Chapter 11

6. Hugo of S. Victor--_De Sacramentis_. {231b}

7. St. Bonaventura--_Breviloquium_. {231c}

8. St. Thomas Aquinas--_Summa contra Gentiles_. {231d}

9. Dante--_Divina Commedia_. {232a}

10. Raymund of Sabunde--_Theologia Naturalis_. {232b}

11. Nicholas of Cusa--_Concordantia Catholica_. {232c}

12. Edward Reuss--_The Bible_. {232d}

13. Pascal's Pensees--_Havet's Edition_. {233a}

14. Malebranche, _De la Recherche de la Verite_. {233b}

15. Baader--_Speculative Dogmatik_. {233c}

16. Molitor--_Philosophie der Geschichte_. {233d}

17. Astie--_Esprit de Vinet_. {233e}

18. Punjer--_Geschichte der Religions-philosophie_. {234a}

19. Rothe--_Theologische Ethik_. {234b}

20. Martensen--_Die Christliche Ethik_. {234c}

21. Oettingen--_Moralstatistik_. {234d}

22. Hartmann--_Phanomenologie des sittlichen Bewusstseins_. {234e}

23. Leibniz--_Letters_ edited by Klopp. {235a}

24. Brandis--_Geschichte der Philosophie_. {235b}

25. Fischer--_Franz Bacon_. {235c}

26. Zeller--_Neuere Deutsche Philosophie_. {235d}

27. Bartholomess--_Doctrines Religieuses de la Philosophie Moderns_. {236a}

28. Guyon--_Morale Anglaise_. {236b}

29. Ritschl--_Entstehung der Altkatholischen Kirche_. {236c}

30. Loening--_Geschichte des Kirchenrechts_. {236d}

31. Baur--_Vorlesungen uber Dogmengeschichte_. {237a}

32. Fenelon--_Correspondence_. {237b}

33. Newman's _Theory of Development_. {237c}

34. Mozley's _University Sermons_. {237d}

35. Schneckenburger--_Vergleichende Darstellung_. {238a}

36. Hundeshagen--_Kirckenvorfassungsgeschichte_. {238b}

37. Schweizer--_Protestantische Centraldogmen_. {238c}

38. Gass--_Geschichte der Lutherischen Dogmatik_. {238d}

39. Cart--_Histoire du Mouvement Religieux dans le Canton de Vaud_. {238e}

40. Blondel--_De la Primaute_. {239a}

41. Le Blanc de Beaulieu--_Theses_. {239b}

42. Thiersch.--_Vorlesungen uber Katholizismus_. {239c}

43. Mohler--_Neue Untersuchungen_. {239d}

44. Scherer--_Melanges de Critique Religieuse_. {240a}

45. Hooker--_Ecclesiastical Polity_. {240b}

46. Weingarten--_Revolutionskirchen Englands_. {240c}

47. Kliefoth--_Acht Bucher von der Kirche_. {240d}

48. Laurent--_Etudes de l'Histoire de l'Humanite_. {240e}

49. Ferrari--_Revolutions de l'ltalie_. {241a}

50. Lange--_Geschichte des Materialismus_. {241b}

51. Guicciardini--_Ricordi Politici_. {241c}

52. Duperron--_Ambassades_. {241d}

53. Richelieu--_Testament Politique_. {242a}

54. Harrington's Writings. {242b}

55. Mignet--_Negotiations de la Succession d'Espagne_. {242c}

56. Rousseau--_Considerations sur la Pologne_. {243a}

57. Foncin--_Ministere de Turgot_. {243b}

58. Burke's _Correspondence_. {243c}

59. Las Cases--_Memorial de Ste. Helene_. {243d}

60. Holtzendorff--_Systematische Rechtsenzyklopadie_. {244a}

61. Jhering--_Geist des Romischen Rechts_. {244b}

62. Geib--_Strafrecht_. {244c}

63. Maine--_Ancient Law_. {245a}

64. Gierke--_Genossenschaftsrecht_. {245b}

65. Stahl--_Philosophie des Rechts_. {245c}

66. Gentz--_Briefwechsel mit Adam Muller_. {246a}

67. Vollgraff--_Polignosie_. {246b}

68. Frantz--_Kritik aller Parteien_. {246c}

69. De Maistre--_Considerations sur la France_. {246d}

70. Donoso Cortes--_Ecrits Politiques_. {247a}

71. Perin--_De la Richesse dans les Societes Chretiennes_. {247b}

72. Le Play--_La Reforme Sociale_. {247c}

73. Riehl--_Die Burgerliche Sociale_. {247d}

