^^^E P ■RM S t OWER ^Hj g HAMLIN FIT CM ^^1 1 ^^^^^^Ihb:' 1 MODERN ENGLISH BOOKS OF POWER ■(i^S> MODERN ENGLISH BOOKS OF POWER By GEORGE HAMLIN FITCH **A Good Book Is the Precious Life-Blood of a Master Spirit, Embalmed and Treasured Up on Purpose to a Life Beyond Life." Milton: Arhofagitica ILLUSTRATED PAUL ELDER AND COMPANY PUBLISHERS, SAN FRANCISCO Copyright, is^z T7^A*L I iy Paul Elder and Company "^ ^ ' ... .Fr The articles in this book appeared originally in the Sunday book-page of the San Francisco Chronicle. The privilege of reproducing them here is due to the courtesy of M. H. de Young, Esq. f^ TO AMERIQUE WHOSE LOVE AND ENCOURAGEMENT HELPED ME TO WRITE THIS BOOK Contents Introduction The Vital Quality in Literature .... xi To Get the Spiritual Essence of a Great Book One Must Study the Man Who Wrote It— The Man Is the Best Epitome of His Message. Macaulay's Essays in European History . . 3 Foremost English Essayist — His Style and Learning Have Made Macaulay a Favorite for Over a Half Century. Scott and His Waverley Novels .... 11 Greatest Novelist the World Has Known — Made History Real and Created Charafters That Will Never Die. Carlyle as an Inspirer of Youth .... 20 Finest English Prose Writer— His Best Books, Past and Present, Sartor Resartus and the French Revolution. De Quincey as a Master of Style . . . . 30 He Wrote the Confessions of an English Opium-Eater— Dreamed Dreams and Sawr Visions and Pi£tured Them in Poetic Prose. Charles Lamb and the Essays of Elia . . . 38 Best Beloved of All the English Writers— Quaintest and Tcnderest Essayist Whose Work Appeals to All Hearts. Dickens, the Foremost of Novelists ... 47 More Widely Read Than Any Other Story -Tellcr-The Greatest of the Modem Humorists Appeals to the Readers of All Ages and Classes. Thackeray, Greatest Master of Fiction , . 56 The Most Accomplished Writer of His Century— Tender Pathos Under an Affeftation of Cynicism and Great Art in Style and Charafters. [V] Contents Page Charlotte Bronte; Her Two Great Novels 66 Jane Eyre and Villette are Touched With Genius— The Tragedy of a Woman's Life That Resulted in Two Stories of Passionate Revolt Against Fate. George Eliot and Her Two Great Novels . 76 Adam Bede and The Mill on the Floss— Her Early Stories Are Rich in Charadler Sketches, With Much Humor and Pathos. RusKiN, THE Apostle of Art 87 Art Critic and Social Reformer— Best Books Are Modern Painters, The Seven Lamps and The Stones of Venice. Tennyson Leads the Victorian Writers . . 96 A Poet Who Voiced the Aspirations of His Age—Locksley Hall, In Memorian and The Idylls of the King Among His Best Works. Browning, Greatest Poet Since Shakespeare . 106 How to Get the Best of Browning's Poems — Read the Lyrics First and Then Take Up the Longer and the More Difficult Works. Meredith and a Few of His Best Novels . .115 One of the Greatest Masters of Fidlion of the Last Cen- tury— T^tf Ordeal of Richard Feverel, Diana of the Crosstuays and Other Novels. Stevenson, Prince of Modern Story- Tellers 123 His Stories of Adventure and Brilliant 'S.^^zyt— Treasure Island and Dr, Jekyll and Mr. Hyde His Most Poo- ular Books. Thomas Hardy; His Tragic Tales of Wessex i 3 1 Greatest Living Writer of English Fiftion— Resenting Harsh Criticisms, the Prose Master Turns to Verse. Kipling's Best Short Stories and Poems . .140 Tales of East Indian Life and Character— Ideal Training of the Genius That Has Produced Some of the Best Literary Work of Our Day. Bibliography 151 Short Notes of Both Standard and Other Editions, With Lives, Sketches and Reminiscences. Index 165 [vi] Illustrations Facing Page Charles Dickens Reading The Chimes at 58 Lincoln's Inn Fields on the Second of December, 1 844. From a Sketch by Daniel Maclise, R. A Title v' Thomas Babington Macaulay at the Age of Forty-nine— After an Engraving by W. Holl, from a Drawing by George Richmond, A. R. A 6 "^ Sir Walter Scott— This Portrait is taken from Chantrey's Bust now at Abbotsford, which, according to Lockhart, **Alone Preserves for Posterity the Expression most fondly Remembered by All who Ever Mingled in his Domestic Circle." . . . i% ^ White Horse Inn— From an Illustration to Wa'verley^ Drawn by G. Cattermole and Engraved by E. Finden . . . 14; Thomas Car lyle— From the World-Famed Masterpiece of Portraiture by James McNeill Whistler . . . . 20 • Archhouse, Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire, the Birthplace of Thomas Carlyle— From a Photograph in the Possession of Alexander Carlyle, M. A., on which Carlyle has Written a Memorandum to Show in which Room he was Born . 26 Thomas De Quincey— From an old Engraving . . . 30 De Quincey with Two Daughters and Grandchild— From a Chalk Drawing by James Archer, R. S. A., made in 1855 34- Charles Lamb— From the Portrait by William Hazlitt . 38 . Mary and Charles Lamb— From the Painting by F. S. Cary made in 1834 44 Charles Dickens at the Age of Twenty-seven- From the Portrait by Daniel Maclise, R. A 48 Original Pickwick Cover Issued in 1 837 with Dickens' Auto- graph—Most of Dickens' Novels were Issued in Shilling Installments before being Published in the Complete Volume 5 2 William Makepeace Thackeray— From a Drawmg by Samuel Laurence, Engraved by J. C. Armytage . . . . 56 Title-page to Vanity Fair^ Drawn by Thackeray, who Fur- nished the Illustrations for Many of his Earlier Editions 58 [vii] Illustrations facing Page William Makepeace Thackeray— A Caricature Drawn by Himself 62 Charlotte Bronte— From the Exquisitely Sympathetic Crayon Portrait by George Richmond, R. A. , now in the National Portrait Gallery of London 66 Mrs. Gaskell— From the Portrait by George Richmond, R. A. Mrs. Gaskell's Life of Bronte is one of the Finest Biog- raphies in the Language 71 George Eliot in 1 864— From the Etching by Mr. Paul Rajon— Drawn by Mr. Frederick Burton— From the Frontispiece to the First Edition of George Eliot' s Life, by Her Hus- band, J. W. Cross 76 George Eliot's Birthplace, South Farm, Arbury, Nuneaton. 80 John Ruskin— From a Photograph Taken on July 20,1882, by Messrs. Elliott & Fry 88 John Ruskin— From the Semi-Romantic Portrait by Sir John E. Millais 92 Lord Alfred Tennyson— After an Engraving by G. J. Stodart From a Photograph by J. Maya 11 96 Facsimile of Tennyson's Original Manuscript of Crossing the Bar. (Copyright by the Macmillan Company) . . .100 Robert Browning — From a Photograph by HoUyer after the Portrait by G. F. Watts, R. A 106 Elizabeth Barrett Browning— After the Portrait by Field Tal- fourd no George Meredith with His Daughter and Grandchildren — From a Photograph Taken Shortly Before His Death . 118 Flint Cottage, Boxhill, the Home of George Meredith— His Writing was done in a Small Swiss Chalet in the Garden 120 Robert Louis Stevenson— The Author's Intimate Associates Pronounce this Photograph a Perfe£l Presentation of His Most Typical Expression 126 Stevenson's Home at Valima, Samoa, Looking Toward Vaea 128 Thomas Hardy— A Portrait Which Brmgs Out Strikingly the Man of Creative Power, the Artist, the Philosopher and the Poet 132 Rudyard Kipling— A Striking Likeness of the Author in a Charadleristic Pose 1 40 Rudyard Kipling— From a Cartoon by W. Nicholson . . 144 [viii] Introdu&ion ll/fraim in this little hook has been to give IVJi short sketches and estimates of the greatest modern English writers from Mac- aulay to Stevenson and Kipling, Omissions there are^ but my effort has been to give the most chara^eristic writers a place and to try to stimulate the reader s interest in the man behind the book as well as in the best works of each author, T^oo much space is devoted in most literary criticism to the bare fa£fs of biography and the details of essays or novels or histories written by authors. My plan has been to arouse interest both in the men and their books so that any reader of this volume may be stimulated to extend his knowledge of the modern English classics, T^hese chapters include the greatest English writers during the last one hundred and fifty years and they have been prepared mainly for those who have no thorough knowledge of modern English books or authors. They are of limited scope so that few quotations have been possible. But they have been written with an eager desire to help those who care to know the best works of modern English [ix] IntroduBion authors. In the same spirit the most appro- friate illustrations have been secured and a helpful bibliography has been added. If this book helps readers to secure one lasting friend among these authors it will have done good missionary work; for to make the books of one man or woman of genius a part of our mental 'possessions is to be set on the broad highway to literary culture. \A The Vital ^luality in Literature To Get the Spiritual Essence of a Great Book One Must Study the Man Who Wrote It-The Man Is the Best Epit- ome of His Message. 7'N this volume as in its predecessor y^ Com- fort Found in Good Old Books ^'^ny aim has been to enforce the theory that behind every great book is a man^ greater than the best book that he ever wrote, T^his strong spiritual quality which every one of the great authors puts into his best books is what we should strive to secure when we read these great classics. Unless we get this spiritual part we miss the essence of the book. Hence it has been my aim in this volume to make clear what manner of men wrote these books which serve as the landmarks of modern English literature. The scope of this book is limit ed^ but from Macaulay to Kipling the effort has been to [xi] The Vital ^ality in Literature include those representative modern English authors who both in prose and verse best reflect the spiritual tendencies of their age. Whether essayists^ historians^ novelists or poets each of these writers has furnished something distinctive; each has caught some salient feature of his age and fixed it for all time in the amber of his thought. And what a bead-roll is this of great English worthies: Macaulay^ the most bril- liant and learned of all English essayists; Scott y the finest story-teller of his own or any other age; Carlyle^ the inspirer of ambitious youth; De ^incey^ the greatest artist in style, whose words are as music to the sensitive ear; DickenSy the master painter of sorrows and joys of the common people; 'Thackeray y the best interpreter of human life and char- a^er; Charlotte Bronte, the brooding Celtic genius who laid bare the hearts of women; George Eliot, the greatest artist of her sex in mastery of human emotion; Ruskin, the first to teach the common people appreciation of art and architecture; 'Tennyson, the melodi- ous singer who voiced the highest aspiration of his time; Browning, the greatest dramatic poet since Shakespeare; Charles Lamb, one of the tender est of essayists; George Mere- dith, the most brilliant and suggestive novelist [xii] The Vital ^ality in Literature of the Victorian age; Stevenson^ the best beloved and most artistic story-teller of his day; Hardy, the master painter of tragedies of rural life; and Kipling, the interpreter of Anglo-Indian life, the singer of the new age of science and discovery, the laureate of the gospel of blood and iron. 