention of printing and its vast multiplication of books, the making of volumes of selections comprizing what is best in one's own or in many literatures is no longer a mere matter of taste or convenience as with the Greeks, but has become something little short of a necessity in this world of many workers, comparatively few scholars, and still fewer intelligent men of leisure. Anthologies have been multiplied like all other books, and in the main they have done much good and no harm. The man who thinks he is a scholar or highly educated because he is familiar with what is collected in a well-chosen anthology, of course, errs grievously. Such familiarity no more makes one a master of literature than a perusal of a dictionary makes the reader a master of style. But as the latter pursuit can hardly fail to enlarge a man's vocabulary, so the former adds to his knowledge, increases his stock of ideas, liberalizes his mind and opens to him new sources of enjoyment.

The Greek habit was to bring together selections of verse, pa.s.sages of especial merit, epigrams and short poems. In the main their example has been followed. From their days down to the "Elegant Extracts in Verse" of our grandmothers and grandfathers, and thence on to our own time with its admirable "Golden Treasury" and "Oxford Handbook of Verse," there has been no end to the making of poetical anthologies and apparently no diminution in the public appet.i.te for them. Poetry indeed lends itself to selection. Much of the best poetry of the world is contained in short poems, complete in themselves, and capable of transference bodily to a volume of selections. There are very few poets of whose quality and genius a fair idea can not be given by a few judicious selections. A large body of n.o.ble and beautiful poetry, of verse which is "a joy forever," can also be given in a very small compa.s.s. And the mechanical attribute of size, it must be remembered, is very important in making a successful anthology, for an essential quality of a volume of selections is that it should be easily portable, that it should be a book which can be slipt into the pocket and readily carried about in any wanderings whether near or remote.

An anthology which is stored in one or more huge and heavy volumes is practically valueless except to those who have neither books nor access to a public library, or who think that a stately tome printed on calendered paper and "profusely ill.u.s.trated" is an ornament to a center-table in a parlor rarely used except on solemn or official occasions.

I have mentioned these advantages of verse for the purposes of an anthology in order to show the difficulties which must be encountered in making a prose selection. Very little prose is in small parcels which can be transferred entire, and therefore with the very important attribute of completeness, to a volume of selections. From most of the great prose writers it is necessary to take extracts, and the chosen pa.s.sage is broken off from what comes before and after. The fame of a great prose writer as a rule rests on a book, and really to know him the book must be read and not merely pa.s.sages from it. Extracts give no very satisfactory idea of "Paradise Lost" or "The Divine Comedy,"

and the same is true of extracts from a history or a novel. It is possible by spreading prose selections through a series of small volumes to overcome the mechanical difficulty and thus make the selections in form what they ought above all things to be--companions and not books of reference or table decorations. But the spiritual or literary problem is not so easily overcome. What prose to take and where to take it are by no means easy questions to solve. Yet they are well worth solving, so far as patient effort can do it, for in this period of easy printing it is desirable to put in convenient form before those who read examples of the masters which will draw us back from the perishing chatter of the moment to the literature which is the highest work of civilization and which is at once n.o.ble and lasting.

Upon that theory this collection has been formed. It is an attempt to give examples from all periods and languages of Western civilization of what is best and most memorable in their prose literature. That the result is not a complete exhibition of the time and the literatures covered by the selections no one is better aware than the editors.

Inexorable conditions of s.p.a.ce make a certain degree of incompleteness inevitable when he who is gathering flowers traverses so vast a garden, and is obliged to confine the results of his labors within such narrow bounds. The editors are also fully conscious that, like all other similar collections, this one too will give rise to the familiar criticism and questionings as to why such a pa.s.sage was omitted and such another inserted; why this writer was chosen and that other pa.s.sed by. In literature we all have our favorites, and even the most catholic of us has also his dislikes if not his pet aversions. I will frankly confess that there are authors represented in these volumes whose writings I should avoid, just as there are certain towns and cities of the world to which, having once visited them, I would never willingly return, for the simple reason that I would not voluntarily subject myself to seeing or reading what I dislike or, which is worse, what bores and fatigues me. But no editor of an anthology must seek to impose upon others his own tastes and opinions.

