The Library of Entertainment: Handbook
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Title: The Library of Entertainment: Handbook
Author: John Chilton Scammell
Release date: February 18, 2016 [eBook #51248]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIBRARY OF ENTERTAINMENT: HANDBOOK ***
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE
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Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
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THE
LIBRARY OF
ENTERTAINMENT
A THOUSAND HOURS OF ENJOYMENT
WITH THE WORLD'S GREAT WRITERS
HANDBOOK
BY JOHN CHILTON SCAMMELL, A.B.
CHICAGO AND BOSTON
GEO. L. SHUMAN & CO.
MCMXX
COPYRIGHT, 1915,
BY GEO. L. SHUMAN & CO.
_Norwood Press_
_J. S. Cashing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co._
_Norwood, Mass., U.S.A._
_Boston Bookbinding Co., Cambridge, Mass._
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE v
THE PURPOSE OF THIS BOOK xi
PART I
SIDE-LIGHTS ON GREAT WRITERS 1
'TO DRIVE DULL CARE AWAY' 12
PART II
THE STUDY OF LITERATURE 17
THE DECISIVE PERIODS IN LITERATURE 19
NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS 28
THE DIVISIONS OF LITERATURE 36
FROM SEVEN TO TWENTY-ONE 54a
THE USE OF THE INDEX AND THE BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 54m
LITERARY CRITICISM 55
PART III
STUDIES OF GREAT AUTHORS 61
BURNS 61
SCOTT 64
WORDSWORTH 67
COLERIDGE 70
BYRON 72
SHELLEY 76
KEATS 78
TENNYSON 81
BROWNING, R. 83
BROWNING, E. B. 86
IRVING 89
POE 91
HAWTHORNE 94
BRYANT 97
LONGFELLOW 99
WHITTIER 102
LOWELL 104
HOLMES 107
HOMER 109
VERGIL 113
DANTE 116
MILTON 119
SHAKESPEARE 122
GOETHE 126
SCHILLER 129
DICKENS 131
THACKERAY 134
JOHNSON 136
GOLDSMITH 139
GRAY 141
BURKE 143
WEBSTER 146
PLATO 148
AURELIUS 151
BACON 153
CARLYLE 156
RUSKIN 159
EMERSON 162
HEINE 164
PLINY 166
PREFACE
"Nowhere so happy as curled up in a corner with a book." So said, or
is reputed to have said, no less a genius than St. Thomas à Kempis.
And thousands of men and women, boys and girls, still testify to the
truth and power of that saying. For of all friends or companions a
book is the most reliable--often quite as helpful as any Jonathan to
any David. For instance, what could have given Abraham Lincoln more
lasting help than those early volumes which he so hungrily devoured
over and over again? "Æsop's Fables," "Robinson Crusoe," "Benjamin
Franklin's Autobiography," "The Pilgrim's Progress" absorbed every
moment he could spare from his chores and his sleep. Not mere
knowledge, but inspiration entered his soul from those oft-read
pages; in them he gleaned visions of life, its strain and anguish,
its exaltation and thrill; there, too, he caught the secret of that
quaint faculty for terse anecdote by which he was to win his way not
only to the heads but to the hearts of the hardy, courageous folk
of the Middle West, and, later, those of the East as well. It was
through this power to read and understand and enjoy that Lincoln
learned to penetrate to the very soul of mankind, the deep recesses
of the thoughts and feelings of his fellow men.
The will to try, the simple decision to make the effort, is all that
is needed in order to grasp what an infinite fund of amusement and
delight lies stored away in books. No unusual imaginative powers are
requisite to get us on horseback with Dumas's swashbuckling, duelling
musketeers, or to place us beside Poe's heroes in their dread
predicaments. What friend or acquaintance can tell you half the tales
of hair-breadth escape, side-splitting dilemma, or tender romance,
such as scores of the cleverest writers have spent their lives in
devising? These same writers have left this world, they can never
more be seen or heard on earth; but the very essence of their talent
and their personality, their brightest, most sparkling thoughts and
ideas remain, and may readily be placed within reach of your own
hand. Charles Dickens can never again voyage over the Atlantic and
stroll across Boston Common in velvet coat and plaid waistcoat,
gesticulating with eyes a-twinkle. But his Mr. Pickwick's adventure
with the Middle-Aged Lady in Yellow Curl-Papers still remains, and
the echo of Pickwick's "Bless my soul, what a dreadful thing" will
ring in our ears forever, and forever stir a quiet chuckle. Rudyard
Kipling is growing old, and his pen no longer flourishes with the
reckless vivacity of the days when he was little more than a "cub"
reporter and wrote "Mandalay." Yet that same "Mandalay" of the "old
Moulmein pagoda" and the "tinkly temple bells" will rouse a thrill
of romance and adventure in thousands of hearts that are still to be
born. Poor Stevenson coughed his life away at Samoa, after a plucky
fight for life that led him to France, 'Frisco, and the South Seas.
None the less, though he has gone from us, the pictures of hope and
courage that leap and laugh at us from his pages are as vivid to-day
as when they first brought their new joy to the delighted world. Read
once more that dainty sketch--that etching rather--"A Night among
the Pines," and see for yourself how that great master of words has
voiced our modern appreciation of the great outdoors. For each great
author is an individual, no two of them are alike, any more than you
are like your next-door neighbor. Their modes of expression, their
joy in life are as varied and divergent as life itself. There is,
moreover, nothing commonplace about them, their work is strong and
fresh. Each has his tale to tell, his song to sing, his meditations
to entrust to us, his own special message to the spirit or to the
intellect of many a generation and many a race.
In other words, all great authors are artists, makers or shapers
of truth and beauty, just as much and in the same measure as are
painters and sculptors. Indeed, Literature is the chief of the Fine
Arts. Music, with all its grandeur and charm, is but sound, and dies
away; Painting, though never so rich in color and striking in form,
is passive and for the most part devoid of action, and sad to say,
very few of us have wealth enough to own even one canvas by a master;
Sculpture, with all its dignity and grace, is cold and cheerless
in the main; and Architecture is too bulky and ponderous to stir
personal appreciation at a moment's notice.
In fact, Literature, and Literature alone, possesses the power of
meeting our every mood and desire, for comfort, for excitement, for
exaltation, for pathos, for laughter.
Literature alone can dwell within the walls of the humblest cabin,
even in the squatter's camp in Labrador or Borneo. Raphael's glorious
paintings may only be visited at the expense of months of time and
hundreds of dollars; Beethoven's symphonies can only be presented
by the most finished orchestras in a few of our largest cities; the
statues wrought by Phidias and Rodin cannot be reproduced by the
thousand and spread broadcast over our nation; Rheims Cathedral and
her sister marvels must stand where first they rose, nor may they
be successfully imitated. But, thank Heaven, Shakespeare, Dickens,
Longfellow for a few cents send their messages to every soul on earth
that can read English.
All of us are acquainted with some half dozen of the immortal writers
of the world, but how many of them have we never met, perhaps have
never heard of. If we could only obtain an introduction to them;
if we only knew which writers and which of their works to select,
all would be well. The most brilliant, the most lovable, the most
sincere, the most thoughtful authors would gather round us and talk
to us; they would bring their very best to entertain and delight
us; they would offer us their guidance and companionship into every
field of thought. Emerson's calm reflective tones reveal the answers
to many of life's most pressing and significant problems; Swift, in
"Gulliver's Travels," jestingly, yet bitterly, strips mankind of its
pride and conceit, and lays bare the greed and selfishness that have
ruined not individuals alone, but whole nations and empires; Lewis
Carroll talks the most laughable, clever nonsense that ever inspired
a humorist's pen; Burns, in the simplest of language, voices the
pathos and tragedy of every life, even the humblest, and with our
own Lincoln proves again and again that true nobility may dwell and
flourish in the midst of poverty.
Truly, herein lies one of life's chief joys, in encountering what
others have thought and achieved--in meeting the actors in the great
world drama, the scenes in which they played their parts, the deeds
by which they have won fame and fortune; still more delectable is the
pleasure of whiling away leisure hours with those folk who are but
products of the fancy, children of the poet's brain, dreams of the
teller of tales: Odysseus, who, for the last three thousand years, as
Sir Philip Sidney has put it, "held children from play and old men
from the chimney corner"; Falstaff, chuckling at the comical ease
with which he hoodwinks all about him; Lady Macbeth, who, even in her
dreams, may not forget the dread stain upon her little hand; Faust,
ever seeking to rid himself of his demon accomplice; the knights of
King Arthur's round table, Robin Hood and his merry men, Dickens's
troop of immortal grotesques, Bret Harte's rough miners, with their
hearts of gold, Irving's droll New Yorkers of the Knickerbocker era,
Longfellow's Blacksmith and his Evangeline,--these and a host of
other undying notables have made life far richer for us all.
Ours is the fault if we do not avail ourselves of their magic. For
here in America the special opportunity to mingle with them lies
readier to the hand than in any other nation. Nowhere else, not in
England, nor France, nor in Italy can the everyday man find books at
his command for the asking. In a few of the largest European cities,
and not anywhere else on that continent, there are libraries of size
and worth, yet even these are hedged about with a hundred rules and
regulations that hamper circulation. But here, through the length and
breadth of this glorious land, are thousands and yet more thousands
of free libraries, containing all manner of books, of every age and
nation, awaiting your demand. They contain all that is splendid in
the way of printed matter, but also much, alas, that is not worth any
man's time; so that though the best lies open and free to us, it is
mingled with a vast amount of wretched trash.
Here lies the chief difficulty for us Americans: How are we to
distinguish the chaff from the wheat, the weeds from the harvest? The
task is that of seeking the proverbial needle in the haystack. We are
deluged with printed matter, tons upon tons of books and magazines
are poured daily upon the bookseller's counters. What is our chance
of choosing the treasures from out this hodgepodge?
To meet this very problem these volumes have been prepared; it is
hardly our place to dwell upon the years of labor and thought in
which they have gradually taken shape, but it is perhaps to the point
to remark that they represent the patient effort of many judges and
critics to supply an introduction and a guide to the best and most
inspiring literature of the nations from the beginning of the art
to the present day,--a means of recreation, amusement, and lasting
profit.
In the past three thousand years, some four hundred authors have
achieved such fame and standing as to distinguish them from the
endless multitudes of commonplace penmen. To choose and present their
very best work in complete, unified selections has constituted the
fundamental purpose of these twelve volumes. In them, it is certain,
an amazingly large proportion of the finest literature has been
brought together; they form a boundless source of entertainment and a
wellnigh infinite field for intellectual diversion and development.
By means of brief and suggestive biographical sketches, together with
the Index and the Handbook, to serve as a guide to fuller enjoyment
and appreciation, the editors have sought to amplify and enhance
the value of the selective feature of the work. And through an
abundance of illustrations, many of them painstaking reproductions of
water color paintings of the homes and favorite haunts of the chief
writers, additional understanding and pleasure is afforded.
The whole of this work has been built on the central idea of
entertainment that shall be simple and unified. Every effort has
been made to shun the elaborate, intricate methods that prevail so
wastefully to-day in our educational and our recreational systems.
At last educators are openly admitting that the only sane means
of raising our standards of education must lie in simplifying the
quantity of the studies so as to attain higher quality. In school and
out of it, Johnny and his sister Molly will unquestionably profit by
simple, straightforward teaching, play, reading, thinking. The more
complex a game is, the fewer people can enjoy it or appreciate its
fine points; the more involved a school system, the fewer children
will be able to acquire thorough training. But simple games and
simple instruction will enable all of us and of our little ones to
get the habit of thoroughness and stability. These twelve volumes,
then, are all constructed upon this principle of furnishing enjoyment
in a simple, clean-cut manner; they constitute one of the most
straightforward, clear, and forceful means toward the advance of our
civilization.
The measure of a successful life is surely the amount of happiness,
of true lasting pleasure which it has contained and which it has
passed on to others. We do not count our years in terms of sorrow or
vexation; we do not recall again and again our moments of failure or
folly; only the bright and golden hours remain fast emblazoned in
our memories, those days of sunshine and delight, when beauty and
laughter sang in our hearts and the air was filled with music. Of all
such days, those on which the friendly pages of some treasured author
were first opened, or those when we reveled in the companionship of
our favorite heroes of romance and adventure--those days indeed are
among the brightest of all. The greater the number of red-letter
days of such wonder and rapture, the greater the value of our lives,
not only to ourselves, but to all who have shared them. In work and
in play, at home and abroad, our undoubted ideal is that of finding
perpetual joy in life. The Fountain of Youth, which Ponce de Leon
vainly sought, is the quest of us all--we no longer seek to lengthen
our lives, but instead we strive with might and main to fill them to
the very brim with joyous thoughts and deeds. To be happy is to be
forever young.
THE PURPOSE OF THIS BOOK
It is the easiest thing in the world to open the treasure-vaults of
the Bank of England--if you have the combination; if you haven't, the
task is hopeless. It is the easiest thing in the world to enjoy the
most brilliant stories, the most laughable humor, the most heroic
deeds that the world has known--if you know where to find them.
"Where's something to read, something so interesting that I can
forget how tired I am and what a hard day I had at the office?" There
is the problem of almost every home in this country. Tired men and
women must have some means of refreshing themselves, of forgetting
their worries and trials for a time. They must rest and gather
strength for the next day's work. Where are they going to get it?
The purpose of this book is to give the owners of THE LIBRARY OF
ENTERTAINMENT an easy answer to that question. Its opening pages
contain some unusual notes on the oddities of literary folk and some
suggestions for hours and hours of entertainment and amusement that
will drive away care and fatigue unfailingly. The brightest stories
and the most fascinating humor are put right on the table beside you,
all you have to do is to turn to them according to the directions in
these pages.
But there is something better still in this little volume. It gives
a true opportunity to enjoy the company of the ablest men and women
who have ever put pen to paper. Until now a college course of three
or four years has been the only means of getting in touch with the
best of good, sensible reading. Our schools do not teach us how to
understand and take pleasure in these books; our libraries only store
them for us to use if we already know about them. Recent figures
show that for some time past more than 10,000 new books have been
published in the United States each year, an equal number in England,
and even more in Germany and Russia. The public libraries contain
millions upon millions printed in the past. It would be impossible
for even a hundred men giving their whole lifetime of eighty years to
do as much as scan the pages of all the world's literature.
Therefore it is only too evident that for the sensible use of the
little time which we can give to reading we should be enabled to
make a selection. We must be started on the right road. This is the
express aim of THE LIBRARY OF ENTERTAINMENT. Until now the pleasure
and the distinction that come from being well-read have belonged to
a few. The combination that opens the treasure-vaults of literature
was only given in college lectures. The outside world has been left
to shift for itself. But this is utterly wrong; with the simple
introduction that is given in Part Two of this book the world of
literature and its lasting delights are open to all.
PART I
SIDE-LIGHTS ON GREAT WRITERS
To many of us it seems as if an author with an assured reputation
must be one of the happiest of men; yet some of the very greatest
have suffered almost intolerably.
Bobby Burns was a victim of drink largely because of his brilliant
imagination and extreme sensitiveness. He was petted by society and
praised as the poet of the future; all England was at his feet. Yet
he gave way to his passions, took to drink, and ruined the lives of
several of his dearest friends, as well as his own. In almost anyone
else this would condemn him absolutely; but the truth is that his
poetic powers, the gift of his genius, rendered him too sensitive to
moods of the moment, and his will could not hold out under the strain.
A somewhat similar case was that of Coleridge. In his youth he showed
extraordinary talent, but he fell a victim to opium and the greater
part of his life was wasted in a series of unfinished efforts. No
opium was necessary to stimulate his imagination, as his weird ballad
of "The Ancient Mariner" plainly shows. Indeed his genius even worked
during his sleep, for "Kubla Khan" is but a fragment of a poem which
he dreamed and then began to write down as soon as he awoke. If he
had not been interrupted by a visitor, a man of no importance, we
might have had the whole instead of a scanty portion of this unique
masterpiece. Even as it stands it is one of the most picturesque and
brilliant compositions ever produced. It seems incredible that it
should be the work of a sleeping brain. And yet this is the man who
gave himself up to opium, wrecking a career that promised to surpass
even that of Byron or Shelley in poetic power.
Thomas De Quincey, the author of the "Confessions of an Opium
Eater," drank laudanum by the glassful. He first took to using this
liquid form of opium in order to gain relief from the dyspepsia that
resulted from his days of privation in the streets of London. Of
course he was unable to stop the use of the drug and had to increase
the doses to the alarming extent mentioned. When he was living in
Edinburgh this almost caused the death of a gentleman who dined with
him there; for his visitor picked up a decanter of a rich, dark red
liquor, which he thought was port wine, poured out a glass, and had
it at his lips, when De Quincey hurriedly seized it and saved the
situation. Smoking opium was not the custom then; Coleridge drank it,
as De Quincey did, and unknowingly spread the habit; for a poor man
who once lived near Coleridge's house admitted that he had obtained
laudanum from a boy who worked for Coleridge and smuggled it out to
his friend by the bottleful.
As we all know, our great American short story writer, Edgar Allan
Poe, was the prey of alcohol and also of opium, as well as a genius.
The combination seems to have been more unavoidable in his case than
in any other we know of. His imagination could only bring forth those
extraordinarily gruesome tales of mystery and horror when stimulated
by wines and brandy or opium. His whole life was spent in the shadow
of despondency and irritation; and although we are indebted to him
for priceless literary gems, he paid the penalty with misery which we
cannot imagine.
In contrast, look at the life of Charles Lamb. He was a poor clerk
at a pitiful salary, struggling to increase his income by literary
work in his spare time, with a dangerous appetite for alcohol, and
an insane sister to take care of. He, himself, constantly dreaded
insanity. Yet he kept up a cheerful and continual resistance to his
craving for drink, although he often took a drop too much. In order
to care for his sister, who had killed her mother in one of her
attacks, he gave up his sweetheart and settled down to the brave and
heartrending task of devotion to the unhappy invalid. This lasted
for thirty-three years, during which he never murmured except when
her attacks forced him to place her in an asylum. One of his friends
leaves the record of meeting Charles and Mary Lamb walking across
the fields to the hospital with tears streaming down their faces.
Yet in spite of all his troubles Lamb's essays have a delicacy and a
cheerfulness that never reveal the burden he had to bear. He is one
of the great heroes of English literature.
John Milton was another such hero. As a young man he won great
distinction as a poet and a scholar; so much so that when he
went to Italy the greatest Italian authors and critics praised
his Italian and Latin poetry as the best of that day, superior
to anything written during that time in Italy itself. He was
received there with boundless enthusiasm and was having the time
of his life, so to speak, when the news reached him of the Puritan
rebellion against Charles the First. Without a moment's hesitation
he abandoned his tour and came back to England. There he acted as
foreign correspondent for Cromwell's Government and kept England
safe from attacks by France and the rest of Europe through his able
diplomacy. He worked day and night until he fell ill and eventually
lost his eyesight. To make matters worse, the Puritans were deprived
of their power and Milton's enemies then persecuted him so that he
had to fly for his life. He spent the rest of his days in a humble
cottage, while his daughters grumbled because he made them transcribe
"Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained." It seems as if his sacrifice
for his country was utterly unrewarded, until we remember that his
name to-day is almost the first in its long roll of poets.
One of the sorrows of literary men is lack of appreciation.
Longfellow was laughed at by the Harvard students whom he taught,
for his poems had no attraction for them and he was only appreciated
elsewhere. Bret Harte wrote the finest stories of California life
that have ever appeared, yet for years he was not recognized in this
country as a writer of unusual powers, and as a matter of fact he
spent the greater part of his life in London, six thousand miles
from his old home; Lafcadio Hearn was so homely and eccentric that
he could not be happy or comfortable in the United States or in
Europe, and took refuge in Japan where his appearance would never
be remarked. As he points out in his wonderful writings on Japanese
life, politeness is one of the ruling habits of that race, so that
he was made far more comfortable and did far better work than would
have been possible in his own country.
Some writers have done their best work in prison. "The Star Spangled
Banner," as we know, was written by Francis Scott Key, while he was
a captive on a British battleship during the bombardment of Fort
McHenry, near Baltimore, in the War of 1812, and as he wondered
whether the flag was still flying he jotted down the lines of our
National Anthem. The masterpiece of Spanish literature was written
in jail; "Don Quixote" is so amusing, so pathetic, and so vivid
that Spain can stake her whole reputation on that one work, written
by Cervantes, an innocent man, imprisoned through envy and malice.
John Bunyan, another guiltless author, wrote his immortal "Pilgrim's
Progress" while he was locked up for his stubborn refusal to mold his
religious belief according to the demands of authorities for whom he
could have no respect. The opium of Coleridge and De Quincey and the
brandy of Edgar Allan Poe never stimulated them to equal the work
of these two geniuses. Innocence in prison has been proved superior
to dissipation in the best of surroundings, for the opium victims,
Coleridge and De Quincey, had the society of England's most brilliant
men and the environment of her finest scenery.
Both Bunyan and Cervantes worked hard, but the hardest workers of
all have been Frenchmen; Balzac and Dumas labored unceasingly for
the greater part of their lifetimes. In twenty years Balzac wrote
ninety-seven novels for a mere pittance that just kept body and
soul together. The greatness of his work was recognized, but the
French public, as a whole, did so little reading, that the publisher
himself did not make anything like a fortune. Dumas was more popular
and employed a staff of assistants to collect the material for his
historical romances, but the actual writing was all his own and cost
him from fourteen to eighteen hours a day in labor. His works are
more numerous than those of Dickens, Thackeray, and Cooper combined.