'The work of each of these men and women who make up the splendid roll of English immortals varies in quality, in style, in capac- ity to touch the heart and inspire the thought of the reader of to-day. But great as are their differences, all meet on the common ground of a warm-hearted, sympathetic humanity that knows no distinctions of race or creed, no lim- itations of time or place. I'he splendid ser- mons on the gospel of work that Carlyle preached after long wrestlings of the spirit are as full of inspiration to the youth of to-day as they were when they came out from the mind of the man who actually lived the labo- rious life that he commended; the little lay discourses that may be found scattered through Thackeray s novels and essays are born of agony of spirit, and it is their spiritual power which keeps them fresh and full of inspira- tion in this age of doubt and materialism. And so we might go down through the whole list. Each of these great writers had [xiii] The Vital ^ality in Literature his Gethsemane^ from which he emerged with the power of moving the hearts of men. So when we read that most beautiful essay of Lamb's on ^^ Dream Children^'' our hearts ache for the lonely man who sacrificed the best things in life for the sake of the sister whom he loved better than his own happiness. And when we read 'Thackeray s eloquent words on family love we know that he wrote in his heart's bloody for the dearest woman in the world to him was lost forever in this worlds when the light of her reason was clouded. And so I have tried in these essays to show how bitter waters of sorrow have strength- ened the spirit of all these masters of English thought and style^ until they have poured out their hearts in eloquent words that can never die. Far across the gulf of years their sono- rous voices reach our ears. Pregnant are they with the passionate earnestness of these men and women of genius^ these bearers of the torch of spiritual inspiration passed from hand to hand down the centuries. When our souls are moved by some great bereavement then the words of these inspired writers soothe our griefs. When we are beaten down in the dust of conflict they come with the refreshment of water from springs in the everlasting hills. When we are bitter over [xiv] The Vital ^ality in Literature great losses or sore over hope deferred or stricken because friends have proved faith- less^ then they soften our hearts and give us courage to take up once more the battle of life. [XV] MODERN ENGLISH BOOKS OF POWER Macaulay's Essays in European History The Foremost Essayist in English LiTERATURE-HlS StYLE AND LEARNING Have Made Macaulay a Favorite For Over a Half Century. MACAULAY belonged to the nineteenth century, as he was born in 1800, but in his cast of mind, in his literary tastes and in his intense partisanship he belonged to the century that includes Swift, Johnson and Goldsmith. He stands alone among famous English authors by reason of his prodigious memory, his wide reading, his oratorical style and his singular ascendancy over the minds of young students. The only writers of modern times who can be classed with him as great personal forces in the development of young minds are Carlyle and Emerson, and of the three Macaulay must be given first place because of a certain dynamic quality in the man [3] Modern English Books of Power and his style which forces convidion on the mind of the immature reader. The same thing to a less extent is true of Carlyle, who suffers in his influence as one grows older. Emerson is in a class by himself. His appeal is that of pure reason and of high enthusiasm-an appeal that never loses its force with those who love the intel- lectual life. Many famous men have testified to the mental stimulus which they received from Macaulay*s essays. Upon these essays, contributed to the Edinburgh Review in its prime, Macaulay lavished all the re- sources of his vast scholarship, his discur- sive reading in the ancient and modern classics, his immense enthusiasm and his strong desire to prove his case. He was a great advocate before he was a great writer, and he never loses sight of the jury of his readers. He blackens the shadows and heightens the lights in order to make heroes out of Clive and Warren Hastings; he hammers Boswell and BoswelFs editor, Croker, over the sacred head of old Dr. Johnson ; he lampoons every eminentTory, as he idealizes every prominent Whig in English political history. Macaulay's style is declamatory; he wrote as though he were [4] Macaulay's Essays in History to deliver his essays from the rostrum; he abounds in antithesis; he works up your interest in the course of a long paragraph until he reaches his smashing climax, in which he fixes indelibly in your mind the impression which he desires to create. It is all like a great piece of legerdemain; your eyes cannot follow the processes, but your mind is amazed and then convinced by the triumphant proof of the conjuror*s skill. Macaulay had one of the most successful of lives. His early advantages were ample. He had a memory which made everything he read his own, ready to be drawn upon at a moment's notice. He was famous as an author at the early age of twenty-five; he was already a distinguished Parliamen- tary orator at thirty; at thirty-three he had gained a place in the East Indian Council. He never married, but he had an ideal domestic life in the home of his sister, and one of his nephews, George Otto Trevel- yan, wrote his biography, one of the best in the language, which reveals the sweet- ness of nature that lay under the hard surface of Macaulay*s charader. He made a fortune out of his books, and in ten years' service in India he gained another fortune, [5] Modern English Books of Power with the leisure for wide reading, which he utilized in writing his history of England. He died at the height of his fame, before his great mental powers had shown any sign of decay. Take it all in all, his was a happy Hfe, brimful of work and enjoyment. Thomas Babington Macaulay was born Odober 25, 1800, the son of a wealthy merchant who was adive in securing the abolition of the slave trade. His precocity is almost beyond belief He read at three years of age, gave signs of his marvelous memory at four, and when only eight years old wrote a theological discourse. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, at eighteen, but his aversion to mathematics cost him college honors. He showed at Cambridge great fondness for Latin decla- mation and for poetry. At twenty-four he became a fellow of Trinity. He studied law, but did not practice. Literature and politics absorbed his attention. At twenty- five he made his first hit with his essay on Milton in the Edinburgh Review. This was followed in rapid succession by the series of essays on which his fame mainly rests. In 1830 he was eledled to Parliament, and in the following year he established his reputation as an orator by [6] ^ if- • ^ -4 1'^ ^.^ — ..«<«#' \ ':l '"V Thomas Babington Macaulay AT THE Age of Forty-nine— After an Engraving BY W. HOLL, FROM A DraWING BY George Richmond, A. R. A. Macaulay's Essays in History a great speech on the reform bill. But financial reverses came when he lost the lucrative post of Commissioner in Bank- ruptcy and his fellowship at Trinity lapsed. To gain an income he accepted the position of secretary of the Board of Control of Indian Affairs, and soon after was offered a seat in the Supreme Council of India at Calcutta at ^50,000 a year. He lived in India four years, and it was mainly in these years that he did the reading which after- ward bore fruit in his History of England, At thirty-nine Macaulay began his His- tory of England ^w^Kich. continued to absorb most of his time for the next twenty years. While he was working on his history he published Lays of Ancient Rome, that had a success scarcely inferior to that of Scott's Lady of the Lake or Byron's Childe Harold. He also published his essays, which had a remarkable sale. His history, the first two volumes of which appeared in 1 848, scored a success that astounded all the critics. When the third volume appeared in 1855, no less than twenty-six thousand, five hundred copies were sold in ten weeks, which broke all records of that day. Mac- aulay received royalties of over 1150,000 on history, a sum which would have been [7] Modern English Books of Power trebled had he secured payment on editions issued in the United States, where his works were more popular than in his own country. His last years were crowded with honors. He accepted a peerage two years before his death. When the end came he was given a public funeral and a place in Westminster Abbey. WithCarlyle, Macaulay shares the honor of being the greatest of English essayists. While he cannot compare with Carlyle in insight into charader and in splendor of imagination, he appeals to the wider audi- ence because of his attradlive style, his wealth of ornament and illustration and his great clearness. Carlyle's appeal is mainly to students, but Macaulay appeals to all classes of readers. Macaulay's style has been imitated by many hands, but no one has ever worked such miracles as he wrought with apparent ease. In the first place, his learning was so much a part of his mind that he drew on its stores without effort. Scarcely a paragraph can be found in all his essays which is not packed with allusions, yet all seem to illustrate his subjedt so naturally that one never looks upon them as used to display his remarkable knowledge. [8] Macaulay's Essays in History Macaulay is a master of all the literary arts. Especially does he love to use an- tithesis and to make his effedls by violent contrasts. Add to this the art of skilful cHmax, clever alliteration, happy illustra- tion and great narrative power and you have the chief features of Macaulay's style. The reader is carried along on this flood of oratorical style, and so great is the author's descriptive power that one actually beholds the scenes and the personages which he depids. Of all his essays Macaulay shows his great powers most conspicuously in those on Milton, Clive, Warren Hastings and Croker's edition of Boswell's Johnson. In these he is always the advocate laboring to convince his hearers; always the orator filled with that passion of enthusiasm which makes one accept his words for the time, just as one's mind is unconsciously swayed by the voice of an eloquent speaker. It is this intense earnestness, this fierce desire to convince, joined to this prodigal display of learning, which stamps Macaulay's words on the brain of the receptive reader. Only when in cold blood we analyze his essays do we escape from this literary hypnotism which he exerts upon every reader. [9J Modern English Books of Power The essays of Macaulay are full of meat and all are worth reading, but, of course, every reader will differ in his estimate of them according to his own tastes and sym- pathies. It is fine pradice to take one of these essays and look up the literary and historical allusions. No more attradive work than this can be set before a reading club. It will give rich returns in knowl- edge as well as in methods of literary study. Macaulay 's History is not read to-day as it was twenty years ago, mainly because his- torical writing in these days has suffered a great change, due to the growth of religious and political toleration. Macaulay is a partisan and a bigot, but if one can discount much of his bias and bitterness it will be found profitable to read portions of this history. Macaulay's verse is not of a high order, but his Lays are full of poetic fire, and they appeal to a wider audience than more finished verse. Of all the English writers of the last century Macaulay has preserved the strong- est hold on the reading public, and what- ever changes time may make in literary fashions, one may rest assured that Macau- lay will always retain his grip on readers of English blood. [lo] Scott AND His Waverley Novels The Greatest Novelist the World Has Known-He Made History Real and Created Characters That Will Never Die. IT is as difficult to sum up in a brief article the work and the influence of Sir Walter Scott as it is to make an estimate of Shake- speare, for Scott holds the same position in English prose fidion that Shakespeare holds in English poetry. In neither depart- ment is there any rival. In sheer creative force Scott stands head and shoulders above every other English novelist, and he has no superior among the novelists of any other nation. He has made Scotland and the Scotch people known to the world as Cervantes made Spain and the Spaniards a reality for all times. But he did more than Cervantes, for his creative mind reached over the border into ["] Modern English Books of Power England and across the channel to France and Germany, and even to the Holy Land, and found there historical types which he made as real and as immortal as his own highland clansmen. His was the great cre- ative brain of the nineteenth century, and his work has made the world his debtor. His work stimulated the best story teller of France and gave the world Monte Crista and l^he ^hree Guardsmen, It fired the imaginations of a score of English histor- ical novelists ; it was the progenitor of Wey- man's A Soldier of France and Conan Doyle's Micah Clarke and 'The White Com- fany, Scott's mind was Shakespearean in its capacity for creating charadters of real flesh and blood; for making great historical per- sonages as real and vital as our next-door neighbors, and for bursts of sustained story telling that carry the reader on for scores of pages without an instant's drop in inter- est. Only the supreme masters in creative art can accomplish these things. And the wonder of it is that Scott did all these things without effort and without any self-consciousness. We can not imagine Scott bragging about any of his books or his characters, as Balzac did about Eugenie [12] Sir Walter Scott This Portrait is Taken from Chantrey's Bust NOW AT AbBOTSFORD, WHICH, ACCORDING TO Lockhart,**Alone Preserves for Pos- terity the Expression most fondly Remembered by All who Ever Mingled in his Domestic Circle'* Scott and His Waverley Novels Grandet and others of his French types. He was too big a man for any small vani- ties. But he was as human as Shakespeare in his love of money, his desire to gather his friends about him and his hearty enjoy- ment of good food and drink. It has become the fashion among some of our hair-splitting critics to decry Scott because of his carelessness in literary style, his tendency to long introductions, and his fondness for description. These critics will tell you that Turgeneff and Tolstoi are greater literary artists than Scott, just as they tell you that Thackeray