The World's Best Books : A Key to the Treasures of Literature Part 25

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 repet.i.tion 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 n.o.ble sentiment, though lacking unity, should rank far above "Don Juan," or any other volume that expresses the ign.o.ble 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_ cla.s.sics,--not books of all time,--for their subjects are transitional, not eternal. They deal with _doubts_, religious and industrial; when these have pa.s.sed away, the mission of the books will be fulfilled, and their importance will be less. But they are _relative_ cla.s.sics,--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 n.o.ble births and deaths--into a valuable periodical, the progenitor of the vast horde that threatens to expel the cla.s.sics 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 ent.i.tled 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 n.o.bility 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 h.e.l.l 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, ant.i.theses, 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 G.o.d as well as the Bible; and if in Nature and society there were good reasons for the existence of an inst.i.tution, 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 cla.s.sic 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 a.s.sent. 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 cla.s.s. (7) _Butler's a.n.a.logy_, chiefly noted for its proof of the existence of G.o.d 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 ill.u.s.tration 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 _d.i.c.kens_; 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 pa.s.s 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 n.o.ble 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 Ta.s.so 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.