He must at the outset remember and never afterward forget that so far as possible his work must be free from the personal equation. He must recognize that some authors who may be mute or dull to him have a place in literature, past or present, sufficiently a.s.sured to ent.i.tle them to a place among selections which are intended above all things else to be representative.

To those who wonder why some favorite bit of their own was omitted while something else for which they do not care at all has found a place I can only say that the editors, having supprest their own personal preferences, have proceeded on certain general principles which seem to be essential in making any selection either of verse or prose which shall possess broader and more enduring qualities than that of being a mere exhibition of the editor's personal taste. To ill.u.s.trate my meaning: Emerson's "Parna.s.sus" is extremely interesting as an exposition of the tastes and preferences of a remarkable man of great and original genius. As an anthology it is a failure, for it is of awkward size, is ill arranged and contains selections made without system, and which in many cases baffle all attempts to explain their appearance. On the other hand, Mr. Palgrave, neither a very remarkable man nor a great and original genius, gave us in the first "Golden Treasury" a collection which has no interest whatever as reflecting the tastes of the editor, but which is quite perfect in its kind.

Barring the disproportionate amount of Wordsworth which includes some of his worst things--and which, be it said in pa.s.sing, was due to Mr.

Palgrave's giving way at that point to his personal enthusiasm--the "Golden Treasury" in form, in scope, and in arrangement, as well as in almost unerring taste, is the best model of what an anthology should be which is to be found in any language.

Returning now to our questioner who misses some favorite and finds something else which he dislikes, the only answer, as I have just said, is that the collection is formed on certain general principles, as any similar collection of the sort must be. This series is called "The Best of the World's Cla.s.sics," and "cla.s.sics" is used not in the narrow and technical sense, but rather in that of Th.o.r.eau, who defined cla.s.sics as "the n.o.blest recorded thoughts of mankind." Therefore, the first principle of guidance in selection is to take examples of the great writings which have moved and influenced the thought of the world, and which have preeminently the quality of "high seriousness"

as required by Aristotle. This test alone, however, would limit the selections too closely. Therefore the second principle of choice is to make selections from writers historically important either personally or by their writings. The third rule is to endeavor to give selections which shall be representative of the various literatures and the various periods through which, the collection ranges. Lastly, and this applies, of course, only to pa.s.sages taken from the writers of England and the United States, the effort has been to give specimens of the masters of English prose, of that prose in its development and at its best, and to show, so far as may be, what can be accomplished with that great instrument, and what a fine style really is as exhibited in the best models. Everything contained in these volumes is there in obedience to one at least of these principles, many in obedience to more than one, some in conformity to all four.

No one will become a scholar or a master of any of the great literatures here represented by reading this collection. Literature and scholarship are not to be had so cheaply as that. Yet is there much profit to be had from these little volumes. They contain many pa.s.sages which merit Dr. Johnson's fine saying about books: "That they help us to enjoy life or teach us to endure it." To the man of letters, to the man of wide reading, they will at least serve to recall, when far from libraries and books, those authors who have been the delight and the instructors of a lifetime. They will bring at least the pleasures of memory and that keener pleasure which arises when we meet a poem or a pa.s.sage of prose which we know as an old and well-loved friend, remote from home, upon some alien page.

To that larger public whose lives are not spent among books and libraries, and for whose delectation such a collection as this is primarily intended, these volumes rightly read at odd times, in idle moments, in out-of-the-way places, on the ship or the train, offer much. They will bring the reader in contact with many of the greatest intellects of all time. They contain some of the n.o.blest thoughts that have pa.s.sed through the minds of our weak and erring race. There is no man who will not be the better, for the moment at least, by reading what Cicero says about old age, Seneca about death, and Socrates about love, to go no further for examples than to

"The glory that was Greece, And the grandeur that was Rome."

Moreover, the bowing acquaintance which can be formed here may easily offer attractions which will lead to a close and intimate friendship, with all that the word implies in the case of a great author or a great book. It seems to me, for example, as if no one who read here the too brief extracts from Erasmus or from Cervantes, to take at random two writers widely separated in thought, could fail to pursue the acquaintance thus begun, so potent are the sympathetic charm, the wit, the wisdom and the humor of both these great men. There is, at least, variety in these little volumes, and while many things in them may not appeal to us, they may to our neighbors. That which "is dumb to us may speak to him."