and Dickens do not deserve a place among the foremost of English novelists. This petty, finical criticism, which would measure everything by its own rigid rule of literary art, loses sight of the great primal fad that Scott created more real characters and told more good stories than any other novelist, and that his work will outlive that of all his detradors. It ignores the fad that Thack- eray's wit, pathos, tenderness and knowl- edge of human nature make him immortal in spite of many defeds. It forgets that Dickens* humor, joy of living and keen desire to help his fellow man will bring him thousands of readers after all the [13] Modern English Books of Power apostles of realism are buried under the dust of oblivion. Scott had the ideal training for a great historical novelist. Yet his literary suc- cesses in verse and prose were the result of accident. It is needless here to review his life. The son of a mediocre Scotch lawyer, he inherited from his father his capacity for work and his passion for sys- tem and order. From his mother he drew his love of reading and his fondness for old tales of the Scotch border. Like so many famous writers, his early education was desultory, but he had the free run of a fine library, and when he was a mere schoolboy his reading of the best English classics had been wider and more thorough than that of his teachers. Forced by boyish illness to live in the country, he early developed a great love for the Scotch ballads and the tales of the romantic past of his native land. These he gathered mainly by word of mouth. Later he was a diligent student and col- ledlor of all the old ballads. In this way his mind was steeped in historical lore, while by many walking tours through the highlands he came to know the common people as very few have ever known them. ^8*5*"*'*^ ^P W W O ? ^ S 5^ ■ " o D > ^ t-1 > H m > ^ s M O o Scott and His Waverley Novels Thus for forty years, while he was a working lawyer and a sheriff of his county, he was really laying up stores of material upon which he drew for his many novels. His literary tastes were first developed by study of German and by the translation of German ballads and plays. This prac- tice led him to write 'The Lay of the Last Minstrely and its success was responsible for Marmion and T^he Lady of the Lake, But great as was his triumph in verse, he dropped the writing of poems when Byron's work eclipsed his own. Then, in his forty-third year, he turned to prose and began with Waverley; that series of novels which is the greatest ever produced by one man. The success of his first story proved a great stimulus to his imagination, and for years he continued to produce these novels, three of which may be ranked as the best in English literature. The element of mystery in regard to the authorship added to Scott's literary suc- cess. It was his habit to crowd his literary work into the early hours from four to eight o'clock in the morning; the remain- der of the day was given up to legal duties and the evening to society. His tremen- dous energy and his power of concentra- [^5] Modern English Books of Power tion made these four hours equal to an ordinary man's working day. His mind was so full of material that the labor was mainly that of seledion. Creative work, when once seated at his desk, was as nat- ural as breathing. Scott came to his desk with the zest of a boy starting on a holi- day, and this pleasure is refleded in the ease and spontaneity of his stories. But much as he liked his literary work, Scott would not have produced so great a number of fine novels had he not been impelled by the desire to retrieve large money losses. His old school friend, Ballantyne, forced into bankruptcy the printing firm in which Scott was a secret partner. The novelist was not morally responsible for these debts, but his keen sense of honor made him accept all the responsibility, and it drove him to that unceasing work which shortened his life. He paid off nearly all the great debt, and he gave in this task an example of high courage and power of work that has never been surpassed and seldom equaled. You may read the record of those last years in Lockhart's fine Life of Scott, Get the one volume edition, for the full work is too long for these busy days, and follow the [i6] Scott and His Waverley Novels old author in his heroic struggle. It will bring tears to your eyes, but it will make you a lover of Scott, the man, who was as great as Scott, the poet and novelist. Ruskin, when he was making up a list of great authors, put opposite Scott's name, "Every line." That bit of advice cannot be followed in these strenuous times, but one must make a seledion of the best, and then, if he have time and inclination, add to this number. To my mind, the four great novels of Scott are Ivanhoe, ^entin Durwardy I'he 'Talisman and The Heart of Midlothian. The first gives you feudal England as no one else has painted it, with a pidure of Richard the Lion-Hearted which no historian has ever approached. It contains some of the most thrilling scenes in all fidlion. James Payn, who was a very clever novelist, relates the story that he and two literary friends agreed to name the scene in all fidion that they regarded as the most dramatic. When they came to com- pare notes they found that all three had chosen the same-the entry of the unknown knight at Ashby de la Zouch, who passes by the tents of the other contestants and strikes with a resounding clash the shield b7\ Modern English Books of Power of the haughty Templar. This romance also contains one of Scott's finest women, the Jewess Rebecca, who atones for the novelist's many insipid female characters. Scott was much like Stevenson-he pre- ferred to draw men, and he was happiest when in the clash of arms or about to undertake a desperate adventure. ^entin Durward is memorable for its splendid pidure of Louis XI, one of the ablest as well as one of the mean- est men who ever sat on a throne. The early chapters of this novel, which describe the adventures of the young Scotch soldier at the court of France, have never been surpassed in romantic interest, ^he T^alisman gives the glory and the romance of the Crusades as no other imaginative work has done. It stands in a class by itself and is only approached by Scott's last novel. Count Robert of Paris^ which gives flashes of the same spirit. Of the Scotch novels it is difficult to make a choice, but it seems to me 'The Heart of Midlothian has the widest appeal, although many would cast their votes for Old Mortality y The Antiquary or Roh Roy because of the rich humor of those romances. Scott's dialed, although true to nature, is [i8] Scott and His Waverley Novels not difficult, as he did not consider it neces- sary to give all the colloquial terms, like the modern "kailyard" writers. If you read three or four of Scott's novels you are pretty apt to read more. It is an easy matter to skip the prolix passages and the unnecessary introductions. This done, you have a body of romance that is far richer than any present-day fi6lion. And their great merit is that, though written in a coarse age, the Waverley novels are sweet and wholesome. One misses a great source of enjoyment and culture who fails to read the best of Scott's novels. Take them all in all, they are the finest fidtion that has ever been written, and their continued popu- larity, despite their many faults, is the best proof of their sterling merit. [19] Carlyle As AN Inspirer OF Youth The Finest English Prose Writer of The Last Century-His Best Books, "Past and Present," "Sartor Resar- TUS" AND THE "FrENCH ReVOLUTION/* As an Influence in stimulating school and k college students, Macaulay must be given a foremost place, but greater than Macaulay, because of his spiritual fervor and his moral force, stands Thomas Carlyle, the great prophet and preacher of the nine- teenth century, whose influence will outlast that of all other writers of his time. And this spiritual potency, which resides in his best work, is not weakened by his love of the Strong Man in History or his fear of the rising tide of popular democracy, in which he saw a dreadful repetition of the horrors of the French Revolution. It was the Puritan element in his granite charader [20] Thomas Carlyle From the World-Famed Masterpiece of Portraiture by James McNeill Whistler Carlyle As an Inspirer of Youth which gave most of the flaming spiritual ardor to Carlyle*s work. It was this which made him the greatest preacher of his day, although he had left behind him all the old articles of faith for which his forefathers went cheerfully to death on many a bloody field. Carlyle believed a strong religious faith was vital to any real and lasting work in this world, and from the day he gave out Sartor Resartus he preached this dodlrine in all his books. He was born into a genera- tion that was content to accept the forms of religion, so long as it could enjoy the good things of this world, and much of Carlyle's speech sounded to the people of his day like the warnings of the prophet Isaiah to the Israelites of old. But Carlyle was never daunted by lack of appreciation or by any ridicule or abuse. These only made him more confident in his belief that the spiritual life is the greatest thing in this world. And he adually lived the life that he preached. For years Carlyle failed to make enough to support himself and his wife, yet he refused a large income, offered by the Lon- don Times for editorial work,on the ground that he could not write to order nor bend [21] Modern English Books of Power his opinions to those of others. He put behind him the temptation to take advan- tage of great fame when it suddenly came to him. When publishers were eager for his work he spent the same time in pre- paring his books as when he was poor and unsought. He labored at the smallest task to give the best that was in him; he wrote much of his work in his heart's blood. Hence it is that through all of his books, but especially through Past and Present and Heroes and Hero JVorship^on^ feels the strong beat of the heart of this great man, who yearned to make others follow the spiritual life that he had found so full of strength and comfort. Carlyle*s life was largely one of work and self-denial. He was born of poor par- ents at the little village of Ecclefechan, in Dumfriesshire, Scotland. His father, though an uneducated stone-mason, was a man of great mental force and originality, while his mother was a woman of fine imagination, with a large gift of story tell- ing. The boy received the groundwork of a good education and then walked eighty miles to Edinburgh University. Born in 1795, Carlyle went to Edinburgh in 1809. His painful economy at college laid the [22] Carlyle As an Inspirer of Youth foundation of the dyspepsia which troubled him all his days, hampered his work and made him take a gloomy view of life. At Edinburgh he made a specialty of mathe- matics and German. He remained at the university five years. The next fifteen years were spent in tutoring, hack writing for the publishers and translation from the German. His first remunerative work was the translation of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, a version which still remains the best in English. After his marriage to Jane Welsh he was driven by poverty to take refuge on his wife's lonely farm at Craigenputtock, where he did much reading and wrote the early essays which contain some of his best work. The Edinburgh Review and Eraser's were opened to him. Finally, in 1833, when he was nearly forty years old, he made his first literary hit with Sartor Resartus^ which called out a storm of caustic criticism. The Germanic style, the elephantine humor, the strange conceits and the sledge-hammer blows at all which the smug English public regarded with reverence-all these features aroused irritation. Four years later came ne French Revolutionywhich established Carlyle's fame [23] Modern English Books of Power as one of the greatest of English writers. From this time on he was freed from the fear of poverty, but it was only in his last years, when he needed little, that he enjoyed an income worthy of his labors. Carlyle's great books,beside those I have mentioned, are the lives of Cromwell and oi Frederick the Great, These are too long for general reading, but a single volume condensation of the Frederick gives a good idea of Carlyle^s method of combining biography and history. Carlyle outlived all his contemporaries— a lonely old man, full of bitter remorse over imaginary neg- lect of his wife, and full also of despair over the democratic tendencies of the age, which he regarded as the outward signs of national degeneracy. Carlyle's fame was clouded thirty years ago by the unwise publication of reminis- cences and letters which he never intended for print. Froude was chosen as his biog- rapher. One of the great masters of Eng- lish, Froude was a bachelor who idealized Mrs. Carlyle