Newman 0 3 6 Sir John Seeley, Ecce Homo: New Universal Library 0 1 0 David Masson, Thomas de Quincey: English Men of Letters Series 0 1 0 John Richard Green, Short History of the English People 0 8 6 Sir Leslie Stephen, Pope: English Men of Letters Series 0 1 0 Lord Acton, On the Study of History 0 2 6 Mandell Creighton, The Age of Elizabeth 0 2 6 F. W. H. Myers, Wordsworth: English Men of Letters Series 0 1 0 £4 10 6
The following authors are omitted, I think justifiably:—Hallam, Whewell, Grote, Faraday, Herschell, Hamilton, John Wilson, Richard Owen, Stirling Maxwell, Buckle, Oscar Wilde, P. G. Hamerton, F. D. Maurice, Henry Sidgwick, and Richard Jebb.
Lastly, here is the list of poets. In the matter of price per volume it is the most expensive of all the lists. This is due to the fact that it contains a larger proportion of copyright works. Where I do not specify the edition of a book, the original copyright edition is meant:
POETS.
£ s. d.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, Poetical Works: Oxford Edition 0 3 6 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, Literary Criticism: Nowell Smith's Edition 0 2 6 Robert Southey, Poems: Canterbury Poets 0 1 0 Robert Southey, Life of Nelson: Everyman's Library 0 1 0 S. T. COLERIDGE, Poetical Works: Newnes's Thin-Paper Classics 0 2 0 S. T. COLERIDGE, Biographia Literaria: Everyman's Library 0 1 0 S. T. COLERIDGE, Lectures on Shakspere: Everyman's Library 0 1 0 JOHN KEATS, Poetical Works: Oxford Edition 0 3 6 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, Poetical Works: Oxford Edition 0 3 6 LORD BYRON, Poems: E. Hartley Coleridge's Edition 0 6 0 LORD BYRON, Letters: Scott Library 0 1 0 Thomas Hood, Poems: World's Classics 0 1 0 James and Horace Smith, Rejected Addresses: New Universal Library 0 1 0 John Keble, The Christian Year: Canterbury Poets 0 1 0 George Darley, Poems: Muses' Library 0 1 0 T. L. Beddoes, Poems: Muses' Library 0 1 0 Thomas Moore, Selected Poems: Canterbury Poets 0 1 0 James Clarence Mangan, Poems: D. J. O'Donoghue's Edition 0 3 6 W. Mackworth Praed, Poems: Canterbury Poets 0 1 0 R. S. Hawker, Cornish Ballads: C. E. Byles's Edition 0 5 0 Edward FitzGerald, Omar Khaayyám: Golden Treasury Series 0 2 6 P. J. Bailey, Festus: Routledge's Edition 0 3 6 Arthur Hugh Clough, Poems: Muses' Library 0 1 0 LORD TENNYSON, Poetical Works: Globe Edition 0 3 6 ROBERT BROWNING, Poetical Works: World's Classics (2 vols.) 0 2 0 Elizabeth Browning, Aurora Leigh: Temple Classics 0 1 6 Elizabeth Browning, Shorter Poems: Canterbury Poets 0 1 0 P. B. Marston, Song-tide: Canterbury Poets 0 1 0 Aubrey de Vere, Legends of St. Patrick: Cassell's National Library 0 0 6 MATTHEW ARNOLD, Poems: Golden Treasury Series 0 2 6 MATTHEW ARNOLD, Essays: Everyman's Library 0 1 0 Coventry Patmore, Poems: Muses' Library 0 1 0 Sydney Dobell, Poems: Canterbury Poets 0 1 0 Eric Mackay, Love-letters of a Violinist: Canterbury Poets 0 1 0 T. E. Brown, Poems 0 7 6 C. S. Calverley, Verses and Translations 0 1 6 D. G. ROSSETTI, Poetical Works 0 3 6 Christina Rossetti, Selected Poems: Golden Treasury Series 0 2 6 James Thomson, City of Dreadful Night 0 3 6 Jean Ingelow, Poems: Red Letter Library 0 1 6 William Morris, The Earthly Paradise 0 6 0 William Morris, Early Romances: Everyman's Library 0 1 0 Augusta Webster, Selected Poems 0 4 6 W. E. Henley, Poetical Works 0 6 0 Francis Thompson, Selected Poems 0 5 0 £5 7 0