It seems incredible that one man could have turned out such a
tremendous mass of fascinating stories.
The only man in English literature who is to be compared to these
two Frenchmen is Sir Walter Scott. In his first success, when money
flowed in on him almost in torrents, his vanity led him to build the
mansion of Abbotsford and his one wish was to be regarded as the
Squire or ruler of the countryside, but not long after, when his
partner in the publishing business had caused the failure of the
firm, he bravely went to work and wrote novel after novel, year after
year, to pay off his debts. His vanity and love of show disappeared
and the man's true nobility took its proper place; almost on his
death-bed he continued to dictate his novels although he was agonized
with pain and distress.
Similar patience was shown by Thomas Carlyle, who rewrote the whole
of his great work, "The French Revolution," after the first copy had
been carelessly burnt by a servant girl in the house of a friend
who had borrowed the manuscript. He was a dyspeptic and a constant
grumbler, but on this occasion he redeemed himself by sitting down
quietly to work and hammering away at his dreary task until he had
once more finished the masterpiece. Carlyle was so sensitive to noise
and other disturbances that he had a sound-proof shed or room built
on the roof of his house in London, where he did a great part of his
writing, and even there he complained of the rumbling of the wagons
in the street, which vibrated through the house.
Herbert Spencer, the great English philosopher, was also easily
disturbed by noises, but he solved the problem by wearing ear muffs
which were specially made under his instruction. Spencer was rather
irritable, it is said; certainly on one occasion he made himself a
source of amusement when he objected to being beaten at billiards by
the son of a friend of his and remarked that it was not fitting that
a young man should have spent so much time and money on so foolish a
pastime; yet when he won, the expenditure of thought and time on the
part of so great a philosopher seemed altogether wise.
Robert Browning had an amusing experience on one occasion toward the
close of his life. He was walking through the residential district of
London's fashionable West End to a meeting which he had been invited
to attend. Mistaking the house, he walked into a literary gathering
that was discussing his own poems. Presently he rose to his feet and
offered a few suggestions as to the meaning of a rather difficult
passage. Now Browning was not at all like a poet in appearance, but
rather resembled a prosperous business man, and it happened that as
he was well toward the back of the hall no one recognized him. On the
contrary his suggestions were ridiculed by other critics who took
the floor when he sat down and he retired unrecognized but vastly
delighted. Of course some of Browning's work is intensely intricate
and confused; he himself said of his early poem "Sordello" that once
there were two beings who understood it, the Almighty and Robert
Browning; now, he added, there was but one, for Browning had long
lost the key to its problem.
Charles Dickens was one of the most impressionable writers who
ever lived. His characters were absolutely real to him and when
he was writing he would impersonate the various characters he
was describing, talking, making faces, jumping up and looking in
the mirror, and then dashing back to his desk to set down each
inspiration. But his impressionable nature prevented complete
happiness; he was either intensely happy or down in the dumps and
miserable. This made him very hard to get along with, so that it is
no wonder that his wife found it almost impossible to live with him.
Gladstone, the 'Grand Old Man' of English politics in the last
century, was a scholar and a linguist as well as a statesman.
On one occasion he was seated in the House of Commons while his
bitter opponent, the clever Disraeli, was delivering a venomous and
brilliant attack upon him. During the speech Gladstone was observed
to be writing on a scrap of paper, apparently taking notes for his
reply. At the conclusion of his enemy's speech Gladstone rose and
delivered a most masterly refutation of the attack, answering and
breaking down each point of Disraeli's invective with the utmost
skill. A member sitting near by noticed that the scrap of paper was
lying on Gladstone's seat and picked it up to see what the notes
were like; to his surprise they consisted of a careful translation
of "Rock of Ages" into smooth Greek verse, which the orator had made
half-consciously while waiting for the occasion to reply to his
opponent.
Macaulay, too, had wonderful scholastic talent and a fine memory.
Even in his youth he showed great ability and read with amazing
speed; most remarkable is the fact that he never seemed to forget
a line he had read, but could repeat pages of an author many years
after he had once perused his work. He read many works again and
again, it is true, but for the pleasure of enjoying the fine points
of style rather than for the sake of attaining greater familiarity
with the book. His essays are regarded as among the most brilliant in
the language, and seem to have been written posthaste, at full swing.
In reality, however, he was well pleased if he produced five foolscap
pages of longhand manuscript a day. It was his custom to spend the
morning writing as fast as he could, the afternoon, in revising and
pruning the morning's work and thus producing finished copy. He knew
only too well that, as Sheridan said, "easy writing makes cursed hard
reading," and that labor alone could produce a forceful and pleasant
style.
Goethe, the greatest of the German immortals, is mainly remembered
as a poet. Yet his fame would be great even if it depended only upon
his scientific exploits. It was he who did much toward establishing
the modern theory of evolution. Goethe also showed his insight into
human progress by prophesying the construction of the Suez and the
Panama Canals as long ago as 1827; this illustrates the marvelous
imagination of the genius who was, as he himself said, a citizen of
the world.
Shakespeare is certainly the supreme master of English literature,
yet there was a time when he was regarded as a nuisance and a
good-for-nothing. He was a poacher, a thieving vagabond arrested for
stealing or killing deer in the park of the neighboring aristocrat,
Sir Thomas Lucy. It was not long afterward that the future playwright
went to London and gained his first acquaintance with the theater
by holding horses for gentlefolk at the entrance of the principal
playhouse of the city. Some authors would also call him a pirate and
a thief, as Sir Thomas Lucy did, for he took plots and ideas wherever
he found them and worked them over into the revised versions that now
rank among the finest achievements of mankind. Yet all the while
his one desire was to be a well-to-do business man of his native
town of Stratford, and as soon as he had made a comfortable fortune
he retired and spent his last years in quiet, building a new house
and writing one or two last plays in the commonplace seclusion of a
country town. There is still one place left in London where his plays
were performed under his direction, although the old theaters have
long since perished. This is the Temple Hall, in the grounds that
belonged to the old Knights Templar of Crusading fame. Here he put on
"The Winter's Tale" with great success. If you are ever in London you
can visit the hall and on entering you can turn the very door-handle,
so tradition says, which the poet himself used.
Molière was the greatest French dramatist. At the height of his
career, legend relates, he was such a favorite with the grand
monarch, Louis XIV, that this proud king made him come and dine in
private with him, so as to convince his servants and courtiers that
the genius whom they thought of as a vulgar, impossible boor, a mere
actor, was worthy of the greatest consideration. Yet when Molière was
dead the king ungratefully refused to see that he was properly buried
and the great man was carried to his last resting-place with little
ceremony.
At the present day one of France's most prominent writers is Rostand,
the author of "Cyrano de Bergerac," a play which brought him into
instant popularity through its brilliance, although a few weeks
before scarcely anyone had heard his name. On the first night of the
production, in 1897, the audience cheered and shouted until it seemed
as if the performance would break up in the confusion created by its
success, yet thanks to Rostand's coolness the actors and even the
spectators were kept calm enough to carry the play through to its
masterly conclusion. At the close, when the curtain had fallen on the
last act, Rostand was sought for everywhere to make his bow to the
enthusiastic audience, but he had quietly driven away to his country
home, with his wife, and there he stayed for a week or more before
the public had a chance to welcome him.
Byron is almost the only man in English letters to come so suddenly
before the people. He woke up one morning to find himself famous,
through the publication of "Childe Harold." Byron was another of
the unhappy geniuses. He was hot-headed and married an equally
irritable wife, so naturally they separated, with anger and yet
with sorrow. His little daughter, who he said was the one friend he
had in the world, died at an early age. He dreaded being fat and
therefore starved himself, a process which did not make him happier.
But his death was in itself enough to redeem him in spite of his
irresponsible and rather selfish career, for he gave himself up to
the cause of the freedom and independence of the Greeks, and died of
fever contracted while preparing for the great campaign against the
Turks.
Poor Dean Swift, the author of "Gulliver's Travels," the bitterest
book ever written about human beings, suffered even more than Byron.
He was keenly sensitive, and his political labors were poorly paid
because he was none too courteous in his manner to the political
leaders for whom he worked so hard. Boot-licking would have brought
him the position he desired, but Swift was not a toady, so he was
driven to accept the second-rate place offered him, and there vented
his anger in the most savage attacks on human nature that can be
imagined. All this while he had been fearing that his mind would give
way; "I am like that tree," he said to a friend one day when they
were out walking, "I shall die at the top first." He was right, for
not long afterward his brain gave way.
"The Old Oaken Bucket" still has a touch of beauty for us, if we
do not hear it too often. It was written under rather interesting
circumstances. Samuel Woodworth, the author, was born and brought up
on a little farm in Scituate, not far from Plymouth, Massachusetts.
In his youth he went to New York and got a job as a reporter. One
day he was in a bar, taking a glass of brandy and declaring that it
was the finest drink on earth, when a friend with him said, "You're
wrong; think of the delicious water you used to draw from the old
well at home." Woodworth jumped up and hurried over to his rooms,
where he sat down and dashed off the outline of the song that at once
won a widespread vogue.
Perhaps the bravest fight against ill health was put up by Robert
Louis Stevenson, the gentle, lovable poet and novelist. As a young
man he found that consumption threatened to carry him off. With the
cheerfulness characteristic of the victims of the White Plague he
set off on a series of outdoor trips afoot and afloat. Two of these
are preserved for us in his "Inland Voyage" and the more fascinating
"Travels with a Donkey." This latter is almost unequaled as a picture
of travel. He finally started for America to see if the climate there
would not be better for him than the moist weather of Scotland, his
home. Eventually he reached Samoa, in the South Seas of the Pacific,
where he lived for several years, cheerful and brave in spite of his
increasing weakness. His character, although mild and kindly, was so
forceful that the chiefs among the natives held him in veneration,
and at the time of his death no one lamented him more than the simple
Samoans, some of whom bore him to the grave on the hill-top near his
home.
Thoreau, one of New England's philosophers of the great and glorious
Emerson days, was as eccentric as any one that can be found. For the
sake of peace and independence he went off into the woods and lived
as a hermit near Walden Pond, outside Concord. To earn what little
money he needed he made lead pencils; like many country folks of
those days he was amazingly dexterous with his knife and his pencils
were a delight to use. In his leisure he made an exhaustive study of
the Pond; but in two years' time he left this little cabin and never
returned. He said that he had had enough of that sort of life and
now he was going to try something else. His was the same spirit of
adventure that stirred the old explorers and yet he was so fond of
New England that he rarely set foot outside her boundaries. He could
find enough to keep him busy thinking and writing within his own
dooryard. But he showed that it was possible for a man in good health
to live on less than $100 a year and have more than two thirds of his
time to himself. On the other hand, as he died of consumption at the
age of forty-four, he also proved that outdoor life is not in itself
a preventive of that scourge.
Whittier, the gentle Quaker poet, was one of the sturdiest heroes of
the antislavery movement. In those days he was a fighter, stoned and
mobbed by the partisans of slavery in Philadelphia and Concord, New
Hampshire. His genius was discovered by William Lloyd Garrison, the
abolitionist, while he was editing a paper at Newburyport. Whittier's
sister had sent some verses of her young brother's to the paper and
Garrison not only printed them but hunted up the author to enlist him
in his good work. In his latter years Whittier clung to the rural
obscurity of Amesbury, where he enjoyed the rippling life of the
little town, talking local politics with the 'natives' in the country
store, chatting with his friends on the doorstep of the Friends'
meeting-house which he had helped to build, or planting trees about
it, like Holmes, who used to boast that at one time or another he
had set out more than seven hundred saplings. Whittier, more than
any other American, has left us glowing pictures of New England life
and geniality. With his reverent sense of the need for emphasizing
morals and duty there was a love of home, of the memory of youth's
work and play that makes "Snow-Bound" immortal. Emerson was the
Yankee philosopher; Hawthorne, the novelist of New England's moods;
Thoreau, the nature-worshiper; Holmes, the Bostonian; Longfellow, the
cosmopolitan poet; but Whittier was the poet of New England's heart.
'TO DRIVE DULL CARE AWAY'
The brightest and most delightful pages that have ever been written.
Short stories, humor, adventure, and fun.
SHORT STORIES
ALDRICH: "Père Antoine's Date Palm."
BALZAC: "The Purse."
BARRIE: "Lads and Lassies."
BJÖRNSON: "The Railroad and the Churchyard."
BOCCACCIO: "The Story of Constantia," "The Story of Federigo and
the Falcon."
BROWN: "Rab and his Friends."
COLLINS: "A Terribly Strange Bed."
CRAWFORD: "The Upper Berth."
ELIOT: "Brother Jacob."
HALE: "The Man Without a Country."
HARDY: "The Three Strangers."
HARTE: "Tennessee's Partner."
HAWTHORNE: "The Snow-Image."
IRVING: "Rip Van Winkle."
JAPANESE LITERATURE: "The Forty-Seven Rônins."
KIPLING: "The Man Who Would Be King."
MACLEOD: "The Washer of the Ford."
MAUPASSANT: "The Piece of String."
MEREDITH: "The Story of Noorna Bin Noorka, the Genie Karaz, and
the Princess of Oolb," "The Punishment of Shahpesh, the Persian,
on Khipil, the Builder."
POE: "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Cask of Amontillado."
STERNE: "The Story of Le Fevre."
STEVENSON: "A Lodging for the Night."
TOLSTOI: "Where Love is, There God is Also."
FAIRY TALES
ANDERSEN: "The Hardy Tin Soldier," "The Ugly Duckling," "The Old
Street Lamp."
APULEIUS: "The Story of Cupid and Psyche."
ARABIAN NIGHTS: "Ali Baba and the Forty Robbers," "Abon-Hassan
the Wag, or the Sleeper Awakened," "The Story of the Three
Apples."
FOUQUÉ: "Undine."
GRIMM: "Cinderella," "Hansel and Grethel," "The Two Brothers."
PERRAULT: "Little Red Riding-Hood," "Blue Beard," "Puss in Boots."
RUSSIAN LITERATURE: "The Water King and Vasilissa the Wise."
HUMOR
BARHAM: "The Knight and the Lady."
BROWNE: "The Showman's Courtship."
CARROLL: "A Mad Tea-Party," "The White Knight," "The Walrus and
the Carpenter," "Jabberwocky."
COWPER: "The Diverting History of John Gilpin."
GILBERT: "The Yarn of the Nancy Bell."
HARRIS: "Old Mr. Rabbit, He's a Good Fisherman."
HARTE: "Plain Language from Truthful James."
HOOD: "Faithless Sally Brown."
HOPE: "The House Opposite."
JERROLD: "Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures."
LAMB: "A Dissertation on Roast Pig."
LOWELL: "The Courtin'."
RASPE: "Baron Münchhausen."
STERNE: "A Sentimental Journey."
ADVENTURE
AUDUBON: "Hospitality in the Woods."
CARLYLE: "The Fall of the Bastille."
COLERIDGE: "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner."
FROUDE: "A Cagliostro of the Second Century."
HAY: "Jim Bludso of the Prairie Belle."
HEARN: "In the Cave of the Children's Ghosts."
HEINE: "Travel-Pictures."
KINGLAKE: "Eothen."
MANDEVILLE: "Travels."
MELVILLE: "Typee."
POLO: "Travels."
STEVENSON: "A Night among the Pines."
PART II
THE STUDY OF LITERATURE
We are told there is no royal road to learning; no short cut to
the understanding and appreciation of literature. We are told that
we must admire Homer, or Addison, or some other immortal author,
but no one tells us _why_ or _how_. No explanation is given of the
reason why their work is deservedly immortal. Our schools do not
introduce us to the delights of good reading; instead, they handle
a few stories and essays as if they were Latin or algebra, making
drudgery out of what ought to be enjoyment. The result is that we are
frightened away from the great writers; their work is supposed to be
a mystery, only to be revealed to those who give years of labor to
its study.
But no one is so dull or so heedless of pleasure as not to accept
the means of lasting delight when it is put right in front of them.
Thousands of people are waiting for the chance to get in touch with
the good sense, rousing style, and splendid ideas of the masters of
literature. That is why this volume has been prepared. It furnishes
a direct and attractive road straight to the heart of literature. It
has been laid out systematically so as to be a simple and practical
guide.
The leading characteristics of each era, each nation, and each
division of literature have been tersely stated, with the authors
under each of these classifications listed beneath. The noblest and
most fascinating works gain tenfold in interest through the knowledge
of these fundamental facts. With them before you, you command a view,
not merely of one single author, but of the whole movement of which
he was a part. You see the ideas and lines of thought from which a
book has sprung, the hidden forces which went into the making of
it. Each book stands in association with those of the same literary
class, or nation, or period; their relationship with the rest of
literature is at once apparent. In this way the wasteful drudgery
and folly of aimless reading is avoided. The study of literature
pursued with the means here given cannot be tedious, for it is
straightforward, simple, and clear.
The results that are to be expected from the limited time which most
of us can devote to reading are more extensive than might be thought.
In this connection read the following selections, practical and
full of common sense, each of them throwing light on the subject of
reading.
THE PREFACE, I, 3.
HAMERTON, "To a Man of Business," VI, 236.
HARRISON, from "The Choice of Books," VI, 275.
MORLEY, "Popular Culture," IX, 236.
SCHOPENHAUER, "On Books and Reading," X, 374.
THE DECISIVE PERIODS IN LITERATURE
FIRST OF ALL: =What is Literature?=
=The expression of thought upon the countless phases of life and the
universe as felt by the greatest intellects.=
There are innumerable views to be taken of this world of ours; each
of us sees it a little differently, the problem of life strikes a
nation or an age or an individual in ever changing ways. Homer saw
it in heroic terms, Swift, in "Gulliver's Travels," looked at it
savagely and sadly, Bunyan, in the "Pilgrim's Progress," saw the
religious side. These authors not only saw but felt; their feelings
took possession of them, they had to write them down and give them
expression. Gray, the author of the immortal "Elegy in a Country
Churchyard," took seven years to perfect the expression of the
feelings roused by what he saw in that secluded village nook. Poe
chose every word of his "Tales of Mystery and Imagination" with the
utmost care. The labor of composition was solely for the purpose of
giving the reader exactly the impression and emotion desired; for the
sake of clearness, force, and ease.
In the second place: Each of the great periods in history has
had certain traits and has excelled in some particular field of
literature. The traits and the works of an era have been molded
by preceding ages and likewise have brought about the development
of the periods which followed. Vergil was influenced by Homer and
the whole tradition of Greek literature; Shakespeare and the rest
of the Elizabethan writers are products of the fresh outburst of
activity which we call the Renaissance; Kipling has profited by the
work of Dickens, Poe, Milton, Chaucer, and a host of other authors.
If we are to appreciate a writer, then, we must know the chief
characteristics of these great literary epochs.
=The Age of the Ancients.= 1500 B.C.-500 A.D. From the dawn of
history to the fall of the Roman Empire, all the principal forms
of literary expression were developed, at least two of which, epic
poetry and tragedy, have never been surpassed. Yet the world was very
small then; it was merely the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Its
ideals were narrow, limited by paganism and slavery. For those who
wrote and those who read there was no struggle for existence, they
were waited on by their slaves, they had no faith in a life after
death; whether thinkers or heedless wasters, they were selfishly
living for to-day and not for the morrow. The bulk of the people were
ignorant, even when not enslaved. As their literature was the product
of an aristocracy, leading a life of leisure, it was inevitably
stately, reserved, and formal in its tone, except in the earliest
productions before society had emerged completely from barbarism.
POETRY
Catullus
Cleanthes
Egyptian
Lit.
Homer
Horace
Ovid
Pindar
Sappho
Theocritus
Vergil
FICTION
Æsop
Apuleius
HISTORY
Cæsar
Herodotus
Josephus
Livy
Suetonius
Tacitus
Thucydides
BIOGRAPHY
Plato
Pliny
Plutarch
DRAMA
Æschylus
Euripides
Sophocles
PHILOSOPHY
Aurelius
Cicero
Epictetus
Lucretius
Plato
Seneca
=The Dark Ages.= 500 A.D.-1000 A.D. Crippled by pride and selfishness
Roman civilization was swept away by wave after wave of barbarian
invasions. Goths, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Huns, Lombards, and Vandals
in turn swarmed over the face of Europe, spreading terror and
desolation. Learning, art, industry, and government perished. But
the invaders brought a love of freedom, a hatred of bondage and
captivity, to offset their contempt for the progress effected by the
great thinkers and rulers of antiquity.
There is but little left to us of the scanty literature produced in
those dim centuries. It is all primitive, Homeric; rhythmic tales of
the heroic lives and deaths of national leaders constitute the sole
endeavor that has lasted. But in these is _the note of freedom_, for
the masses of the people as well as the rulers and nobles delighted
in Charlemagne and his peerless knight Roland, or in Eric, the Viking
adventurer, who dared to sail far forth to Vinland. The great ruler
was not a mere commander but a leader whom men of every class gladly
followed with love as well as respect. Yet the ideals were low,
mainly of physical prowess and sheer brute strength.
Anglo-Saxon Lit.
French Lit.
German Lit.
Norse Lit.
Spanish Lit.