Again, let it be noticed that there is much more than the "high seriousness" which is the test of the greatest prose as of the finest poetry. Humor and pathos, tragedy and comedy, all find their place and glimpses of the pageant of human history flit through the pages. It would seem as if it were impossible to read extracts from Thucydides and Tacitus and Gibbon and not long to go to their histories and learn all that could be said by such men about the life of man upon earth, about Athens and Rome and the rise and fall of empires. Selections are unsatisfying and the better they are the more unsatisfying they become. But this is in reality their great merit. They have much beauty in themselves, they awaken pleasant memories, they revive old delights, but, above all, if rightly read they open the gates to the illimitable gardens whence all the flowers which have here been gathered may be found blooming in radiance, unplucked and unbroken and rooted in their native soil.

The most important part of the collection is that which gives selections from those writers whose native tongue is English. No translation even of prose can ever quite reproduce its original, and as a rule can not hope to equal it. There are many translations, notably the Elizabethan, which are extremely fine in themselves and memorable examples of English prose. Still they are not the original writings. Something escapes in the translation into another tongue, an impalpable something which can not be held or transmitted. The Bible stands alone, a great literary monument of the n.o.blest and most beautiful English, which has formed English speech and become a part of the language as it is of the thought and emotion of the people who read "King James'" version in all parts of the globe. Yet we know that the version which the people, so fortunate in its possession, wisely and absolutely decline to give up in exchange for any revision is neither an accurate nor a faithful reproduction of its original.

Therefore, putting aside the English Bible as wholly by itself, it may be safely said that the soul of a language and the beauties of style which it is capable of exhibiting can only be found and studied in the productions of writers who not only think in the language in which they write, but to whom that speech is native, the inalienable birthright and heritage of their race or country. In such writers we get not only the thought, the humor, or the pathos, all that can be transferred in a translation, but also the pleasure to the ear akin to music, the sense of form, the artistic gratification which form brings, all those attributes which are possible in the highest degree to those only to whom the language is native.

For these reasons, as will be readily understood, in making selections from those writers whose native tongue is English, specimens have been given of all periods from the earliest time and occasionally of authors who would not otherwise find a place in such a collection, for the purpose of tracing in outline the development of English prose and the formation of an English style which, like all true and great styles, is peculiar to the language and can not be reproduced in any other. This is not the place, nor would it be feasible within any reasonable limits to narrate the history of English prose. But in these selections it is possible to follow its gradual advance from the first rude and crude attempts through the splendid irregularities of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to the establishment of a standard of style in the eighteenth and thence onward to the modifications and changes in that standard which extend to our own time.

The purpose of this collection is not didactic. If it were it would be a school-book and not an anthology in the Greek sense, where the first principle was to seek what was of literary value, artistic in expression, and n.o.ble in thought. Yet the mere bringing together of examples of prose from the writings of the great masters of style can not but teach a lesson never more needed than now.

I do not mean by this to suggest imitation of any writer. Nothing is more dangerous, especially when the style of the writer imitated is peculiar and strongly marked. That which is valuable and instructive is the opportunity given here for a study of fine English styles, and in this way to learn the capabilities of the language and the general principles which have governed the production of the best English prose. We have in the English language an unequaled richness of vocabulary far surpa.s.sing in extent that of any other tongue. It possesses a great literature and a body of poetry unrivaled in modern times. It is not only one of the strongest bonds of union in the United States, but it is the language in which our freedom was won and in which our history and our laws are written. It is our greatest heritage. To weaken, corrupt or deprave it would be a misfortune without parallel to our entire people. Yet we can not disguise from ourselves the fact that the fertility of the printing-press, the multiplication of cheap magazines, and the flood of printed words poured out daily in the newspapers all tend strongly in this direction. This is an era of haste and hurry stimulated by the great inventions which have changed human environment. Form and style in any art require time, and time seems the one thing we can neither spare nor wisely economize. Yet, in literature above all arts, to abandon form and style is inevitably destructive and entails misfortunes which can hardly be estimated, for loose, weak and vulgar writing is a sure precursor of loose, weak and vulgar thinking. If form of expression is cast aside, form in thought and in the presentation of thought is certain to follow. Against all this the fine English prose amply represented in these selections offers a silent and convincing protest to every one who will read it attentively.

