Definitions and Divisions.—Literature is life pulsing through life upon life; but only when the middle life imparts new beauty to the first is literature produced in any true and proper sense. The last life is that of the reader; the middle one that of the author; the first that of the person or age he pictures. Literature is the past pouring itself into the present. Every great man consumes and digests his own times. Shakspeare gives us the England of the 16th century, with the added qualities of beauty, ideality, and order. When we read Gibbon's "Rome," it is really the life of all those turbulent times of which he writes that is pouring upon us through the channels of genius. Dante paints with his own sublime skill the portraits of Italy in the 14th century, of his own rich, inner life, and of the universal human soul in one composite masterpiece of art. In one of Munchausen's stories, a bugler on the stage-top in St. Petersburg was surprised to find that the bugle stopped in the middle of the song. Afterward, in Italy, sweet music was heard, and upon investigation it was found that a part of the song had been frozen in the instrument in Russia, and thawed in the warmer air of Italy. So the music of river and breeze, of battle and banquet, was frozen in the verse of Homer nearly three thousand years ago, and is ready at any time, under the heat of our earnest study, to pour its harmony into our lives.
It is the fact that beauty is added by the author which distinguishes Literature from the pictures of life that are given to us by newspaper reporters, tables of statistics, etc. Literature is not merely life,—it is life crystallized in art. This is the first great line dividing the Literary from the Non-Literary. The first class is again divided into Poetry and Prose. In the first the form is measured, and the substance imagery and imagination. In the latter the form is unmeasured, and the substance direct. Imagery is the heart of poetry, and rhythm its body. The thought must be expressed not in words merely, but in words that convey other thoughts through which the first shines. The inner life is pictured in the language of external Nature, and Nature is painted in the colors of the heart. The poet must dip his brush in that eternal paint-pot from which the forests and fields, the mountains, the sky, and the stars were painted. He must throw human life out upon the world, and draw the world into the stream of his own thought. Sometimes we find the substance of the poetic in the dress of prose, as in Emerson's and in Ingersoll's lectures, and then we have the prose poem; and sometimes we find the form of poetry with only the direct expression, which is the substance of prose, or perhaps without even the substance of literary prose, as in parts of Wordsworth, Pope, Longfellow, Homer, Tennyson, and even sometimes in Shakspeare; see, for example, Tennyson's "Dirge."
Tests for the Choice of Books.—In deciding which of those glorious ships that sail the ages, bringing their precious freight of genius to every time and people, we shall invite into our ports, we must consider the nature of the crew, the beauty, strength, and size of the vessel, the depth of our harbor, the character of the cargo, and our own wants. In estimating the value of a book, we have to note (1) the kind of life that forms its material; (2) the qualities of the author,—that is, of the life through which the stream comes to us, and whose spirit is caught by the current, as the breezes that come through the garden bear with them the perfume of flowers that they touch; (3) the form of the book, its music, simplicity, size, and artistic shape; (4) its merits, compared with the rest of the books in its own sphere of thought; (5) its fame; (6) our abilities; and (7) our needs. There result several tests of the claims of any book upon our attention.
I. What effect will it have upon character? Will it make me more careful, earnest, sincere, placid, sympathetic, gay, enthusiastic, loving, generous, pure, and brave by exercising these emotions in me, and more abhorrent of evil by showing me its loathsomeness; or more sorrowful, fretful, cruel, envious, vindictive, cowardly, and false, less reverent of right and more attracted by evil, by picturing good as coming from contemptible sources, and evil as clothed with beauty? Is the author such a man as I would wish to be the companion of my heart, or such as I must study to avoid?
II. What effect will the book produce upon the mind? Will it exercise and strengthen my fancy, imagination, memory, invention, originality, insight, breadth, common-sense, and philosophic power? Will it make me bright, witty, reasonable, and tolerant? Will it give me the quality of intellectual beauty? Will it give me a deeper knowledge of human life, of Nature, and of my business, or open the doorways of any great temple of science where I am as yet a stranger? Will it help to build a standard of taste in literature for the guidance of myself and others? Will it give me a knowledge of what other people are thinking and feeling, thus opening the avenues of communication between my life and theirs?
