Immortal Memories Part 9

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 Const.i.tutions des Peuples Libres_. {248a}

75. Rossi--_Cours du Droit Const.i.tutionnel_. {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. La.s.salle--_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 t.i.tle 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 doc.u.ments, 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 n.o.blest 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 a.s.suming 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 cla.s.sified 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 s.h.i.+rk much responsibility of selection. Scott is a whole library, Shakspere is yet another. One may give "Keats" or "Sh.e.l.ley" because they are more limited in quant.i.ty. 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}