We can begin with the splendid prose of the age of Elizabeth and of the seventeenth century. It is irregular and untamed, but exuberant and brilliant, rich both in texture and substance. We find it at its height in the strange beauties of Sir Thomas Browne, in the n.o.ble pages of Milton, stiff with golden embroidery, as Macaulay says, and in the touching and beautiful simplicity of Bunyan's childlike sentences. Thence we pa.s.s to the eighteenth century, when English prose was freed from its involutions and irregularities and brought to uniformity and to a standard. The age of Anne gave to English prose balance, precision and settled form. There have been periods of greater originality, but the eighteenth century at least lived up to Pope's doctrine, set forth in the familiar line:

"What oft was thought but ne'er so well exprest."

As there is no better period to turn to for instruction than the age of Anne, so, if we must choose a single writer there is no better master to be studied than Swift. There have been many great writers and many fine and beautiful styles since the days of the terrible Dean of St. Patrick's, from the imposing and finely balanced sentences of Gibbon to the subtle delicacy of Hawthorne and the careful finish of Robert Louis Stevenson. But in Swift better than in any one writer can we find the lessons which are so sorely needed now. He had in the highest degree force, clearness and concentration all combined with a marvelous simplicity. Swift's style may have lacked richness, but it never failed in taste. There is not a line of false fine-writing in all his books. Those are the qualities which are so needed now, simplicity and clearness and a scrupulous avoidance of that would-be fine writing which is not at all fine but merely vulgar and insincere.

The writing in our newspapers is where reform is particularly needed.

There are great journals here and there which maintain throughout a careful standard of good and sober English. Most of them, unhappily, are filled in the news columns at least with a strange jargon found nowhere else, spoken by no one and never used in daily life by those who every night furnish it to the compositors. It is happily compounded in about equal parts of turgid fine writing, vulgar jauntiness and indiscriminate slang.

I can best show my meaning by example. A writer in a newspaper wished to state that a man who had once caused excitement by a book of temporary interest and who, after the days of his notoriety were over, lived a long and checkered career, had killed himself. This is the way he said it:

His life's work void of fruition and dissipated into emptiness, his fondest hopes and ambitions crumbled and scattered, shunned as a fanatic, and unable to longer wage life's battle, Hinton Rowan Helper, at one time United States consul general to Buenos Ayres, yesterday sought the darkest egress from his woes and disappointments--a suicide's death.

In an unpretentious lodging-house in Pennsylvania avenue, near the Capitol, the man who as much, if not more than any other agitator, is said to have blazed the way to the Civil War, the writer who stirred this nation to its core by his anti-slavery philippics, and the promoter with the most gigantic railroad enterprise projected in the history of the world, was found gript in the icy hand of death. The brain which gave birth to his historic writings had willed the stilling of the heart which for three-quarters of a century had palpitated quick and high with roseate hopes.

That pa.s.sage, taken at hazard from a newspaper, is intended, I think, to be fine writing of an imposing and dramatic kind. Why could not the writer have written it, a little more carefully perhaps, but still in just the language which he would have used naturally in describing the event to his wife or friend? Simply stated, it would have been far more solemn and impressive than this turgid, insincere account with its large words, its forced note of tragedy and its split infinitive.

Let me put beneath it another description of a death-bed:

The blood and spirits of Le Fevre, which were waxing cold and slow, and were retreating to their last citadel, the heart--rallied back,--the film forsook his eyes for a moment,--he looked up wishfully into my Uncle Toby's face,--then cast a look upon his boy,--and that ligament, fine as it was,--was never broken.

Nature instantly ebbed again,--the film returned to its place,--the pulse fluttered,--stopt,--went on,--throbbed,--stopt again,--moved,--stopt,--shall I go on?

No.