=The Middle Ages.= 1000 A.D.-1400 A.D. However, as soon as the
dread of barbarian havoc had passed and peace and government had
been restored to some extent, a new and brighter era began. The
thirst for learning has never been greater than at this time.
Students flocked to the universities of Paris, Oxford, and Bologna
in thousands, begging their way, traveling on foot for hundreds of
miles. Religion seized men even more firmly, finding them active or
meditative occupations either in the monasteries or in the Crusades.
The aspirations of the time appear in the legends of King Arthur and
the Round Table, as told in the prose of the day by Sir Thomas Malory
or in the more recent verse of Tennyson's "Idylls of the King." This
is the chivalric ideal of perfect knighthood. The religious feeling
is shown in such hymns as the "Stabat Mater," the "Dies Iræ," or
"Jerusalem the Golden." Dante, commonly reckoned the second of the
world's poets, proves the zeal for learning and scholarship. The
spirit of freedom gleams from the "Old English Ballads" of Robin
Hood, the enemy of the oppressive nobles and the friend of the poor
and the humble. It is even more evident in the work of John Wyclif,
who translated the Bible into English so that the common peasant
might have the advantage of hearing the Gospel message read to him
in a tongue that he understood, and that he might feel that the
teachings of religion were meant for him as much as for the wealthy
and the learned.
But science and thought had not yet startled men into recognition of
the wonder round about them. Knowledge was assumed to be complete.
To probe into the mysteries of nature was unholy and wicked in those
days. The awakening from unseeing and unreasoning childhood to the
adventuresome zest of youth and young manhood was yet to come.
POETRY
Chaucer
Dante
Old English
Ballads
Petrarch
Tasso
FICTION
Boccaccio
Malory
HISTORY
Froissart
TRAVEL
Mandeville
Polo
RELIGION
Bernard, St.
Bernard of Cluny
Jacopone
à Kempis
Thomas of Celano
Wyclif
=The Renaissance.= 1400-1600. The gradual increase of knowledge
and better government toward the close of the Middle Ages caused a
desire for higher things. This hidden desire suddenly broke loose
with astonishing force when the art of printing was discovered, about
1450. Information had hitherto been spread only by word of mouth
or by laboriously copying a volume by hand. The process in either
case was slower than we can imagine. But now new ideas, rare books,
foreign teaching could be spread broadcast like wildfire.
It also happened at just this time that Constantinople was taken by
the Turks (1453). The greatest treasures of Greek literature had been
jealously hidden away there for centuries. Now that the scholars had
to fly for their lives they let loose a store of new thought on the
nations of western Europe. Taking refuge in Italy they brought with
them these rich volumes. The Italian enthusiasm and the ardor with
which these discoveries were published to the world spread like fire
through France and Germany and England.
Everywhere mankind awoke; never before or since have people lived
so strenuously. Their newly awakened curiosity drove them round the
Cape of Good Hope and across the Atlantic Ocean. Exploration and
adventure, the invasion of Mexico and the Americas as well as the
Orient, the search for gold and for happiness went hand in hand.
At the same time Luther roused northern Europe with his demand
for religious reform and founded the Protestant church. In England
Shakespeare and his companions had discovered a new field of literary
venture and produced plays by the hundred, many of them immortal. The
modern world of action and progress had at last come of age.
The passing of the old ideals, of chivalry and monkish study, is
nowhere better shown than in "Don Quixote." The love of creative art
hand in hand with adventure echoes through every page of Cellini's
"Autobiography." Francis Bacon discovered a new method of reasoning;
Montaigne did what had not been thought of for hundreds of years, and
began to study his own personality, the workings of his mind, and the
problems which he found in his own life within himself; Sir Thomas
More also took up a subject that had not been touched for seventeen
centuries and drew a wonderful picture of an ideal government in his
"Utopia." Columbus and a whole squadron of others sailed the unknown
seas. The Elizabethan nobles, like Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Walter
Raleigh, were poets, statesmen, courtiers, and generals all at once.
POETRY
Michelangelo
Ronsard
Shakespeare
Spenser
Villon
FICTION
Cervantes
Rabelais
HISTORY
Holinshed
Raleigh
BIOGRAPHY
Cellini
DRAMA
Jonson
Marlowe
Shakespeare
PHILOSOPHY
& SCIENCE
Ascham
Bacon
Luther
Machiavelli
Montaigne
More
Sidney
=The Age of Classicism.= 1600-1776. By 1600 imagination and the
creative spirit were running riot. The exuberance of wonder and
discovery had led to a wordy and confused style of writing. It was
time for this unbalanced disorderly manner to be subjected to sound
criticism and to be regulated by laws of composition.
This is precisely what happened. Enthusiasm and inventive power
were wearied, and thinking men began to criticize and judge the
work that was being done. It was clear to them that there was need
of proportion and symmetry, that each act of a play, for example,
should do its special part in the development of the plot and in the
revelation of the characters. The problem in the scholar's mind was:
What is the best possible form or model to follow in making a play, a
song, or a speech? Wise men came to the conclusion that the classic
authors of ancient literature furnished the best examples, and this
is why the period is called the Age of Classicism.
It was characterized by the use of reason and judgment, rather than
feeling and inspiration, by convention and law, by restraint and
dignity. In fact the wilder side of nature was actually disliked;
the Alps were not grand, but barbaric and odious, in the eyes of the
literary men of that day. Dr. Johnson, in his famous Dictionary,
defines a mountain as "a protuberance on the face of nature." The
rich land-owners altered the landscapes on their great estates,
smoothed out the inelegances of the meadows, cut trees down and
planted others, laid out geometrically correct roads and paths, and
altogether 'improved' nature until the whole scene was thoroughly
artificial; very trim and neat, but very unnatural.
In literature it was much the same. Poetry, such as Pope's, seems
stilted and affected to us; the plays of Racine, the opposite of
Shakespeare's, are formal and long-winded, so exalted in tone and
so restrained in their phrasing that they are dignity indeed, but
nothing else.
Yet the movement was beneficial because it cut away the extravagances
of the earlier period. It also produced a new branch of literature,
the critical essay. The essays of Bacon and Montaigne had been
philosophical. Those of Addison and Steele dealt with life and
literature critically, using fable and fiction to give point to their
verdicts in enforcement of law and convention.
But writing based on the ancient classics demanded a highly educated
public. Only the wealthy could obtain the education necessary.
Besides, the aristocracy held that the common people should be kept
in their place, that learning and scholarship were not for them.
The life of thought and progress was remote from the mass of the
population, just as the government was carried on without reference
to their needs or wishes.
POETRY
Dryden
Goldsmith
Gray
Herbert[1]
Milton[1]
Pope
FICTION
Bunyan[1]
Defoe
Fénelon
Fielding
Goldsmith
Johnson
Le Sage
Sterne
Swift
HISTORY & ORATORY
Burke
Gibbon
ESSAY & BIOG.
Addison
Boswell
Steele
Voltaire
DRAMA
Calderon
Lessing
Molière
Racine
Sheridan
RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY
Browne[1]
Bunyan[1]
Herbert[1]
Kant
Smith, A.
Watts
Wesley
=The Age of Romanticism.= 1776-1832. The Revolution in America, soon
followed by that in France, is the historical sign of the passing
of the aristocratic spirit of classicism. Freedom, equality, the
destruction of the bondage that had held the common people back from
education and advancement, these are the new ideas. In literature as
in life a reaction broke out against the formal, stilted, unemotional
style of classicism. Wordsworth and Byron in England, Rousseau in
France, and Goethe and Schiller in Germany were the leaders in
the intellectual activity. Their writings and their principles
were directly opposed to their predecessors. Liberty, instead of
convention; free expression of passion and feeling, in the place
of cold reasoning; individual expression instead of imitation and
studied restraint; simple words and direct, clear statement in the
place of an affected and artificial style; a love for the wild and
picturesque in scenery rather than for the smooth and cultivated
parks of the past century. Contrast Byron with Pope, or Scott's
novels with Johnson's "Rasselas" to see the radical difference in
tone.
This outburst of freedom and self-expression meant progress. To
increase the advance, steam and machinery came into use; just as
printing accomplished marvels in the days of the Renaissance, so
now there was again a blaze of creative genius and inventiveness.
National education at the expense of the state and the growth of
newspapers and magazines put rich and poor, noble and peasant more
nearly on a level than any bloodshed or lawmaking could ever have
done.
POETRY
Blake
Burns
Byron
Coleridge
Keats
Musset
Shelley
Uhland
Wordsworth
FICTION
Chateaubriand
Fouqué
Hugo
Manzoni
Scott
ESSAY
De Quincey
Hazlitt
Heine
Lamb
Richter
Southey
DRAMA
Goethe
Schiller
PHILOSOPHY
Rousseau
Schopenhauer
=The Nineteenth Century=. The first glow of the romantic enthusiasm
soon died away and the new forces of industry and commerce took
possession of Europe and America.
But the swift onrush of manufacturing and trading called for armies
of accountants, skilled workers, and salesmen. These made up a new
class of society; hitherto there had been aristocrats and peasants,
educated and ignorant, rich and poor. The army of business employees,
alert, vigorous, ready for any quantity of reading-matter that would
amuse or furnish knowledge, added their countless numbers to the
reading public. Fiction, at first in the novel, and later in the
short story, was published as fast as it could be printed. This great
middle class itself provided material for genius to work on. Dickens
and George Eliot are striking examples of authors who wrote about
this new middle class in order to amuse it. The influence of business
life made the world more matter of fact and in consequence literature
became rather more prosaic, with a tendency to present a realistic
picture of everyday life and manners. Science, aided by a multitude
of mechanical inventions, made unprecedented progress and assumed a
more important place in the minds of men than ever before. History
was treated scientifically, thought was more systematic than ever,
the nineteenth century presented a union of the enthusiasm of the
Renaissance, the love of system of the Classic Age, and the devotion
to nature of the Romantic Period.
The following lists have been selected from the great array of
nineteenth-century authors with the view of presenting those whose
work has been peculiarly significant of the period.
POETRY
Arnold, M.
Browning, E. B.
Browning, R.
Bryant
Longfellow
Lowell
Morris, W.
Poe
Rossetti
Swinburne
Tennyson
Whitman
FICTION
Austen
Balzac
Dickens
Dumas
Eliot
Hardy
Harte
Hawthorne
Irving
Kipling
Poe
Stevenson
Thackeray
Tolstoi
Zola
HISTORY
Bancroft
Carlyle
Ferrero
Green
Guizot
Hodgkin
Michelet
Mommsen
Motley
Parkman
Prescott
Symonds
Taine
ESSAY & BIOG.
Arnold, M.
Chesterton
Emerson
La Ramée
Lewes
Lockhart
Lowell
Morley
Pater
Sainte-Beuve
Stephen
Thoreau
Villari
PHILOSOPHY & SCIENCE
Carlyle
Darwin
Emerson
Galton
Hamilton
Ruskin
Shaler
Spencer
RELIGION
Bowne
Brierley
Brooks
Channing
Robertson
NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS
Each of the nations, like each of the great eras of human progress,
possesses definite characteristics of its own. Frenchmen differ from
Englishmen in their faces, their customs, and also in intellectual
trend. Shakespeare is unlike Ibsen not simply because he lived at an
earlier date, in another epoch, but also because he was the native
of another country. Kipling's point of view is not the same as that
of Thomas Bailey Aldrich; their national traditions and surroundings
varied sufficiently to leave a mark upon their work so legible that
one is recognized as English and the other as American without need
of referring to their biographies.
It is necessary, then, to have in mind the traits that individualize
nations and races. For this reason the national characteristics are
here set forth briefly, with lists of the principal authors of each
country.
=Greek Literature.= An unequaled perception of beauty, with a love of
symmetry and proportion: the reason and the feelings, the intellect
and the emotions are perfectly blended. The powers of imagination
and creation are highly trained, as well as the logical faculty,
resulting in the perfection of skill and insight in epic poetry
(Homer), tragedy (Æschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles), and philosophy
(Plato).
POETRY
Cleanthes
Homer
Pindar
Sappho
Theocritus
FICTION
Æsop
HISTORY
Herodotus
Thucydides
BIOGRAPHY
Plato
Plutarch
DRAMA
Æschylus
Euripides
Sophocles
PHILOSOPHY
Epictetus
Plato
=Latin Literature.= The power of organization, with an ardor for
law and order, combined with a genius for adapting and utilizing
the best products of the nations which came under the Roman rule.
This talent for adaptation and imitation stands in contrast to the
Greek creative talent. Inasmuch as Rome's greatest literary works
belong to a period four centuries after the best Greek production, it
follows that the Roman authors profited not only by Greek achievement
but also by the increased knowledge of the world due to the vast
extension of the Roman Empire. Apart from this broader point of
view, Latin authors borrowed method and style from the Greek; Vergil
follows Homer and Theocritus, who was also imitated by Horace. Cicero
and Seneca took both thought and style from Greek philosophers. In
fact, Athens was the university at which all well-educated Romans had
studied.
POETRY
Catullus
Horace
Ovid
Vergil
FICTION
Apuleius
HISTORY
Cæsar
Josephus[2]
Livy
Suetonius
Tacitus
BIOGRAPHY
Pliny
PHILOSOPHY
Aurelius
Cicero
Lucretius
Seneca
=English Literature.= England's isolation as an island has enabled
her to develop a national literature continuously for nine centuries
with only the slightest interruption from the world without. Foreign
ideas have been introduced, certainly, but by Englishmen instead of
by foreigners. Where a slothful race would have lain dormant and
inactive, the vigorous and adventurous islanders have even led the
way in two fields of literary endeavor, for fiction and the essay
reached their successive stages of growth more quickly in England
than elsewhere. Throughout poetry and prose, with but few exceptions,
there is a blend of shrewdness and inspiration which in daily life
is called common sense; Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Browning
continually sound the practical note, evincing their knowledge and
appreciation of material affairs. Another trait is that of searching
out the moral lessons in life and thought. "Books in the running
brooks, sermons in stones" are constantly sought by English authors.
Chaucer, Bunyan, Milton, Dickens, Carlyle, Browning, and many others
from the forefront of English letters play the part of teacher and
preacher again and again.
POETRY
Anglo-Saxon
Literature
Arnold, M.
Blake
Browning, E. B.
Browning, R.
Burns
Byron
Chaucer
Clough
Coleridge
Dryden
Goldsmith
Gray
Henley
Keats
Kingsley
Macaulay
Milton
Morris, W.
Old English Ballads
Patmore
Pope
Rossetti, C.
Rossetti, D. G.
Scott
Shakespeare
Shelley
Sidney
Spenser
Swinburne
Tennyson
Wordsworth
FICTION
Austen
Barrie
Blackmore
Borrow
Brontë
Caine
Defoe
Dickens
Doyle
Eliot
Fielding
Gaskell
Goldsmith
Hardy
Hughes
Kingsley
Kipling
Lever
Lytton
Macdonald
Macleod
Malory
Meredith
Reade
Richardson
Scott
Stevenson
Swift
Thackeray
Watson
HISTORY
Carlyle
Creasy
Farrar
Freeman
Froissart
Froude
Gibbon
Gladstone
Green
Grote
Hodgkin
Holinshed
McCarthy
Mahaffy
Raleigh
Smith, G.
Symonds
BIOGRAPHY
Boswell
Chesterton
Evelyn
Lewes
Lockhart
Pepys
Southey
ESSAY
Addison
Arnold, M.
Bacon
Benson
De Quincey
Hamerton
Harrison
Hazlitt
Lamb
Lang
La Ramée
Macaulay
Milton
Morley
Pater
Ruskin
Sidney
Steele
Stephen
Stevenson
Thackeray
Walton
White, G.
HUMOR
Barham
Carroll
Cowper
Dickens
Gilbert
Hood
Hope
Jerrold
Sterne
Swift
Thackeray
TRAVEL
Hearn
Kinglake
Mandeville
Stevenson
Tyndall
DRAMA
Jonson
Marlowe
Shakespeare
Sheridan
ORATORY
Bright
Burke
SCIENCE
& PHILOSOPHY
Bacon
Carlyle
Darwin
Galton
Mill
More
Ruskin
Smith, A.
Spencer
RELIGION
Bonar
Bowring
Brierley
Browne, Sir T.
Cowper
Faber
Heber
Herbert
Hooker
Keble
Lyte
Milman
Newman
Robertson
Toplady
Watts
Wesley
Wyclif
=American Literature.= Obviously akin to English literature,
yet more democratic in tone, owing to national tendencies, such
as the character of the settlers, and the subsequent historical
developments. Longfellow, Emerson, Whitman, and the other
leading American authors wrote for the nation and not for any
restricted class; the aristocratic note characteristic of much of
eighteenth-century English literature is not to be found in American
writers.
POETRY
Aldrich
Bryant
Emerson
Field
Holmes
Howe
Key
Lanier
Longfellow
Lowell
Morris, G. P.
Payne
Poe
Read
Riley
Smith, S. F.
Story
Taylor
Whitman
Whittier
Woodworth
FICTION
Aldrich
Cooper
Crawford
Hale
Harte
Hawthorne
Irving
Poe
Stowe
HISTORY
Bancroft
Fiske
Irving
McMaster
Motley
Parkman
Prescott
ESSAY
Emerson
Fields
Howells
Lowell
Mitchell
Thoreau
Warner
HUMOR
Browne, C. F.
Harris
Harte
Holmes
Irving
Lowell
TRAVEL
Audubon
Dana
Melville
ORATORY
Choate
Henry
Lincoln
Phillips
Sumner
Washington
Webster
SCIENCE
& PHILOSOPHY
Emerson
Hamilton
Shaler
RELIGION
Bowne
Brooks
Channing
Palmer
Sears
=French Literature.= A marked love of beauty, almost Greek in its
nature, with a feeling for accuracy and organization which is
decidedly Latin. These qualities have produced delicacy and clearness
of expression; but their tendencies lead to perfection of style and
form rather than to depth of thought, giving an effect of lightness
and brilliance, and at times of superficiality.
POETRY
French Lit.
La Fontaine
Musset
Ronsard
Rouget de Lisle
Verlaine
Villon
FICTION
Balzac
Bernardin de
Saint-Pierre
Chateaubriand
Daudet
Dumas
Fénelon
Feuillet
French Lit.
Hugo
Laboulaye
Le Sage
Maupassant
Perrault
Zola
HISTORY
French Lit.
Guizot
Michelet
Taine
Voltaire
ESSAY
Montaigne
Sainte-Beuve
DRAMA
Molière
Racine
Rostand
PHILOSOPHY
Pascal
Rousseau
RELIGION
Bernard, St.
Bernard of Cluny
=German Literature.= Depth of thought and forceful expression,
which are in part responsible for the complex character of the
national style as opposed to the clarity of the French. Owing to
the unsettled condition of Germany for many centuries, the arts in
general, and literature especially, did not begin to flourish to a
noteworthy degree until the eighteenth century. While Luther was the
first great author to use the language in its present form, it was
not until two centuries later that the next eminent writers, Lessing,
Schiller, and Goethe, appeared, whose work marks the highest point in
the history of German letters.
POETRY
Arndt
German Lit.
Goethe
Heine
Schneckenburger
Uhland
FICTION
Fouqué
Grimm
Raspe
HISTORY
Mommsen
DRAMA
Lessing
Schiller
Goethe
PHILOSOPHY
Kant
Schopenhauer
RELIGION
à Kempis
Luther
=Italian Literature.= Emotional and imaginative rather than
reflective, and therefore at its best in the brilliant and exuberant
era of the Renaissance, which first came into full bloom in Italy.
POETRY
Dante
Jacopone
Michelangelo
Petrarch
Tasso
FICTION
Boccaccio
Manzoni
HISTORY
Ferrero
TRAVEL
& BIOG.
Cellini
Pellico
Polo
Villari
PHILOSOPHY
Machiavelli
RELIGION
Jacopone
Mazzini
Thomas of Celano
=Spanish Literature.= Marked by the dignity that is the predominating
characteristic of the nation. Just as Spain has had but one brief
period when she was supreme among the European nations, so she has
produced but one supreme author, Cervantes. Her literature, for the
most part, and notably at the present day, is imitative, behind
rather than ahead of the times.
POETRY
Spanish Lit.
FICTION
Cervantes
DRAMA
Calderon
=Scandinavian Literature.= Norway, Sweden, and Denmark are nations
of the same race; their history, literature, and civilization are
inseparably associated. Climate, racial character, historical
developments, and other causes have combined to retard the growth of
their literature. Apart from the sagas little of universal interest
appeared until the nineteenth century, in which Ibsen created a
sensation with his dramas of relentless criticism of the vanity and
pettiness of life in the prosperous, democratic society of Norway.
POETRY
Ewald
Norse Lit.
FICTION
Andersen
Björnson
HISTORY
Norse Lit.
DRAMA
Ibsen
=Russian Literature.= In some respects more closely related to the
East than to the West, and hampered by despotism until the twentieth
century, Russia produced nothing of value until a century ago. The
novelists mentioned below then began a series of vivid pictures of
the struggle for freedom, knowledge, and civilization as opposed to
tyranny, universal ignorance, and barbarism. Their work has a strong
national flavor, coupled with a youthful energy and an enthusiasm
for the mission of enlightenment that recalls the spirit of the
Renaissance and its zeal for discovery and progress.