III. What will be the effect on my skills and accomplishments? Will it store my mind full of beautiful thoughts and images that will make my conversation a delight and profit to my friends? Will it teach me how to write with power, give me the art of thinking clearly and expressing my thought with force and attractiveness? Will it supply a knowledge of the best means of attaining any other desired art or accomplishment?
IV. Is the book simple enough for me? Is it within my grasp? If not, I must wait till I have come upon a level with it.
V. Will the book impart a pleasure in the very reading? This test alone is not reliable; for till our taste is formed, the trouble may not be in it but in ourselves.
VI. Has it been superseded by a later book, or has its truth passed into the every-day life of the race? If so, I do not need to read it. Other things equal, the authors nearest to us in time and space have the greatest claims on our attention. Especially is this true in science, in which each succeeding great book sucks the life out of all its predecessors. In poetry there is a principle that operates in the opposite direction; for what comes last is often but an imitation, that lacks the fire and force of the original. Nature is best painted, not from books, but from her own sweet face.
VII. What is the relation of the book to the completeness of my development? Will it fill a gap in the walls of my building? Other things equal, I had better read about something I know nothing of than about something I am familiar with; for the aim is to get a picture of the universe in my brain, and a full development of my whole nature. It is a good plan to read everything of something and something of everything. A too general reader seems vague and hazy, as if he were fed on fog; and a too special reader is narrow and hard, as if fed on needles.
VIII. Is the matter inviting my attention of permanent value? The profits of reading what is merely of the moment are not so great as those accruing from the reading of literature that is of all time. To hear the gossip of the street is not as valuable as to hear the lectures of Joseph Cook, or the sermons of Beecher and Brooks. On this principle, most of our time should be spent on classics, and very little upon transient matter. There is a vast amount of energy wasted in this country in the reading of newspapers and periodicals. The newspaper is a wonderful thing. It brings the whole huge earth to me in a little brown wrapper every morning. The editor is a sort of travelling stage-manager, who sets up his booth on my desk every day, bringing with him the greatest performers from all the countries of the world, to play their parts before my eyes. Yonder is an immense mass-meeting; and that mite, brandishing his mandibles in an excited manner, is the great Mr. So-and-So, explaining his position amid the tumultuous explosions of an appreciative multitude. That puffet of smoke and dust to the right is a revolution. There in the shadow of the wood comes an old man who lays down a scythe and glass while he shifts the scenes, and we see a bony hand reaching out to snatch back a player in the midst of his part, and even trying to clutch the showman himself. For three dollars a year I can buy a season ticket to this great Globe theatre, for which God writes the dramas, whose scene-shifter is Time, and whose curtain is rung down by Death.[1] But theatre-going, if kept up continuously, is very enervating. 'T is better far to read the hand-bills and placards at the door, and only when the play is great go in. Glance at the head-lines of the paper always; read the mighty pages seldom. The editors could save the nation millions of rich hours by a daily column of brief but complete statements of the paper's contents, instead of those flaring head-lines that allure but do not satisfy, and only lead us on to read that Mr. Windbag nominated Mr. Darkhorse amid great applause, and that Mr. Darkhorse accepted in a three-column speech skilfully constructed so as to commit himself to nothing; or that Mr. Bondholder's daughter was married, and that Mrs. So-and-So wore cream satin and point lace, with roses, etc.
[1] Adapted from Lowell.