74. Sismondi--_Etudes sur les Constitutions des Peuples Libres_. {248a}

75. Rossi--_Cours du Droit Constitutionnel_. {248b}

76. Barante--_Vie de Royer Collard_. {248c}

77. Duvergier de Hauranne--_Histoire du Gouvernement Parlementaire_. {249a}

78. Madison--_Debates of the Congress of Confederation_. {249b}

79. Hamilton--_The Federalist_. {249c}

80. Calhoun--_Essay on Government_. {249d}

81. Dumont--_Sophismes Anarchiques_. {250a}

82. Quinet--_La Revolution Francaise_. {250b}

83. Stein--_Sozialismus in Frankreich_. {250c}

84. Lassalle--_System der Erworbenen Rechte_. {251a}

85. Thonissen--_Le Socialisme depuis l'Antiquite_. {251b}

86. Considerant--_Destines Sociale_. {251c}

87. Roscher--_Nationalokonomik_. {251d}

89. Mill--_System of Logic_. {251e}

90. Coleridge--_Aids to Reflection_. {252a}

91. Radowitz--_Fragmente_. {252b}

92. Gioberti--_Pensieri_. {252c}

93. Humboldt--_Kosmos_. {253a}

94. De Candolle--_Histoire des Sciences et des Savants_. {253b}

95. Darwin--_Origin of Species_. {253c}

96. Littre--_Fragments de Philosophie_. {253d}

97. Cournot--_Enchainements des Idees fondamentales_. {253e}

98. _Monatschriften der wissenschaftlichen Vereine_. {254}

This list, written in 1883 in Miss Gladstone's (Mrs. Drew's) Diary, must always have an interest in the history of the human mind.

But my readers will, I imagine, for the most part, agree with me that there are others besides untutored savages and illiterate peasant women to whom such a list is entirely impracticable. It indicates the enormous preference which on the whole Lord Acton gave to the Literature of Knowledge over the Literature of Power, to use De Quincey's famous distinction. With the exception of Dante's _Divine Comedy_ there is practically not a single book that has any title whatever to a place in the Literature of Power, a literature which many of us think the only thing in the world of books worth consideration. Great philosophy is here, and high thought. Who would for a moment wish to disparage St. Bonaventure, the Seraphic Doctor, or Aquinas the Angelic? Plato and Pascal, Malebranche and Fenelon, Bossuet and Machiavelli are all among the world's immortals. Yet now and again we are bewildered by finding the least important book of a well-known author--as for example Rousseau's _Poland_ instead of the _Confessions_ and Coleridge's _Aids to Reflection_ instead of the _Poems_ or the _Biographia Literaria_. Think of an historian whose ideal of historical work was so high that he despised all who worked only from printed documents, selecting the _Memorial of St. Helena_ of Las Casas in preference not only to a hundred- and-one similar compilations concerning Napoleon's exile, but in preference to Thucydides, Herodotus and Gibbon.

Sometimes Lord Acton names a theologian who is absolutely out-of-date, at others a philosopher who is in the same case. But on the whole it is a fascinating list as an index to what a well-trained mind thought the noblest mental equipment for life's work. At the best, it is true, it would represent but one half of life. But then Lord Acton recognized this when he asked that men should be "steeled against the charm of literary beauty and talent," and he was assuming in any case that all the books in aesthetic literature, the best poetry and the best history had already been read, as he undoubtedly had read them.