and who regarded as the simple truth an old man*s bitter regrets over opportunities negleded to make his wife happier. Everyone who has studied Carlyle^s life knows that he was dogmatic, [24] Carlyle As an Inspirer of Youth dyspeptic, irritable, and given to sharp speech even against those he loved the best. But over against these failings must be placed his tenderness, his unfaltering affedion, his self-denial, his tremendous labors, his small rewards. When separated from his wife Carlyle wrote her letters that are like those of a young lover, an infinite tenderness in every line. One of her great crosses was the belief that her husband was in love with the brilliant Lady Ashburton. Her jeal- ousy was absurd, as this great lady invited Carlyle to her dinners because he was the most brilliant talker in all England, and he accepted because the opportunity to indulge in monologue to appreciative hear- ers was a keener pleasure to him than to write eloquent warnings to his day and generation. Froude*s unhappy book, with a small library of commentary that it called forth, is practically forgotten, but Carlyle*s fame and his books endure because they are real and not founded on illusion. Carlyle opens a new world to the col- lege student or the ambitious youth who may be gaining an education by his own efforts. He sounds a note that is found in no other author of our time. Doubtless [25J Modern English Books of Power some of this attradion is due to his singu- lar style, formed on a long study of the German, but most of it is due to the tre- mendous earnestness of the man, which lays hold of the young reader. Never shall I forget when in college preparatory days I devoured P^j/ and Present and was stirred to extra effort by its trumpet calls that work is worship and that the night soon Cometh when no man can work. His tine chapter on Labor ^vfixh. its splen- did version of the Mason^s Song of Goethe has stimulated thousands to take up heavy burdens and gp on with the struggle for that culture of the mind and the soul which is the more precious the harder the fight to secure it. I remember copying in a commonplace book some of Carlyle*s son- orous passages that stir the blood of the young like a bugle call to arms. Reading them over years after, I am glad to say that they still appealed to me, for it seems to me that the saddest thing in this world is to lose one's youthful enthusiasms. When you can keep these fresh and strong, after years of contadl with a selfish world, age cannot touch you. In this appeal to all that is best and noblest in youth, Carlyle stands unrivaled. [26] -*^(4*Ux4^ [ll^- Archhouse, Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire The Birthplace of Thomas Carlyle-From a Photograph in the Possession of Alexander Carlyle, M.A.ON WHICH Carlyle has Written a Memorandum to Show in which Room He was Born Carlyle As an Inspirer of Youth He has far more heart, force and real warm blood than Emerson, who saw just as clearly, but who could not make his thought reach the reader. A course in Carlyle should be compulsory in the freshman year at every college. If the lecturer were a man still full of his early enthusiasms it could not fail to have rich results. Take, for instance, those two chapters in Past and Present that are entitled "Happy" and "Labor." In a dozen pages are summed up all Carlyle's creed. In these pages he declares that the only enduring happiness is found in good, honest work, done with all a man's heart and soul. And after caustic words on the modern craving for happiness he ends a noble diatribe with these words, which are worth framing and hanging on the wall, where they may be studied day by day: Brief brawling Day, with its noisy phantasms, its poor paper-crown's tinsel -gilt^ is gone; and divine everlasting Night, with her star-diadems, with her silences and her veracities, is come ! What hast thou done, and how? Happiness, unhappiness; all that was but wages thou hadst; thou hast spent all that, in sus- taining thyself hitherward ; not a coin of it remains with thee ; it is all spent, eaten ; and now thy work, where is thy work ? Swift, out with it ; let us see thy work! [27] Modern English Books of Power Sartor Resartus is very hard reading, but if you make up your mind to go through it you will be repaid by many fine thoughts and many noble passages of impassioned prose. Under the guise of Herr Diogenes Teufelsdrockh, Carlyle tells the story of his early religious doubts, his painful strug- gles that recall Bunyan's wrestlings with despair, and his final entry upon a new spiritual life. He wrote to let others know how he had emerged from the Valley of the Shadow of Pessimism into the deledl- able Mountains of Faith. Carlyle was the first of his day to proclaim the great truth that the spiritual life is far more important than the material life, and this he showed by the humorous philosophy of clothes, which he unfolded in the style of the Ger- man pedants. Carlyle evidently took great pleasure in developing this satire on Ger- man philosophy, which is full of broad humor. 'The French Revolution has been aptly called "history by lightning flashes.** One needs to have a good general idea of the period before reading Carlyle*s work. Then he can enjoy this series of splendid pidures of the upheaval of the nether world and the strange moral monsters that sated their [28] Carlyle As an Inspirer of Youth lust for blood and power in those evil days, which witnessed the terrible payment of debts of selfish monarchy. Carlyle reaches the height of his power in this book, which may be read many times with profit. The sources of Carlyle's strength as a writer are his moral and spiritual fervor and his power of making the reader see what he sees. The first insures him endur- ing fame, as it makes what he wrote eighty years ago as fresh and as full of fine stim- ulus as though it were written yesterday. The^ other faculty was born in him. He had an eye for pidures; he described what he saw down to the minutest detail; he made the men of the French Revolution as real as the people he met on his tour of Ireland. He made Cromwell and Frederick men of blood and iron, not mere historical lay figures. And over all he cast the glam- our of his own indomitable spirit, which makes life look good even to the man who feels the pinch of poverty and whose out- look is dreary. You can't keep down the boy who makes Carlyle his daily compan- ion; he will rise by very force of fighting spirit of this dour old Scotchman. [29] De Quincey As A Master of Style He Wrote "Confessions of an English Opium-Eater-Dreamed Dreams and Saw Visions and Pictured Them in Poetic Prose. OF all the English writers Thomas De Quincey must be given the palm for rhythmical prose. He is as stately as Mil- ton, with more than Milton's command of rhythm. If you read aloud his best pas- sages, which are written in what he calls his bravura style, you have a near approach to the music of the organ. De Quincey was so nice a judge of words, he knew so well how to balance his periods, that one of his sentences gives to the appreciative ear the same delight as a stanza of perfed verse. Ruskin had much of De Quincey's com- mand of impassioned prose, but he never rose to the same sustained heights as the [30] Thomas De Quincey From an Old Engraving De QyiNCEY As A Master of Style older author. In fa6l, De Quincey stands alone in these traits: the mass and accuracy of his accumulated knowledge; the power of making the finest distindions clear to any reader, and the gorgeous style, thick with the embroidery of poetical figures, yet never giving the impression of over- adornment. And above all these merits is the supreme charm of melodious, rhyth- mical sentences, which give the same enjoy- ment as fine music. Forty years ago De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater was read by everyone who professed any knowledge of the masters of English literature. To-day it is voted old-fashioned, and few are famil- iar with its splendid imagery. His other works, which fill over a dozen volumes, are practically forgotten, mainly because his style is very diffuse and his constant digressions weary the reader who has small leisure for books. No one, however, should miss reading the Confessions, the Autobiography and some one essay, such, for instance, as "Murder as One of the Fine Arts," or "The Flight of a Tartar Tribe,'' or "The Vision of Sud- den Death" in An English Mail Coach, All these contain passages of the greatest beauty [31] Modern English Books of Power He lost his father at the age of seven, and his mother seems to have given little per- sonal attention to him. He was in nominal charge of four guardians, and at seventeen, when his health had been seriously reduced by lack of exercise and overdosing of medi- cines, the sensitive boy ran away from the Manchester Grammar school and wandered for several months in Wales. He was allowed a pound a week by one of his guardians, and he made shift with this for months; but finally the hunger for books, which he had no money to buy, sent him to London. There he undertook to get advances from money-lenders on his expec- tations. This would have been easy, as he was left a substantial income in his father's will, but these Shylocks kept the boy waiting. In his Confessions he tells of his suffer- ings from want of food, of his nights in an unfurnished house in Soho with a little girl who was the "slavey" of a disreputable lawyer, of his wanderings in the streets, of the saving of his life by an outcast woman whom he has immortalized in the most elo- quent passages of the book. Finally, he was restored to his friends and went to Oxford. His mental independence prevented him [34] x^^ De Quincey with Two Daughters AND Grandchild— From a Chalk Drawing BY James Archer, R. S. A. MADE IN 1855. De Quincey As a Master of Style from taking a degree, and chronic neuralgia of the face and teeth led him to form the habit of taking opium, which clung to him for life. De Quincey was a close associate of Col- eridge, Wordsworth, Southey, Lamb and others. He was a brilliant talker, especially when stimulated with opium, but he was incapable of sustained intelledual work. Hence all his essays and other work first appeared in periodicals and were then pub- lished in book form. It is noteworthy that an American publisher was the first to gather his essays in book form, and that his first appreciation, like that of Carlyle, came from this country. Much of De Quincey's work is now unreadable because it deals with political economy and allied subjedts, in which he fancied he was an expert. He is a master only when he deals with pure literature, but he has a large vein of satiric humor that found its best expression in the gro- tesque irony of "Murder as One of the Fine Arts." In this essay he descants on the greatest crime as though it were an accomplishment, and his freakish wit makes this paper as enjoyable as Charles Lamb*s essay on the origin of roast pig. [35] Modern English Books of Power De Quincey's fame, however, rests upon 'The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, This is a record unique in English litera- ture. It tells in De Quincey*s usual style, with many tedious digressions, the story of his negledled boyhood, his revolt at school discipline and monotony that had shattered his health, his wanderings in Wales, his life as a common vagrant in London, his college life, his introdudlion to opium and the dreams that came with indulgence in the drug. The gorgeous beauty of DeQuincey's pictures of these opium visions has prob- ably induced many susceptible readers to make a trial of the drug, with deep dis- appointment as the result. No common mind can hope to have such visions as De Quincey records. His imagination has well been called Druidic; it played about the great fads and personages of history and it invested these with a background of the most solemn and imposing natural features. These dreams came to have with him the very semblance of reality. Read the terrible passages in the Confessions in which the Malay figures; read the dream fugues in "Suspira," the visions seen by the boy when he looked on his dead sister's face, or the noble pas- [36] De Quincey As a Master of Style sages that pidure the three Ladies of Sor- row. Here is a passage on the vision of eternity at his sister's death bier, which gives a good idea of De Quincey's style: Whilst I stood, a solemn wind began to blow— the saddest that ear ever heard. It was a wind that might have swept the fields of mortality for a thousand cen- turies. Many times since upon summer days, when the sun is about the hottest, I have remarked the same wind arising and uttering the same hollow, solemn, Memnonian, but saintly swell; it is in this world the one great audible symbol of eternity. It is a great temptation to quote some of De Quincey's fine passages, but most of them are so interwoven with