Part 14

_Second_, the Period of Chaucer, from 1066 to the death of Chaucer in 1400. The great books of this period were _Mandeville's Travels_, Langland's "Piers the Ploughman." Wycliffe's translation of the Bible (these two books, with Wycliffe's tracts, went all over England among the common people, rousing them against the Catholic Church, and starting the reformation that afterward grew into Puritanism, and gained control of the nation under Cromwell), Gower's Poems, and _Chaucer's Canterbury Tales_. Those in italics are the only books that claim our reading. Mandeville travelled thirty years, and then wrote all he saw and all he heard from the mouth of rumor. Chaucer is half French and two-thirds Italian. He drank in the spirit of the Golden Age of Italy, which was in the early part of his own century. Probably he met Petrarch and Boccaccio, and certainly he drew largely from their works as well as from Dante's, and he dug into poor Gower as into a stone quarry. He is still our best story-teller in verse, and one of our most musical poets; and every one should know something of this "morning star of English poetry," by far the greatest light before the Elizabethan age, and still easily among the first five or six of our poets.

_Third_, the Later Period, from 1400 to 1559, in which _Malory's Morte D'Arthur_, containing fragments of the stories about King Arthur and the knights of his round table, which like a bed-rock crop out so often in English Literature, should be read while reading Tennyson's "Idylls of the King," which is based upon Malory; and _Sir Thomas More's Utopia_ also claims some attention on the plea of breadth, as it is the work of a great mind, thoroughly and practically versed in government, and sets forth his idea of a perfect commonwealth.

In this age of nine and a half centuries there were, then, ten noteworthy books and one great book; eight only of the eleven, however, have any claim upon our attention, the last three being all that are entitled to more than a rapid reading by the general student; and only Chaucer for continuous companionship can rank high, and even he cannot be put on the first shelf.

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=In the Shakspearian Age= the great books were (1) _Roger Ascham's Schoolmaster_, which was a fine argument for kindness in teaching and nobility in the teacher, but has been superseded by Spencer's "Education." (2) _Sackville's Induction_ to a series of political tragedies, called "A Mirror for Magistrates." The poet goes down into hell like Dante, and meets Remorse, Famine, War, Misery, Care, Sleep, Death, etc., and talks with noted Englishmen who had fallen. This "Mirror" was of great fame and influence in its day; and the "Induction," though far inferior to both Chaucer and Spenser, is yet the best poetic work done in the time between those masters. (3) _John Lyly's Euphues_, a book that expressed the thought of Ascham's "Schoolmaster" in a style peculiar for its puns, antitheses, and floweriness,--a style which made a witty handling of language the chief aim of writing. Lyly was a master of the art, and the ladies of the court committed his sentences in great numbers, that they might shine in society. The book has given a word to the language; that affected word-placing style is known as _euphuistic_. The book has no claims upon our reading. (4) _Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia_, a romance in the same conceited style as the "Euphues," and only valuable as a mine for poetic images. (5) _Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity_, which was a defence of the church system against the Puritans. The latter said that no such system of church government could be found in the Bible, and therefore should not exist. Hooker answered that Nature was a revelation from God as well as the Bible; and if in Nature and society there were good reasons for the existence of an institution, that was enough. The book is not of importance to the general reader to-day, for the truth of its principles is universally admitted. (6) _The Plays of Marlowe_, a very powerful but gross writer. His "Dr. Faustus" may very properly receive attention, but only after the best plays of Shakspeare, Jonson, Calderon, Racine, Moliere, Corneille, AEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes have been carefully read. (7) _The Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher_, which are filled with beauty and imagination, mingled with the immodesty and vulgarity that were natural to this age. The remark just made about Marlowe applies here. (8) _Fox's Book of Martyrs_, which for the sake of breadth should be glanced at by every one. The marvellous heroism and devotion to faith on one side, and cruelty on the other that come to us through the pages of this history, open a new world to the modern mind. (9) _Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene_, which combines the poetry of a Homer with the allegory of a Bunyan. It presents moral truth under vast and beautiful imagery. In English poetry it claims our attention next to Shakspeare and Milton. (10) _Ben Jonson's Plays_, which stand next to those of Shakspeare in English drama. (11) _The Plays of Shakspeare_, which need no comment, as they have already been placed at the summit of all literature; and (12) _Bacon's Works_, including the _Novum Organum_, the _New Atlantis_, and the _Essays_, the first of which, though one of the greatest books of the world, setting forth the true methods of arriving at truth by experiment and observation and the collation of facts, we do not need to read, because the substance of it may be found in better form in Mill's Logic. The "Essays," however, are world-famed for their condensed wit and wisdom on topics of never-dying interest, and stand among the very best books on the upper shelf. The "New Atlantis" also should be read for breadth, with More's "Utopia;" the subject being the same, namely, an ideal commonwealth.