POETRY
Derzhavin
FICTION
Russian Lit.
Sienkiewicz
Tolstoi
Turgenieff
=Oriental Literature.= Arabia, Persia, India, China, and Japan
live and think along lines utterly at variance with our mode of
life. Their points of difference from each other are by no means as
distinct as the radical contrast between their customs and ours.
As we all know, Arabic and Hebrew are written from right to left,
so that a book's first page corresponds to the last page with us;
in China and Japan people write down the page in vertical columns.
Again, with us energy and activity, wisely used, form the basis of
our life and our religion, whereas in the Orient it is held best
to abstain from all action, to lead a life of absolute quiet and
inactivity, if possible.
It follows that the literature of the East is first of all
exceedingly difficult to translate well and in the second place is
not to be judged in the same fashion as Western writings.
POETRY
Hafiz
Omar Khayyám
Sadi
FICTION
Arabian Nights
Jewish Lit.
HISTORY
Japanese Lit.
Josephus[3]
RELIGION
Confucius
Hindoo Lit.
Jewish Lit.
Mohammed
THE DIVISIONS OF LITERATURE
Poetry, history, the novel, the short story, the essay, and other
branches of literature have all passed through successive stages
of change and progress. To trace one of these divisions from its
beginnings is not only interesting, but affords an excellent method
of study, easily carried out and immediately beneficial. The novel
of to-day, for example, is the product of centuries of authorship,
in which various elements were gradually blended; the contributions
of Cervantes, Defoe, Addison, and Scott, extending over a space of
two hundred and thirty years, have each played a decisive part in its
formation. So it is with history, poetry, and the rest of the forms
of intellectual expression. The origin and nature of each of these
divisions is considered in the pages that follow, with the usual
lists and examples under each heading.
POETRY
How did poetry originate? In every nation the beginnings of its
literature have been poems. This highest form of literary expression
is also the oldest; it is not the final triumphant product of a
highly civilized age, after centuries of slow development and gradual
growth of power and art in the use of words. It is exactly the
opposite; the earliest authors are the poets who sang and chanted the
brave deeds of the leaders of their nation; the "Iliad," the Norse
sagas, the "Song of Roland" are well-known examples of this primitive
yet glorious poetry. But why is this, that one of the greatest of the
arts should be already highly perfected in barbaric times? Because
poetry rests on two principles: it is imaginative in its nature and
rhythmic in its form. Man's imagination stirred him to conquest for
the sake of glory and dominion, and then his imagination was again
roused to tell in words of splendid imagery of his honor and fame
and valor, of loveliness and happiness and power. Man's instinct for
the regular cadence that he heard in the tramp of marching feet led
him to chant aloud in firm, even measure while the words he sang
fitted themselves to the beat of his music. It was only a slight
matter to vary the length of the lines or group them in stanzas or
use rhyme in order to increase the beauty of verse construction.
However, the true test of poetry has always been the value of its
imaginative power; no matter how accurate or elaborate its form,
unless it expresses great ideas it cannot rank as great poetry, but
merely as good verse. Like all art, poetry is the expression of
genuine feeling in beautiful form. (See Sidney's "Defense of Poesy.")
THE CHIEF DIVISIONS OF POETRY
=Epic poetry= tells the story of a great sequence of events, such as
the wanderings and home-coming of Odysseus, in the "Odyssey." It is
the earliest form of literature and one of the grandest. No great
period or nation has failed to produce its epic.
For examples in Ancient Literature see "The Epic of Pentaur" under
Egyptian Literature; Homer; and Vergil. The works of the last two are
known as 'heroic epics.'
In the Dark Ages: "Beowulf" under Anglo-Saxon Literature; "The Song
of Roland" under French Literature; "The Nibelungenlied" under German
Literature; "The Saga of Eric the Red" under Norse Literature; and
"The Chronicle of the Cid" under Spanish Literature.
In the Middle Ages: Dante and Tasso, who wrote 'sacred epics.' The
"Old English Ballads" are excellent examples of the shorter poetic
tales from which such epics as the "Iliad," the "Nibelungenlied," and
the "Song of Roland" were built up.
In the Renaissance: Spenser, whose "Faerie Queene" is an epic of
chivalry. Milton's great epics of "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise
Regained" are sacred epics, reflecting the Puritan influence that
came over England at the close of the period.
In the Age of Classicism: the mock-epic of Pope's "Rape of the Lock,"
and the epic tale in prose, "Telemachus," by Fénelon.
In the Age of Romanticism: Scott's "Lady of the Lake," and Byron's
"Childe Harold's Pilgrimage," although this last is perhaps best
regarded as a study of the poet's emotions upon visiting the grandest
scenes in Europe.
In Nineteenth Century Literature: Longfellow's "Evangeline" and
"Hiawatha" are short epics. Owing to the central, unifying figure of
King Arthur, Tennyson's "Idylls of the King" have much of the epic
effect.
=Lyric poetry= includes all verse that presents the poet's feelings
and passions; it is characterized also by plentiful use of varied
ideas, rich and fanciful imagery, and rhythmical flow of language.
From the beginning there were shorter songs, as well as the epic,
often accompanied on the lyre, a small harp, from which this branch
of poetry takes its name. To-day lyric poetry tends toward a lighter
tone and spirit than in the Romantic Period; in length it may vary
very widely, from the little quatrain, of four lines, to an ode or
a ballad of almost epic extent. Burns, Milton, Moore, Byron, Keats,
Shelley, Shakespeare, and Wordsworth are among the foremost in this
field; among the ancients Catullus, Horace, and Sappho are prominent;
while the writings of Goethe, Heine, Uhland, Longfellow, Whittier,
Browning, Tennyson, and Swinburne contain many that are familiar.
Musical accompaniment is no longer essential. There are several forms
of the lyric, chief among which are the following:
The Ode, addressed to a person or a personified idea or else
expressing the poet's emotions at a moment of great exaltation.
In form it either follows a varying sequence of lines of
irregular length or else employs a series of uniform stanzas.
Illustrative of the former are Dryden's "Alexander's Feast"
and "A Song for St. Cecilia's Day," and Wordsworth's "Ode on
Intimations of Immortality"; among the latter are Collins's "Ode
to Evening," Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale" and "Ode on a Grecian
Urn," Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" and "To a Skylark," and
Wordsworth's "To the Cuckoo" and "Ode to Duty."
The Sonnet, of Italian origin, was brought to its perfection
by Petrarch; it consists of fourteen lines of equal length
(in English usually of ten syllables), the first eight lines
constituting the _octave_ and the last six, the _sestet_. In
the octave the rhymes are arranged _a b b a a b b a_, and in
the sestet, either _c d c d c d_ or _c d e c d e_. The sonnet
should contain one idea, which may be treated from two points of
view, in the octave and sestet respectively. As used by Milton
and later poets in England this double treatment was not often
observed and there is no break of thought at the end of the
octave. Owing to its restrictions the sonnet is considered one
of the most difficult forms in which to achieve distinction,
as metrical ingenuity without sublimity of thought bars mere
versifiers. The most noted examples by English authors are E.
B. Browning's "Sonnets from the Portuguese," Keats's "On First
Looking into Chapman's Homer," Milton's "On His Blindness,"
Shelley's "England in 1819," and those selected from Wordsworth.
The Ballad, partaking somewhat of the epic, is a tale in verse,
usually arranged in short stanzas. "Old English Ballads,"
Cowper's "The Diverting History of John Gilpin," Drayton's
"Ballad of Agincourt," and Rossetti's "The White Ship" are
specimens of this form. It originated among the peasantry, who
commemorated the prowess of their favorite heroes in rough verse
sung by the cottage hearth.
The Elegy is devoted to the memory of the dead and therefore is
grave and stately in its metrical form as well as in thought.
Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," Milton's
"Lycidas," Shelley's "Adonais," and Tennyson's "In Memoriam" are
the most famous.
=Idyllic poetry= briefly presents a picture, complete and lovely,
usually pastoral and romantic. Tennyson's "Idylls of the King,"
Goldsmith's "Deserted Village," the Idylls of Theocritus, and the
Eclogues of Vergil are the best examples.
=Dramatic poetry=, in which the form of a play or drama is used, has
always been chosen for the deepest and most majestic presentations
of the problems and wonders of human life. The dramatic poets of
the ancients as well as those of modern times rank among the most
far-seeing thinkers and ablest writers of the world. No philosopher
or historian has ever been able to reach the people or express the
profoundest reflections so readily and forcibly.
The tragedies of Æschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles, with those of
Shakespeare and the "Faust" of Goethe, are the highest achievements
in literature; their effect, from the stage, is instantaneous, and
even in reading them the mind receives a direct impression of wonder
and awe not elsewhere given. The Greek tragedies mentioned above
have for their underlying theme the power of relentless fate, the
inevitable omnipotence of right, and the final destruction of wrong
and falsehood. In these and "Macbeth," "Hamlet," and "King Lear"
the mastery of plot and action is superb; the play gathers force
and momentum until the catastrophe sweeps down upon the evil-doers
and unfortunates like a tidal wave. Yet each step in its progress,
even the least trifle, is so natural as to seem unavoidable. Here
is the proof of the poet's genius, in that he selects the message
to be presented to his audience or readers, chooses his characters,
and outlines his plot, then combines the three elements with such
skill and with such inspiration as to leave an effect of perfect
truth and actuality. Aristotle, the ancient philosopher and critic,
declared that the very souls of the audience were cleansed and rid of
pettiness and self-seeking by beholding such works as these; that the
spectacle of disaster brought down upon men by their own vanity and
wrong-doing, and portrayed in language of such vivid grandeur, was
the most impressive means of reaching the hearts of men.
In addition to the authors mentioned above, Calderon, Jonson,
Lessing, Marlowe, Molière, Racine, Rostand, and Schiller have made
notable contributions to the poetic drama. (See also Drama, p. 49.)
FICTION
The practice of telling tales of love and heroism is older than
history itself. Ever since men sat about the fire of an evening and
recited the deeds of their chieftains or extolled the beauty of
their princesses, in other words, ever since the days when poetry
first began, stories and tales have been handed down, first by word
of mouth, then by carvings and inscriptions and at last by writing
and printing. The first fiction was a simple, imaginative invention
of adventure, told to pass the time. Æsop's "Fables" and Apuleius's
"Story of Cupid and Psyche," ancient as they are, show the progress
already made in the art of narration, the one simple and insistent
in its purpose of teaching common sense by whimsical anecdotes, the
other a delicately artistic legend told with exquisite grace. In
"Jewish Literature" the story of Tobit's wonderful adventures at once
calls to mind the "Arabian Nights," which were of similar origin,
told by professional story-tellers for centuries before they were
finally written down and translated for our perpetual delight.
=The novel=, a new feature in fiction, shows its first faint
beginnings in the tumult and enthusiasm of the Renaissance, that
strenuous age of new ideas and discoveries. Cervantes in writing "Don
Quixote" had a definite purpose in mind beyond mere entertainment;
the passing of the age of chivalry and the pathos and humor of life
form the true subject of his tale. Bunyan in the "Pilgrim's Progress"
shows the same intent of doing something more than providing
interesting reading; the growth of a noble character through struggle
and temptation on the journey through life is the central thought
of his work. His hero, Christian, changes in character, becoming a
stronger, better man as the story goes on. Defoe's Robinson Crusoe
goes through much of the same evolution. And this is the underlying
principle of the novel, that it has a purpose beyond simple
story-telling, possessing a plot or unified succession of incidents,
with actors whose characters develop. It is a picture of human life,
with strength and weakness, happiness and misery, all bound together
and forming a united and well-proportioned whole.
However, it was not until Addison and Steele, in the "Spectator"
essays, had shown such skill in drawing characters and depicting
manners and customs that the time was ripe for the true novel to
appear. For one of the chief duties of the novel is to criticize
life, to furnish comment on the social conditions and tendencies of
the day. Among the earliest and also the greatest of the English
novelists, Fielding, whose work appeared about thirty years after the
"Spectator," not only draws sturdy and truthful pictures of the life
of his day, but also makes the reader see the true value of that life
and estimate its good and its bad qualities. In the same way Dickens
and Thackeray, not very long after, supplied unending amusement and
fun for the world and at the same time did far more by making the
nations sit up and think, pointing out with almost brutal clearness
the need of unselfish action and the love of truth and simplicity.
There is not a novel of high rank but contains more than meets the
eye at first glance. It is the readiest means of putting a critical
estimate of history, of life and society, directly before the world.
NOVELS AND GENERAL FICTION
Austen
Balzac
Beaconsfield
Blackmore
Borrow
Brontë
Bunyan
Caine
Cervantes
Chateaubriand
Cooper
Daudet
Defoe
Dickens
Doyle
Dumas
Fénelon
Feuillet
Fielding
Gaskell
Goldsmith
Hugo
Kingsley
Le Sage
Lever
Lytton
Macdonald
Manzoni
Meredith
Reade
Richardson
Scott
Shorthouse
Sienkiewicz
Stowe
Thackeray
Turgenieff
Zola
=The short story=, as distinct from a story that is short, is a
nineteenth-century development in fiction. During the last hundred
years the magazines grew so rapidly in numbers and circulation that
they could not depend entirely on continued stories; they had to
have tales that would be complete in one number, which could be read
at one sitting. The demand brought the needed solution, a story
which instead of length, with intricate action and complex studies
of personality, supplied rapid action, brilliantly imaginative
description, and a terse portrayal of character. Scenes, persons,
and events were stamped immediately on the reader's mind; the effect
desired by the writer was attained by force and bold decision. Edgar
Allan Poe was one of the first to excel in this field, utilizing his
critical powers as well as sheer inspiration to meet the situation.
The variations in style and manner are as manifold in the short story
as in the novel. Boccaccio, "The Arabian Nights," French Literature,
and the "Gesta Romanorum" show the work of the Middle Ages, from mere
anecdote with a moral tagged on, in the "Gesta," to the graceful
prose poem of "Aucassin and Nicolete." Barrie, Brown, and Hawthorne
do little more than draw quiet sketches of simple life, while
Björnson, Eliot, Hardy, Harte, Irving, Kipling, Macleod, Maupassant,
Stevenson, and Tolstoi deal powerfully with situations that bring
home to us the force of fate which lurks hidden in petty incidents.
Aldrich, Collins, Crawford, Hale, and Watson have all used this type
of fiction effectively. Indeed, Hale's "Man Without a Country" drives
home the idea of patriotism so vigorously that Italy recently issued
a translation in an edition of a million copies for distribution to
her army.
HISTORY
Like poetry and fiction, history emerges from the darkness of the
unknown ages, at first no more than a boastful record of slaughter
and usurpation, such as shows through the gloss and splendor of epic
poetry. The sagas in "Norse Literature," the crisp record of invasion
and conquest by Cæsar, and that of Josephus on the Roman conquest of
the Jews are all of this type, a chronicle by an eyewitness of the
succession of deeds that made up some event in a nation's life.
An improvement came with Herodotus in ancient times and again with
Froissart in the Middle Ages. Both of these historians added zest
to their tale by including some account of the principal personages
as well as picturesque, well-drawn pictures of the scene. In other
words, they filled in the background of their pictures, their wars
were waged by people with definite personalities and in a country
with certain individual features and peculiarities.
From this method to the modern scientific style was a further
advance. It is now understood that we must perceive the growth of
a nation, its social changes, its increase of intellectual as well
as physical power, its innermost secrets of success or failure.
Thucydides, the Greek historian, and Tacitus, the Roman, felt
something of this and have left us far more than a mere list of
battles and rulers. Gibbon, in "The Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire," and later still, Guizot, Mommsen, and Ferrero, have carried
on the work of analyzing the complex mysteries of history and
civilization and have brought it to its highest development. The more
stirring visions of heroism and kingly dominion have been replaced by
pages in which not an emperor but a nation is born, passes through
childhood to maturity and wisdom, succumbs to disease or an enemy's
murderous attacks, and perishes.
The study of history nowadays may involve the scholar in years of
drudgery, such as searching out and listing the exports and imports
of the city of London between the years 1340 and 1400. However,
the conclusions drawn from his discoveries may be of world-wide
importance. The questions of tariff reform, wage-scales, taxation,
and representative government will all be affected by the data which
his scientific investigation will have brought to light. Those of us
whose life-work lies in other directions can give no attention to
the details of toilsome labor like this. But the results must always
be significant for us. The great movements in the troublous advance
of the nations from barbarism to civilization are full of lessons
which we must learn. History, regarded as a series of wars, an
unceasing fury of bloodshed and misgovernment, is of slight interest
to peace-loving people. But history as a series of pictures, showing
the conditions of life in various ages and countries, picturing the
spread of liberty and equality, and the slow yet sure increase of
justice--history viewed in this manner is one of the most stirring
and educative subjects for reading and study.
How was the Roman Empire built up? What was the condition of the
people in the days of Homer? How did the ancient tribes live from
which the German nation is descended? What was England like in
Shakespeare's time? These are some of the questions which we should
ask. Many of the ablest brains in Europe and America have spent their
lives in finding out the answers.
The following lists group the historians according to the nation
which they discuss.
GREECE
Froude
Gladstone
Grote
Herodotus
Mahaffy
Plutarch
Thucydides
ROME
Cæsar
Farrar
Ferrero
Freeman
Gibbon
Hodgkin
Josephus
Livy
Mommsen
Pliny
Suetonius
Tacitus
ENGLAND
Cæsar
Creasy
Evelyn
Froissart
Green
Holinshed
McCarthy
Pepys
Raleigh
Smith, G.
Southey
Taine
AMERICA
Bancroft
Fiske
Irving
McMaster
Parkman
FRANCE
Cæsar
Carlyle
Creasy
French Lit.
Froissart
Michelet
Parkman
ITALY
Cellini
Hodgkin
Symonds
Villari
SPAIN
Creasy
Prescott
Spanish Lit.
Egyptian Literature, Guizot's "History of Civilization in Europe,"
Japanese Literature, Josephus on the conquest of the Jews by Rome,
Motley's "Relief of Leyden," Norse Literature, Tacitus's "Customs of
the Germans," and Voltaire's account of Charles XII of Sweden are
other selections.
BIOGRAPHY
The lives of great men have always been of interest not merely for
the sake of satisfying curiosity, but because of the value of further
knowledge about their habits, thoughts, and actions. The personality
of a great man attracts us; perhaps through reading an intimate
account of his life we may see into the reasons for his superiority,
possibly we may find the key to the secret of power. So much can be
learned from biography that it seems absurd how little importance
is given to the subject even in our best colleges. Yet Christianity
rests upon the life and teachings of one Personality, nation after
nation has been saved or ruined by the deeds of one individual,
wisdom and contentment have been found by the great minds of the
world. By considering their lives, their principles, their virtues,
and their failings we can get an extraordinary insight into the
problems of happiness and wholesome living. Carlyle rightly called a
Great Man "the most precious gift that Heaven can give to the Earth;
a man of 'genius' as we call it; the Soul of a Man actually sent down
from the skies with a God's-message to us." To see such a man at his
work, at his play, thinking, dreaming, attaining greatness little by
little or in a flash, to spend hours with him in thought, learning
from him or from his friends and critics wherein he proved his power
and how he labored to express it: to be in such close touch with one
of the giants of the earth is a privilege which we must not dare to
neglect. The opportunity is ours, ours be the blame and the failure
if we neglect it.
Boswell
Cellini
Chesterton
Eckermann
Evelyn
Fields
Franklin
Lewes
Lockhart
Pellico
Pepys
Plato
Pliny
Plutarch
Renan
Southey
Stephen
Villari
ESSAY
Originally intended, as its name implies, to be a tentative effort
rather than a finished production, the essay has none the less become
one of the most perfect forms of prose. Its subject and the treatment
thereof may be of almost any nature, provided it is well wrought
and finished in style; for an essay is the artistic consideration
of a topic, often critical, as in the case of Matthew Arnold's
masterpieces, humorous, as with Lamb, philosophical as with Emerson,
Carlyle, and Ruskin, and so on through a dozen diverse manners. In
general the essay is brief, critical, and scholarly, and bears the
stamp of the author's personality and individual opinion in his most
polished style.
Bacon and Montaigne were the first to use it, Milton followed, and
then Addison and Steele brought it to a high state of light and
pungent perfection. Lamb, Macaulay, and Stevenson are perhaps the
leaders in its later development. The work of such writers as Walton
and Gilbert White, though not perhaps within the stricter limits of
the definition, is closely related to the essay in tone and style.
Addison
Arnold, M.
Benson
De Quincey
Hamerton
Harrison
Hazlitt
Howells
Lamb
Lang
La Ramée
Lowell
Macaulay
Mill
Mitchell
Montaigne
Morley
Pater
Ruskin
Sainte-Beuve
Sidney
Steele
Stephen
Stevenson
Thackeray
Thoreau
Walton
Warner
White, G.
HUMOR
Humor is the most subtle of intellectual modes of expression. To
define it and lay down its laws and principles is all but beyond
human power. For it ranges from the inspired nonsense of Carroll's
"Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking-Glass" or the rough
and ready gusto of Browne's "Showman's Courtship" to the airily
intangible delicacy of Lamb's "Essays of Elia" and the venomous
sarcasm of Swift's "Gulliver's Travels." Mere wit turns on an absurd
similarity in words or ideas, as in Hood's lines:
"They went and told the sexton, and
The sexton tolled the bell."