the context that the most eloquent bits cannot be taken out without the loss of their beauty. De Quincey was a dreamer before he became a slave to opium. This drug intensified a natural tendency until he became a vision- ary without an equal in English literature. And these visions, evoked by his splendid imagination, are worth reading in these days as an antidote to the materialism of present-day life; they demonstrate the power of the spiritual life, which is the potent and abiding force in all literature. [37] Charles Lamb And The Essays of Elia The Best Beloved of All the English Writers-Quaintest and Tenderest Essayist Whose Work Appeals to All Hearts. OF all the English writers of the last century none is so well beloved as Charles Lamb. Thirty years ago his Essays of Elia was a book which every one with any claim to culture had not only read, but read many times. It was the traveling companion and the familiar friend, the unfailing resource in periods of depression, the comforter in time of trouble. It touched many experiences of life, and it ranged from sunny, spontaneous humor to that pathos which is too deep for tears. Into it Lamb put all that was rarest and best in his nature, all that he had gleaned from a life of self-sacrifice and spiritual culture. [38] Charles Lamb From the Portrait by William Hazlitt Charles Lamb and Essays of Elia Such men as he were rare in his day, and not understood by the literary men of harder nature who criticised his peculiari- ties and failed to appreciate the delicacy of his genius. Only one such has appeared in our time-he who has given us a look into his heart in A Window in thrums and in that beautiful tribute to his mother, Margaret Ogilvie, Barrie, in his insight into the mind of a child and in his freakish fancy that seems brought over from the world of fairyland to lend its glamour to prosaic life, is the only successor to Lamb. Lamb can endure this negled:, for were he able to revisit this earth no one would touch more whimsically than he upon the fads and the foibles of contemporary life; but it's a great pity that in the popular craze about the new writers,all redolent with the varnish of novelty, we should consign to the dust of unused shelves the works of Charles Lamb. All that he wrote which the world remembers is in Elia and his many letters-those incomparable epistles in which he quizzed his friends and revealed the tenderness of his nature and the deli- cacy of his fancy. Robert Louis Stevenson is justly re- garded as the greatest essayist of our time, [39] Modern English Books of Power but I would not exchange the Essays of Elia for the best things of the author of Virginibus Puerisque, Stevenson always, except in his familiar early letters, suggests the literary artist who has revised his first draft, with an eye fixed on the world of readers who will follow him when he is gone. But Lamb always wrote with that charming spontaneous grace that comes from a mind saturated with the best read- ing and mellow with much thought. You fancy him jotting down his thoughts, with his quizzical smile at the effedt of his quips and cranks. You cannot figure him as laboriously searching for the right word or painfully recasting the same sentence many times until he reached the form which suited his finical taste. This was Steven- son's method, and it leaves much of his work with the smell of the lamp upon it. Lamb apparently wrote for the mere pleas- ure of putting his thoughts in form, just as he talked when his stammering tongue had been eased with a little good old wine. It is idle to expedl another Lamb in our strenuous modern life, so we should make the most of this quaint Englishman of the early part of the last century, who seemed to bring over into an artificial age all the [40] Charles Lamb and Essays of Elia dewy freshness of fancy of the old Eliza- bethan worthies. Can anything be more perfed in its pathos than his essay on "Dream Children," the tender fancy of a bachelor whom hard fate robbed of the domestic joys that would have made life beautiful for him? Can anything be more full of fun than his "Dissertation on Roast Pig," or his "Mrs. Battle's Opinion on Whist"? His style fitted his thought like a glove; about it is the aroma of an earlier age when men and women opened their hearts like children. Lamb lays a spell upon us such as no other writer can work; he plays upon the strings of our hearts, now surprising us into wholesome laughter, now melting us to tears. You may know his essays by heart, but you can't define their elusive charm. Lamb had one of the saddest of lives, yet he remained sweet and wholesome through trials that would have embittered a nature less fine and noble. He came of poor people and he and his sister Mary inherited from their mother a strain of mental unsound- ness. Lamb spent seven years in Christ's Hospital as a "Blue Coat" boy, and the chief result, aside from the foundations of a good classical scholarship, was a friend- [41] Modern English Books of Power ship for Coleridge which endured through life. From this school he was forced to go into a clerkship in the South Sea house, but after three years he secured a desk in the East India house, where he remained for thirty years. Four years later his first great sorrow fell upon Lamb. His sister Mary sud- denly developed insanity, attacked a maid servant, and when the mother interfered the insane girl fatally wounded her with a knife. In this crisis Lamb showed the fineness of his nature. Instead of permit- ting poor Mary to be consigned to a pub- lic insane asylum, he gave bonds that he would care for her, and he did care for her during the remainder of her life. Although in love with a girl, he resolutely put aside all thoughts of marriage and domestic hap- piness and devoted himself to his unfor- tunate sister, who in her lucid periods repaid his devotion with the tenderest affedion. Lamb's letters to Coleridge in those try- ing days are among the most pathetic in the language. To Coleridge he turned for stimulus in his reading and study, and he never failed to get help and comfort from this great, ill-balanced man of genius. Later [42] Charles Lamb and Essays of Elia he began a correspondence with Southey, in which he betrayed much humor and great fancy. In his leisure he saturated his mind with the EHzabethan poets and dram- atists; pradically he lived in the sixteenth century, for his only real life was a stu- dent's dream life. He contributed to the London newspapers, but his first published work to score any success was his T^ales From Shakespeare^ in which his sister aided him. Then followed Poets Contemporary With Shakespeare^ selections with critical comment, which at once gave Lamb rank among the best critics of his time. He wrote,when the mood seized him, recollec- tions of his youth, essays and criticisms which he afterward issued in two volumes. Twenty-five essays that he contributed to the London Magazine over the signa- ture of Elia were reprinted in a book, the Essays of Elia , and established Lamb's rep- utation as one of the great masters of English. Another volume o^ Essays of Elia was published in 1833. ^^ 1^34 Lamb sorrowed over the death of Coleridge, and in November of the same year death came to him. Of all English critics Carlyle is the only one who had hard words for Lamb, and the Sage of Chelsea probably [43] Modern English Books of Power wrote his scornful comment because of some playful jest of Elia. Charles Lamb's taste was for the wri- ters of the Elizabethan age, and even in his time he found that this taste had become old-fashioned. He complained, when only twenty-one years old, in a letter to Col- eridge, that all his friends "read nothing but reviews and new books." His letters, like his essays, refled: the reading of little-known books; they show abundant traces of his loiterings in the byways of literature. Here there is space only to dwell on some of the best of the Essays of Elia. In these we find the most pathetic deal with the sufferings of children. Lamb himself had known loneliness and suffering and lack of appreciation when a boy in the great Blue Coat School. Far more vividly than Dickens he brings before us his negleded childhood and all that it represented in lonely helplessness. Then he deals with later things, with his love of old books, his passion for the play, his delight in Lon- don and its various aspeds, his joy in all strange chara6ters like the old benchers of the Inner Temple. The essay opens with that alluring pic- ture of the South Sea house, and is followed [44] Mary and Charles Lamb From the Painting by F. S. Gary MADE IN 1834 Charles Lamb and Essays of Elia by the reminiscences of Christ's Hospital, where Lamb was a schoolboy for seven years. These show one side of Lamb's nature-the quaintly reminiscent. Another side is revealed in "Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist," with its delicate irony and its playful humor, while still another phase is seen in the exquisite phantasy of "Dream Children," with its tender pathos and its revelation of a heart that never knew the joys of domestic love and care. Yet close after this beautiful reverie comes "A Dis- sertation On Roast Pig," in which Lamb develops the theory that the Chinese first discovered the virtues of roast suckling pig after a fire which destroyed the house of Ho-ti, and that with the fatuousness of the race they regularly burned down their houses to enjoy this succulent delicacy. "The Last Essays of Elia y a second series which Lamb brought out with a curious preface "by a friend of the late Elia," do not differ from the earlier series, save that they are shorter and are more devoted to literary themes. Perfed in its pathos is "The Superannuated Man," while "The Child Angel" is a dream which appeals to the reader more than any of the splendid dreams that De Quincey immortalized in [45] Modern English Books of Power his florid prose. Lamb in these essays gives some wise counsel on books and reading, urging with a whimsical earnestness the claims of the good old books which had been his comfort in many dark hours. It is in such confidences that we come very close to this man, so richly endowed with all endearing qualities that the world will never forget Elia and his exquisite essays. [46] Dickens The Foremost of Novelists More Widely Read Than Any Other Story Teller-The Greatest of the Modern Humorists Appeals to the Readers of All Ages and Classes. Charles Dickens is the greatest English novelist since Scott, and he and Scott, to my mind, are the greatest English wri- ters after Shakespeare. Many will dissent from this, but my reason for giving him this foremost place among the modern writers is the range, the variety, the dra- matic power, the humor and the pathos of his work. He was a great caricaturist rather than a great artist, but he was supreme in his class, and his grotesque charad:ers have enough in them of human nature to make them accepted as real people. To him belongs the first place among novelists, after Scott, because of his splen- did creative imagination, which has peopled [47] Modern English Books of Power the world of fidlion with scores of fine char- acters. His genial humor which has bright- ened life for so many thousands of readers; his tender pathos which brings tears to the eyes of those who seldom weep over imagi- nary or even real grief or pain; his rollick- ing gayety which makes one enjoy good food and good drink in his tales almost as much as if one really shared in those feasts he was so fond of describing; his keen sympathy with the poor and the suffering; his flaming anger against injustice and cru- elty that resulted in so many great public reforms; his descriptive power that makes the reader adlually see everything that he depicts— all these traits of Dickens' genius go to make him the unquestioned leader of our modern story tellers. Without his humor and his pathos he would still stand far above all others of his day; with these qualities, which make every story he ever wrote throb with genuine human feeling, he stands in a class by himself. Many literary critics have spent much labor in comparing Dickens with Thack- eray, but there seems to me no basis for such comparison. One was a great carica- turist who wrote for the common people and brought tears or laughter at will from [48] Charles Dickens AT THE Age of Twenty-seven- From the Portrait by Daniel Maclise, R. A. Dickens Foremost of Novelists the kitchen maid as freely as from the great lady; from the little child with no knowledge of the world as readily as from the mature reader who has known wrong, sorrow and suffering. The other was the supreme literary artist of modern times, a gentleman by instind: and training, who wrote for a limited class of readers, and who could not, because of nature and tem- perament, touch at will the springs of laughter and tears as Dickens did. Dickens has created a score of charaders