From this sixty-one years of prolific writing, in which no less than two hundred and thirty authors gathered their poems together and published them, to say nothing of all the scattered writings, twelve volumes have come down to us with a large measure of fame. Only the last seven call for our reading; but two of them, Shakspeare and Bacon, are among the very most important books on the first shelf of the world's library.

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=The Post-Shakspearian Age= is divided into four times, or periods,--the Time of Milton; the Time of Dryden; the Time of Pope; and the Time of the Novelists, Historians, and Scientists.

THE TIME OF MILTON, from 1620 to 1674, was contemporary with the Golden Age of literature in France. The great English books of this time were (1) _Chapman's Translation of Homer_, which is superseded by Pope's. (2) _Hobbes's Leviathan_, a discourse on government. Hobbes taught that government exists for the people, and rests not on the divine right of kings, but on a compact or agreement of all the citizens to give up a portion of their liberties in order by social co-operation the better to secure the remainder. He is one of our greatest philosophers; but the general reader will find the substance of Hobbes's whole philosophy better put in Locke, Mill, and Herbert Spencer. (3) _Walton's Complete Angler_, the work of a retired merchant who combined a love of fishing with a poetic perception of the beauties of Nature. It will repay a glance. (4) _S. Butler's Hudibras_, a keen satire on the Puritans who went too far in their effort to compel all men to conform their lives to the Puritan standard of abstinence from worldly pleasures. In spite of its vulgarity, the book stands very high in the literature of humor. (5) _George Herbert's Poems_, many of which are as sweet and holy as a flower upon a grave, and are beloved by all spiritually minded people. (6) _Jeremy Taylor's Holy Living and Dying_, a book that in the strength of its claim upon us must rank close after the Bible, Shakspeare, and the Science of Physiology and Hygiene. (7) _Milton's Poems_, of which the "Paradise Lost" and "Comus," for their sublimity and beauty, rank next after Shakspeare in English poetry. AEschylus, Dante, and Milton are the three sublimest souls in history.

From this time of fifty-four years seven great books have come to us, Milton and Taylor being among our most precious possessions.

THE TIME OF DRYDEN.--From the death of Milton, in 1674, to the death of Dryden, in 1700, the latter held undisputed kingship in the realm of letters. This and the succeeding time of Pope were marked by the development of a classic style and a fine literary and critical taste, but were lacking in great creative power. The great books were (1) _Newton's Principia_, the highest summit in the region of astronomy, unless the "Mecanique Celeste" of Laplace must be excepted. Newton's discovery of the law of gravitation, and his theory of fluxions place him at the head of the mathematical thinkers of the world. His books, however, need not be read by the general student, for in these sciences the later books are better. (2) _Locke's Works_ upon Government and the Understanding are among the best in the world, but their results will all be found in the later works of Spencer, Mill, and Bryce; and the only part of the writings of Locke that claims our reading to-day is the little book upon the _Conduct of the Understanding_, which tells us how to watch the processes of our thought, to keep clear of prejudice, careless observation, etc., and should be in the hands of every one who ever presumes to do any thinking. (3) _Dryden's Translation of Virgil_ is the best we have, and contains the finest writing of our great John. (4) _Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress_ picturing in magnificent allegory the journey of a Christian soul toward heaven, and his "Holy War," telling of the conflict between good and evil, and the devil's efforts to capture and hold the town of "Mansoul," should be among the first books we read. The "Progress" holds a place in the affections of all English-speaking peoples second only to the Bible. (5) _Sam Pepys's Diary_ is the greatest book of its kind in the world, and is much read for its vividness and interesting detail. It has, however, no claims to be read until all the books on the first shelf of Table I. have been mastered, and a large portion of the second shelf pretty thoroughly looked into.