Yet the deepest humor is all but pathos; Don Quixote's demented
visions of giants that prove to be windmills and of castles that turn
out to be taverns provoke our laughter while they stir our pity.
Humor would seem to depend, according to some, upon the association
of ideas or circumstances that have no true relation to each other,
as if they actually possessed a natural relationship. For this reason
a cat or a cow dressed in coat and trousers provokes laughter, or
a village bully described as a proud monarch causes a smile. An
unexpected answer made as seriously as if it were appropriate is one
of the commoner examples of the ludicrous. It is much for the same
reason that actual misfortune may appear laughable, if the element of
suffering is suppressed, as in Joel Chandler Harris's "Uncle Remus"
stories, or Gilbert's "Yarn of the Nancy Bell." Its very subtlety
limits the appeal of humor. "One man's meat is another man's poison"
applies more closely to this division of authorship than to any
other. What tickles the fancy of one person, and more especially, one
nation, may not afford even passing amusement to another. Englishmen
find our comic papers dull, while many Americans see little to laugh
at in "Punch."
Barham
Browne
Carroll
Cervantes
Cowper
Gilbert
Harris
Harte
Holmes
Hood
Hope
Irving
Jerrold
Jonson
Lamb
Lowell
Richter
Sheridan
Sterne
Swift
FOR THE CHILDREN
The foundations of good taste are best laid in childhood. Fairy
tales, adventures, and all sorts of stories for children may be
well designed and well written, or the opposite, just as much as
books for older people. Choose your children's books as you choose
their food; take care they get no trash, arrange a tempting diet of
wholesome nourishment for their minds. The authors listed below wrote
as carefully and thoughtfully for little folks as when they wrote
for grown-ups. Andersen devoted his life to authorship for children;
the Grimm brothers made a scientific study of folk-lore and fairy
tales throughout the German empire, collecting the stories told by
the firesides in each district. Carroll, Hawthorne, Kingsley, and
many others put their best efforts into books which are unquestioned
examples of great literature and yet were purposed entirely for
youth. There is no occasion for young people to ruin their taste and
their appreciation with ill-written rubbish.
Æsop
Andersen
Arabian Nights
Brown
Fouqué
Grimm
Hughes
Irving
Jewish Lit.
Kingsley
Laboulaye
Perrault
Raspe
Russian Lit.
Swift
TRAVEL
The majority of travelers have been men of action rather than words,
filled with enthusiasm and inspiration for deeds instead of books.
Columbus, Magellan, Drake, and the rest of the leaders of exploration
have left nothing that can be called literature. Their records,
at best, are scientific reports of their discoveries. Still, ever
since the days when Pausanias made his remarkable tour of Greece and
described its wonders and Herodotus jotted down the travelers' tales
of Egypt, there have been able writers to tell of the marvels, real
or imaginary, to be found in foreign lands.
Audubon
Dana
Hearn
Heine
Kinglake
Mandeville
Melville
Pausanias
Polo
Stevenson
Tyndall
DRAMA
In both ancient and modern literature the drama is of religious
origin. Among the Greeks it began as a service in memory of some dead
hero, the choir or chorus chanting the story of his life and deeds.
Their leader presently began to take an actor's part, addressing the
audience or congregation, and then other persons were introduced
who carried on a dialogue with him and at last played the part of
characters in the hero's history. In the Middle Ages, when the great
majority of the people could not read, the Bible story was acted
at Christmas, Easter, and other festivals in order to impress it
on their minds more vividly. From this it was an easy step to the
presentation of historical events, and it was but one more step to
the modern drama's elaborate staging and well-rounded plot. (For the
poetic drama, see p. 40.)
In general the drama has certain limitations which must be taken
into account before passing judgment upon a play. Three hours is the
utmost duration for a play; it must 'get across' within that period,
since an audience becomes wearied during the third hour. It appeals
to two senses, hearing and sight, while other forms of literature
appeal but to one. This is an advantage as far as it enables the
dramatist to tell his story by scenery and action as well as by
speech and incidental music. It is a handicap when the action or
the scenery is faulty and distracts the attention of the audience
from the dialogue. Descriptions of any length, the study or analysis
of personality, all features of ordinary fiction which delay the
action are impossible on the stage. Speech and action must be fitted
together so as to carry the plot through without pause, revealing the
story forcibly, clearly, and yet naturally, within the restricted
time.
These limitations have been handled in widely varying manners:
three systems of presentation have been employed, the ancient,
the medieval, and the modern, all of which are to be seen at the
present day, thanks to the revival of Greek plays in the stadiums
and amphitheaters of our colleges and likewise to the revival of the
Elizabethan drama during the past ten years.
The ancient or Greek drama was presented in a stone amphitheater
against a background of marble, constructed in the form of a palace
or temple; the semicircular space occupied by the orchestra seats
in our theaters contained an altar in the center and was used by
the actors as a part of the stage; the chorus in particular used
this space for their stately dances and stood at one side during
the progress of the action, commenting on the course of events in
odes which they chanted. The lack of movable scenery, and other
limitations, resulted in the restrictions known as =the three
'unities,'= of action, time, and place. No play, according to =the
unity of action=, should introduce incidents that were not a part of
the main action; the plot must be absolutely simple. Thus the story
of Jessica and Lorenzo, in "The Merchant of Venice" would be barred
by this convention, as it does not contribute to the development of
the main story of Antonio and Shylock. The =unity of time= required
that the action should not represent the occurrences of more than a
day at the very outside, and the =unity of place= held the action to
one spot. These latter conventions were to increase the impression
of truth and actuality on the minds of the spectators, heightening
the effect of complete naturalness and leaving their imaginations
free to grasp the problems of the plot without the additional effort
of supposing lapses of time and changes of scene to have occurred.
The number of actors was small; usually two, or at most three, were
permitted to take part at one time in a portion of the dialogue.
These conventions produce a simplicity that was not bare and dull,
but just the reverse; the attention is focused directly upon the
leading character and his fate from beginning to end. The effect is
single and direct, there is no complexity or intricacy to puzzle the
audience or distract its interest in the crisis which is so obviously
approaching. The grandeur of this type of drama is like that of a
great hymn, such as "Old Hundred," sung by a vast congregation.
The medieval plays, which reached their height in Shakespeare's
time, were very different from those of the ancients. The stage was
almost as bare and scenery was not used, but changes of locality were
frequent, indicated by hanging out a sign with the words, "This is
a garden" or "A Street in Venice" and so on. In the same way there
was no restriction upon time; years might be supposed to have passed
between one act and the next. The imagination of the audience was
expected to take care of such matters, and indeed it did so with
the utmost ease. The plot could be supplemented with all sorts of
incidents whether they directly concerned it or not. For example, the
wrestling scene at the beginning of "As You Like It" was inserted to
satisfy the Elizabethan love of sport, not because it could be of
use in advancing the progress of the story, as it did nothing of the
kind. The Greek unities were disregarded completely; however, the
most impressive of Shakespeare's tragedies do adhere to the principle
of the unity of action,--"Macbeth," for example, deals with the
consequences of unscrupulous ambition, each event in the play leads
directly on to the catastrophe without a pause, there are no minor
events or plots.
The modern play differs from both the earlier forms of the drama
in its appeal to the eye. The use of scenery, which came in at
the beginning of the Age of Classicism, has led to an elaboration
of stage effects which sometimes is injurious to the success of
a production. Much of the modern stage-craft is concerned with
scenic effects and therefore does not come into this discussion.
The chief distinction to-day lies in the treatment of problems
of everyday life in an everyday manner. Neither the ancient nor
the Shakespearian playwrights handled tragedy in the setting of
ordinary life. The Greeks portrayed famous heroes and princes and
so did the Elizabethans, but rarely, except in comedy, was there
any presentation of the life of the middle classes of that time.
Sheridan and Ibsen, in common with most of the modern playwrights,
take the life of the mass of the people and draw their illustrations
of success and failure direct. The audience of to-day sees itself
walking and talking on the stage, playing the fool or the hero.
Each style has its merits and its faults, each is powerful in the
hands of a genius and each fails when used by incompetents. The
average drama depends largely upon the actors for its success, it can
hardly be classed among literary efforts. Only the plays wrought by
masters of thought as well as of speech can be given a place in the
realm of literature.
Æschylus
Calderon
Euripides
Goethe
Ibsen
Jonson
Lessing
Marlowe
Molière
Racine
Rostand
Schiller
Shakespeare
Sheridan
Sophocles
ORATORY
The art of addressing a large gathering and winning their support, as
well as their attention, by sound argument and also by eloquence is
a study that is in danger of falling into a decline, owing perhaps
to the prevalence of newspapers and the rapidity with which an
argument or an idea can be spread broadcast over the world by the
telegraph and the press. In reading even the finest speeches of the
past or the present allowance must almost always be made for the
personal magnetism of the speaker, the appeal made by his presence,
his gestures, and his voice. For this reason it is difficult to form
a just estimate of the worth of a speech, especially at a date when
the subject has become less vital or even unfamiliar through the
passage of time. The sole bases of criticism under these conditions
must be the force of the argument and the eloquence of the style.
This is aptly illustrated in the case of Burke, whose arguments were
admitted to be irresistible in their strength, but who had so poor a
delivery that he was called the dinner-bell of the House of Commons,
in reference to the departure of the members when he rose to speak.
The most influential speakers have been those who combined skill in
argument with grace and eloquence and reinforced these qualities with
a commanding personality. These talents are needed to-day if we are
to maintain the standard set by Washington, Webster, and Lincoln.
Bright
Brooks
Burke
Channing
Choate
Demosthenes
Henry
Lincoln
Mirabeau
Phillips
Robertson
Sumner
Washington
Webster
PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE
The aim of philosophy, like that of science, is to probe the mystery
of life, to discover as far as possible the nature of man and of the
universe in which he dwells. These efforts began when men first asked
"What am I? What is this world?" Philosophy attempts the answer by
reasoning and meditation, while science uses inventions, such as the
telescope, mathematical calculation, and all other means of obtaining
accurate information regarding the physical environment and nature
of man. The former is concerned with the spirit, the unseen, the
motives of honor, love, and the like, and the infinite possibilities
of the mind and the soul; the latter deals with the actual, material
conditions of life. The best of scientific literature so closely
borders on philosophy that it has been included among the selections
that treat of philosophic problems.
Aurelius
Bacon
Carlyle
Cicero
Darwin
Emerson
Epictetus
Galton
Hamilton
Kant
Lucretius
Machiavelli
Mill
More
Pascal
Plato
Rousseau
Ruskin
Schopenhauer
Seneca
Shaler
Smith, A.
Spencer
RELIGION
Certain hymns will always linger in the memory from the days of
childhood; and certain sermons and devotional works have so feelingly
expressed the aspirations of Christian life that they have attained
enduring fame. These are here collected without reference to
denominational distinction.
Also, as it is of interest to note the ideals of thinkers in other
than Christian lands, passages are included from the teachings of
Confucius, the Chinese scholar; Cleanthes, the Greek poet; the life
of Buddha, in Hindoo Literature; the Talmud, in Jewish Literature;
and the "Koran" of Mohammed.
HYMNS
Bernard, St.
Bernard of Cluny
Bonar
Bowring
Cowper
Faber
Heber
Herbert
Jacopone
Keble
Luther
Lyte
Milman
Newman
Palmer
Thomas of Celano
Toplady
Watts
Wesley
SERMONS AND DEVOTIONAL WORKS
Bowne
Brierley
Brooks
Browne, Sir T.
Bunyan
Channing
Hooker
à Kempis
Luther
Mazzini
Robertson
Wyclif
FROM SEVEN TO TWENTY-ONE
Lists of readings for young and old.
Showing how to acquire, by easy stages, a knowledge of the best in
literature, year by year.
Unlike poets, painters, and the rest of the world of artists,
booklovers are made, not born. But many a booklover has been spoiled
in the making, too; so that we must needs give thought to the process
of transforming everyday folk into _willing and skilful readers and
lovers of books_. Many boys and girls and many men and women have
lost all interest in the realm of books through lack of suitable
material for enjoyment and adequate opportunity for practice. What
books they could find round the house failed to meet their desires or
hold their attention; probably they were technical or 'dry-as-dust.'
In other words the untrained reader, whether young or old, must be
trained and exercised on the right books at the right time. Not
that he should be coaxed and tempted with light fiction or showy
trash, quite the contrary; he must acquire _strength of mind and
intellectual habits_--he is to be trained to grasp serious thought as
well as highstrung romance. Conan Doyle's thrilling "White Company"
or Blackmore's tender "Lorna Doone" form excellent entertainment, but
they must be supplemented by sturdy common sense, such as one finds
in Franklin's "Autobiography," Dana's "Two Years Before the Mast,"
or Bancroft's account of the Lexington and Concord fight. The young
mind, and the old one as well, cannot grow strong and able without
exercise. Just as tennis, football, swimming, or golf help to develop
and strengthen our physical powers, so the mind likewise must take
exercise that will ripen and enlarge the intellectual powers. The
joy of living is dependent upon full vigor of brain and brawn; the
weakling, whether in intellect or in muscle, loses the best that life
has to give. Our ideal must be not merely a sound mind in a sound
body but, rather, a strong mind in a strong body.
The lists that follow have been devised to meet the requirements for
training the mind to a ready facility and enjoyment of books and
reading. Naturally, these groups are arbitrary, they definitely place
one author or selection in the eleven year old's list, another in
the fifteen; whereas either might well be transferred, in individual
cases. The object manifestly is to group writers and selections as a
means of guidance and help to the average reader whether parent or
child, but not to draw hard and fast lines. The sooner the reader
becomes ready to wander as he will, the sooner will he be a true
booklover.
=Seven to Ten Years of Age.= At this time of life, as every one
knows, fairy tales are an unfailing delight and form the foundations,
moreover, of all thorough literary appreciation. In addition to
these, tales of adventure or of travel, such as Malory's Morte
Darthur, or Marco Polo's astonishing discoveries in China, serve as
admirable supplementary reading at this age.
ÆSOP
Fables
ANDERSEN
Fairy Tales
GRIMM
Fairy Tales
HARRIS
Uncle Remus
IRVING
Rip Van Winkle
KEY
Star Spangled Banner
KINGSLEY
Water Babies
LABOULAYE
Poucinet
MALORY
Morte Darthur
PERRAULT
Fairy Tales
POLO
Travels
RUSSIAN LIT.
The Water King
SMITH, S. F.
America
SWIFT
Gulliver's Travels
=Eleven and Twelve Years of Age.= The next step consists in awakening
the sense of understanding, rousing the mind to grasp actual scenes
and situations. For this purpose the "Pilgrim's Progress," "Two
Years Before the Mast," "The Village Blacksmith," or "Horatius" are
especially suitable. For while the fairy tale element is continued
in "Cupid and Psyche," the "Odyssey," and "Undine," it is to these
more realistic selections that we must look for the stimulus to
imaginative growth that the children need. For this reason,
"Robinson Crusoe" is of paramount value at this time simply because
it trains the young mind to picture the scenes or events with the
utmost care for details; probably no other work of fiction in English
Literature can equal it for realistic vividness and precision.
APULEIUS
Cupid and Psyche
BROWN, J.
Rab
BUNYAN
Pilgrim's Progress
CARROLL
Alice in Wonderland, etc.
COOPER
Pathfinder
DANA
Two Years Before the Mast
DEFOE
Robinson Crusoe
FOUQUÉ
Undine
GESTA ROMANORUM
HAWTHORNE
Snow Image
HEMANS
Casabianca
Pilgrim Fathers
HERODOTUS
Legends
HOMER
Iliad
Odyssey
HOWE
Battle Hymn
HUGHES
Tom Brown
JAPANESE LIT.
The Ronins
LIVY
Legends
LONGFELLOW
Village Blacksmith
Hiawatha
Evangeline
MACAULAY
Horatius
MELVILLE
Typee
MEREDITH
Shagpat
RASPE
Baron Münchausen
READ
Sheridan's Ride
WHITTIER
Barbara Frietchie
=Thirteen and Fourteen Years of Age.= This period should mark
the beginning of true reading power--the faculty of perceiving
and absorbing the pictures, the facts, the ideas that lie within
the printed page. The true joys of reading first-class fiction,
for example, "Don Quixote" or "The Cloister and the Hearth," are
usually first experienced in these years. And in the same manner
young readers delight in the more vivid pages of history, such
as "The Relief of Leyden," or "The Conquest of Peru," or--best
of all--Raleigh's telling account of the fight of the 'Revenge'
together with Tennyson's magnificent poem, built up from the prose
of Raleigh. For it is in such passages as these that the natural
tendency to hero-worship is roused and fostered. Jim Bludso, Sir
Launfal, Alexander the Great, John Halifax, Lorna Doone, and
Constantia, together with the splendid characters in the works
already mentioned, all establish in the minds of the average boy
and girl examples of courage, courtesy, and nobility that are never
forgotten.
ADDISON
Mirza
Arabian Nights
BLACKMORE
Lorna Doone
BOCCACCIO
Constantia
Federigo
BORROW
Lavengro
BROWNE, C. F.
The Showman's Courtship
CELLINI
Life
CERVANTES
Don Quixote
COLLINS, W. W.
A Terribly Strange Bed
CRAIK
John Halifax
DICKENS
David Copperfield
Pickwick
FRENCH LITERATURE
Aucassin
HALE
Man Without a Country
HARTE
Truthful James
HAY
Jim Bludso
HENRY
Speech
HOLINSHED
Princes in the Tower
HOLMES
Nautilus
Old Ironsides
HUNT
Abou Ben Adhem
INGELOW
High Tide
JEWISH LITERATURE
Tobit
KINGLAKE
Eothen
LE SAGE
Gil Blas
LOWELL
Sir Launfal
LYTTON
Pompeii
MCMASTER
Settler Life in 1800
MOTLEY
Relief of Leyden
NORSE LITERATURE
Discovery of Vinland
PLUTARCH
Alexander the Great
PRESCOTT
Conquest of Peru
RALEIGH
The Fight of the "Revenge"
READE
Cloister and the Hearth
SOUTHEY
Inchcape Rock
TENNYSON
The Revenge
The Light Brigade, Etc.
=Fifteen and Sixteen Years of Age.= The appreciation of poetry is
one of the most subtle and difficult developments in the youthful
intellect. Yet some enjoyment of poetry, not merely narrative poems,
but contemplative verse as well, should manifest itself during these
next years. Furthermore, it is high time to form an acquaintance with
writers who will be met again and again in days yet to come. No one
will maintain for a moment that a sixteen year old lad will fully
understand and appreciate Milton's "L'Allegro," with its treasury of
allusion; yet, on the other hand, no one will pretend that this same
lad should not at least be granted the opportunity to listen for the
first time to those immortal lines. For this reason not only Milton,
but Lincoln, Cowper, Pepys, Tolstoi, Hodgkin, Gray, and several
others are included in the list.
But apart from the more serious and contemplative side of the
reading that can be commenced at this age, there is much that will
fascinate and delight those who are looking for pastime rather than
deep thinking. Barham's "Ingoldsby Legends," of which "The Knight
and the Lady" is a most characteristic tale in verse, have long been
the joy of all who love laughter and nonsense; and so with Irving's
"Knickerbocker's New York," which in many respects is unequaled for
wit and delicate fun. Crawford's "The Upper Berth," Doyle's "White
Company," and Dumas's "Three Musketeers" furnish thrill enough for
the most eager adventure seeker. Tolstoi and Goldsmith will satisfy
a quieter mood with their gentle satire on the folly and stupidity
and vanity of everyday people, who none the less are the salt of the
earth, after all.
AGASSIZ
Mountains
AUDUBON
In the Woods
BANCROFT
Lexington and Concord
BARHAM
The Knight and the Lady
BARRIE
Lads and Lasses
BERNARD, ST.
Hymn
NOTE. The reader should take care to read and even to reread
the majority of the selections in the previous lists before
attempting further progress.
BERNARD OF CLUNY
Hymns
BRONTË
Jane Eyre
COLERIDGE
Poems
COWPER
Poems
CRAWFORD, F. M.
The Upper Berth
DOYLE
The White Company
DUMAS
Three Musketeers,
Monte Cristo, etc.
EWALD
King Christian
FRANKLIN
Autobiography
FROUDE
A Cagliostro of the Second Century
GILBERT
The Nancy Bell
GOLDSMITH
Vicar of Wakefield
GRAY
Elegy
HAWTHORNE
The Old Manse
HEINE
Travel Pictures
HODGKIN
Attila the Hun
HOOD
Poems
IRVING
Knickerbocker's New York
JOSEPHUS
Destruction of the Temple
KINGSLEY
Poems
LA FONTAINE
Fables
LINCOLN
Gettysburg Speech
LONGFELLOW
Poems
MAHAFFY
Alexander the Great
MILTON
L'Allegro
Il Penseroso
PEPYS
Diary
PHILLIPS
Toussaint L'Ouverture
ROUGET DE LISLE
The Marseillaise
SCOTT
Selections
STOWE
Uncle Tom's Cabin
TOLSTOI
Where Love Is
WHITTIER
Poems
=Seventeen and Eighteen Years of Age.= With increasing maturity we
may naturally expect the mind to enjoy the more calm and meditative
moods of life: for example, the essays of Addison and Lamb, the more
forceful historical reflections of such writers as Green, Froissart,
and Parkman, the "Utopia" of Sir Thomas More, Thoreau's "Walden," and
Washington's "Farewell Address." These form an excellent introduction
to the deeper thoughts which will shortly be forced upon youth as it
goes out into the world to fight for a career.
