A child's guide to reading

In the Mermaid Series. Jonson’s fine lyrics, including the perfect song “Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes,” should be looked for in the anthologies.

The best edition of Keats is that edited by Buxton Forman. Good editions are those in Everyman’s Library and in the Golden Treasury Series.

In one volume, published by Scribner. An inspired poet, if ever one was born in America.

A volume of selections from the prose and verse of Landor is to be found in the Golden Treasury Series.

In the Cambridge Edition. A good selection from Longfellow appears in the Golden Treasury Series.

In the Cambridge Edition.

Translated by Richard Hovey.

In the Mermaid Series.

Published in one volume by Scribner. Meredith’s poems of nature should be read first.

In the Cambridge Edition and also in the Globe Edition. There are many texts of Milton prepared for use in schools. The young reader will be fortunate if he can read and enjoy the shorter poems and two or three books of “Paradise Lost,” before he comes to the study of them in school.

There are many English versions of Molière, some prepared for the stage. The edition in three volumes in Bohn’s Library is practically complete.

The complete poems of Moore are published in an inexpensive volume by T. Y. Crowell & Co. Moore’s songs are his best work and many of them retain a sure place in the popular balladry of our race.

The great fluency of Morris’s poetry makes his longer narratives remarkably easy to read. Although he is a poet known and cherished by the few, his stories in verse are singularly well adapted to young readers.

The best edition is that edited by Stedman and Woodberry. There are several other single-volume editions. The dozen best poems of Poe should be known to every young American, and Mr. Andrew Lang is right in saying (preface to the “Blue Poetry Book”) that the youngest ear will be delighted by the beauty of the words.

In the Cambridge Edition. A century that began with Keats and Shelley and ended with Swinburne and Meredith does not accord Pope the high place he enjoyed in his own century, but places him at best among the most brilliant of the comic poets. The “Rape of the Lock” is a humorous masterpiece. A surprisingly good anthology of Pope is the section given to him in Bartlett’s “Familiar Quotations”; the large number of lines from his work is sure proof of his place in our literature; only Shakespeare, Milton, and the Bible contribute so much that is “familiar.”

A natural and joyous singer about common things, deservedly popular in America and a truer poet than many critics suspect.

Published in one volume by Little, Brown & Co. Among English women only Mrs. Browning is so fine a poet as Christina Rossetti.

In two volumes, published by Little, Brown & Co. The young reader should begin with Rossetti’s songs, ballads, and simpler poems, “The Blessed Damosel” and “My Sister’s Sleep.” The sonnet sequence, “The House of Life,” is for mature readers.

In several volumes of Bohn’s Library, translated by Coleridge and others.

In the Cambridge Edition. Scott’s narrative poems are preëminently adapted to the taste and understanding of young readers. There are many school editions of Scott’s poetry, and innumerable reprints attest his continued popularity.

The best one-volume edition of Shakespeare is the Cambridge Edition. The best edition in many volumes is the Cambridge Shakespeare, published by Macmillan & Co. It gives the readings of the Elizabethan texts so that the reader can distinguish (and accept or reject) the emendations of scholars. A pocket edition such as the Temple (Macmillan), or the Ariel (Putnam), will prove a good friend.

In the Cambridge Edition or the Globe. In two volumes in Everyman’s Library. Selected poems in the Golden Treasury Series.

In a small attractive volume, published by Macmillan.

In the English translation of R. C. Jebb. The volume in Everyman’s Library contains translations by Young. Professor G. H. Palmer’s “Antigone” is as remarkable as his “Odyssey.”

Selected poems in the Golden Treasury Series.

In the Globe Edition. Called the poet’s poet; a source of inspiration to other poets. If we do not read “The Faerie Queene” at length, it is because we have so many poets since Spenser. Yet if the reader had only Spenser he would have an inexhaustible river of English poetry.

Published by Scribner, in one volume, which contains Stevenson’s other verse. “The Child’s Garden” celebrates childhood in a way that touches the grown imagination, like the poems about children by Blake, Swinburne, and Francis Thompson, but it appeals also to children of all ages.

Edited by R. H. Stoddard and published by Crowell. The young reader should approach Swinburne first in “Atalanta,” poems about children, poems about other poets, and poems of liberty, notably “The Litany of Nations.” He is a noble poet, frequently misrepresented by friendly and unfriendly wafters of current literary opinion.

In two or three small volumes, published by Small, Maynard & Co. The purest note among living American poets.

Complete in one volume in the Cambridge Edition and also in the Globe.

Of all modern poets preëminently the one for young and old readers to know entire (with the possible exception of his dramas).

In English prose, together with translations from Bion and Moschus, by Andrew Lang, in the Golden Treasury Series. Theocritus is translated into excellent English verse by the poet, C. S. Calverley.

Dimmed but not displaced by later poets of nature. Thomson may be read first in the anthologies, from which now and again a sincere admirer will be sent to his complete works.

A remarkable poet, easily among those whom we think of as next to the greatest poets. Professor William James calls “The City of Dreadful Night” “that pathetic book,” “which I think is less well known than it should be for its literary beauty, simply because men are afraid to quote its words—they are so gloomy, and at the same time so sincere.”

This poet, lately dead, has surely taken his place among the true voices of English poetry.

In the Aldine Edition (Macmillan).

In Conington’s prose translation. The poetic version of William Morris is spirited and fluent.

In the Mermaid Series.

Whitman’s poetry is complete in one volume, published by Small, Maynard & Co. The most powerful of American poets. The young reader should begin with the patriotic pieces and the poems of nature in the sections entitled “Sea-Drift,” “By the Roadside,” “Drum Taps,” “Memories of President Lincoln,” “Whispers of Heavenly Death.”

In the Cambridge Edition. Widely loved in America for his popular ballads and songs of common things. In his poems of liberty and in poems of religious sympathy and faith, the true passion of the poet overcomes the technical limitations of his verse and results in pure poetry.

In the Globe Edition. The true Wordsworthian believes with Robert Southey that “a greater poet than Wordsworth there never has been nor ever will be.” A serene voice that swelled increasingly through a troubled century, and is more and more felt to have uttered the essential ideas needed in these hundred years. Yet much of Wordsworth is less than poetic, and the new reader should seek him first in the selections edited by Matthew Arnold in the Golden Treasury Series.