Of the five great works of these twenty-six years, Bunyan and Locke are far the most important for us.

THE TIME OF POPE, or the _Time of the Essayists and Satirists_, covers a period of forty years, from 1700 to 1740, during which the great translator of Homer held the sceptre of literary power by unanimous assent. The great works of this time were (1) _The Essays of Addison and Steele_ in the "Tatler" and "Spectator," which, though of great merit, must rank below those of Emerson, Bacon, and Montaigne. (2) _Defoe's Robinson Crusoe_, the boy's own book. (3) _Swift's Satires_,--the "Tale of a Tub," "Gulliver's Travels," and the "Battle of the Books,"--all full of the strongest mixture of grossness, fierceness, and intense wit that the world has seen. The "Battle of the Books" may be read with great advantage by the general reader as well as by the student of humor. (4) _Berkeley's Human Knowledge_, exceedingly interesting for the keenness of its confutation of any knowledge of the existence of matter. (5) _Pope's Poems_--the "Rape of the Lock" (which means the theft of a lock of hair), the "Essay on Man," and his translation of Homer--must form a part of every wide course of reading. Their mechanical execution, especially, is of the very finest. (6) _Thomson's Seasons_, a beautiful poem of the second class. (7) _Butler's Analogy_, chiefly noted for its proof of the existence of God from the fact that there is evidence of design in Nature.

Of these writers, Pope and Defoe are far the most important for us.

We have, down to this time of 1740, out of a literature covering eleven and a half centuries, recommended to the chief attention of the reader ten great authors,--Chaucer and Spenser, Shakspeare and Bacon, Milton and Taylor, Bunyan and Locke, Pope and Defoe. We now come to the TIME OF NOVELISTS, HISTORIANS, AND SCIENTISTS, a period in the history of our literature that is so prolific of great writers in all the vastly multiplied departments of thought, that it is no longer possible to particularize in the manner we have done in regard to the preceding ages. A sufficient illustration has been given of the methods of judging books and the results of their application. With the ample materials of Table I. before him, the reader must now be left to make his own judgments in regard to the relative merits of the books of the modern period. We shall confine our remarks on this last time of English literature to the recommendation of ten great authors to match the ten great names of former times. In history, we shall name _Parkman_, the greatest of American historians; in philosophy, _Herbert Spencer_, the greatest name in the whole list of philosophers; in poetry, _Byron_ and _Tennyson_, neither of them equal to Shakspeare and Milton, but standing in the next file behind them; in fiction, _Scott_, _Eliot_, and _Dickens_; in poetic humor, _Lowell_, the greatest of all names in this department; and in general literature, _Carlyle_ and _Ruskin_, two of the purest, wisest, and most forcible writers of all the past, and, curiously enough, both of them very eccentric and very wordy,--a sort of English double star, which will be counted in this list as a unit, in order to crowd in _Emerson_, who belongs in this great company, and is not by any means the least worthy member of it. One more writer there is in this time greater than any we have named, except Spencer and Scott; namely, the author of "The Origin of Species." _Darwin_ stands by the side of Newton in the history of scientific thought; but, like his great compeer, the essence of his book has come to be a part of modern thought that floats in the air we breathe; and so his claims to being read are less than those of authors who cannot be called so great when speaking of intrinsic merit.

Having introduced the greatest ten of old, and ten that may be deemed the greatest of the new, in English letters, we shall pass to take a bird's-eye view of what is best in Greece and Rome, France, Italy, and Spain, and say a word of Persia, Germany, and Portugal.

THE GREATEST NAMES OF OTHER LITERATURES.

