The World's Best Books : A Key to the Treasures of Literature Part 23

Looking Backward, Bellamy.

Destinee Sociale, Considerant.

More's "Utopia."

Co-operative Societies, Watts.

History of Co-operation, Holyoake.

The Margin of Profits, Atkinson.

Gronlund's "Co-operative Commonwealth."

Capital, Karl Marx.

The State in relation to Labor, Jevons.

Organisation du Travail, Louis Blanc.

Co-operative Stores, Morrison.

Labor and Capital, Jervis.

Newton's "Co-operative Production and Co-operative Distribution in the United States."

Property and Progress, Mallock.

Principles of Sociology, Spencer.

Mill on Socialism.

The Progress of the Working Cla.s.ses, Giffen.

Ely's "French and German Socialism," "Problems of To-day,"

and "Labor Movement in America."

Dilke's "Problems of Greater Britain."

Contemporary Socialism, Rae.

Outlines of an Industrial Science, Symes.

Early History of Land-holding among the Germans, Ross; etc.

=Malthusianism=.--To take a smaller example. Suppose the student wishes to make a thorough study of the doctrine of Malthusius in regard to population, he will have to refer to Macaulay's "Essay on Sadler," and the works on Political Economy of Ricardo, Chalmers, Roscher, etc., in support of Malthus, and to George's "Progress and Poverty," Spencer's "Biology" (Vol. II.), Sadler's "Law of Population," and the works of G.o.dwin, Greg, Rickards, Doubleday, Carey, Alison, etc., against him.

For an example of a very different kind, cl.u.s.ter about the myth of Cupid the poems "Cupid and my Campaspe," by Lilly; "The Threat of Cupid,"

translated by Herrick; "Cupid Drowned," by Leigh Hunt; and "Cupid Stung," by Moore.

A great deal depends on selecting some department of thought and exhausting it. To know something of everything and everything of something is the true aim. If a child displays fine musical or artistic ability, among the books given it ought to be many that bear upon music and art,--the "Autobiography of Rubenstein;" the Lives of Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, Chopin, Mendelssohn; and Rocksho's "History of Music,"

Upton's "Woman in Music," Clayton's "Queens of Song," Lillie's "Music and the Musician," Haweis' "Music and Morals," Jameson's "Lives of the Painters," Crowest's "Tone Poets," Clement's "Painting and Sculpture,"

Mereweather's "Semele, or the Spirit of Beauty," etc.

Probably these examples, with those to be found in the notes to Table I., are amply sufficient to show what is meant by grouping the lights of literature about a single point so as to illuminate it intensely; but one more specimen will be given, because of the interest the subject has for us now and is likely to have for many years.

=The Tariff Question= may be studied in Ely's "Problems of To-day,"

Greeley's "Political Economy," Carey's "Principles of Social Science,"

E. P. Smith's "Manual of Political Economy," Byles's "Sophisms of Free Trade," Thompson's "Social Science and National Economy," Bastiat's "Sophisms of Protection," Mill's "Political Economy," Sumner's "Lectures on the History of Protection in the United States," Fawcett's "Free Trade and Protection," Mongredien's "History of the Free Trade Movement," b.u.t.t's "Protection Free Trade," Walters' "What is Free Trade," "The Gladstone-Blaine Debate," etc.

TABLE V.

_Showing the Distribution of the Best Literature in Time and s.p.a.ce, with a Parallel Reference to some of the World's Great Events._

[It was impossible to get the writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries into the unit s.p.a.ce. The former fills a s.p.a.ce twice the unit width, and the latter, when it is complete, will require five units.]