"The charm of literary beauty and talent!" There is the whole question. Nothing really matters for the average man, so far as books are concerned, but this charm, and I am criticizing Lord Acton's list for the average man. The student who has got beyond it need not worry himself about classified lists. He may read his Plato, and Aristotle, his Pascal and Newman, his Christian apologists and German theologians, as he wills; or he may read in some other quite different direction. Guidance is impossible to a mind at such a stage of cultivation as Lord Acton had in view.

Only minds at a more primitive stage of culture than this most learned and most accomplished man seemed able to conceive of, could be bettered by advice as to reading. Given, indeed, contact with some superior mind, which out of its rich equipment of culture should advise as to the books that might be most profitably read, I could imagine advice being helpful. It would be of no value, it is true, to an untutored savage or illiterate peasant, but to a youth fresh from school-books and much modern fiction, to a young girl about to enter upon life in its more serious aspects, it would be immensely serviceable. It was of such as these that Mr. Ruskin thought when he wrote of "King's Treasures" in _Sesame and Lilies_, and the same idea was doubtless in Sir John Lubbock's mind when he lectured on the "Hundred Best Books." But Lord Avebury's list had its limitations, it seems to me, for any one who has an interest in good literature and guidance to the reading thereof. To give "Scott" as one book and "Shakspere" as another was I suggest to shirk much responsibility of selection. Scott is a whole library, Shakspere is yet another. One may give "Keats" or "Shelley" because they are more limited in quantity. Even to name novels by Charles Kingsley and Bulwer Lytton in this select hundred was to demonstrate to men of this generation that Lord Avebury being of an earlier one had a bias in favour of the books that we are all outgrowing. To include Mill's _Logic_ is to ignore the Time Spirit acting on philosophy; to include Tennyson's _Idylls_ its action on poetry. Mill and Tennyson will always live in literature but not I think by these books.

But the fact is that there is no possibility of naming the hundred best books. No one could quarrel with Lord Avebury if he had named these as his hundred own favourites among the books of the world. Still, it might have been _his_ hundred; it could not possibly have been any one else's hundred because every man of education must make his own choice. No! the naming of the hundred best books for any large, general audience is quite impossible. All that is possible in such a connexion is to state emphatically that there are very few books that are equally suitable to every kind of intellect. Temperament as well as intellectual endowment make for so much in reading. Take, for example, the _Imitation_ of _Christ_. George Eliot, although not a Christian, found it soul-satisfying. Thackeray, as I think a more robust intellect, found it well nigh as mischievous as did Eugene Sue, whose anathematizations in his novel _The Wandering Jew_ are remembered by all. Other books that have been the outcome of piety of mind leave less room for difference of opinion. Surely Dante's _Divine Comedy_, and Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_, make an universal appeal. That universal appeal is the point at which alone guidance is possible. There are great books that can be read only by the few, but surely the very greatest appeal alike to the educated and the illiterate, to the man of rich intellectual endowment and to the man to whom all processes of reasoning are incomprehensible. _Hamlet_ is a wonderful test of this quality. It "holds the boards" at the small provincial theatre, it is enacted by Mr. Crummles to an illiterate peasantry, and it is performed by the greatest actor to the most select city audience. It is made the subject of study by learned commentators. It is world-embracing.

Are there in the English language, including translations, a hundred books that stand the test as _Hamlet_ stands it? No two men would make the same list of books that answer to this demand of an universal appeal, and obviously each nation must make its own list. Mine is for English boys and girls just growing into manhood and womanhood, or for those who have had no educational advantages in early years. I exclude living writers, and I give the hundred in four groups.

POETRY.

1. The Bible. {260a}

2. _The Odyssey_, translated by Butcher and Lang. {260b}

3. The _Iliad_, translated by Lang, Leaf and Myers. {260b}

4. Aeschylus, translated by George Warr. {261a}

5. Sophocles, translated by J. S. Phillimore. {261a}

6. Euripides, translated by Gilbert Murray. {261a}

7. Virgil, translated by Dryden. {261b}

8. Catullus, translated by Theodore Martin. {261c}

9. Horace, translated by Theodore Martin. {261d}

10. Dante, translated by Cary. {262a}

11. Shakspere, _Hamlet_. {262b}

12. Chaucer, _Canterbury Tales_. {262c}

13. FitzGerald, _Omar Khayyam_. {263a}

14. Goethe, _Faust_. {263b}

15. Shelley. {263c}

16. Byron. {263d}

17. Wordsworth. {264a}

18. Keats. {264b}

19. Burns. {264c}

20. Coleridge. {264d}

21. Cowper. {264e}

22. Crabbe. {265a}

23. Tennyson. {265b}

24. Browning. {265c}

25. Milton. {265d}

FICTION.