=Greece=, in her thirteen centuries of almost continuous literary productiveness from Homer to Longus, gave the world its greatest epic poet, _Homer_; the finest of lyric poets, _Pindar_; the prince of orators, _Demosthenes_; aside from our own Bacon and Spencer, the greatest philosophers of all the ages, _Plato_ and _Aristotle_; the most noted of fabulists, _AEsop_; the most powerful writer of comedy, _Aristophanes_ (Moliere, however, is much to be preferred for modern reading, because of his fuller applicability to our life); and the three greatest writers of pure tragedy, _AEschylus_, _Sophocles_, and _Euripides_,--the first remarkable for his gloomy grandeur and gigantic, dark, and terrible sublimity; the second for his sweet majesty and pathos; and third for the power with which he paints men as they are in real life. Euripides was a great favorite with Milton and Fox.

To one who is not acquainted with these ten great Greeks, much of the sweetest and grandest of life remains untasted and unknown. Begin with Homer, Plato's "Phaedo" and "Republic," AEschylus' "Prometheus Bound," Sophocles' "OEdipus," and Demosthenes' "On the Crown."

A liberal reading must also include the Greek historians Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon.

=Rome= taught the world the art of war, but was herself a pupil in the halls of Grecian letters. Only three writers--_Plutarch_, _Marcus Aurelius_ (who both wrote in Greek), and _Epictetus_--can claim our attention in anything like an equal degree with the authors of Athens named just above. Its literature as a whole is on a far lower plane than that of Greece or England. A liberal education must include Virgil's "AEneid," the national epic of Rome (which, however, must take its place in our lives and hearts far after Homer, Shakspeare, Milton, Dante, and Goethe), for its elegance and imagination; Horace, for his wit, grace, sense, and inimitable witchery of phrase; Lucretius, for his depth of meditation; Tacitus, for knowledge of our ancestors; Ovid and Catullus, for their beauty of expression; Juvenal, for the keenness of his satire; and Plautus and Terence, for their insight into the characters of men. But these books should wait until at least the three first named in this paragraph, with the ten Greek and twenty English writers spoken of in the preceding paragraphs, have come to be familiar friends.

=Italy=, in Chaucer's century, produced a noble literature. _Dante_ is the Shakspeare of the Latin races. He stands among the first creators of sublimity. AEschylus and Milton only can claim a place beside him. _Petrarch_ takes lofty rank as a lyric poet, breathing the heart of love. Boccaccio may be put with Chaucer. Ariosto and Tasso wrote the finest epics of Italian poetry. A liberal education must neglect no one of these. Every life should hold communion with the soul of Dante, and get a taste at least of Petrarch.

=France= has a glorious literature; in science, the best in the world. In history, _Guizot_; in jurisprudence, in its widest sense, _Montesquieu_; and in picturing the literary history of a nation, _Taine_, stand unrivalled anywhere. Among essayists, _Montaigne_; among writers of fiction, _Le Sage_, _Victor Hugo_, and _Balzac_; among the dramatists, _Corneille_ the grand, _Racine_ the graceful and tender, and _Moliere_ the creator of modern comedy; and among fabulists, the inimitable poet of fable, _La Fontaine_, demand a share of our time with the best. Descartes, Pascal, Rousseau, Voltaire, and Comte belong in every liberal scheme of culture and to every student of philosophy.

=Spain= gives us two most glorious names, _Cervantes_ and _Pedro Calderon de la Barca_,--the former one of the world's very greatest humorists, the brother spirit of Lowell; the latter, a princely dramatist, the brother of Shakspeare.

=Germany= boasts one summit on which the shadow of no other falls. _Goethe's_ "Faust" and "Wilhelm Meister" and his minor poems cannot be neglected if we want the best the world affords; _Schiller_, too, and _Humboldt_, _Kant_ and _Heine_, _Helmholtz_ and _Haeckel_ must be read. In science and history, the list of German greatness is a very long and bright one.

=Persia= calls us to read her magnificent astronomer-poet, _Omar Khayyam_; her splendid epic, the _Shah Nameh of Firdusi_, the story of whose labors, successes, and misfortunes is one of the most interesting passages in the history of poetry; and taste at least of her extravagant singer of the troubles and ecstasies of love, Hafiz.

=Portugal= has given us _Camoens_, with his great poem the "Luciad." =Denmark= brings us her charming _Andersen_; and =Russia= comes to us with her Byronic Pushkin and her Schiller-hearted poet, Lermontoff, at least for a glance.