+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ GREECE B.C. ISRAEL Homer 1000 David, The Hesiod Psalms +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ 900 +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ 800 Rome founded +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ aesop 700 +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ 600 INDIA Nebuchadnezzar, Buddha king of Babylon Republic established at Rome +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ THE GOLDEN AGE OF GRECIAN 500 Mahabharata Darius, king of LITERATURE Ramayana Persia Pindar aeschylus Herodotus (Epics of India) GREECE Sophocles Thucydides Battle of Marathon Pericles Euripides Xenophon " " Thermopylae Aristophanes " " Salamis Cincinnatus at Rome Socrates Ezra at Jerusalem +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ Plato 400 Alexander Aristotle The Gauls burn Demosthenes Rome +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ 300 Wars of Rome against Carthage Hannibal in Italy +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ 200 Greece becomes a Roman Province ROME The Gracchi, Marius, and Sylla +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ ROME. AUGUSTAN AGE, 31 100 ROME B. C. TO A. D. 14. Reatinus Ovid Pompey Sall.u.s.t Livy Civil War, Cicero Lucretius Empire Virgil established +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ Tacitus A.D. Jerusalem taken by t.i.tus Plutarch Juvenal Pompeii overwhelmed Pliny Josephus Romans conquer Britain +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ Epictetus 100 Church Fathers Marcus Aurelius +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ 200 Aurelian conquers Zen.o.bia +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ 300 Under Constantine Christianity becomes the State religion Roman Empire divided +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ 400 Angles and Saxons drive out the Britons Huns under Attila invade the Roman Empire +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ 500 Christianity carried to England by Augustine +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ ENGLISH LITERATURE 600 ARABIA Caedmon Mahomet +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ Baeda 700 FRANCE Cynewulf Charlemagne founds the Empire of the West +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ aelfred, 850-900 800 Danes overrun England _aelfred's_ _glorious _reign_ +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ 900 Chivalry begins Capetian kings in France ENGLAND Saint Dunstan Papal supremacy +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ 1000 PERSIA ENGLAND Firdusi's Shah Canute the Great Nameh 1066. _Norman_ _Conquest_ Peter the Hermit First Crusade +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ Geoffrey of Monmouth 1100 PERSIA ENGLAND Omar Khayyam Plantagenets GERMANY Richard I. Nibelungenlied SPAIN FRANCE Chronicle of Second and Third the Cid Crusades Saint Bernard +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ Layamon 1200 PERSIA ENGLAND Roger Bacon Saadi 1215. Runnymede, Magna Charta Edward I. +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ Mandeville 1300 ITALY ENGLAND Langland Dante Chivalry at its Wycliffe Chaucer Petrarch height Gower Boccaccio The Black Prince _Gunpowder_ PERSIA FRANCE Hafiz Battles of Crecy, Poictiers, and Agincourt +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ Lydgate 1400 GERMANY ENGLAND Fortescue Thomas a Henry VIII. Malory Kempis shook off the Pope Arabian Nights _Movable Type_ (probably) _Discovery of_ PERSIA _America_ Jami Joan of Arc Wars of the Roses +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ _Copernicus_ More Ascham 1500 ITALY _Kepler_ Lyly Sackville Ariosto _The Armada_ Sidney Ta.s.so ENGLAND Marlowe Fox Galileo Henry VIII., Spenser Hooker Elizabeth GERMANY FRANCE 1515. _Luther's_ Montaigne _Reformation_ FRANCE Ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ Jonson Bacon Herbert 1600 SPAIN. 1620. Plymouth Shakspeare Newton J.Taylor Cervantes Rock and the Chapman Hobbes Calderon "Mayflower" Beaumont & Walton GERMANY 1649 Fletcher S. Butler Kepler _Cromwell_ Milton Locke FRANCE 1660 Restoration Bunyan Pepys Descartes 1688 Revolution Dryden Corneille William and Mary Racine FRANCE. Moliere Louis XIV. La Fontain +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ Addison Cowper Otis 1700 FRANCE 1776. American Steele Burns Jay Montesquieu Revolution Pope Rogers Adams Le Sage 1789-94. French Defoe Hume Hamilton Rousseau Revolution Swift Edwards Madison Voltaire ENGLAND Berkeley A. Smith Jefferson Marlborough J. Butler Bentham Pitt GERMANY Moore Gibbon Burke Munchausen Thomson Johnson Fox Lessing Young Boswell Erskine Gray Malthus P. Henry. Goldsmith Mackintosh Sterne Paine +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+ Scott Herschel DeQuincey 1800 GERMANY 1807. Fulton's Byron Whewell Whately Schiller Steamboat Bryant Ricardo Jeffrey Goethe Wellington Drake Carey Brougham Kant 1815. Waterloo Wordsworth Faraday S. Smith Fichte 1815. White wives Keats Lyell C. North Hegel sold in England Sh.e.l.ley Aga.s.siz N. Webster Sch.e.l.ling 1830. Pa.s.senger Payne Whitney H. H. White Niebuhr railway Keble A. Gray D. Webster Schlosser 1833. Matches Halleck Hallam Sparks Heine 1844. Telegraph Key Prescott Story Haeckel 1845. Mexican War Macaulay Lewes Gould Helmholtz Hood Milman Cooper Grimm Poe Buckle Disraeli Froebel Read Merivale d.i.c.kens Tennyson Hildreth Thackeray FRANCE 1860. Rebellion Browning Freeman Bronte La Place 1863. Emanc.i.p.ation Lowell Draper Hawthorne Guizot Longfellow Froude Irving De Tocqueville Carleton Walpole Hughes Comte Ingelow Lecky Kingsley Hugo Whittier Parkman Eliot Dumas 1870. Franco- Mill Bancroft Collins Balzac German War Spencer Whipple Macdonald Renan 1874. The Ruskin Twain Hunt Taine Telephone Arnold Jerrold Wallace Emanc.i.p.ation of Curtis Choate Clarke RUSSIA serfs in Holmes Lincoln Landor Pushkin Russia Mansel Phillips Tourgee Lermontoff Carlyle Everett Holland Bashkirtseff Emerson Sumner Howells Tolstoi Darwin Garfield Mrs. Whitney Huxley Gladstone Miss Alcott DENMARK Dana A. D. White Bellamy Andersen Tyndall Beecher Gronlund Lubbock P. Brooks Gilman POLAND Proctor Lamb Holley Sienkiewicz Davy Hazlitt Dodge Proctor Lamb Jewett Davy Hazlitt Burroughs Bright Rives Stowe Fiske Aldrich Hearn Curtin Warner Burnett Hale Curtis Edwards Higginson 1900 +-------------------------------+------+----------------+-------------------+

REMARKS ON TABLE V.