that are household words to one that Thackeray has given us. Both were men of the rarest genius, English to the core, but each expressed his genius in his own way, and the way of Dickens touched a thousand hearts where Thackeray touched but one. Personally, Thackeray appeals to me far more than Dickens does, but it is foolish to permit one's own fancies to bHnd or warp his critical judgments. Hence I set Dickens at the head of modern novelists and give him an equal place with Scott as the great- est English writer since Shakespeare. Take it all in all, Dickens had a success- ful and a happy life. He was born in 1 8 12 and died in 1870. His boyhood was hard [49] Modern English Books of Power because of his father's thriftlessness, and it always rankled in his memory that at nine years of age he was placed at work pasting labels on boxes of shoe blacking. But he had many chances in childhood and youth for reading and study, and his keen mind took advantage of all these. He was a natural mimic, and it was mere blind chance that kept him from the stage and made him a great novelist. He drifted into news- paper work as a shorthand reporter, wrote the stories that are known as Sketches by BoZy and in this way came to be engaged to write the Pickwick Papers^ to serve as a story to accompany drawings by Seymour, a popular artist. But Dickens from the outset planned the story and Seymour lived only to illustrate the first number. The tale caught the fancy of the public, and Dickens developed Pickwick, the Wel- lers and other charaders in a most amusing fashion. Great success marked the appear- ance of the Pickwick Papers in book form, and the public appreciation gave Dickens confidence and stimulus. Soon appeared Oliver I'wisi, Nicholas Nickleby, OldCurosity Shop and the long line of familiar stories that ended with The Mystery of Edwin Droody left unfinished by the master's hand. [50] Dickens Foremost of Novelists All these novels were originally pub- lished in monthly numbers. In these days, when so many new novels come from the press every month, it is difficult to appre- ciate the eagerness with which one of these monthly parts of Dickens' stories was awaited in England as well as in this coun- try. My father used to tell of the way these numbers of Dickens* novels were seized upon in New England when he was a young man and were worn out in passing from hand to hand. Dickens first devel- oped the Christmas story and made it a real addition to the joy of the holiday season. His Christmas Carol ?Lnd I'he Cricket on the Hearth still stand as the best of these tales that paint the simple joys of the great- est of English Holidays. Dickens was also a great editor, and in Household Words and All The Year Round he found a means of giving pleasure to hosts of readers as well as a vehicle for the monthly publication of his novels. Dickens was the first to make a great fortune by giving public readings from his own works. His rare dramatic ability made him an ideal interpreter of his own work, and those who were fortunate enough to hear him on his two trips to this country [51] Modern English Books of Power speak always of the light which these read- ings cast on his principal characters and of the pleasure that the audience showed in the novelist's remarkable powers as a mimic and an elocutionist. Most of the great English writers have labored until forty or over before fame came to them. Of such were Scott, Thackeray, Carlyle and George Eliot. But Dickens had an international fame at twenty-four, and he was a household word wherever English was spoken by the time he was thirty. From that day to the day of his death, fame, popularity, wealth, troops of friends, were his portion, and with these were joined unusual capacity for work and unusual delight in the exercise of his great creative powers. In taking up Dickens* novels it must always be borne in mind that you will find many digressions, many bits of afFedation, some mawkish pathos. But these defedls do not seriously injure the stories. You cannot afford to leave Pickwick Papers unread, because this novel contains more sponta- neous humor than any other of Dickens' work, and it is also quoted most frequently. The boy or girl who cannot follow with relish the amusing incidents in this book [52] /^ //if^'^^^^Ki^. ^A^yj ^^ 4i./ 'POSTHUMOUS PAPERS LOrfDON: CHAPMAN i HALU 18C, STRAND. Original Pickwick Cover Issued in 1837 WITH Dickens' Autograph— Most of Dickens' Novels WERE Issued in Shilling Installments before BEING Published in the Complete Volume Dickens Foremost of Novelists is not normal. Older readers will get more from the book, but it is doubtful whether they will enjoy its rollicking fun with so keen a zest. Mr. Pickwick, Sam Weller and his father. Bob Sawyer and the others, how firmly they are fixed in the mind! What real flesh and blood creatures they are, despite their creator's exaggera- tion of special traits and peculiarities! After the Pickwick Papers the choice of the most charaderistic of Dickens' novels is difficult, but my favorites have always been David Copperfield and A 'Tale of 'Two Cities^ the one the most spontaneous, the freshest in fancy, the most deeply pathetic of all Dickens' work; the other absolutely unlike anything he ever wrote, but great in its intense descriptive passages, which make the horrors of the French Revolution more real than Carlyle's famous history, and in the sublime self-sacrifice of Sidney Carton, which Henry Miller, in " The Only Way," has impressed on thousands of tear- ful playgoers. That David Copperfield is not autobiographical we have the positive assertion of Charles Dickens the younger, yet at the same time every lover of this book feels that the boyhood of David repro- duces memories of the novelist's childhood [53] Modern English Books of Power and youth, and that from real people and real scenes are drawn the humble home and the loyal hearts of the Peggottys, the great self-sacrifice of Ham, the woes of Little Emily and the tragedy of Steerforth's fate. One misses much who does not follow the chief adlors in this great story, the master- piece of Dickens. Other fine novels, if you have time for them, are Nicholas Nickleby, which broke up the unspeakably cruel boarding schools for boys in Yorkshire, in one of which poor Smike was done to death; or Our Mutual Friendyin which Dickens attacked the Eng- lish poor laws; or Dombey and Son^ that paints the pathos of the child of a rich man dying for the love which his father was too selfish to give him; or Bleak House^ in which the terrible sufferings wrought by the law's delay in the Court of Chancery are drawn with so much pathos that the book served as a valuable aid in removing a great public wrong, while the satire on foreign missions served to draw the Eng- lish nation's attention to the wretched heathen at home in the East Side of Lon- don, of whom Poor Jo was a pitiable specimen. In other novels other good pur- poses were also served. [54] Dickens Foremost of Novelists But several pages could be filled with a mere enumeration of Dickens* stories and their salient features. You cannot go wrong in taking up any of his novels or his short stories, and when you have finished with them you will have the satisfadion of hav- ing added to your possessions a number of the real people of fidion, whom it is far better to know than the best characters of contemporary iidlion, because these will be forgotten in a twelvemonth, if not before. The hours that you spend with Dickens will be profitable as well as pleasant, for they will leave the memory of a great- hearted man who labored through his books to make the world better and happier. [5S] Thackeray Greatest Master of Fiction The Most Accomplished Writer of His Century-Tender Pathos Under An Affectation of Cynicism and Great Art in Style and Characters. OF all modern English authors, Thack- eray is my favorite. Humor, pathos, satire, ripe culture, knowledge of the world and of the human heart, instindive good taste and a style equaled by none of his fellows in its clearness, ease, flexibility and winning charm-these are some of the traits that make the author of Vanity Fair and £j»/(?;/^ incomparably the first literary artist as well as the greatest writer of his age. Whether he would have been as fine a writer had he been given a happy life is a question that no one can answer. But to my mind it has always seemed as though the dark shadow that rested on his domes- tic life for thirty years made him infinitely [56] William Makepeace Thackeray From a Drawing by Samuel Laurence, Engraved by J. C. Armytage Thackeray the Master of Fiction tender to the grief and pain of others. Probably it came as a shock to most lovers of Thackeray to read in a news item from London only three or four years ago that the widow of Thackeray was dead, at the great age of ninety years. She had outlived her famous husband nearly a full half cen- tury, but of her we had heard nothing in all this time. When a beautiful young Irish girl she was married to the novelist, and she made him an ideal wife for a few years. Then her mind give way,and the remainder of her long career was spent within the walls of a sanatorium-more lost to her loved ones than if she had been buried in her grave. The knowledge of her existence, which was a ghastly death in life, the fad: that it prevented him from giving his three young girls a real home, as well as barred him under the English law from marrying again-all these things to Thackeray were an ever-present pain, like acid on an open wound. It was this sorrow, from which he could never escape that gave such exquisite tenderness to his pathos; and it was this sor- row, ading on one of the most sensitive natures, that often sharpened his satire and made it merciless when direded against the shams and hypocrisies of life. [57] Modern English Books of Power Thackeray's fame rests mainly on two great hooiks— Vanity Fair and Henry Esmond, The first has been made very real to thou- sands of readers by the brilliant adting of Mrs. Fiske in Becky Sharp. The other is one of the finest historical novels in the language and the greatest exploit in bring- ing over into our century the style, the mode of thought, the very essence of a pre- vious age. Thackeray was saturated with the literature of the eighteenth century, and in Esmond he reproduced the time of Addison and Steele as perfectly as he made an imitation of a numberof the Spectator. This literary tour de force was made the more noteworthy by the absolute lack of all effort on the novelist's part. The style of Queen Anne's age seemed a part of the man, not an assumed garment. While in the heroine o{ Vanity i^^^/r Thackeray gave the world one of the coldest and most selfish of women, he atoned for this by creating in Esmond the finest gentleman in all English literature, with the single exception of his own Colonel Newcome. Strid: injunctions Thackeray left against any regulation biography, and the result is that the world knows less of his life before fame came to him than it does of [58] ^ SMITH ELDER & CO 15 WATERLOO place: Title-page to "Vanity Fair'' Drawn by Thackeray, who Furnished the Illustrations FOR MANY OF HIS EaRLIER EDITIONS Thackeray the Master of Fiction any other celebrated author of his age. The scanty fads show that he was born in Calcutta in 1 8 1 1 ; that he was left a fortune of I10O5OOO by his father, who died when he was five years old; that, like most chil- dren of Anglo-Indians, he was sent to school in England; that he was prepared for college at the old Charter House School; that he was graduated from Trinity Col- lege, Cambridge, and that while in college he showed much ability as a writer of verse and prose, although he took no honors and gained no prizes. After reading law he was moved to become an artist and spent some time in travel on the Continent. But this delightful life was rudely cut short by the loss of his fortune and he was forced to earn his living by literature and journalism. Under various pseudonyms he soon gained a reputation as a satirist and humorist, his first success being I'he Great Hoggarty Diamond, Then years of work for Punch and other papers followed before he won enduring fame by Vanity Fair, which he styled "a novel without a hero." Charlotte Bronte, who gained a great reputation by Jane Eyre, added to Thack- eray's vogue by dedicating to him in rarely eloquent words the second edition of her [59] Modern English Books of Power novel, against which preachers fulminated because of what they called its immoral ten- dencies. Then in rapid succession Thack- eray wrote Pendennis, Henry Esmond ^ "The NewcomeSj T^he Virginians ^ Lovel the Wid- ower and T^he Adventures of Philip, All these are masterpieces of wit, satire and humor, cast in a perfect style that never offends the most fastidious taste, yet they are negleded to-day mainly because they do not furnish exciting incidents. Thackeray, like