At this time, too, interest is stirred to attempt an understanding of
the 'reason for things'--the mind endeavors to arrive at some law or
principle beneath the varied course of life and action in the world.
In other words, boyhood and girlhood are past, and an older view of
life and its responsibilities must naturally take the place of the
carefree spirit of earlier days. The qualities of friendship that
appear in "Tennessee's Partner" and the search for spiritual as well
as intellectual companionship and understanding that is emphasized
in Tennyson or Matthew Arnold are at this time beginning to be more
fully appreciated and understood.
ADDISON
Punning
Good Nature
Westminster Abbey
ALDRICH
Père Antoine
ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE
Beowulf
ARNOLD, M.
The Forsaken Merman
BALZAC
The Purse
BJÖRNSON
Railroad and Churchyard
BROOKS
Lincoln
CAINE
The Bondman
CAMPBELL
Poems
CREASY
Decisive Battles
DAUDET
Tartarin
EDGEWORTH
Castle Rackrent
FIELD
Poems
FROISSART
Battles of Otterbourne and Crécy
GASKELL
Cranford
GREEN
English History
HARDY
The Three Strangers
HARTE
Tennessee's Partner
HINDOO LITERATURE
HUGO
Selections
JERROLD
Mrs. Caudle
LAMB
Essays
LEVER
Charles O'Malley
LINCOLN
Second Inaugural
LOWELL
The Courtin'
MORE
Utopia
OVID
Philemon and Baucis
PARKMAN
La Salle
The Plains of Abraham
POE
Tales
SHORTHOUSE
John Inglesant
STEELE
Essays
SWIFT
Selections
TENNYSON
Poems
THOREAU
Walden
TYNDALL
Ascent of Mont Blanc
VOLTAIRE
Charles XII
WASHINGTON
Farewell Address
=Nineteen and Twenty Years of Age.= Unquestionably, as the years
pass on, we read again the books that have already given us so many
hours of happiness and amusement. For this reason it is well for the
young booklover to return to the lists for the previous years and
renew acquaintanceships there. No doubt some of the authors whom he
found but moderately amusing then will now win far more favor in his
sight. Meanwhile, among the fresh material history and criticism
naturally find a prominent place. Mommsen's estimate of Julius Cæsar
and Chesterton's appreciative critique of Dickens stand among the
foremost studies of great men that the world has yet produced. In
the field of poetry it is high time to spend some quiet hours with
Emerson, Browning, Shakespeare, Shelley, and Wordsworth. These five
poets represent perhaps the very best that English verse has produced
in the way of meditation--insight into the depths of nature and
humanity.
At this point the reader will do well to consider other chapters
in this Handbook, notably that on Literary Criticism, and the rest
of Part II, which deals with the general principles underlying a
fuller comprehension of literature. Part III, Studies of Great
Authors, will be of even greater help to those readers who are
finding increased pleasure in reading as students rather than for
the sake of recreation or light reading alone. By following out the
lines of thought presented in Parts II and III, especially if one
does not attempt to carry too heavy a quantity of reading at a time,
the enjoyment of books and thought will be immensely stimulated and
broadened.
ALDRICH
Poems
ALFRED THE GREAT
Poems
ASCHAM
The Schoolmaster
AUSTEN
Pride and Prejudice
BEECHER
Industry and Idleness
BERANGER
Poems
BOSWELL
Life of Johnson
BROWNING, R.
Poems
BURKE
Speech
BYRON
Poems
CHANNING
Self-culture
CHESTERTON
Dickens
DE QUINCEY
Dreams
Our Ladies of Sorrow
ELIOT
Brother Jacob
Poems
EMERSON
Poems
FARRAR
Corruption of Rome
FERRERO
Empire Building
FIELDING
Selections
FREEMAN
The World Romeless
GIBBON
Roman Empire
HAWKINS
Dolly Dialogues
HEARN
In Japan
HOLMES
The Autocrat
HOWELLS
Essay
HUNT
Autobiography
JOHNSON
Rasselas
KEATS
Poems
KIPLING
Mandalay
Man Who Would be King
LOCKHART
Life of Scott
MACAULAY
Milton
MILTON
Poems
MIRABEAU
Franklin
MOMMSEN
Julius Cæsar
MORRIS, W.
Poem
PAUSANIAS
Description of Greece
PLATO
Trial of Socrates
PLINY
Letters
POE
Poems
POPE
Poems
RILEY
Poems
ROSTAND
Cyrano
SCHILLER
Wilhelm Tell
SHAKESPEARE
Selections
SHELLEY
Poems
SHERIDAN
The Rivals
The School for Scandal
STEPHEN
Hawthorne
STEVENSON
Selections
SUETONIUS
Roman Emperors
SUMNER
Grandeur of Nations
TACITUS
The Histories
THACKERAY
Selections
WHITMAN
O Captain
WORDSWORTH
Poems
=Twenty-one and After.= During these years, through respect for
wisdom and experience, maturity rapidly quickens into being. Once
we get a few hard knocks in the battle of life, our regard for the
learning and understanding of our elders soon increases. We likewise
can enter more thoroughly into the work of such thinkers as Carlyle,
Galton, Emerson, Ruskin, Shaler, or of such poets as Chaucer and
Goethe. For these men have spent the best of their lives in studying
and probing into the causes and developments of our moods and
characters. Carlyle has given us the most terrific and stirring
account ever written of the battle that is waged in every man's soul
between the forces of good and evil. Goethe has dramatized this same
problem, revealing the wretchedness of him who only thinks of self,
who drags his nearest and dearest down to ruin simply to gratify his
lusts or his whims. Ruskin searches architecture, painting, or even
the workmanship of everyday trades in order to discover their true
merit--their greatness and their weakness. From such writings we can
learn more and yet more each time we peruse them. There is no end to
the richness and wealth of thought and experience to be gained from
these alone.
ALCOTT
Thoreau's Flute
ARNOLD, E.
Poems
BACON
Essays
BARNARD
Robin Gray
BENSON
Games
BLAKE
Poems
BOURDILLON
Light
BRYANT
Poems
BURNS
Poems
CARLYLE
Selections
CHAUCER
Poems
CHOATE
Webster
DANTE
Divine Comedy
EMERSON
Essays
EVELYN
Diary
FIELDS
Dickens
FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanac
GOETHE
Faust, etc.
GOLDSMITH
Deserted Village
HAMERTON
Intellectual Life
HARRISON
Choice of Books
HAZLITT
Great and Little Things
HEINE
The Romantic School
HENLEY
Out of the Night
IBSEN
A Doll's House
JACOPONE
Stabat Mater
JEWISH LITERATURE
The Talmud
JOUBERT
Essays
LANG
The Divining Rod
LANIER
Marshes of Glynn
LOWELL
Chaucer
LUTHER
Table Talk
Ein Feste Burg
MCCARTHY
Disasters of Cabul
MARLOWE
Dr. Faustus
MAUPASSANT
The Piece of String
MILTON
Areopagitica
MITCHELL
Dream Life
MOLIÈRE
Imaginary Invalid
ROSSETTI, D. G.
Poems
RUSKIN
Selections
SAINTE-BEUVE
Mme. de Staël
SHALER
The Last of Earth and Man
SIENKIEWICZ
Quo Vadis
STERNE
Selections
THOMAS OF CELANO
Dies Iræ
WALTON
Compleat Angler
Apart from the power to appreciate the thought itself, the reader
by this time is surely ready to take pleasure in the style of such
writers as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Matthew Arnold, Walter Pater,
Herrick, and Spenser. And with respect to the matter, he surely will
profit in the company of Sir Thomas Browne, Thomas à Kempis, Mill,
and Plato, presenting four remarkably valuable points of view in
their studies of what is most worth man's consideration. Further
reading of interest in style and in matter will be found under the
headings of "Essay," "Travel," "Drama," "Oratory," "Philosophy,"
etc., on pages 46-53 of this Handbook.
One of the chief problems of the reader deals with the question of
foreign authors. Perhaps one man in a hundred thousand can find
time to learn to read more than four languages fluently. If he is
to get in touch with the great writers of other tongues than those
which he knows, he must perforce read translations. And for most of
us translations are the only resource. The modern writers have been
translated with but slight difficulty, mainly because their views of
life are so closely akin to ours that their thoughts may be put into
English with slight trouble. But the ancients, the masters of Greek
and Roman Literature, regarded life from other standpoints than ours.
They were mainly interested in interpreting fate and the mysteries
of life. Their work, then, is for the most part philosophic, even
when presented in the form of drama or of poetry. It is so great, so
lofty in tone and so profound in its perception of everlasting truths
that we cannot afford to neglect it. But it can only be grasped by
a mature mind and by calm and patient meditation. The tragedies of
Æschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles, the poetry of Lucretius and
Cleanthes, and the meditations of Marcus Aurelius rank among the
grandest and most sublime works that mortal mind has ever achieved.
For complete lists of foreign authors, see the classified entries on
pages 28-35 of this Handbook.
THE INDEX AND THE BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES
=The Use of the Index.= The thoughtful and habitual use of the Index
will prove of more lasting benefit than any other practice associated
with reading. Not only is attention called to authors, to the titles
of selections, and to the opening lines of familiar and unfamiliar
poems, but hundreds upon hundreds of topics are there listed, dealing
with subjects of endless variety as viewed by the ablest minds of
the past and the present. Agriculture, for example, is dealt with by
ancients and moderns--among others, by Cicero and by Charles Dudley
Warner. America's development, we find, has been presented from such
diverse viewpoints as those of Ferrero, the modern Italian historian;
of Goethe, the master-poet of old Germany, as bitter a foe of Prussia
as any who live to-day; of Hamilton, the statesman-economist; of
McMaster, the historian; of Henry, the patriot orator; of Leslie
Stephen, the English critic, and other leaders of the world's
thought. The value of books, the use of chariots of war, the case
for and against Charles I of England, the nature of conversation,
the progress of the drama in ancient and in more recent times--these
topics suggest the amazing diversity of outlook.
Whether for the sake of study or merely as a pastime, every moment
employed upon the Index will prove stimulating, will open trains of
thought and furnish additional means of enjoyment that otherwise will
lie undiscovered.
These fifty pages provide an encyclopedia of intellectual
entertainment and cultivation. Through them the reader can pursue
a subject or a line of thought as nowhere else. Not the opinion of
one man, or of one nation, or of one era alone, but the best and
most valued reflections of the great men of all the ages are here
collected under every important heading on which they best expressed
themselves.
Throughout this whole work, Opportunity lies in wait, needing only
to be recognized; then, she at once enriches your life and your
usefulness. Not a page but contains thoughts, suggestions, grave
and gay, old and new, matter-of-fact or sublime,--yet all of them
leading to a more sincere and purposeful understanding of the deeds
and thoughts that make up a sound and full career. But of all these
thousands of pages and selections not any contain more hints for the
reader than the pages of the Index.
=The Use of the Biographical Sketches.= The reader who has once
grasped the inestimable value of reflecting on the books that
he meets, will naturally perceive the worth of the Biographical
Sketches that immediately precede the selections in the LIBRARY. For
although these are purposely terse, yet they have been painstakingly
constructed to supply two essential needs; first, an introduction to
the author, as well as to his best work; second, a guide to his other
works.
As has elsewhere been pointed out (pages 19, 28, 55, etc., of this
Handbook), the true appreciation and enjoyment of a writer are
unquestionably increased by understanding his personality and his
outlook on the world.
In the second place, the selections present the best and only the
best achievements of each writer. They obviously cannot include
thirty volumes of Scott's novels, for example; nor is it desirable
that the quotations from any author should extend beyond complete
passages of assured distinction. On the other hand, persons attracted
by an author's style or subject matter will naturally desire to
read more of his work and even to acquire several of his most
characteristic books. The Biographical Sketch lists his principal
writings so that you can send for them to bookseller or public
library.
THE LIBRARY OF ENTERTAINMENT will thus form the nucleus of a
collection that can become unique, in that it will not contain an
author that you have not tested before purchase. To own books that
you value and esteem unfailingly leads to reading with increased
pleasure day by day; such reading forms the purpose that lies behind
these volumes.
LITERARY CRITICISM
Criticism is a term that is commonly misused and misunderstood.
It does not mean condemnation and disapproval. It does mean sound
judgment, a careful valuation of the work under discussion, weighing
its merits and its faults; therefore it follows that sincere
criticism may be wholly free from fault-finding, provided the subject
proves to be without blemish. The criticism of Milton's minor poems,
"L'Allegro," "Il Penseroso," and "Lycidas," must be an appreciation
of their beauty and power, since they are practically faultless.
To form a trustworthy opinion regarding a piece of literature is
not difficult; all that is necessary is to make a definite, orderly
inquiry into certain essential facts.
I. The first of these concern the author himself, his surroundings,
and the influences which shaped his thoughts.
1. =The period when he lived.= Each of the great ages of literature
has its special characteristics and tendencies, without a knowledge
of which it is impossible to judge a writer's work. (These periods
are defined on p. 19 ff.) For example, if Dickens had lived in
Shakespeare's time his writings would have been very different in
form and in style; he would have probably written comedies for the
stage instead of novels.
2. =His nation.= Nationality also has strong traits that must be
taken into account. (These are stated on p. 28 ff.) If Dickens had
been a Frenchman, he would have paid more attention to the grace and
clearness of his style; if he had been a German, he would have tended
to be more philosophical in his thought, his plots would have been
deeper, and his characters less vivid.
3. =His life and immediate surroundings.= Equally significant are
the social conditions in which a man is reared, whether noble,
like Byron, or poor, like Burns; well-educated, like Macaulay, or
self-taught, like Bunyan; unfortunate and dissipated, like Poe, or
fortunate and happy, like Holmes. These facts all have a direct
bearing on the view we must take of the man's productions. Joel
Chandler Harris could never have written his amusing "Uncle Remus"
stories, if he had not spent his boyhood on a Southern plantation.
De Quincey would never have written "Our Ladies of Sorrow" if he had
not been the slave of opium. Stevenson's "Travels With a Donkey," one
of his most charming books, is due to the fact that his consumptive
tendencies compelled him to go on a walking trip in the pure and
bracing air of the mountains of southern France.
II. A second group of facts deals with the work itself.
1. =The form=; poetry, fiction, history, essay, drama, etc. (These
are discussed on p. 36 ff.)
2. =The style.= The worth of the author's work as a piece of
composition is best decided by observing the following elements,
which taken all together make up the style and quality of his writing.
What =words= does he use? Are they commonplace or do they express his
exact meaning? Are they simple, or unusual and even unintelligible?
Are they forceful or weak? etc.
How are his =sentences= constructed? Are they straightforward or
confused? Do they express a simple, direct thought or do they contain
several ideas? If complex and lengthy, are they still powerful? etc.
Are his =paragraphs= unified; that is, do they contain one leading
idea? Do they follow in systematic order, leading from one to the
other? Is the development of the author's subject easily followed?
etc.
Are the =scenes= and =characters=, the =plots= and =purposes= clearly
shown? Does it require more than one reading to find out what the
writer is trying to say? Is his work convincing? Do the characters
change, and if so, is the change natural or does it seem unreal and
artificial? Are the incidents natural or do some of the events seem
forced? If the latter, do you think the author is justified? What
is the author's aim? Has he any further purpose than that which is
immediately evident? etc.
What is the =tone= of his work? Realism? Imagination? Mystery? Charm?
Beauty? Accuracy? Delicacy? Pathos? Humor? Joy? Sarcasm? etc.
3. =The effect.= What are =your feelings= regarding the work? Do you
like it or dislike it? Why?
What is your cold =judgment= regarding it? Note that this is by no
means necessarily the same thing as what you may feel. Many people
do not care especially for Dickens or Kipling, yet they all grant
that both these authors have deserved their fame. They may not like
them, but their reason and their judgment compel admission of their
ability. It is accordingly important to ask what impression a book
makes on your feelings and on your judgment as well, and to ask why
that impression has grown upon you.
The value of this systematic consideration of a passage of literature
is manifest. The reader's knowledge is increased, and, better still,
his ability to arrive at a wise judgment of other literature is
greater than before. Efficiency in habits of thought is encouraged,
his outlook on life is broader, he becomes more fit to take a
prominent part in social and in business life, wherever judgment and
thought are needed.
PART III
STUDIES OF GREAT AUTHORS
In making use of these Studies, the reader is advised to adopt the
following method:
Read the sketches of the author in the Study and in front of the
selections and then read the selections themselves. Next answer the
questions in the Study, taking care to give reasons for each answer,
with illustrations carefully chosen from the author's work, wherever
possible. In making comparisons between authors or selections
remember that points of contrast as well as of likeness should be
considered.
Be sure to keep in mind the essentials of PART II, and refer not only
to them but to the INDEX for references to national characteristics,
history, and authors.
Further reading should be selected from the author's works given in
the notes which precede the selections and from the biographical and
critical works mentioned at the end of each Study.
ROBERT BURNS
(1759-1796)
Robert Burns was born and spent most of his life in Ayrshire, in
the lowlands of Scotland. Broad-minded, tolerant, and trusting, he
had a place in his heart for all men, whatever their failings. His
thoughtless love of good-fellowship was the principal cause of his
untimely end.
His best songs, dealing with the common life of the Lowlands and
written in the Scottish dialect, were as a rule spontaneous; though
"The Cotter's Saturday Night," probably reminiscent of his boyhood
home, is a more finished and careful production.
He is the greatest of Scotch poets. Since Shakespeare there has been
no better interpreter of the human heart.
THE MAN
1. Why is Burns called the Ayrshire Bard? Locate Ayrshire on the
map.
2. From what rank of society did Burns come?
3. What was his attitude toward the humbler classes of society?
II, 379. Toward men in general?
4. What can you say as to his patriotism?
5. Was he a favorite with the public?
6. See Carlyle's opinion of his reception by the public, III, 55;
of his worth, III, 102.
7. To what may we ascribe his rapid decline and early death?
8. What do you judge his views would be as to the merits of
Romanticism and Classicism?
STYLE AND WORKS
1. What portion of Great Britain is the scene of most of Burns'
poems?
2. Were they the product of deliberate art or spontaneous impulse?
3. Have his poems any great influence at the present time?
4. Is his best work in English or in the Scotch dialect? Explain
why?
5. Do you consider it worth while to master the difficulties of
the dialect?
6. What is your opinion as to the love element in his poetry?
7. There have been but few better interpreters of nature.
8. Like many a Scotchman of his day he seems to have had a full
appreciation of the joys of conviviality.
9. Had Burns the element of humor in any marked degree?
10. Compare his songs with those of Shakespeare, Jonson, Byron,
Shelley, and Tennyson; for feeling, polish, and power.
"THE COTTER'S SATURDAY NIGHT"
1. Is the scene laid in the Highlands or the Lowlands?
2. Does the fact that the poem is written in the Scotch dialect
add to or detract from its beauty? The mingling of literary
language and dialect is intentional; discuss the value of this.
3. Would you judge Burns to have been at heart a religious man?
4. What comparison does the author draw between Scotch and
Italian songs?
5. What contrast is drawn between the worship of the poor and
that of the rich?
6. To what does Burns ascribe the grandeur of Scotland?
7. Compare with the "Deserted Village" and the "Elegy in a
Country Churchyard," in purpose and in style. Which of the three
breathes the greatest moral earnestness?
8. "The Cotter's Saturday Night" is a typical poem of the latter
half of the eighteenth century. What other poems of the period
resemble it in their treatment of rural life? VI, 94, 106.
9. Does the poem belong to the Age of Classicism or Romanticism
or both; in what respects?
10. For other pictures of Scotch life and character see the
selections from Barrie, Scott, and Watson.
FOR REFERENCE
"Life of Robert Burns."--CUNNINGHAM.
"Modern Idols; Studies in Biography and Criticism."--THORNE.
"Critical and Miscellaneous Essays."--CARLYLE.
"The Burns Country."--DOUGALL.
"The Ayrshire Homes and Haunts of Burns."--SHELLEY.
SIR WALTER SCOTT
(1771-1832)
Scott first achieved success as a poet; but as his fame began to pale
before the rising star of Byron, he wisely dropped verse and appeared
as a writer of fiction, in which he was far more successful. Some
critics consider "Ivanhoe" the greatest romance ever written. Many
of his early novels are of almost equal merit. With "Woodstock" and
"Anne of Geierstein," a decline in his powers is perceptible.
Scott may be considered the founder of the historical novel, and it
is doubtful if he has ever been excelled. His scenes of medieval life
are somewhat overdrawn, it is true, though possibly no more so than
the requirements of successful fiction demanded.
Several of his ancestors had taken a prominent part in the warfare of
the Border, a fact which largely accounts for his great interest in
Scottish legend.
He earned more by his writings than any other literary man of
the period. At his country seat, Abbotsford, he entertained with
lavish hospitality. It became a resort of scholars; and Washington
Irving and many other Americans visited him there. He lived and
died practically without an enemy, even Byron, who assailed him so
bitterly at one time, being won over by his magnanimity. He refused
the post of poet laureate in favor of his friend Southey.