Intrinsic Merit.—It must be noted that the tests of intrinsic merit are not precisely the same as the tests for the choice of books. The latter include the former and more. Intrinsic merit depends on the character impressed upon the book by its subject-matter and the author; but in determining the claims of a book upon the attention of the ordinary English reader, it is necessary not only to look at the book itself, but also to consider the needs and abilities of the reader. One may not be able to read the book that is intrinsically the best, because of the want of time or lack of sufficient mental development. Green's "Short History of England" and Dickens' "Child's History of England" may not be the greatest works in their department, but they may have the greatest claims on the attention of one whose time or ability is limited. A chief need of every one is to know what others are thinking and feeling. To open up avenues of communication between mind and mind is one of the great objects of reading. Now it often happens that a book of no very high merit artistically considered—a book that can never take rank as a classic—becomes very famous, and is for a time the subject of much comment and conversation. In such cases all who would remain in thorough sympathy with their fellows must give the book at least a hasty reading, or in some way gain a knowledge of its contents. Intrinsically "Robert Elsmere" and "Looking Backward" may not be worthy of high rank (though I am by no means so sure of this as many of the critics seem to be); but their fame, joined as it is with high motive, entitles them to a reading.
It is always a good plan, however, to endeavor to ascertain the absolute or intrinsic merit of a book first, and afterward arrive at the relative value or claim upon the attention by making the correction required by the time and place, later publications in the same department, the peculiar needs and abilities of readers, etc.
In testing intrinsic worth we must consider—
Motive.
Magnitude.
Unity.
Universality.
Suggestiveness.
Expression.
Motive.—The purpose of the author and the emotional character of the subject matter are of great importance. A noble subject nobly handled begets nobility in the reader, and a spirit of meanness brought into a book by its subject or author also impresses itself upon those who come in contact with it. Kind, loving books make the world more tender-hearted; coarse and lustful books degrade mankind. The nobility of the sentiment in and underlying a work is therefore a test of prime importance.
Whittier's "Voices of Freedom,"
Lowell's "Vision of Sir Launfal,"
Tennyson's "Locksley Hall,"
Warner's "A-Hunting of the Deer,"
Shakspeare's "Coriolanus,"
Macaulay's "Horatius" and "Virginia,"
Æschylus' "Prometheus,"
Dickens' "Christmas Carol,"
Sewell's "Black Beauty,"
Chaucer's "Griselda,"
Browning's "Ivan Ivanovitch,"
Arnold's "Forsaken Merman," and "The Light of Asia,"
are fine examples of high motive.
Magnitude.—The grander the subject, the deeper the impression upon us. In reading a book like "The Light of Asia," that reveals the heart of a great religion, or Guizot's "Civilization in Europe," that deals with the life of a continent, or Darwin's "Origin of Species," or Spencer's "Nebular Hypothesis," that grapples with problems as wide as the world and as deep as the starry spaces,—in reading such books we receive into ourselves a larger part of the universe than when we devote ourselves to the history of the town we live in, or the account of the latest game of base ball.
Unity.—A book, picture, statue, play, or oratorio is an artistic unity when no part of it could be removed without injury to the whole effect. True art masses many forces to a single central purpose. The more complex a book is in its substance (not its expression),—that is to say, the greater the variety of thoughts and feelings compressed within its lids,—the higher it will rank, if the parts are good in themselves and are so related as to produce one tremendous effect. But no intrusion of anything not essentially related to the supreme purpose can be tolerated. A good book is like a soldier who will not burden himself with anything that will not increase his fighting power, because, if he did, its weight would diminish his fighting force. In the same way, if a book contains unnecessary matter, a portion of the attention that should be concentrated upon the real purpose of the volume, is absorbed by the superfluous pages, rendering the effect less powerful than it would otherwise be. Most of the examples of high motive named above, would be in place here, especially,—
Prometheus.
The Forsaken Merman.
The Light of Asia.
Other fine specimens of unity are,—
Holmes's "Nautilus."
Hood's "Bridge of Sighs."
Gray's "Elegy."
Hunt's "Abou Ben Adhem."
Longfellow's "Psalm of Life."
Whittier's "Barefoot Boy."
Shelley's "Ode to a Skylark."
Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind."
Byron's "Eve of Waterloo."
Bryant's "Thanatopsis."
Reed's "Drifting."
Drake's "Culprit Fay."
Irving's "Art of Bookmaking," etc. (in "Sketch Book").
Rives' "Story of Arnon."