1. _The Arabian Nights Entertainment_. {266a}

2. _Don Quixote_, by Cervantes. {266b}

3. _Pilgrim's Progress_, by Bunyan. {266c}

4. _Robinson Crusoe_, by Defoe. {266d}

5. _Gulliver's Travels_, by Swift. {267a}

6. _Clarissa_, by Richardson. {267b}

7. _Tom Jones_, by Fielding. {267c}

8. _Rasselas_, by Johnson. {267d}

9. _Vicar of Wakefield_, by Goldsmith. {268a}

10. _Sentimental Journey_, by Sterne. {268b}

11. _Nightmare Abbey_, by Peacock. {268c}

12. _Kenilworth_, by Walter Scott. {268d}

13. _Pere Goriot_, by Balzac. {268e}

14. _The Three Musketeers_, by Dumas. {269a}

15. _Vanity Fair_, by Thackeray. {269b}

16. _Villette_, by Charlotte Bronte. {269c}

17. _David Copperfield_, by Charles Dickens. {269d}

18. _Barchester Towers_, by Anthony Trollope. {269e}

19. Boccaccio's _Decameron_. {269f}

20. _Wuthering Heights_, by Emily Bronte. {270a}

21. _The Cloister and the Hearth_, by Charles Reade. {270b}

22. _Les Miserables_, by Victor Hugo. {270c}

23. _Cranford_, by Mrs. Gaskell. {270d}

24. _Consuelo_, by George Sand. {270e}

25. _Charles O'Malley_, by Charles Lever. {270f}

MISCELLANEOUS. HISTORY, ESSAYS, ETC.

1. Macaulay, _History of England_. {271a}

2. Carlyle, _Past and Present_. {271b}

3. Motley, _Dutch Republic_. {271c}

4. Gibbon, _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_. {271d}

5. Plutarch's _Lives_. {272a}

6. Montaigne's _Essays_. {272b}

7. Richard Steele, _Essays_. {272c}

8. Lamb, _Essays of Elia_. {272d}

9. De Quincey, _Opium Eater_. {272e}

10. Hazlitt, _Essays_. {273a}

11. Borrow, _Lavengro_. {273b}

12. Emerson, _Representative Men_. {273c}

13. Landor, _Imaginary Conversations_. {273d}

14. Arnold, _Essays in Criticism_. {273e}

15. Herodotus, _Macaulay's Translation_. {273f}

16. Howell's _Familiar Letters_. {274a}

17. Buckle's _History of Civilization_. {274b}

18. Tacitus, Church and Brodribb's Translation. {274c}

19. Mitford's _Our Village_. {274d}

20. Green's _Short History of the English People_. {274e}

21. Taine, _Ancient Regime_. {275a}

22. Bourrienne, _Napoleon_. {275b}

23. Tocqueville, _Democracy in America_. {275c}

24. Walton, _Compleat Angler_. {275d}

25 White, _Natural History of Selbourne_. {276a}

BIOGRAPHICAL AND AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL.

