Page:Lubbock - The Best Hundred Books (1886).pdf/35

Rh

Fergusson's History of Architecture.

Ruskin.

Tyrwhitt.

De Tocqueville.

John Stuart Mill.

Fawcett.

Laveleye.

Adam Smith.

Cornewall Lewis.

Lord Brougham.

Sir J. Lubbock.

J. G. Wood's Books on Natural History.

White's Natural History of Selborne.

Geology: Hugh Miller, Ramsay, Geikie, Ansted. Botany: General Elements of British.

Science of Language, Trench and Farrar, Max Müller, Taylor's Words and Places.

in every variety; specially the old collection.

HE old race of librarians who knew only the outsides of books has happily passed away. Librarians in these days are keenly alive to the educational side of their functions, and the following letters from some of the leading librarians in the country will therefore have a peculiar value.

Dear Sir,—You will find it difficult to guide young people in their reading by merely forming a list of good books. Literature has many branches, each of which has its "best books." Let a young choose his line of study, and he will find no difficulty in discovering the best authority in it. The result of several persons putting down the titles of books they considered "best reading" would be an interesting but very imperfect bibliography of as many sections of literature. But fuller and better information is already obtainable from printed works—each department having special bibliographies. A choice selection of them is placed in the Museum Reading-room, and a list of them has been printed. A very useful guide to books in English is supplied by a work published in New York, entitled "The Best Reading," by A. B. Perkins, 8vo, 1877. The books are classified in the form of an index to subjects. "The English Catalogue," with indexes for periods of years from 1837, published by Sampson Low and Co., is also extremely useful for ascertaining what has been written on any particular subject. But the beginner should be advised to read histories of the literature of his own and other countries—as Hallam's "Introduction to the Literature of Europe," Joseph Warton's "History of English Poetry," Craik's "History of English Literature," Taine's History, and others of the same class. These would give him a survey of the field, and would quicken his taste for what was naturally most congenial to him. Excuse me if in these general remarks I have evaded doing what you specially desired.—Yours faithfully, 2em

Mr. R. Harrison wrote to us as follows:—

Unfortunately, I did not read Sir John Lubbock's lecture or address recently delivered on the subject of books, but I have seen the list of books that he appears to think would form an adequate collection for a man of culture to keep near him for the purpose of study and intellectual refreshment. The selection in some respects is very good, but I venture to say that it is not adequate o the requirements of the majority of thinking men in the present day. It cannot fairly be said that a hundred books, including the ancient classical writers in the original tongues, would be fully appreciated by men who had not spent previous years in the reading of untold volumes in the acquisition of the ancient languages.

Would it not be sufficient for the ordinary reader of our day to use what Shakspeare used for obtaining a knowledge of the mind of the ancients? If North's translation of Plutarch served our great dramatist in the production of his classical plays, would not the modest volumes of Collins's "Ancient Classics for English Readers" adequately convey to the ordinary modern reader the form and substance of ancient thought? Why should he pore over books that he never can thoroughly enjoy unless he be a second Porson? In recommending books to an ordinary reader, I would add to Collins's "Ancient Classics" Whewell's "Platonic Dialogues" and Jowett's translation of Plato. Homer he should read in old Chapman's version, and, adopting Sir John Lubbock's list generally, I would suggest the "Agricola" of Tacitus as more interesting than the "Germania," and one of the many good English versions of the "Agamemnon" of Æschylus as sufficient for the division of Greek dramatists. Under "Epic Poetry" Sir John has placed Malory's "Morte d'Arthur." I confess I would rather recommend Tennyson's "Idylls of the King." With regard to Eastern poetry, I imagine that an ordinary Englishman would learn more of its spirit and character from Omar Khayyam's "Rubáiyat," translated into English by Fitzgerald, and Edwin Arnold's work, the "Light of Asia," and others, than he would from the interminable "Mahabaratha" and "Ramayana," even when epitomized. I take the liberty of adding to Sir John Lubbock's list the names of a few other books without reading which no man can be held to have a competent knowledge of even English literature:—

Milman's History of Early Christianity and of Latin Christianity.

Histories of Rome by Dr. Arnold, Merivale, and Mommsen.

Histories of Greece by Thirlwall and Grote.

Freeman's Norman Conquest, and other works.

Hallam's Works.

Stubbs's Constitutional History.

Froude's History of England.

Macaulay's England.

Stanhope (or Mahon's) England.

Lecky's Eighteenth Century.

McCarthy's Our Own Times.