Poets whom I have omitted after hesitation are: Ebenezer Elliott, Thomas Woolner, William Barnes, Gerald Massey, and Charles Jeremiah Wells. On the other hand, I have had no hesitation about omitting David Moir, Felicia Hemans, Aytoun, Sir Edwin Arnold, and Sir Lewis Morris. I have included John Keble in deference to much enlightened opinion, but against my inclination. There are two names in the list which may be somewhat unfamiliar to many readers. James Clarence Mangan is the author of My Dark Rosaleen, an acknowledged masterpiece, which every library must contain. T. E. Brown is a great poet, recognised as such by a few hundred people, and assuredly destined to a far wider fame. I have included FitzGerald because Omar Khayyám is much less a translation than an original work.
SUMMARY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
83 prose-writers, in 141 volumes, costing £ 9 10 7
38 poets " 46 " " 5 7 0
121 187 £14 17 7
GRAND SUMMARY OF COMPLETE LIBRARY.
Authors. Volumes. Price.
1. To Dryden 48 72 £ 5 9 0
2. Eighteenth Century 57 78 6 8 0
3. Nineteenth Century 121 187 £14 17 7
226 337 £26 14 7
I think it will be agreed that the total cost of this library is surprisingly small. By laying out the sum of sixpence a day for three years you may become the possessor of a collection of books which, for range and completeness in all branches of literature, will bear comparison with libraries far more imposing, more numerous, and more expensive.
I have mentioned the question of discount. The discount which you will obtain (even from a bookseller in a small town) will be more than sufficient to pay for Chambers's Cyclopædia of English Literature, three volumes, price 30s. net. This work is indispensable to a bookman. Personally, I owe it much.
When you have read, wholly or in part, a majority of these three hundred and thirty-five volumes, with enjoyment, you may begin to whisper to yourself that your literary taste is formed; and you may pronounce judgment on modern works which come before the bar of your opinion in the calm assurance that, though to err is human, you do at any rate know what you are talking about.
Chapter XIV
Mental Stocktaking
Great books do not spring from something accidental in the great men who wrote them. They are the effluence of their very core, the expression of the life itself of the authors. And literature cannot be said to have served its true purpose until it has been translated into the actual life of him who reads. It does not succeed until it becomes the vehicle of the vital. Progress is the gradual result of the unending battle between human reason and human instinct, in which the former slowly but surely wins. The most powerful engine in this battle is literature. It is the vast reservoir of true ideas and high emotions—and life is constituted of ideas and emotions. In a world deprived of literature, the intellectual and emotional activity of all but a few exceptionally gifted men would quickly sink and retract to a narrow circle. The broad, the noble, the generous would tend to disappear for want of accessible storage. And life would be correspondingly degraded, because the fallacious idea and the petty emotion would never feel the upward pull of the ideas and emotions of genius. Only by conceiving a society without literature can it be clearly realised that the function of literature is to raise the plain towards the top level of the peaks. Literature exists so that where one man has lived finely ten thousand may afterwards live finely. It is a means of life; it concerns the living essence.
Of course, literature has a minor function, that of passing the time in an agreeable and harmless fashion, by giving momentary faint pleasure. Vast multitudes of people (among whom may be numbered not a few habitual readers) utilise only this minor function of literature; by implication they class it with golf, bridge, or soporifics. Literary genius, however, had no intention of competing with these devices for fleeting the empty hours; and all such use of literature may be left out of account. You, O serious student of many volumes, believe that you have a sincere passion