1. Boswell's Johnson. {276b}

2. Lockhart's Scott. {276c}

3. Pepys's Diary. {276d}

4. Walpole's Letters. {277a}

5. The Memoirs of Count de Gramont. {277b}

6. Gray's Letters. {277c}

7. Southey's Nelson. {277d}

8. Moore's Byron. {277e}

9. Hogg's Shelley. {278a}

10. Rousseau's Confessions. {278b}

11. Froude's Carlyle. {278c}

12. Rogers's Table Talk. {279a}

13. Confessions of St. Augustine. {279b}

14. Amiel's Journal. {279c}

15. Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. {279d}

16. Lewes's Life of Goethe. {279e}

17. Sime's Life of Lessing. {280a}

18. Franklin's Autobiography. {280b}

19. Greville's Memoirs. {280c}

20. Forster's Life of Dickens. {280d}

21. Madame D'Arblay's Diary. {280e}

22. Newman's Apologia. {281a}

23. The Paston Letters. {281b}

24. Cellini's Autobiography. {281c}

25. Browne's Religio Medici. {281d}

My readers for the most part have read every one of these books. I throw out this list as a tentative effort in the direction of suggesting a hundred books with which to start a library. The young student will find much to amuse, and certainly nothing here to bore him. These books will not make him a prig, as Mr. James Payn said that Lord Avebury's list would make him a prig. They will make the dull man less dull, the bright man brighter. Here is good, cheerful, robust reading for boy and girl, for man and woman. There are many sins of omission, but none of commission. Our young friend will add to this list fast enough, but there is nothing in it that he may not read with profit. These books, I repeat, make an universal appeal. The learned man may enjoy them, the unlearned may enjoy them also. They are, as _Hamlet_ is, of universal interest. Devotion to science will not impair a taste for them, nor will zest for abstract speculations. Not even those who are "better skilled in grammar than in poetry" can fail to appreciate. These hundred books will in the main be the hundred best books of many of my readers who are quite capable of selecting for themselves. One last word of advice. Let not the young reader buy large quantities of books at once or be beguiled into subscribing for some cheap series which will save him the trouble of selecting. He may buy many books from such cheap series afterwards, but not his first hundred, I think. These should be acquired through much saving, and purchased with great thought and deliberation. The purchase of a book should become to the young book-lover a most solemn function.

_Butler and Tanner_, _The Selwood Printing Works_, _Frome_, _and London_

Footnotes:

{3} Richard Garnett (1835-1906) was son of the philologist of the same name who was for a time priest-vicar of Lichfield Cathedral. He attended the Johnson Celebration on Sept. 18, 1905, and proposed "the Immortal Memory of Dr. Johnson." He died on the following Good Friday, April 13, and was buried in Highgate Cemetery April 17, 1906.

{6} Anna Seward (1747-1809). Her works were published after her death:--_The Poetical Works of Anna Seward_. _With Extracts from her Literary Correspondence_. Edited by Walter Scott, Esq. In three volumes--_John Ballantyne & Co._, 1810. _Letters of Anna Seward written between the Years_ 1784 _and_ 1807. In six volumes. Archibald Constable & Co., 1811. "Longwinded and florid" one biographer calls her letters, but by the aid of what Scott calls 'the laudable practice of skipping' they are quite entertaining.

{8} Sir Robert Thomas White-Thomson, K.C.B., wrote to me in reference to this estimate of Miss Seward from Broomford Manor, Exbourne, North Devon, and his letter seemed of sufficient importance from a genealogical standpoint for me to ask his permission to make an extract from the letter: "I have read your address in a Lichfield newspaper. Apart from the wider and more important bearings of your words, those which had reference to the Seward family were especially welcome to me. You will understand this when I tell you that, with the exception of the Romney portrait of Anna, and a few other objects left 'away' by her will, my grandfather, Thomas White, of Lichfield Close, her cousin and residuary legatee, became possessed of all the contents of her house. Some of the books and engravings were sold by auction, but the remainder were taken good care of, and passed to me on my mother's death in 1860. As thus, 'in a way' the representative of the 'Swan of Lichfield,' you can easily see what such an appreciation of her as was yours means to me. Of course I know her weak points, and how the pot of clay must suffer in trying to 'bump' the pot of iron in midstream, but I also know that she was no ordinary personage in her day, when the standard of feminine culture was low, and I have resented some things that have been written of her. Mrs. Oliphant treats her kindly in her _Literary History of England_, and now I have your 'appreciation' of her, for which I beg to thank you."

{15} Once certainly in the lines "On the Death of Mr. Robert Levet":--

Well try'd through many a varying year, See Levet to the grave descend, Officious, innocent, sincere, Of ev'ry friendless name the friend.