His publishing house failing in 1828 with a shortage of over half a
million, Scott chivalrously devoted the last six years of his life to
the payment of the debt, a feat which he had almost accomplished when
death overtook him.
Although among the first and best of the prose writers of the
Romantic period and a decided follower of the Romantic principles in
his work, yet Scott was so conservative in politics and so patriotic
a supporter of monarchy that the revolutionary spirit of the French
Revolution and the passion for liberty that inspired many authors of
the day had slight influence on him.
THE MAN
1. What fact in Scott's family history explains his great
interest in Scottish history and tradition?
2. What were his earnings from his writings as compared with
those of other writers of his time?
3. Would you consider his tastes democratic or the reverse? See
illustration opposite X, 388. See also Thackeray's account of him
under the title of the Baron of Bradwardine, XII, 66.
4. How did Scott bear himself toward contemporary poets?
5. Your opinion as to his hospitality? His charity? His industry?
VIII, 206.
6. What striking event in Scott's life conclusively shows him to
have been a man of honor?
7. By what appellation is he often known? XI, 289.
8. His fondness for dumb animals was proverbial. VIII, 208.
STYLE AND WORKS
1. In what branch of literature did Scott first achieve
distinction? Why did he abandon it for fiction?
2. Why did the revolutionary wave which so powerfully affected
his contemporaries, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, and Southey,
leave Scott unaffected?
3. In whose favor did Scott decline the honor of being appointed
poet laureate?
4. From what sources did he derive the materials for his poems?
I, 181.
5. Of his three best poems, "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" is
considered the most natural, "Marmion," the most powerful, and
"The Lady of the Lake," the most romantic and picturesque.
6. Which is esteemed his greatest novel? Mention two novels which
seem to indicate a decline in his powers.
7. Was he greater in verse or in fiction?
8. Do Scott's works give a true picture of the times to which
they relate?
9. Manzoni, Dumas, and Hugo all owe much to Scott. Compare their
work.
10. Is Scott more intent on his narrative and general scenes, or
on drawing characters clearly and describing their development
and change?
11. Compare Scott with Dickens, Eliot, and Balzac as regards the
traits mentioned in question 10.
"THE LADY OF THE LAKE"
1. Had Fitz-James formerly visited Roderick Dhu's dominions?
2. What was his errand this time?
3. What period in Scottish history do you understand to be
covered by the poem?
4. Is the sense of honor and hospitality towards strangers
characteristic of the Highland Scotch?
5. Draw a comparison between the fate of the Highlanders and that
of the American Indian. X, 385.
6. In what sense are the terms "Gael" and "Saxon" used?
7. Why does Fitz-James hesitate to fight with Roderick Dhu after
being safely led beyond the Coilantogle Ford?
8. In the combat was the victory won by physical strength or
skill in the use of weapons?
9. Which is the hero, Fitz-James or Roderick Dhu, and why?
10. Byron surpassed Scott in poetry; can you see how? Compare the
two.
FOR REFERENCE
"Famous English Authors of the Nineteenth Century."--BOLTON.
"Sir Walter Scott."--CROCKETT AND CAW.
"Edinburgh under Sir Walter Scott."--FYFE.
"Life of Sir Walter Scott."--LOCKHART.
"In the Days of Scott."--JENKS.
"Sir Walter Scott."--LANG.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
(1770-1850)
Wordsworth, the first of the English poets of Romanticism, came of
age just as the storm of the French Revolution broke over Europe. In
1791, after he had taken his degree at Cambridge University, he went
to France, where he spent nearly a year, fascinated by the struggle
for freedom, and only returned when his friends stopped his allowance
and so compelled him to withdraw from danger.
He deliberately chose poetry as his profession, working with
Coleridge for the purpose of establishing new laws of poetic
composition. In 1798 they published a little volume, the "Lyrical
Ballads," which marked a radical departure from the artificial and
affected style of the latter days of the Classic Age. (See also notes
on Coleridge, p. 70 of this volume.)
He eventually settled in the Lake District, in the north-west of
England, where Coleridge and Southey, the other two 'Lake Poets,'
spent many years. His income was a mere trifle, but he and his sister
Dorothy lived in tranquil simplicity on the borders of Grasmere
until his circumstances improved. In 1802 he was able to marry and
soon after he moved to Rydal Mount, a larger abode near by, and also
overlooking a stretch of water enclosed by the heathery mountains.
Here he spent the last thirty-eight years of his life, dying at the
age of eighty. Almost all the greater writers of his day were among
his friends and acquaintances.
As a lover of nature, delighting in travel amid lovely scenery, he
found his answer to the problem of life in the tranquillity and ever
present spirit of law and duty which he perceived in all nature's
forms. For him the presence of God was manifest in fields and
mountains, in flowers and brooks, as much as in the lives of men and
women.
Poetry, in his conception, was the preservation of impressions in
such form that when read it would again create those impressions.
Its language should be extremely simple, hardly departing from that
of everyday life and conversation. The petty incidents of daily
experience for him often contained such deep suggestions of beauty
and good that he recorded them at length.
It was this utter simplicity of attitude and tone that made him the
object of slashing criticism for some time. An absolute innovator,
his work was as absurd in the eyes of the critics as the wildest
freaks of the cubists are to us. At last he became a subject of
discussion instead of ridicule, then of praise, and finally of
lasting fame. Yet much of his work is far better unread to-day; only
in his earlier verse, when the inspiration of youth and the freshness
of his message still urged him, is there any true greatness evident.
His later work, like his later years, is cold and conservative. He
made no further progress, once he had given expression to his first
radical ideas. This tendency was rebuked by Browning in "The Lost
Leader."
THE MAN
1. Did Wordsworth take an active part in the life of his time? I,
180.
2. How did Browning look on this side of his character? II, 265.
3. What two poets were intimately associated with Wordsworth?
III, 310; XI, 221.
4. The following illustrations are closely associated with his
life and work: III, _Frontispiece_, 322; IV, 178; XI, 228; XII,
_Frontispiece_, 324.
5. What influences molded his ideas of poetry and life?
6. How does his length of life compare with that of his
contemporaries, Byron, Keats, Shelley, Southey, Lamb, and De
Quincey?
7. Is it customary for a person to grow more conservative with
age?
STYLE AND WORKS
1. Are his poems uniformly of good quality? III, 265.
2. What peculiarly English characteristic is present in them?
VIII, 272.
3. State Wordsworth's historical position in literature.
4. Name some of his choicest short poems.
5. With what school of poets is he classed?
6. What element predominates in Wordsworth's poetry?
7. What elements detract from his power, in your opinion?
8. How do you rank him among nineteenth century poets?
9. Does he fulfil his idea of poetry in his work?
10. Read "The Daffodils," 339, and "Upon Westminster Bridge,"
354. These are two of his best short poems. Which do you prefer?
Why?
"ODE ON INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY
CHILDHOOD"
1. How does a child view his surroundings?
2. Why cannot an adult see the same objects in like manner?
3. Is the Soul in existence before the body which it is to
inhabit?
4. What forces are constantly at work to crush and suppress a
child's imaginative power?
5. In what way is the shepherd boy the embodiment of joy?
6. What phases of Nature are most attractive to all people in
general?
7.
"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That stands and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more." ("Macbeth")
Find passages in Wordsworth's poem which contradict this
sentiment.
8. Is this the best of his poems here selected? Why?
9. Is the simplicity of style effective? How?
10. Contrast with "We are Seven"; why is there so marked a
simplicity in the lesser poem?
FOR REFERENCE
"Wordsworth" ("English Men of Letters").--MYERS.
"Story-Lives of Great Authors."--ROWBOTHAM.
"Essays in Criticism."--ARNOLD.
"Biographia Literaria."--COLERIDGE.
"The Makers of Modern English."--DAWSON.
"Essays on the Poets."--DE QUINCEY.
"The Age of Wordsworth" ("Handbooks of English
Literature").--HERFORD.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
(1772-1834)
A victim of the opium habit after the age of thirty and by nature
irresolute and dreamy, Coleridge led a wandering life, leaving his
family with his friend Southey.
Most of his poetry, small in volume, though unexcelled in quality,
was written before he was thirty, "The Ancient Mariner," his first
poem, having been composed at the age of twenty-four. After this he
devoted himself for the most part to metaphysical speculation of no
permanent value.
He excelled all other writers of his day in dealing with the
supernatural. "The Ancient Mariner," his masterpiece, is a successful
attempt to revive the metrical ballad of the middle ages. By the use
of rubrics the medieval effect is heightened, while the introduction
of the wedding guest relieves the credibility of the reader by making
of an improbable account simply 'a tale that is told.'
He lived for some time at Keswick in Cumberland near its group
of celebrated lakes, where Wordsworth and Southey also resided,
and hence the appellation of "Lake Poets," given to the three
distinguished friends.
Joining with Wordsworth in 1798 in the publication of a little volume
of verse, "Lyrical Ballads," he became one of the first to give voice
to the movement known as Romanticism.
THE MAN
1. What influence had Coleridge on the literature of his day?
2. What is said of him as a conversationalist? As a critic? III,
92 ff.
3. Why is he known as one of the "Lake Poets"?
4. Was he more useful to his friends than they to him, or _vice
versa_?
5. To what do you attribute the early decline of his poetic
powers?
6. What other English writer of the same period was addicted to
the opium habit? IV, 171.
7. What great mental defect militated most against Coleridge's
success? III, 94.
8. What traits of character especially endeared him to his
friends?
9. What can you say of his religious faith? III, 91.
STYLE AND WORKS
1. What poets constituted the "Lake School," and from what lakes
was the term derived?
2. Name his three principal poems.
3. What can you say as to the volume of his poetry?
4. Between what years was most of it written?
5. Are his other works--philosophical, religious, and
critical--quoted to-day?
6. In what one element does Coleridge outdistance the other poets
of his day?
7. Read the poems by Wordsworth, XII, 332-339; these were
published in the volume, "Lyrical Ballads," with "The Ancient
Mariner"; how are they characteristic of Romanticism?
8. "Kubla Khan," like Poe's "Raven," has frequently been
attributed to an opium vision. This cannot be proved, but it
is well known that he dreamed these lines and many more which
he forgot before he could write them down. In character it is
closely akin to De Quincey's account of opium dreams, IV, 171 ff.
"THE ANCIENT MARINER"
1. How old was Coleridge when he wrote the poem?
2. What led him to write it?
3. In writing the poem did Coleridge draw his inspiration from
classical, medieval, or modern sources?
4. Where is the scene laid?
5. What is the purpose of the rubrics or running commentary in
the margin?
6. Why is the wedding guest introduced, and what is the purpose
of the constant interruptions in the narrative?
7. Look up the term "albatross" in reference works.
8. What punishment was inflicted on the Ancient Mariner for
having shot the Albatross?
9. What broke the spell which had been cast upon him?
10. What would the repeated allusion to the mariner's "glittering
eye," seem to indicate?
11. The moral which this tale is supposed to teach?
FOR REFERENCE
"Coleridge" ("Bell's Miniature Series.")--GARNETT.
"Coleridge" ("Lives of Famous Poets.")--ROSSETTI.
"Selected Poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge."--GEORGE.
"S. T. Coleridge; a Narrative of the Events of his
Life."--CAMPBELL.
"Selections from the Poets; Coleridge."--LANG.
"Table Talk" ("Bohn's Standard Library")--Ed. ASHE.
GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON
(1788-1824)
George Gordon, sixth Lord Byron, was born in London. His father,
a profligate captain of the guards, having squandered most of his
wife's property, she parted from him, retiring on a small income to
Aberdeen, Scotland. In his eleventh year, however, the son inherited
the title and estate of his grand-uncle, and the mother and son left
Scotland and settled down at Newstead Abbey, near Nottingham, in
Sherwood Forest.
Byron prepared for the university at Harrow and then went to
Cambridge, where he published "Hours of Idleness," a volume of verse
of no merit that brought down the unduly savage review of Brougham,
to which Byron replied anonymously with "English Bards and Scotch
Reviewers," a dashing satire that he later suppressed, when he became
a friend of many whom he there held up to ridicule.
Soon after receiving his M.A. he made a two years' tour of Portugal,
Spain, Albania, and Greece, composing meanwhile the first two
cantos of "Childe Harold," published in 1812. So immediate was its
success that he literally "woke up one morning and found himself
famous." Though not so fine as the last two cantos, yet they are
full of the new spirit of Romanticism. The poetic tales of "The
Giaour," "The Bride of Abydos," "The Corsair," and "Lara" followed
in quick succession. All this time he had felt financial pressure
and several of his friends had died, including his mother, whom he
loved notwithstanding her uncertain temper, so that his life had
by no means been happy, and the cynical tone of much of his verse
was a direct expression of his feelings. His health was also marred
by a tendency to corpulence which he tried to check by a rigid and
scanty diet, while a deformed foot gave him both pain and constant
embarrassment.
It is true that he was given to the dissipation then so rife in
England, yet although a libertine from the modern point of view,
there is not sufficient reason for the bitterly relentless tone
adopted by many biographers and critics. He determined to remedy
matters by marrying, but the experiment proved unfortunate, the
couple separated and at the outburst of public indignation that
followed, though unjustified, Byron went into voluntary exile, never
to return.
Most of his subsequent life was spent at various places in Italy,
where he completed "Childe Harold," and wrote "Don Juan" and a number
of shorter poems, and tried his hand at drama. For a time he worked
together with Leigh Hunt and Shelley at Pisa.
His life in Italy was licentious, a tendency that colored his later
works, notably "Don Juan"; although his intellectual powers would
seem to have grown up to the time of his premature death.
The close of his life went far toward redeeming his wayward career.
He flew to the assistance of the Greeks struggling for independence
from the barbaric Turkish rule, and devoted his means and his life
to their service. Finding them at sixes and sevens among themselves,
he showed the qualities of a statesman and soldier and soon brought
order out of chaos. But a few months' exposure led to a fever from
which he died.
THE MAN
1. To what is the so-called "satanic" element in his life to be
ascribed?
2. Where were Byron's early years spent?
3. In what manner did he acquire Oriental coloring for his poetic
romances?
4. What led to his withdrawal from England?
5. Among his intimate friends were Moore and Shelley; Leigh
Hunt, Scott, and Coleridge were also appreciative acquaintances.
Compare their work with his.
6. Give the circumstances of his death.
7. Goethe refers to Byron's love of exercise. IV, 398.
8. He seems to have been something of a dandy and a snob, but
with redeeming features. VII, 38; XII, 89.
9. Why is his life, as well as his work, typical of the extreme
tendency of the Romantic Period?
10. Read Hunt's account of Byron. VII, 217 ff.
STYLE AND WORKS
1. Give Matthew Arnold's estimate of Byron. I, 190.
2. Was he as fully equipped as Tennyson for the position of the
supreme modern poet? I, 191.
3. Does Chesterton's estimate of Byron coincide with that of
Arnold? III, 267.
4. As to Goethe's views of Byron's pictorial powers, see IV, 388.
5. In his choice of themes, did he favor cheerful subjects? IV,
388.
6. Was Byron's early death a real loss to literature? IV, 399.
7. Why were Byron's tragedies his least successful performances?
VIII, 357.
8. Is his fame destined to endure? I, 181.
9. Why did Byron fail, while Spenser succeeded, in applying the
spirit of his age to English literature? I, 180.
10. What characteristics of Romanticism appear in his work?
Contrast it with that of Pope and Goldsmith. Compare it with
Burns.
FROM "CHILDE HAROLD"
1. The selections from "Childe Harold" represent Byron at his
best in spirit and in style.
2. "Greece"; why does Byron use the phrase, "sad relic of
departed worth"?
3. "Waterloo"; show how the poet by skilful changes in wording,
as well as in choice of expressions, works steadily to the climax
of the last line. Note the breaks and varied measure of the
metrical rhythm.
4. Contrast the feeling in "Venice" and in "Rome"; in which is it
more melancholy; more profound; more sentimental; more forceful?
Why?
5. Which impresses you more, "The Dying Gladiator" or "Laocoon
and Apollo"? Which of these pieces of statuary do you think Byron
was most affected by? Why?
6. "Solitude" and "The Ocean" are famous examples of the Byronic
attitude toward nature. Is this the same as Wordsworth's or
Shelley's, apart from the difference in their styles?
7. Does Byron ever leave his own emotions and personality out
of his work? Compare him in this respect with Goldsmith, Gray,
Bryant, Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Longfellow. Write down the
dates of their births and draw conclusions.
FOR REFERENCE
"Famous English Authors."--BOLTON.
"Recollections of a Long Life."--BROUGHTON.
"The Love Affairs of Lord Byron."--GRIBBLE.
"Byron."--MAYNE.
"With Byron in Italy."--MCMAHAN.
"Essays in Criticism."--ARNOLD.
"Byron and Byronism in America."--LEONARD.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
(1792-1822)
Shelley was from his earliest youth equally distinguished by poetic
gifts of the highest order and by a reckless and ungovernable
disposition. After thorough preliminary education, he was sent to
Oxford, where he displayed rare literary talent, but from which he
was expelled for publishing a tract on "The Necessity of Atheism."
After eloping with the sixteen-year-old daughter of a retired
tavern-keeper, Harriet Westbrook, whom he married in Scotland, he
led a wandering life for a time until his financial position was
improved upon his coming of age in 1813. By this time he and his
wife had become estranged, and Shelley eloped with Mary Godwin and
settled on the Continent. Two years later his wife committed suicide
by drowning, and when Shelley attempted to secure the custody of his
two children, it was denied him. Shelley now left England for good,
visited one Italian city after another, and finally settled down at
Pisa. Keats, Byron, and Hunt were among his close friends. "Adonais"
is an elegy to Keats's memory.
His poems may be divided into two classes. In the first class we
have his three long poems, "Queen Mab," "The Revolt of Islam," and
"Prometheus Unbound," each an attempt to apply the revolutionary
principles of the period. In these he displays a progressive
improvement, appearing at his best in "Prometheus Unbound."
The second class, embracing "Alastor," "Adonais," and many shorter
poems, includes his subjective works. They exceed in melody and
illusive and mysterious beauty anything else of the century. The
spirit of freedom and the spirit of beauty were the subjects of his
muse.
With some faults he had much beauty of character. He was beloved
by all who knew him. He was kindness itself and spent much of
his time dispensing charity among the poor, even to the point
of self-deprivation. Easily excited to indignation at the least
suspicion of oppression or wrong, he was at other times the gentlest
of men.
THE MAN
1. In what respect was Shelley preëminently a child of the French
Revolution?
2. Compare his religious influence with that of Tennyson. XII, 6.
3. Give an account of his unfortunate marriages.
4. What may be said in his defense?
5. In what respect were the lives of Keats and Shelley similar?
6. Read Hunt's account of his death and cremation. VII, 220 ff.
7. Was Shelley irreligious? VII, 223 ff.
STYLE AND WORKS
1. In what three poems does Shelley outline his views on human
society?
2. Will his name outlast the interest in his writings? I, 181.
3. Why did Shelley fail in his attempt to apply freely the modern
spirit to literature? I, 180.
4. With what great poems is "Adonais" classified, and why? IX,
105; XII, 47.
5. What qualities characterize his shorter poems?
6. In what respects does he outrank all subsequent poets? XI, 95.
7. State the qualities in which he resembles Keats. VII, 380.
"TO A SKYLARK" AND OTHER POEMS
1. Where does the skylark remain while singing?
2. Which of the numerous similes that Shelley uses do you think
most appropriate in a description of the skylark?
3. What are the qualities of the skylark's song which make it so
famous?
4. To what does Shelley ascribe the unexcelled beauty of the
bird's music?
5. Is the skylark a native of America? (See encyclopedia.)
6. Compare this with Wordsworth's "To a Skylark," XII, 340, in
language and style, and in spirit.
7. "The Ode to the West Wind" and "The Cloud" are especially
characteristic of Shelley in his loftier flights of imaginative
beauty. Compare them with Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale" and "Ode
on a Grecian Urn," VII, 381, 383. Which of these is most vivid;
which most musical?
8. "Arethusa" and "The Invitation," are among his more vigorous
light verse.
9. Compare the powerful sonnet, "England in 1819," with Milton's
sonnet "On His Blindness," IX, 119; and with Wordsworth's
sonnets, XII, 353, 354.
10. In his day Shelley was regarded by many as an atheist; an
opinion which is no longer generally held. Does his work indicate
atheism to your mind?
11. Much of his work is impalpable, has insufficient strength
to grip any but a mind with delicate powers of perception. Find
examples of this characteristic.
FOR REFERENCE
"Famous English Authors."--BOLTON.
"Shelley, the Man and the Poet."--CLUTTON-BROCK.
"Romantic life of Shelley."--GRIBBLE.
"Literary Studies."--BAGEHOT.
"Studies in Poetry."--BROOKE.
"Essays on the Poets."--DE QUINCEY.
"Leigh Hunt's Relations with Byron, Shelley, and Keats."--MILLER.
JOHN KEATS
(1795-1821)
The son of an hostler in a livery-stable, with only a partial
education, John Keats certainly would not be chosen as a possible
equal of Shelley, Byron, Wordsworth, or Coleridge. Yet such was his
genius that he attained this position with no other training than
came from his love of reading, especially in the fields of mythology
and poetry.