Dante's "Divine Comedy."
Schiller's "Veiled Statue of Truth."
Goethe's "Erl King."
Humor alone has a right to violate unity even apparently; and although wit and humor produce their effects by displaying incongruities, yet underlying all high art, in this department as in others, there is always a deep unity,—a truth revealed and enforced by the destruction of its contradictories accomplished by the sallies of wit and humor.
Universality.—Other things equal, the more people interested in the subject the more important the book. A matter which affects a million people is of more consequence than one which affects only a single person. National affairs, and all matters of magnitude, of course possess this quality; but magnitude is not necessary to universality,—the thoughts, feelings, and actions of an unpretentious person in a little village may be types of what passes in the life of every human being, and by their representativeness attain a more universal interest for mankind than the business and politics of a state.
The rules of tennis are not of so wide importance as an English grammar, nor is the latter so universal as Dante's "Inferno" or "The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius,"—these being among the books that in the highest degree possess the quality under discussion. Other fine examples are—
Goethe's "Faust."
Shakespeare's Plays and Sonnets.
Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress."
Arnold's "Light of Asia."
Bacon's and Emerson's Essays.
"Uncle Tom's Cabin."
Sewell's "Black Beauty."
Eliot's "Romola."
Curtis' "Prue and I."
Cooper's "Last of the Mohicans."
Tourgée's "Hot Plowshares."
Irving's "Sketch Book."
Plato, Spencer, etc.
In fact, all books that express love, longing, admiration, tenderness, sorrow, laughter, joy, victory over nature or man, or any other thought or feeling common to men, have the attribute of universality in greater or less degree.
Suggestiveness.—Every great work of art suggests far more than it expresses. This truth is illustrated by paintings like Bierstadt's "Yosemite" or his "Drummer Boy," Millet's "Angelus," or Turner's "Slave Ship." Statues like the "Greek Slave" or "The Forced Prayer;" speeches like those of Phillips, Fox, Clay, Pitt, Bright, Webster, and Brooks; songs like "Home, Sweet Home," "My Country," "Douglas," "Annie Laurie;" and books like
Emerson's Essays.
Æschylus' "Prometheus."
Goethe's "Faust" and "Wilhelm Meister."
Dante's "Divine Comedy."
"Hamlet" and many other of Shakspeare's Plays.
Curtis' "Prue and I."
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 repetition 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 noble sentiment, though lacking unity, should rank far above "Don Juan," or any other volume that expresses the ignoble 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 classics,—not books of all time,—for their subjects are transitional, not eternal. They deal with doubts, religious and industrial; when these have passed away, the mission of the books will be fulfilled, and their importance will be less. But they are relative classics,—books that are of great value to their age, and will be great as long as their subjects are prominent.
in the
Literatures of England, America, Greece,
Rome, Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Persia,
Portugal, Denmark, Russia.
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] Cædmon,[3] Bæda,[4] Cynewulf, and Ælfred, 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 noble births and deaths—into a valuable periodical, the progenitor of the vast horde that threatens to expel the classics 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, Cædmon, 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 entitled 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 nobility 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 hell 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, antitheses, 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 God as well as the Bible; and if in Nature and society there were good reasons for the existence of an institution, 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, Molière, Corneille, Æschylus, 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. Æschylus, 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 classic 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 "Mécanique Céleste" 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 assent. 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 class. (7) Butler's Analogy, chiefly noted for its proof of the existence of God 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 illustration 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 Dickens; 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 pass 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.
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, Æsop; the most powerful writer of comedy, Aristophanes (Molière, 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, Æschylus, 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 "Phædo" and "Republic," Æschylus' "Prometheus Bound," Sophocles' "Œdipus," 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 "Æneid," 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 noble literature. Dante is the Shakspeare of the Latin races. He stands among the first creators of sublimity. Æschylus 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 Tasso 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 Molière 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.
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 Khayyám; her splendid epic, the Shah Nameh of Firdusi, the story of whose labors, successes, and misfortunes is one of the most interesting passages 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.