{18} _Prayers and Meditations_: composed by Samuel Johnson, LL.D., and published from his Manuscripts by George Straham, D.D., Prebendary of Rochester and Vicar of Islington in Middlesex, 1785. Dr. Birkbeck Hill suggests that Johnson could not have contemplated the publication of the work in its entirety, but the world is the better for the self revelation, notwithstanding Cowper's remark in a letter to Newton (August 27, 1785), that "the publisher of it is neither much a friend to the cause of religion nor to the author's memory; for by the specimen of it that has reached us, it seems to contain only such stuff as has a direct tendency to expose both to ridicule."

{19} There is an edition with a brief Introduction by Augustine Birrell, published by Elliot Stock in 1904, and another, with an Introduction by "H. C.," was issued by H. R. Allenson in 1906.

{31} The Rev. Angus Mackay, author of _The Brontes In Fact and Fiction_. He was Rector of Holy Trinity Church, Dean Bridge, Edinburgh, when he died, aged 54, on New Year's Day, 1907. Earlier in life he had been a Curate at Olney.

{34} John Newton (1725-1807) had been the captain of a slave ship before his 'conversion.' He became Curate of Olney in 1764 and published the famous Olney Hymns with Cowper in 1779. In 1780 Newton became the popular Incumbent of St. Mary Woolnoth, London.

{35} See the Globe _Cowper_, with an Introduction by the Rev. William Benham, the Rector of St. Edmund's, Lombard Street. Canon Benham has written many books, but he has done no better piece of work than this fine Introduction which first appeared in 1870.

{36} Thomas Scott (1747-1821). His commentaries first appeared in weekly parts between 1788 and 1792, and were first issued in ten volumes, 1823-25. He was Rector of Astin Sandford in Buckinghamshire from 1801 until his death. His _Life_ was published by his son, the Rev. John Scott, in 1822.

{37} Thomas Percy (1729-1811) became Vicar of Easton Maudit, Northamptonshire, in 1753. Johnson visited him here in 1764. In 1765 Percy published his _Reliques of Ancient English Poetry_. He became Bishop of Dromere in 1782.

{38a} William Hayley (1745-1820) was counted a great poet in his day and placed in the same rank with Dryden and Pope. He wrote _Triumphs of Temper_ 1781, _Triumphs of Music_ 1804, and many other works; but he is of interest here by virtue of his _Life and Letters of William Cowper_, _Esq._, _with Remarks on Epistolary Writers_, published in 1803.

{38b} Robert Southey (1774-1843), whose _Life and Works of Cowper_ is in fifteen volumes, which were published by Baldwin & Cradock between the years 1835 and 1837. The attractive form in which the works are presented, the many fine steel engravings, and the excellent type make this still the only way for book lovers to approach Cowper. Southey had to suffer the competition of the Rev. T. S. Grimshawe, who produced, through Saunders & Otley, about the same time a reprint of Hayley's biography with much of Cowper's correspondence that is not in Southey's volumes. The whole correspondence was collected by Mr. Thomas Wright, and published by Hodder & Stoughton in 1904.

{38c} Walter Bagehot (1826-1877) in his _Literary Studies_. James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) in his _Essays_. Mrs. Oliphant (1828-1897) in her _Literary History of England_; and George Eliot (1819-1880) in her _Essays_ (Worldliness and Other Worldliness).

{44} It has no bearing upon the subject that the horrors of the Bastille at the time of its fall were greatly exaggerated.

{47} _Theology in the English Poets_, by Stopford A. Brooke.

{56} Mr. Leslie Stephen, who became Sir Leslie Stephen, K.C.B., in 1902, was born in 1832 and died in 1904. In addition to the article in the _D.N.B._, this great critic has one on "Cowper and Rousseau" in his _Hours in a Library_.

{62} Sir John Fenn (1739-1794), the antiquary, obtained the originals of the _Paston Letters_ from Thomas Worth, a chemist of Diss. The following lines were first printed in Cowper's Collected Poems, by Mr. J. C. Bailey in his admirable edition of 1906, published by the Methuens:--