The World's Best Books : A Key to the Treasures of Literature Part 26

=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 pa.s.sages 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.ses 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 pa.s.s 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 l.u.s.ty 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 n.o.blest 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 sh.o.r.e 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 ill.u.s.trated 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 G.o.d 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, Impa.s.sioned 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 n.o.ble 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=. "G.o.d 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]