This famous pa.s.sage is neither unintentional sentiment nor unaffected pathos. The art is apparent even in the punctuation. The writer meant to be touching and pathetic and to awaken emotions of tenderness and pity and he succeeded. The description is all he meant it to be. The extract from the newspaper arouses no emotion, unless it be resentment at its form and leaves us cold and unmoved. The other is touching and pitiful. Observe the manner in which Sterne obtains his effect, the perfect simplicity and good taste of every word, the reserve, the gentleness, the utter absence of any straining for effect. The one description died the day it appeared. The other has held its place for a century and a half. Are not the qualities which produced such a result worth striving for?

Let me take another haphazard selection from a description of a young girl ent.i.tled as such to every one's kindness, courtesy and respect.

In it occurs this sentence: "The college girl is grammatical in speech, but she has the jolliest, chummiest jargon of slang that ever rolled from under a pink tongue." That articulate sounds come from beneath the tongue is at least novel and few persons are fortunate enough to be able to talk with that portion of their mouths. But I have no desire to dwell either upon the anatomical peculiarities of the sentence or upon its abysmal vulgarity. It is supposed to be effective, it is what is appropriately called "breezy," it is a form of words which can be heard nowhere in the speech of men and women.

Why should it be consigned to print? It is possible to describe a young girl attractively and effectively in much simpler fashion. Let me give an example, not a famous pa.s.sage at all, from another writer:

She shocked no canon of taste; she was admirably in keeping with herself, and never jarred against surrounding circ.u.mstances. Her figure, to be sure--so small as to be almost childlike and so elastic that motion seemed as easy or easier to it than rest--would hardly have suited one's idea of a countess. Neither did her face--with brown ringlets on either side and a slightly piquant nose, and the wholesome bloom, and the clear shade of tan, and the half dozen freckles, friendly remembrancers of the April sun and breeze--precisely give us the right to call her beautiful.

But there was both l.u.s.ter and depth in her eyes. She was very pretty; as graceful as a bird and graceful much in the same way; as pleasant about the house as a gleam of sunshine falling on the floor through a shadow of twinkling leaves, or as a ray of firelight that dances on the wall while evening is drawing nigh.

Contrast this with the newspaper sentence and the sensation is one of pain. Again I say, observe the method by which Hawthorne gets his effect, the simplicity of the language, the balance of the sentences, the reserve, the refinement, and the final imaginative touch in the charming comparison with which the pa.s.sage ends.

To blame the hard working men who write for the day which is pa.s.sing over them because they do not write like Sterne and Hawthorne would be as absurd as it would be unjust. But they ought to recognize the qualities of fine English prose, they ought to remember that they can improve their readers by giving them good, simple English, pure and undefiled, and they ought not to debauch the public taste by vulgar fine writing and even more vulgar light writing. In short, they ought to write for the public as they would talk to their wives and children and friends; a little more formally and carefully perhaps, but in the same simple and direct fashion.

For the prolific authors of the flood of stories, which every month bears on its broad bosom many tons of advertis.e.m.e.nts, no such allowance need be made. They are not compelled to furnish copy between daylight and dark. They need a course of study in English prose more than anyone else, and they would profit by the effort. As a cla.s.s they seem to be like the young man in Du Maurier's picture, who, being asked if he had read Thackeray, replies, "No. I nevah read novels; I write them."

In this age of quickening movement and restless haste it is, above all things, important to struggle against the well-nigh universal inclination to abandon all efforts for form and style. They are the great preservers of what is best in literature, the salt which ought never to lose its savor. Those who use English in public speech and public writing have a serious responsibility too generally forgotten and disregarded. I would fain call attention to it altho no single man can hope to effect much by any plea he can make in behalf of the use of good English, whether written or spoken. Yet no one, I think, can read the great masterpieces of English prose and not have both lesson and responsibility brought home to him. He would be insensible, indeed, if he did not feel after such reading that he was a sharer in a n.o.ble heritage which it behooved him to guard and cherish. If this series serves no other purpose, it will exhibit to those who read it some of the splendors and the beauties of English prose. It will at least open the gates of literature and perhaps lead its readers to authors they have not known before, or recall the words of writers who have entered into their lives and thoughts and thus make them more mindful of the ineffable value to them and their children of the great language which is at once their birthright and their inheritance.

HENRY CABOT LODGE.

_Washington, D. C., July 15, 1909._