The World's Best Books : A Key to the Treasures of Literature Part 12

Turgenieff's "Liza," "Smoke," and "Fathers and Sons." (Russia, 19th cent.)

Eugene Sue's "Wandering Jew."

Manzoni's "I promessi Sposi."

[238] Cottin's "Elizabeth."

Besant's "All Sorts and Conditions of Men." (Eng., 19th cent.)

Stevenson's "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." A book that teaches the danger of giving way to the evil side of our nature.

[239] Mrs. Ward's "Robert Elsmere" is a famous picture of the struggle in the religious mind to-day. (Eng., 19th cent.)

Margaret Deland's "John Ward, Preacher," is a book of the same cla.s.s as the last, but is not as interesting as her "Florida Days" or her Poems.

(U. S., 19th cent.)

Anna Sewell's "Black Beauty" is the autobiography of a n.o.ble horse, and is tender and intelligent. A book that every one who has anything to do with horses, or indeed with animals of any sort, cannot afford to neglect. (Eng., 19th cent.)

Bret Harte's "Luck of Roaring Camp" is an interesting picture of Western life, and opens a new vein of fiction. (U. S., 19th cent.)

[240] Green's "Hand and Ring," "Leavenworth Case," etc., are splendid examples of reasoning, without any of the objectionable features usually found in detective stories. (U. S., 19th cent.)

Miss Mulock's "John Halifax, Gentleman," is a great and famous book.

(Eng., 19th cent.)

Disraeli's "Lothair," "Endymion," etc., are strong books; requiring the notice of one who reads widely in English fiction. (Eng., 19th cent.)

Howells' "A Modern Instance," "The Undiscovered Country," "A Hazard of New Fortunes," "A Chance Acquaintance," "Lady of the Aroostook," etc., are not objectionable. (U. S., 19th cent.)

Tolsto's "Anna Karenina" deserves mention, though we cannot by any means agree with Howells that Tolsto is the greatest of novelists. The motive and atmosphere of his books are not lofty, and some of his work is positively disgraceful. (Russia, 19th cent.)

[241] George Sand's "Consuelo" is a great book in more senses than one; and although it deserves a place in this lower list, yet there are so many better books, that if one follows the true order, life would be likely to depart before he had time to read a four-volume novel by an author of the tone of George Sand. (France, 19th cent.)

Black's "Strange Adventures of a Phaeton," "Princess of Thule." (Eng., 19th cent.)

Blackmore's "Lorna Doone." (Eng., 19th cent.)

Olive Schreiner's "Story of an African Farm" is powerful, but not altogether wholesome. (Eng., 19th cent.)

[242] Bremer's "The Neighbors." (Norway, 19th cent.)

Trollope's "Last Chronicles of Ba.r.s.etshire." (Eng., 19th cent.)

Winthrop's "Cecil Dreeme," "John Brent." (U. S., 19th cent.)

[243] Richardson's "Pamela" and "Clarissa Harlowe" are interesting, because they were the beginning of the English novel; but they are not nice or natural, and have no attractions except their historic position.

(Eng., 1689-1761.)

Smollett's "Humphrey Clinker" is his strongest work. "Peregrine Pickle"

is very witty, and "Adventures of an Atom" altogether a miserable book.

Smollett possessed power, but his work is on a very low plane. (Eng., 18th cent.)

Boccaccio's "Decameron" is a series of splendidly told tales, from which Chaucer drew much besides his inspiration. The book is strong, but of very inferior moral tone.

ORATORY.

Great and successful oratory requires deep knowledge of the human mind and character, personal force, vivid imagination, control of language and temper, and a faculty of putting the greatest truths in such clear and simple and forceful form, that they may not only be grasped by untrained minds, but will break down the barriers of prejudice and interest, and fight their way to the throne of the will. Oratory is religion, science, philosophy, biography, history, wit, pathos, and poetry _in action_. This department of literature is therefore of the greatest value in the development of mind and heart, and of the power to influence and control our fellows. Especially read and study Demosthenes on the Crown, Burke's "Warren Hastings' Oration," Webster's "Reply to Hayne," Phillips' "Lovejoy" and "Toussaint L'Ouverture," and Lincoln's "Gettysburg," his debates with Douglas, and his great speeches in New York and the East before the War, in which fun, pathos, and logic were all welded together in such masterly shape that professors of oratory followed him about from city to city, studying him as a model of eloquence. There is a book called "Great Orations of Great Orators" that is very valuable, and there is a series of three volumes containing the best British orations (fifteen orators), and another similar series of American speeches (thirty-two orators).