We have thus named as the chiefs, twenty authors in English, ten in Greek, three of Rome, two of Italy, ten of France, two of Spain, seven of Germany, three of Persia, one of Portugal, one of Denmark, and two of Russia,--sixty-one in all,--which, if read in the manner indicated, will impart a pretty thorough knowledge of the literary treasures of the world.

THE FOUNTAINS OF NATIONAL LITERATURES.

In the early history of every great people there has grown up a body of songs celebrating the heroism of their valiant warriors and the charms of their beautiful women. These have, generation after generation, been passed by word of mouth from one group of singers to their successors,--by each new set of artists somewhat polished and improved,--until they come to us as Homer's Iliad, the "Nibelungenlied" of the Germans, the "Chronicle of the Cid" of the Spanish, the "Chansons de Gestes," the "Romans," and the "Fabliaux" of the French, and "Beowulf" and the "Morte D'Arthur" of English literature. These great poems are the sources of a vast portion of what is best in subsequent art. From them Virgil, Boccaccio, Chaucer, Rabelais, Moliere, Shakspeare, Calderon, and a host of others have drawn their inspiration. Malory has wrought the Arthurian songs into a mould of the purest English. The closing books, in their quiet pathos and reserved strength,--in their melody, winged words, and inimitable turns of phrase,--rank with the best poetry of Europe. Southey called the "Cid" the finest poem in the Spanish language, and Prescott said it was "the most remarkable performance of the Middle Ages." This may be going rather too far; but it certainly stands in the very front rank of national poems. It has been translated by Lockhart in verse, by Southey in prose, and there is a splendid fragment by Frere. Of the French early epics, the "Chanson de Roland" and the "Roman du Renart" are the best. The "Nibelungenlied" is the embodiment of the wild and tragic,--the highest note of the barbaric drama of the North. That last terrific scene in the Hall of Etzel will rest forever in the memory of every reader of the book. Carlyle has given a sketch of the poem in his "Miscellanies," vol. iii., and there exists a complete but prolix and altogether miserable translation of the great epic, but we sadly need a condensed version of the myth of "Siegfried" the brave, and "Chriemhild" the beautiful, in the stirring prose of Malory or Southey. No reader will regret a perusal of these songs of the people; it is a journey to the head-waters of the literary Nile.

The reader of this little book we hope has gained an inspiration--if it were not his before--that, with a strong and steady step, will lead him into all the paths of beauty and of truth. Each glorious emotion and each glowing thought that comes to us, becomes a centre of new growth. Each wave of pathos, humor, or sublimity that pulses through the heart or passes to the brain, sets up vibrations that will never die, but beautify the hours and years that follow to the end of life. These waves that pass into the soul do not conceal their music in the heart, but echo back upon the world in waves of kindred power; and these return forever from the world into the heart that gave them forth. It is as on the evening river, where the boatman bends his homeward oar. Each lusty call that leaves his lips, or song, or bugle blast that slips the tensioned bars, and wings the breeze, to teach its rhythm to the trees that crown the rocky twilight steep o'er which the lengthening shadows creep, returns and enters, softened, sweet, and clear, the waiting portal of the sender's ear. The man who fills his being with the noblest books, and pours their beauty out in word and deed, is like the merry singers on the placid moonlit lake. Backward the ripples o'er the silver sheet come on the echoes' winged feet; the hills and valleys all around gather the gentle shower of sound, and pour the stream upon the boat in which the happy singers float, chanting the hymns they loved of yore, shipping the glistening wave-washed oar, to hear reflected from the shore their every charmed note. Oh, loosen from _thy_ lip, my friend, no tone thine ear would with remorseful sorrow hear, hurling it back from far and near, the listening landscape oft repeat! Rather a melody send to greet the mountains beyond the silver sheet. Life's the soul's song; sing sweetly, then, that when the silence comes again, and ere it comes, from every glen the echoes shall be sweet.

APPENDIX.

THE BEST THOUGHTS OF GREAT MEN ABOUT BOOKS AND READING.

APPENDIX I.

THE BEST THOUGHTS OF GREAT MEN ABOUT BOOKS AND READING.

=Addison=. "Books are the legacies that genius leaves to mankind."