=Definitions and Divisions=.--Literature is life pulsing through life upon life; but only when the middle life imparts new beauty to the first is literature produced in any true and proper sense. The last life is that of the reader; the middle one that of the author; the first that of the person or age he pictures. Literature is the past pouring itself into the present. Every great man consumes and digests his own times.

Shakspeare gives us the England of the 16th century, with the added qualities of beauty, ideality, and order. When we read Gibbon's "Rome,"

it is really the life of all those turbulent times of which he writes that is pouring upon us through the channels of genius. Dante paints with his own sublime skill the portraits of Italy in the 14th century, of his own rich, inner life, and of the universal human soul in one composite masterpiece of art. In one of Munchausen's stories, a bugler on the stage-top in St. Petersburg was surprised to find that the bugle stopped in the middle of the song. Afterward, in Italy, sweet music was heard, and upon investigation it was found that a part of the song had been frozen in the instrument in Russia, and thawed in the warmer air of Italy. So the music of river and breeze, of battle and banquet, was frozen in the verse of Homer nearly three thousand years ago, and is ready at any time, under the heat of our earnest study, to pour its harmony into our lives.

It is the fact that beauty is added by the author which distinguishes _Literature_ from the pictures of life that are given to us by newspaper reporters, tables of statistics, etc. Literature is not merely life,--it is life _crystallized in art_. This is the first great line dividing the Literary from the Non-Literary. The first cla.s.s is again divided into Poetry and Prose. In the first the form is measured, and the substance imagery and imagination. In the latter the form is unmeasured, and the substance direct. Imagery is the heart of poetry, and rhythm its body.

The thought must be expressed not in words merely, but in words that convey other thoughts through which the first s.h.i.+nes. The inner life is pictured in the language of external Nature, and Nature is painted in the colors of the heart. The poet must dip his brush in that eternal paint-pot from which the forests and fields, the mountains, the sky, and the stars were painted. He must throw human life out upon the world, and draw the world into the stream of his own thought. Sometimes we find the substance of the poetic in the dress of prose, as in Emerson's and in Ingersoll's lectures, and then we have the prose poem; and sometimes we find the form of poetry with only the direct expression, which is the substance of prose, or perhaps without even the substance of _literary_ prose, as in parts of Wordsworth, Pope, Longfellow, Homer, Tennyson, and even sometimes in Shakspeare; see, for example, Tennyson's "Dirge."

=Tests for the Choice of Books=.--In deciding which of those glorious s.h.i.+ps that sail the ages, bringing their precious freight of genius to every time and people, we shall invite into our ports, we must consider the nature of the crew, the beauty, strength, and size of the vessel, the depth of our harbor, the character of the cargo, and our own wants.

In estimating the value of a book, we have to note (1) the kind of life that forms its material; (2) the qualities of the author,--that is, of the life through which the stream comes to us, and whose spirit is caught by the current, as the breezes that come through the garden bear with them the perfume of flowers that they touch; (3) the form of the book, its music, simplicity, size, and artistic shape; (4) its merits, compared with the rest of the books in its own sphere of thought; (5) its fame; (6) our abilities; and (7) our needs. There result several tests of the claims of any book upon our attention.

I. What effect will it have upon character? Will it make me more careful, earnest, sincere, placid, sympathetic, gay, enthusiastic, loving, generous, pure, and brave by exercising these emotions in me, and more abhorrent of evil by showing me its loathsomeness; or more sorrowful, fretful, cruel, envious, vindictive, cowardly, and false, less reverent of right and more attracted by evil, by picturing good as coming from contemptible sources, and evil as clothed with beauty? Is the author such a man as I would wish to be the companion of my heart, or such as I must study to avoid?

II. What effect will the book produce upon the mind? Will it exercise and strengthen my fancy, imagination, memory, invention, originality, insight, breadth, common-sense, and philosophic power? Will it make me bright, witty, reasonable, and tolerant? Will it give me the quality of intellectual beauty? Will it give me a deeper knowledge of human life, of Nature, and of my business, or open the doorways of any great temple of science where I am as yet a stranger? Will it help to build a standard of taste in literature for the guidance of myself and others?

Will it give me a knowledge of what other people are thinking and feeling, thus opening the avenues of communication between my life and theirs?

III. What will be the effect on my skills and accomplishments? Will it store my mind full of beautiful thoughts and images that will make my conversation a delight and profit to my friends? Will it teach me how to write with power, give me the art of thinking clearly and expressing my thought with force and attractiveness? Will it supply a knowledge of the best means of attaining any other desired art or accomplishment?

IV. Is the book simple enough for me? Is it within my grasp? If not, I must wait till I have come upon a level with it.

V. Will the book impart a pleasure in the very reading? This test alone is not reliable; for till our taste is formed, the trouble may not be in it but in ourselves.