WIT AND HUMOR.

In what wit consists, and why it is we laugh, are questions hard to answer (read on that subject Spencer and Hobbes, and Mathews' "Wit and Humor; their Use and Abuse"); but certain it is that a little seasoning of fun makes intellectual food very palatable, and much better adapts it for universal and permanent a.s.similation. Most men can keep what is tied to their memories with a joke. Considering all things, Lowell, Holmes, d.i.c.kens, and Cervantes are the best humorists the world affords. See Table III. Group 4. They exhibit a union of power and purpose that is not found elsewhere. They always subordinate wit to wisdom, always aim at something far higher than making fun for its own sake, never appear to make any effort for their effects, and always polish their work to perfection. A great deal of the keenest wit will be found in books whose general character puts them in some other column,--Poetry, Fiction, Oratory, etc. The works of Shakspeare, Addison, Eliot, Sheridan, Goldsmith, Irving, Higginson, Carleton, Thackeray, Hood, Saxe, Fielding, Smollett, Aristophanes, Moliere, etc., abound in wit and humor.

The student of humor will be interested in Hazlitt's "English Comic Writers," Thackeray's "English Humorists," and Besant's "French Humorists."

[244] "Fable for Critics," "Biglow Papers." Considering the keenness and variety of wit, the depth of sarcasm, the breadth of view, and the importance of its subject, the "Biglow Papers" is the greatest humorous work of all history. (U. S., 19th cent.)

[245] "Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table," "Professor at the Breakfast-Table," etc. (U. S., 19th cent.)

[246] "Pickwick Papers." (Eng., 19th cent.)

[247] "Don Quixote." (Spain, 1547-1616.)

[248] Along with much violent scoffing, and calling of his betters by hard names, Ingersoll's speeches contain some of the keenest wit in the language. (U. S., 19th cent.)

[249] Marietta Holley's "Sweet Cicely," "Samantha at the Centennial,"

"Betsey Bobbet," "My Wayward Pardner," "Samantha at Saratoga," "Samantha among the Brethren," etc., are full of quaint fun, keen insight, and common-sense. They are somewhat more wordy than we wish they were, but they are wholesome, and the author's purpose is always a lofty one. Her fun is not mere fun, but is like the laughing eye and smiling lip of one whose words are full of thought and elevated feeling. (U. S., 19th cent.)

[250] G. W. Curtis's "Potiphar Papers" is a good example of quiet, refined humor. (U. S., 19th cent.)

[251] Chauncey M. Depew's Orations and After-Dinner Speeches are worthy of perusal by all lovers of wit and sense. (U. S., 19th cent.)

[252] Mark Twain is the greatest of those who make humor the primary object. He does not, like Artemus Ward, make it the sole object,--there is a large amount of keen common-sense in his "A Yankee in King Arthur's Court," and there is also in it an open-mindedness to the newest currents of thought that proves the author to be one of the most wide-awake men of the day. "Innocents Abroad," "The Prince and the Pauper," "Roughing It," etc., are very amusing books, the only drawback being that the reader is sometimes conscious of an effort to be funny.

(U. S., 19th cent.)

253: Charles Dudley Warner's "In the Wilderness" gives some exceedingly amusing sketches of backwoods life. See also other books mentioned under the head of Fiction. (U. S., 19th cent.)

[254] S. K. Edwards' "Two Runaways, and Other Stories" is a book that no lover of humor can afford to be without. (U. S., 19th cent.)

[255] E. E. Hale's "My Double, and How He Undid Me," and other stories contain much innocent recreation. (U. S., 19th cent.)

[256] Nasby's "Ekoes from Kentucky" and "Swingin' round the Circle" are full of the keenest political sarcasm. Lincoln was so impressed with Nasby's power, that he said he had rather possess such gifts than be President of the United States. (U. S., 19th cent.)