After a few years at school he was apprenticed to a surgeon, and
studied at the hospitals for a time, but disliking the profession
he gave himself up to reading and then to authorship. Shakespeare,
Wordsworth, the Italian poets, and later, Milton, were among his
favorites. He was well built and strong, yet exposure brought on
consumption in 1818, shortly after the publication of "Endymion."
Whether the decline in his health was due to the violent attacks upon
his poem by the reviewers or to the fact that he nursed a consumptive
brother for the three months preceding the latter's death is still
considered an open question by many. Shelley and Byron were bitter
against the reviews and attributed his steady decline to that source
alone. Meanwhile he worked on his last and greatest poems, while
his health went to pieces. When it was too late for hope he sailed
to Italy with his friend Severn, in whose arms he died a few months
later. Not quite two years afterward Shelley's remains were laid
beside him in the Protestant Cemetery at Rome, and in 1881 Severn,
too, found his last resting-place there.
The epitaph which Keats had inscribed on his tomb,
"Here lies one whose name was writ in water,"
is happily proved false. Even to-day it is probable that he has not
reached the highest recognition which he is to win in the world of
poetry.
The one idea at the foundation of all his writings is the
much-quoted phrase which begins "Endymion,"--"A thing of beauty
is a joy forever," or as he expressed it in the "Ode on a Grecian
Urn,"--"Beauty is truth." He is the poet of the senses, luxuriant,
yet sublime. The Odes, "The Eve of St. Agnes," and "Hyperion" are
hardly to be matched in the whole realm of English poetry. Strange
to say Keats never studied Greek, leaving school before he reached
that subject. Yet his work is nearer that of the Greeks in its
exquisite balance of reason and feeling, in its absolute appreciation
of beauty, and in purity of tone and style, nearer than that of all
other English writers. But this is only true of his best work; in his
other verse he lacks in taste and proportion, lavishing description
without measure on every object of any charm.
THE MAN
1. What was Keats's origin and education?
2. How do you explain his poetic talent?
3. Who were his contemporaries?
4. What was the probable reason for his early death?
5. What other poets of his time also died at an early age?
6. Where is he buried and with whom?
7. Are modern book reviews commonly unjust or harsh?
8. Shelley's "Adonais" was written as an elegy on Keats, and is
more like Keats's own work than any other of his poems. See if
you can trace the resemblance in style.
STYLE AND WORKS
1. Keats belongs to the Romantic school, yet he is so great as to
possess certain characteristics of the Classic. What are they?
2. What are the best lines in each of the selections? Why?
3. What are the leading differences between Keats and Shelley in
style and thought?
4. In the "Ode to a Nightingale" there are several lines which
might easily have been taken from Shakespeare, they are so
similar to his style: can you find any of them?
5. Have you ever seen a Grecian urn or vase? (See encyclopedia or
other reference work for illustrations.)
6. What English poet, much read by Keats, is suggested by
"Hyperion"?
7. Judging by "Hyperion," did Keats possess narrative power?
8. Compare Keats with Wordsworth and Swinburne. Which do you
prefer and why?
9. How does Arnold sum up Keats's work? I, 181.
"THE EVE OF ST. AGNES"
1. How many stanzas are introductory?
2. Trace the growing sense of action in these.
3. Is Porphyro like Romeo? How?
4. At what general period in history does the action occur?
5. Is the narrative or descriptive quality predominant?
6. Note that the poet appeals to each of the senses.
7. Give examples of Keats's eye for color.
8. Is this poem superior to the two Odes? Why?
FOR REFERENCE
"Keats" ("English Men of Letters").--COLVIN.
"Studies in Interpretation."--HUDSON.
"Life, Letters, and Literary Remains."--MILNES.
"John Keats: a Study."--OWEN.
"John Keats. A Literary Biography."--HANCOCK.
"Studies in Poetry."--BROOKE.
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
(1809-1892)
Alfred Tennyson, generally accounted the greatest English poet since
Milton, was born at Somersby, Lincolnshire, where his early studies
were for the most part personally directed by his father, the rector
of the parish. He then studied at Cambridge, where "The Lady of
Shalott" and "A Dream of Fair Women," were written.
Criticism and the death of a dearly loved friend, Arthur Hallam, now
drove the tender-souled Tennyson into a retirement from which he
did not reappear for nine years. He was busy during all this time,
composing and perfecting "Locksley Hall," "Dora," "Morte D'Arthur,"
and other poems whose publication placed him in the front rank as a
poet. "The Princess" followed in 1847 and "In Memoriam," his noblest
work, an elegy on the death of Arthur Hallam, in 1850, seventeen
years after his friend's decease.
In the same year he was appointed poet laureate and married a Miss
Sellwood. Nine years later appeared his great epic cycle, "Idylls
of the King." In 1884 he was raised to the peerage. "Crossing the
Bar," published shortly before his death, was a fitting close to a
literary life nobly consecrated to the combat against skepticism and
materialism.
THE MAN
1. Would you place Tennyson among the aristocracy of England? He
is known as "Alfred, Lord Tennyson": was he of noble extraction?
2. What position did he hold at the Court of St. James?
3. Who preceded and who succeeded him as poet laureate? XII, 324;
I, 235.
4. How may we account for his strong religious bent?
5. Locate on the map two districts intimately connected with the
life of Tennyson, Lincolnshire and the Isle of Wight.
6. Compare England in his lifetime with conditions in the days of
Byron and Shelley. XI, 434 ff.
STYLE AND WORKS
1. What poems are classed with "In Memoriam" as the great elegies
of English Literature? VI, 106; IX, 105; XI, 95.
2. What great contribution did Tennyson make to epic poetry?
3. From what sources did Tennyson derive the material for his
"Idylls of the King"? VIII, 262; IX, 15.
4. Which of his poems was instrumental in establishing his
reputation? XII, 5.
5. What poem indicates his religious feeling?
6. Name some of his best early poems.
7. In memory of whom was "In Memoriam" written?
8. Name three works based on the Arthurian legend; two dealing
with the romance of common life; and two dealing with immortality.
9. What are the principal excellences of his style?
10. Compare "The Revenge" with Raleigh's account of the battle,
X, 124, from which Tennyson took his facts and even his phrases.
What does this show with regard to Raleigh's power as an author?
FROM "IN MEMORIAM"
1. Find the two stanzas which contain the central thought on
which the poem is based.
2. What attitude did Tennyson take in regard to his friend's
death?
3. Why does nature fail to comfort human beings in this type of
sorrow?
4. Was Tennyson interested in social and political problems?
5. To what Scriptural event yet to be fulfilled does "Ring in the
Christ that is to be" refer?
6. What traits of character does Tennyson exhibit in this poem?
7. The marriage introduced toward the close of the poem helps
to present Tennyson's eventual reconciliation with the earthly
separation from his friend.
8. In this marriage scene is Tennyson addressing his dead friend,
or other persons? What phrases refer unmistakably to Hallam?
FOR REFERENCE
"Tennyson and his Friends."--TENNYSON.
"The Story of the Idylls of the King."--MCFEE.
"Essays in Biography and Criticism."--BAYNE.
"Tennyson, his Homes, his Friends and his Work."--CARY.
"Literary Leaders of Modern England."--DAWSON.
"Men I Have Known."--FARRAR.
"Poets in the Pulpit."--HAWEIS.
"Nature Knowledge in Modern Poetry."--MACKIE.
"The Poetry of Tennyson."--VAN DYKE.
"Tennyson" ("English Men of Letters Series").--LYALL.
ROBERT BROWNING
(1812-1889)
Of German descent, Browning was, like so many other famous English
writers, a native of London. His father was a ready versifier and
his mother an accomplished musician, and they encouraged in every
possible manner the appearance of like talent in their son. In
his youth he drank deep of those fountains of romanticism, Byron,
Shelley, and Keats.
His schooling finished and the tour of the Continent made, he devoted
his life to literature, producing a number of dramatic poems of more
or less merit. It was not, however, until the period 1841 to 1846
that, by the publication of the series of poems entitled "Bells
and Pomegranates," which included "Pippa Passes," he attained any
great literary fame. The latter play attracted the attention of Miss
Barrett, and led to an acquaintance which resulted in their marriage
in 1846.
The Brownings left at once for Florence, Italy, where they led an
ideal married life until the death of Mrs. Browning in 1861. Like his
wife, he took a great interest in Italy, and after her death his time
was divided between England, where his son was being educated, and
Italy. In the years immediately following Mrs. Browning's death, he
composed "The Ring and the Book," a long epic poem commonly accounted
his masterpiece; he continued writing until his death in 1889, his
last work being published as he lay on his deathbed.
Browning was a short, stocky, active man, mingling freely with all
classes of society and totally unlike the generality of poets. His
works largely reflect the man, one noticeable feature being the
entire absence of poetic melancholy.
Browning and Tennyson loomed above all the other poets of their
day, and their comparative merits were a fertile source of argument
even then. Both men were, however, too large to be affected by such
considerations, and their relations were always of the most cordial
nature.
Browning is deeply analytic, a trait perhaps derived from his German
ancestors along with his peculiarities of syntax and vocabulary and
his obscurity of expression. The latter characteristic has largely
discouraged the general public, so that the reading of Browning is
limited to people with a literary turn. His poetry is, however, well
worth the reading. He is by far the deepest poet of the nineteenth
century. He leaves environment to lesser poets and concentrates all
his energies upon man himself, his passions and emotions. His nature
is essentially dramatic, and had he devoted himself strictly to
drama, instead of lyric verse, he doubtless would have been far more
appreciated by the public. His poetic monologues, such as "Andrea del
Sarto," "Confessions," and "Prospice," dramatic in nature, are rather
hampered and confusing because of their form.
THE MAN
1. In what place was Robert Browning born?
2. Account for his musical and poetic proclivities.
3. What incident led to his union with Elizabeth Barrett Browning?
4. Florence has what connection with the lives of the Brownings?
5. Describe Browning's life after the death of his wife.
6. Give a description of his general appearance.
7. What personal relations did Browning and Tennyson sustain
toward one another?
8. Who were the leading American contemporaries of Browning? II,
293; VIII, 253; XII, 301.
9. Give "Ouida's" opinion of Browning's moral courage. VIII, 107.
STYLE AND WORKS
1. When did Browning first begin to write poetry?
2. When were his last works written?
3. Upon what models were the poems of his youth written?
4. Which is considered his masterpiece?
5. In what characteristic is he preëminent among
nineteenth-century poets?
6. State the defects in his style.
7. Why is it proper to say that Browning is essentially dramatic?
8. State the limitations on Browning's popularity.
9. What form of verse in which Mrs. Browning was preëminent was
never attempted by Robert Browning? II, 239, 251.
10. Compare the styles of Browning and Tennyson as shown in
"Hervé Riel" and "The Revenge," XII, 39.
"ANDREA DEL SARTO"
1. In what country is this scene laid?
2. Can you name a few contemporaneous artists?
3. Had Andrea Del Sarto attained distinction as a painter yet?
4. How do an artist's circumstances very often affect his
paintings?
5.
"When the young man was flaming out his thoughts
Upon a palace-wall for Rome to see"
What great work of Raphael's do these lines suggest?
6. Explain the following quotation of Agnolo's:
"Friend, there's a certain sorry little scrub
Goes up and down our Florence, none cares how,
Who, were he set to plan and execute
As you are, pricked on by your popes and kings,
Would bring the sweat into that brow of yours!"
7. Account for the different spelling of the artist's names
(_e.g._ Rafael for Raphael, etc.).
FOR REFERENCE
"Browning, Poet and Man."--CARY.
"Robert Browning."--DOWDEN.
"The Brownings, Their Life and Art."--WHITING.
"Browning's Verse-Form."--BEATTY.
"Browning and the Christian Faith."--BERDOE.
"Literary Leaders of Modern England."--DAWSON.
"Robert Browning."--CHESTERTON.
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
(1809-1861)
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, easily first among English poets of
her sex, was born in Durham. The daughter of a rich retired India
merchant, she was remarkably precocious, reading Homer in the
original, and writing verse at the age of eight years.
In 1836 the family removed to London, where she commenced her
life-work. Despite the fact that she was a chronic invalid, she
was familiar with the language and literature of several nations.
Her poems of this period reflect her deep interest in social and
humanitarian questions.
At this very time, when her fame far exceeded his, Robert Browning
called on her to thank her for a compliment paid him in one of her
poems. It seems to have been a case of love at first sight. They were
married in 1846 and soon removed to Florence, Italy.
The "Sonnets from the Portuguese," among the world's noblest love
poems, contain the record of her courtship and marriage.
In Italy she regained her health somewhat, and it was here that most
of her best works were written. She took a great interest in the
cause of Italian independence, as appears from "Casa Guidi Windows,"
and many lesser poems.
Although she began to write at an early age, she reached maturity
slowly, producing her best works only after her fortieth year. She
died in 1861.
Her characteristic note is that of sympathy, but her insight into
human character was not particularly deep. The greatest faults in
her style are vagueness and lack of self-restraint, probably to be
attributed to her extremely sensitive temperament and overflowing
imagination.
In the "Sonnets" these faults are not so noticeable, the rigid rules
of that species of verse restraining her within bounds.
THE WOMAN
1. How does she rank among the women writers and especially the
poets of the nineteenth century?
2. What can you say as to the early development of her faculties;
and when did she reach her full poetic power?
3. What was her attitude toward questions of the day?
4. What qualities would make her as much admired at the present
time as during the period in which she lived?
5. How were Robert and Elizabeth Browning brought together?
6. Where did they make their home?
7. Which was the better known at the time of their first meeting,
Robert or Elizabeth?
8. Where was most of her best poetry written?
9. Why are her writings after marriage colored with Italian hopes
and aspirations?
10. With what essentially feminine attribute was she abundantly
endowed?
STYLE AND WORKS
1. Name her leading works.
2. What unique position in the English language is filled by the
"Sonnets from the Portuguese"?
3. For what purpose did she write "Casa Guidi Windows"?
4. Had she a profound knowledge of man?
5. What particular defects strike one in her style?
6. Why is she at her best when writing in the sonnet form?
7. Compare her verse with that of Mrs. Hemans, Lucy Larcom,
Shelley, Keats, and Longfellow.
"THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN"
1. What protest does "The Cry of the Children" voice?
2. Since this poem was written have steps been taken to improve
the condition of children who work? Name some of the limitations
of child labor in your state.
3. To what country does "our happy Fatherland" refer?
4. What potent evil now partially remedied by law was prevalent
in the factories and mines of those days?
5. Were the sanitary conditions of the factories regulated by
law, such as light, cleanliness, etc.? (See encyclopedia.)
6. How is the moral and physical life of a child affected by such
close and continuous application to work of this character?
7. What would Mrs. Browning make the guiding principle in the
solution of economic ills?
FOR REFERENCE
"The Book of Noble Englishwomen."--BRUCE.
"Elizabeth Barrett Browning" ("Famous Women.")--INGRAM.
"The Brownings; Their Life and Art."--WHITING.
"Florence in the Poetry of the Brownings."--MCMAHAN.
"The Letters of E. B. Browning."--Ed. KENYON.
WASHINGTON IRVING
(1783-1859)
Washington Irving has the distinction of being the only one of our
early writers of eminence born in the metropolis; and, with the
exception of Cooper, the only one born outside of New England.
The youngest son of a well-to-do New York merchant, he was born
in 1783, just after the close of the Revolutionary War. He was,
therefore, very properly christened "Washington." It is said that
some years after, he was brought to President Washington, who,
on being told that he was a namesake, laid his hand upon him and
bestowed his blessing. Little could the Father of His Country have
realized that the benediction would bear fruit and that the recipient
thereof was to become the Prince of American Letters.
Like many other authors he studied for the bar, but found neither
law nor politics congenial. Though well-read, his education was
unsystematic. His first literary endeavors appeared in "Salmagundi,"
a semimonthly periodical in which he collaborated with his brother
and James Kirk Paulding. This was followed by his inimitable
"Knickerbocker's History of New York," still among the greatest
masterpieces of American humor, which established his reputation.
In 1814 he sailed for Europe, where the next seventeen years of his
life were spent. Several years were divided between Great Britain
and France, where the "Sketch-Book," "Bracebridge Hall," and "Tales
of a Traveler" were written. Afterwards he spent some years in Spain
writing his striking series of works descriptive of Spanish history
and antiquities--"The Conquest of Granada," "The Alhambra," etc.
Returning to America, he built a beautiful home at "Sunnyside"
(rightly named for one who always looked on the sunny side of life),
where he resided continuously during the remaining twenty-seven years
of his life, with the exception of four years spent as minister of
the United States at the Court of Spain. These latter years were full
of labor, the most notable results being his lives of Goldsmith and
Washington.
His writings are distinguished by an easy grace, a flowing rhythm,
a light play of fancy and humor, a delicate and tender sentiment
sometimes suffused with a gentle melancholy, smooth and unaffected
narrative, picturesque description, and graphic delineation of
character.
Thackeray describes him as being in his family "gentle, generous,
good-humored, and self-denying;" and in society "a delightful example
of complete gentlemanliness."
THE MAN
1. What peculiarity of birth distinguishes Irving from all other
ante bellum writers?
2. What was his education; his social position?
3. Note points of resemblance between his life and that of Bryant.
4. In what countries was a considerable portion of his life spent?
5. Where did he spend his days after his return from Europe?
6. What public service did Irving render his country?
7. Summarize his character.
8. In view of the many years he voluntarily spent abroad, would
you consider him a patriotic man?
STYLE AND WORKS
1. What work established his reputation?
2. What writing did he do abroad?
3. What are his principal serious works?
4. State the prevailing characteristics of his style.
5. Contrast Irving's humor with that of Dickens.
6. Is his humor "American"? Why?
7. Compare his style with Hawthorne's. Which do you prefer? Why?
FROM "KNICKERBOCKER'S NEW YORK"
1. In proportion to its population, how would the record of crime
to-day in New York compare with that in the administration of
Governor Van Twiller?
2. Give reasons for this difference.
3. What was the Dutch ideal of family life?
4. Judging from this account, was the social distinction between
the different classes as great as it is to-day?
5. What was the style of dress worn by the ladies of those days?
6. Discuss its merits or inconveniences as compared with the
style of dress to-day.
7. To what extent would you consider this history authoritative?
8. Wherein lies the charm of Irving's power as a writer?
9. Compare the tone of this selection with that of "Rip Van
Winkle."
FOR REFERENCE
"Washington Irving."--BOYTON.
"Four Famous American Writers."--CODY.
"Irving" ("American Men of Letters").--WARNER.
"Literary Likings."--BURTON.
"Literary and Social Essays."--CURTIS.
"Backgrounds of Literature."--MABIE.
EDGAR ALLAN POE
(1809-1849)
Although born in Boston, Poe was of Southern descent and received his
early education in England and Virginia. He belonged to no school
of writers. His works are _sui generis_ and bear no local color or
imprint.
Though a loving husband, he was throughout his life practically
without friends, his caustic criticism in particular making him
many enemies in the world of letters, with disastrous effect on
the reception of his writings. His life was consequently one long
struggle for bare necessities, in spite of which, working with
unflagging energy, he left behind several volumes of poems, tales,
and criticism of a high order.
The wonderful technique, faultless form, and painstaking choice of
detail, combined with the grotesque and morbid beauty of both his
poetry and his prose have secured for Poe an abiding place in our
literature. It is the perfection of literary style that has given
him his great popularity abroad and especially in France. Indeed,
Poe's neglect of the moral point of view and his constant achievement
of artistic perfection of form are French rather than English or
American characteristics.
THE MAN
1. Poe was born in Boston. Would you class him with the New
England school of writers?
2. Where did he receive his early education? Does this account
for certain peculiarities in his writings?
3. Was Poe a man of warm sympathies?
4. What were his relations with other writers of his day?
5. Was the circle of his friendship extensive? What effect had
this on his ultimate success as a writer?
6. Compare Scott and Poe as money-makers.
7. What is your opinion of Poe as a husband?
8. He was not a hard drinker as compared with men of his time.
The malevolence of his literary executor is responsible in part
for the belief to the contrary. On the other hand his will was
not strong enough to resist the insidious craving for alcohol and
opium, and his high-strung temperament was affected by a slight
quantity of either poison.
STYLE AND WORKS
1. What rank do you assign to Poe among American poets? Among
short-story writers?
2. Wherein lay his strength?
3. What elements of weakness do you observe?
4. In "The Fall of the House of Usher" notice how the atmosphere
of horror is fixed in the opening paragraph by a series of
adjectives and adverbs expressive of ever increasing gloom and
culminating in the word "torture."
5. Compare the nightmare dread that is attained both at the
end of "The Fall of the House of Usher" and in "The Cask of
Amontillado" with De Quincey's description of the dreams caused
by opium and the attendant melancholia. IV, 171-181.
6. However, Poe was not merely recording fragments of opium
dreams; the earliest prose work of the romantic period, now
forgotten because of its many weaknesses and imperfections,
consisted largely of just such tales of horror. Bürger's
"Lenore," Walpole's "Castle of Otranto," Mrs. Radcliffe's
"Mysteries of Udolpho," and Mrs. Shelley's "Frankenstein" were
among the foremost of these.
7. Can you discover any suggestions of religious or moral feeling
in either of these tales? If so, do they impress you as Poe's
actual conviction or as a part of the picture which he is drawing?
8. Is this type of tale worth preserving apart from its
excellence in style? Do you think it easy or difficult to tell
such a story? Why?
9. Is Poe i
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