Dickens in his readings, made a fortune by his ledures, first on "The English Humorists,'' and later on "The Four Georges," and, like Dickens, he received the heartiest welcome and the largest money returns from this country. He died alone in his room on Christmas eve in the fine new home in London which he had recently made for himself and his three daughters. Thackeray was a giant physically, with a mind that worked easily, but he was indo- lent and always wrote under pressure, with the printer's devil waiting for his "copy." He was a thorough man of the world, yet full of the freshness of fancy and the tender- ness of heart of a little child. All children were a delight to him, and he never could [60] Thackeray the Master of Fiction refrain from giving them extravagant tips. The ever-present grief that could not be forgotten by fame or success made him very tender to all suffering, especially the suffering of the weak and the helpless. Yet, like many a sensitive man, he con- cealed this kindness of heart under an affedation of cynicism, which led many unsympathetic critics to style him hard and ferocious in his satire. Like Dickens, Thackeray was one of the great reporters of his day, with an eye that took in unconsciously every detail of face, costume or scene and reproduced it with perfect accuracy. The reader of his novels is entertained by a series of pen pidures of men and women and scenes in high life and life below stairs that are photographic in their clearness and fidelity. Dickens always failed when he came to depidl Brit- ish aristocratic life; but Thackeray moved in drawing-rooms and brilliant assemblages with the ease of a man familiar from youth with good society, and hence free from all embarrassment, even in the presence of royalty. Thackeray*s early works are written in the same perfed, easy, colloquial style, rich in natural literary allusions and frequently [6i] Modern English Books of Power rhythmic with poetic feeling, which marked his latest novel. He also had perfe6l com- mand of slang and the cockney dialed: of the Londoner. No greater master of dia- logue or narrative ever wrote than he who pidured the gradual degradation of Becky Sharp or the many self-sacrifices of Henry Esmond for the woman that he loved. Howells and other critics have censured Thackeray severely because of his tendency to preach, and also because he regarded his characters as puppets and himself as the showman who brought out their peculiari- ties. There is some ground for this criticism, if one regards the art of the novelist as centered wholly in realism; but such a hard and fast rule would condemn all old English noveHsts from Richardson to Thackeray. It ought not to disturb any reader that Defoe turns aside and gives refledlions on the adts of his chara6lers, for these remarks are the fruit of his own knowledge of the world. In the same way Thackeray keeps up a running comment on his men and women, and these bits of philosophy make his novels a storehouse of apothegms, which may be read again and again with great profit and pleasure. The modern novel, with its comparative lack of thought and [62] > ^^Sf:' Power praised by Elizabeth Barrett, who after- wards became his wife. Among the many- poems that Browning produced in five years were Colombe's Birthday, A Blot in the ^Scutcheon, Dramatic Romances and Lyrics and A Soul's tragedy. Browning, in 1 846, married Elizabeth Barrett, the author of Lady Geraldine's Courtship and other poems, a woman who had been an invalid, confined to her room for years. Love gave her strength to arise and walk, and love also gave her the cour- age to defy the foolish tyranny of her father and elope with Browning. What kind of man that father was may be seen in his comment after the marriage: "I've no ob- jedion to the young man, but my daughter should have been thinking of another world." They went to Italy, where for fif- teen years they made an ideal home. Mrs. Browning's story of her love is seen in Son- nets From the Portuguese, and some of her finest work is in Casa Guidi Windows, Each stimulated the other, while there was a notable absence of that jealousy which has often served to turn the love of literary men and women into the fiercest hatred. Mrs. Browning died suddenly in 1861, and the poet for some time was stunned [no] Elizabeth Barrett Browning After the Portrait by Field Talfourd Greatest Poet Since Shakespeare by this unlooked-for calamity. He spent two years in seclusion at work on poems, but then he gathered up his courage and once more took his old place in the social life of London. In Prospice and One IVord More, written in the autumn following his wife's death, he shows that he has over- come all doubts of the reaHty of immor- tality. These two poems alone would entitle Browning to the highest place among the world's great poets. In addition he wrote the memorial to his wife, O Lyric Love, that is the cry of the soul left here on this earth to the soul of the beloved in Paradise. To the sympathetic this poem, with its solemn rhythm, will appeal like splendid organ music. Among Browning's other poems that are noteworthy are Fifine at the Fair, Red Cotton Nightcap Country, ^he Inn Album and Dramatic Idyls. Browning's last poem, y:/jd?^2«<^o, appeared in London on the same day that its author died at Venice. As the great bell of San Marco struck ten in the evening. Browning, as he lay in bed, asked his son if there were any news of the new volume. A telegram was read saying the book was well received. The aged poet smiled and breathed his last. [Ill] Modern English Books of Power In beginning the reading of Browning it is well to understand that at least half or maybe two-thirds of his work should be discarded at the outset, as it is of interest only to scholars. My suggestion to one who would learn to love Browning is to get a little book, Lyrical Poems of Robert Brownings by Dr. A. J. George. The editor in a preface indicates the best work of Browning, and also brings out strongly the fa6t that readers, and especially young readers, must be given poems which inter- est them. His seledions of lyrics have been made from this standpoint, and his notes will be found very helpful. He develops the point that Browning's great revelation to the world through his poems was his strong and abiding assurance that man has in him the principle of divinity, and that many of the experiences that the world calls failures are really the stepping stones of the ascent to that conquest of self and that develop- ment of the whole nature which means the highest life. He says also that Browning is one of the most eloquent expounders of the dodrine of the reality of a future life, in which those who live a noble and unselfish life will get their reward in an existence free from all physical ills. [112] Greatest Poet Since Shakespeare In this little book will be found Pippa P asses y a noble series of lyrics, which devel- ops the idea of the silent influence of a little silk weaver of Asolo upon four sets of people in the great crises of their lives. In each episode Pippa sings a song that awakens remorse or kindles manhood or arouses patriotism or duty. It is a perfed: poem. Among other lyrics given here are Evelyn Hope^ which must be bracketed with Burns* 'To Mary in Heaven or with Words- worth's Lucy and Prospice, which sounds the note of deep personal love that is as sure of immortality as of life. It is as beautiful and as inspiring as Tennyson's Crossing the Bar, Other poems due to Browning's love for his wife are My Star and One Word More, If these lyrics appeal to you, then take up some of Browning's longer poems, A Blot in the 'Scutcheon^ Colombe s Birthday^ A SouV s Tragedy^ Fra Lippo Lippi and Rabbi Ben Ezra, Very few readers in these days have time or patience to read The Ring and the Book, but it will repay your attention, as it is the most remarkable attempt in all literature to revive the trag- edy of the great and innocent love of a woman and a priest. ["3] Modern English Books of Power Among the many fine passages in Brown- ing, I think there is nothing which equals these lines in O Lyric Love, the beautiful invocation to his wife: O lyric Love, half angel and half bird And all a wonder and a wild desire- Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun. Took sanctuary within the holier blue And sang a kindred soul out to his face- Hail then, and hearken from the realms of help ! Never may I commence my song, my due To God who best taught song by gift of thee. Except with bent head and beseeching hand- That shall despite the distance and the dark. What was, again may be j some interchange Of grace, some splendor once thy very thought. Some benediction anciently thy smile. The songs in Pippa Passes should be read, as they are as near perfed: as Shake- speare's songs or the songs of Tennyson in The Princess, ["4] Meredith And a Few of His Best Novels One of the Greatest Masters of Fic- tion OF Last Century-"The Ordeal OF Richard Feverel" "Diana of the Crossways"and Other Novels. GEORGE Meredith is acknowledged by the best critics to be among the great- est English novelists of the last century; yet to the general reader he is only a name. Like Henry James, he is barred off from popular appreciation by a style which is "caviare to the general." Thomas Hardy is recognized as the finest living English novelist, but there is very little comparison between himself and Meredith. Professor William Lyon Phelps, who is one of the best and sanest of American critics, says they are both pagans, but Meredith was an optimist, while Hardy is a pessimist. Then he adds this illuminating comment: "Mr. Hardy is a great novelist; whereas, ["5] Modern English Books of Power to adapt a phrase that Arnold applied to Emerson, I should say that Mr. Meredith was not a great novelist; he was a great man who wrote novels." It is only within the last twenty-five years that Meredith has had any vogue in this country. At that time a good edition of his novels was issued, and critics gave the volumes generous mention in the lead- ing magazines and newspapers. But the public did not respond with any cordiality. The novel with us has come to be looked upon mainly as a source of amusement, and a writer of fidion who demands too keen attention from his readers can never hope to be popular. Meredith, as Profes- sor Phelps says, was a great man who, among other intelledual adivities, wrote some good novels. Doubtless he did more real good to literature as the inspirer of other writers than he did with his books. For more than the ordinary working years of most men he was one of the chief "read- ers*' for a large London publishing house. To hini were submitted the manuscripts of new npvels, and it was his privilege to recognize the genius of Thomas Hardy, of the author of^he Story of an African Farm and other now famous English novelists. [ii6] Meredith and His Best Novels Meredith was a singularly acute critic of the work of others, but when he came to write himself he cast his thoughts in a style that has been the despair of many admir- ers. In this he resembled Browning, who never would write verse that was easy read- ing. Meredith*s thought is usually clear, yet his brilliant but erratic mind was im- pelled to clothe this thought in the most bizarre garments. Literary paradox he loved; his mind turned naturally to meta- phor, and despite the protests of his closest friends he continued to puzzle and exas- perate the public. He who could have written the greatest novels of his age merely wrote stories which serve to illustrate his theories of life and condud. No man ever put more real thought into novels than he; none had a finer eye for the beauties of nature or the development of character. But he had no patience to develop his men and women in the clear, orthodox way. He imagined that the ordinary reader could follow his lightning flashes of illu- mination, his piling up of metaphor on metaphor, and the result is that many are discouraged by his methods, just as nine readers out of ten are wearied when they attempt to read Browning's longer Modern English Books of Power poems. His kinship to Browning is strong in style and in method of thought, in his way of leaping from one conclusion to another, in his elimination of all the usual small conned:ing words and in his liberties with the language. He seemed to be writ- ing for himself, not for the general public, and he never took into account the slower mental processes of those not endowed with his own vivid imagination. Meredith's life was that of a scholar; it contained few exciting episodes. He was of Welsh and Irish stock. At an early age he was sent to Germany, where he remained at a Moravian school until he was fifteen. He then returned to England to study law, but he never pradliced it. For a num- ber of years he was a regular contributor to the London Morning Post, and in 1866 he aded as correspondent