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Mr. Quaritch remarks that "Sir John's 'working man' is an ideal creature.
I have known many working men, but none of them could have suggested such a feast as he has prepared for them." He adds, "In my younger days I had no books whatever beyond my school books. Arrived in London in 1842, I joined a literary inst.i.tution, and read all their historical works. To read fiction I had no time. A friend of mine read novels all night long, and was one morning found dead in his bed." If Mr. Quaritch intends this as a warning, he should present the fact for the consideration of those readers who swell the numbers of novels in the statistics of the Free Libraries.
Looking at the _Pall Mall Gazette's_ list, it naturally occurs to us that it would be a great error for an Englishman to arrange his reading so that he excluded Chaucer while he included Confucius. Among the names of modern novelists it is strange that Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte should have been omitted. In Sir John Lubbock's own list it will be seen that the names of Chaucer and Miss Austen occur. Among Essayists one would like to have seen at least the names of Charles Lamb, De Quincey, and Landor, and many will regret to find such delightful writers as Walton and Thomas Fuller omitted. We ought, however, to be grateful to Sir John Lubbock for raising a valuable discussion which is likely to draw the attention of many readers to books which might otherwise have been most unjustly neglected by them.[69]
The following is Sir John Lubbock's list. It will be seen that several of the books, whose absence is remarked on, do really form part of the list, and that the objections of the critics are so far met.
_The Bible._
Marcus Aurelius, _Meditations_.
Epictetus.
Confucius, _a.n.a.lects_.
_Le Bouddha et sa Religion_ (St.-Hilaire).
Aristotle, _Ethics_.
Mahomet, _Koran_ (parts of).
_Apostolic Fathers_, Wake's collection.
St. Augustine, _Confessions_.
Thomas a Kempis, _Imitation_.
Pascal, _Pensees_.
Spinoza, _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_.
Comte, _Cat. of Positive Philosophy_ (Congreve).
Butler, _a.n.a.logy_.
Jeremy Taylor, _Holy Living and Holy Dying_.
Bunyan, _Pilgrim's Progress_.
Keble, _Christian Year_.
Aristotle, _Politics_.
Plato's Dialogues--at any rate the _Phaedo_ and _Republic_.
Demosthenes, _De Corona_.
Lucretius.
Plutarch.
Horace.
Cicero, _De Officiis_, _De Amicitia_, _De Senectute_.
Homer, _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_.
Hesiod.
Virgil.
Niebelungenlied.
Malory, _Morte d'Arthur_.
Maha-Bharata, _Ramayana_, epitomized by Talboys Wheeler in the first two vols. of his _History of India_.
Firdusi, _Shah-nameh_. Translated by Atkinson.
_She-king_ (Chinese Odes).
aeschylus, _Prometheus_, _House of Atreus_, Trilogy, or _Persae_.
Sophocles, _OEdipus_, Trilogy.
Euripides, _Medea_, Aristophanes, _The Knights_.
Herodotus.
Xenophon, _Anabasis_.
Thucydides.
Tacitus, _Germania_.
Livy.
Gibbon, _Decline and Fall_.
Hume, _England_.
Grote, _Greece_.
Carlyle, _French Revolution_.
Green, _Short History of England_.
Bacon, _Novum Organum_.
Mill, _Logic_ and _Political Economy_.
Darwin, _Origin of Species_.
Smith, _Wealth of Nations_ (part of).
Berkeley, _Human Knowledge_.
Descartes, _Discours sur la Methode_.
Locke, _Conduct of the Understanding_.
Lewes, _History of Philosophy_.
Cook, _Voyages_.
Humboldt, _Travels_.
Darwin, _Naturalist in the Beagle_.
Shakespeare.
Milton, _Paradise Lost_, and the shorter poems.
Dante, _Divina Commedia_.
Spenser, _Faerie Queen_.
Dryden's Poems.
Chaucer, Morris's (or, if expurgated, Clarke's or Mrs. Haweis's) edition.
Gray.
Burns.
Scott's Poems.
Wordsworth, Mr. Arnold's selection.