during the Austro-Italian war. For many years he served as chief reader and literary adviser to Chapman & Hall, the English pub- lishers, and in that capacity he showed an insight that led to the development of many authors whose first work was crude and unpromising. Meredith himself began his literary career with l!he Shaving of Shag- fat^ a series of Oriental tales the central [118] George Meredith with His Daughter and Grandchildren— From a Photograph Taken Shortly Before His Death Meredith and His Best Novels idea of which is the overcoming of estab- lished evil. Shagpat stands for any evil or superstition, and Shibli Bagarag, the hero, is the reformer. This book, with its wealth of metaphor, opened the door for Mere- dith, but he did not score a success until he wrote The Ordeal of Richard Feverely two years later. Despite its faults, this is his greatest book, and it is the one which readers should begin with. It is overloaded with aphorism in the famous "Pilgrim's Scrip,**which is a diary kept by Sir Austin, the father of Richard. The boy is trained to cut women out of his life, and just when the father's theory seems to have succeeded Richard meets and falls in love with Lucy, and the whole towering strudure founded on the "Pilgrim's Scrip" falls into ruin. The scene in which Richard and Lucy meet is one of the great scenes in English fidlion, in which Meredith's passionate love of nature serves to bring out the natural love of the two young people. Earth was all greenness in the eyes of these two lovers, and nature served only to deepen the love that they saw in each other's gaze and felt with thrilling force in each other's kisses. But even stronger that this scene is that last terrible chapter, in which Richard ["9] Modern English Books of Power returns to his home and refuses to stay withLucy and her child. Stevenson declared that this parting scene was the strongest bit of English since Shakespeare. It cer- tainly reaches great heights of exaltation, and in its simplicity it reveals what miracles Meredith could work when he allowed his creative imagination full play. Another story which is usually bracketed with this is Diana of the Cross ways. This great novel was founded on a real incident in English history of Meredith's time. Diana Warwick was drawn from Caroline Norton, one of the three beautiful and bril- liant granddaughters of Sheridan, author of "The School for Scandal, Her marriage was disastrous, and her husband accused her of infidelity with Lord Melbourne, Prime Minister at the time. His divorce suit caused a great scandal, but it resulted in her vindication. Then later she was accused of betraying to a writer on the Times the secret that Sir Robert Peel had decided to repeal the corn laws. This secret had been confided to her by Sidney Her- bert,one of her admirers. Meredith's novel, in which the results of Diana's treachery were brought out, resulted in a public inquiry into the charge against Caroline [120] Flint Cottage, Boxhill, the Home of George Meredith— His Writing was done in N A Small Swiss Chalet in the Garden Meredith and His Best Novels Norton, which found that she was inno- cent. But the fad: that Meredith used such an incident as the climax of his story gave Diana of the Crossways an enormous vogue, and did much to bring the novelist into public favor. No more brilliant woman than Diana has ever been drawn by Meredith, but despite the art of her creator it is impos- sible for the reader to imagine her selling for money a great party secret which had been whispered to her by the man she loved. She was too keen a woman to plead, as Diana pleaded, that she did not recognize the importance of this secret, for the de- fense is cut away by her admission that she was promised thousands of pounds by the newspaperman at the very time that her extravagances had loaded her with debts. Space is lacking here to do more than mention three or four of Meredith^s other novels that are fine works of art. These are Rhoda Fleming, Sandra Belloni, Evan Harrington and 'The Egoist, Each is a mas- terpiece in its way; each is full of human passion, yet tinged with a philosophy that lifts up the novels to what Meredith him- self called "honorable fidion, a fount of life, an aid to life, quick with our blood." [I2l] Modern English Books of Power The novel to him was a means of showing man's spiritual nature,"a soul born adive, wind-beaten, but ascending/' A score of novels Meredith wrote in his long life. The work of his later years was not happy. T^he Amazing Marriage and Lord Ormont and His Aminta are mere shadows of his earlier work, with all his old mannerisms intensified. But if you like Richard and Diana, then you can enlarge your acquaintance with Meredith to your own exceeding profit, for he is one of the great masters of fidion, who used the novel merely to preach his do<5trine of the rich- ness and fulness of human life if we would but see it with his eyes. [122] Stevenson Prince of Modern Story-Tellers His Stories of Adventure and His Brilliant Essays-"Treasure Island'* And"Dr. Jekyll and Mr.Hyde" His Most Popular Books. IT is as difficult to criticise the work of Robert Louis Stevenson as it is to find faults in the friend that you love as a brother. For with all his faults, this young Scotchman with his appealing charm dis- arms criticism. Nowhere in all literature may one find his like for warming the heart unless it be Charles Lamb, of gracious memory, and the secret of this charm is that Stevenson remained a child to the end of his days, with all a child's eagerness for love and praise, and with all a child's pas- sion for making believe that his puppets are real flesh and blood people. When such a nature is endowed with consummate skill in the use of words, then one gets the finest, if not the greatest, of creative artists. Modern English Books of Power In sheer technical skill Stevenson stands head and shoulders above all the other literary craftsmen of his day; but this skill was not used to refine his meaning until it wearied the reader, as in the case of Henry James, nor was it used to bewilder him with the richness of his resources, as was too often the case with George Meredith. With Stevenson, style had adlually become the man; he could not write the simplest article in any other than a highly finished literary way. Witness the amazingly elo- quent defense of Father Damien which he dashed off in a few hours and read to his wife and his stepson before the ink was dry on the sheets. Above all other things Stevenson was a great natural story-teller. With him the story was the main consideration, yet in some of his short tales such as Markheiniy or A Lodging for the Night , or ^he Sire de Maletroifs Door, the story itself merely serves as a thread upon which he has strung the most remarkable analysis of a man's soul. He has the distindlion of having written in Treasure Island the best piratical story of the last century. If he could have maintained the high level of the opening chapter he would have produced a work [124] Prince of Modern Story-Tellers worthy to rank with Robinson Crusoe, As it is, he created two villains, the blind man Pew and John Silver, who are absolutely unique in literature. The blind pirate in his malevolent fury is a creature that chills the heart, while Silver is a cheerful villain who murders with a smile. In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Stevenson has aroused that sense of mystery and horror which springs from the spedacle of the domination of an evil spirit over a nature essentially kind and good. Stevenson came of a race of Scotch men of affairs. His grandfather was the most distinguished lighthouse builder of his day and his father gained prominence in the same work that demands the highest engi- neering skill with great executive capacity. Stevenson himself would have been an explorer or a soldier of fortune had he been born with the physical strength to fit his mental endowments. His childhood was so full of sickness that it reads Hke a hospital report. His life was probably preserved by the assiduous care and rare devotion of an old Scotch nurse, Alison Cunningham, whom he has immortalized in his letters and in his A Child's Garden of Verse. The sickly boy was an eager reader of every- Modern English Books of Power thing that fell in his way in romance and poetry. Later he devoted himself to sys- tematic training of his powers of observation and his great capacity for expressing his thoughts. His youth was spent in migrations to the south in winter and in efforts to thrive in Scotland's dour climate in the summer. His school training was fitful and brief, but from the age of ten the boy had been training himself in the field which he felt was to be his own. His first literary work was essays and descriptive sketches for the magazines. Then came short stories in which he revealed great capacity. Recog- nition came very slowly. He was compara- tively unknown after he had produced such charming work as An Inland Voyage and "Travels With a 'Donkey^ not to mention the New Arabian Nights. Popularity came with Treasure Island^ written as a story for boys, and the one work of Stevenson's in which his creative imagination does not flag toward the end; but fame came only after the writing of The Strange Case of Dr, Jekyll and Mr, Hyde-thc most remarkable story of a dual personality produced in the last century. After this he wrote a long succession of stories, not one of which can [126] Prince of Modern Story-Tellers be called a masterpiece because of the author's inability to finish his novels as he planned them. Lack of patience or want of sustained creative power invariably made him cut short his novels or end them in a way that exasperates the reader. Some months Stevenson spent in Califor- nia, but this State, with its romantic history and its singular scenic beauty, appeared to have little influence on his genius. In fad, locality seemed not to color the work of his imagination. His closing years were spent in Somoa, a South Sea Island para- dise, in which he reveled in the primitive conditions of life and recovered much of his early zest in physical life. Yet his best work in those last years dealt not with the palm-fringed atolls of the Pacific, but with the bleak Scotch moors which refused him a home. In his letters he dwells on the curious obsession of his imagination by old Scotch scenes and characters, and on the day of his death he didated a chapter of Weir of Hermiston^ a romance of the piduresque period of Scotland which had in it the elements of his best work. It is idle to deny that Stevenson appeals only to a limited audience. Despite his keen interest in all kinds of people, he [127J Modern English Books of Power lacked that sympathetic touch which brings large sales and wide circulation. About the time of his death his admirers declared he would supersede Scott or Dickens; but the seventeen years since his death have seen many changes in literary reputations. Ste- venson has held his own remarkably well. As a man the interest in him is still keen, but of his works only a few are widely read. Among these the first place must be given to Dr, Jekyll and Mr, Hyde, partly because of the profound impression made upon the public mind by the dramatization of this tale, and partly because it appeals strongly to the sense of the mystery of conflidting personality. Next to this is treasure Island, one of the best romances of adventure ever written. Readers who cannot feel a thrill of genuine terror when the blind pirate Pew comes tapping with his cane have missed a great pleasure. One-legged John Silver, in his cheerful lack of all the ordi- nary virtues, is a charader that puts the fear of death upon the reader. The open- ing chapter of this story is one of the finest things in all the literature of adventure. Of Stevenson's other work the two Scotch stonts, Kidnaped and David Balfour y [128] Prince of Modern Story-Tellers always seemed to me to be among his best. The chapter on the flight of David and Allan across the moor, the contest in play- ing the pipes and the adventures of David and Catriona in Holland-these are things to read many times and enjoy the more at every reading. Stevenson, like Jack Lon- don, is a writer for men; he could not draw women well. When he brings one in there is usually an end of stirring adventure, just as London spoiled T^he Sea tVolf^fith. his literary heroine. Of Stevenson's short stories the finest are 'The Pavilion on the Links, a tale of Sici- lian vengeance and English love that is full of haunting mystery and the deadly fear of unknown assassins; Markheim, a brilliant example of this author's skill in laying bare the conflid of a soul with evil and its ulti- mate triumph; 'The Sire de Maletroif s Door^ a vivid pidure of the cruelty and the auto- cratic power of a great French noble of the fifteenth century, and A Lodging for the Night, a remarkable defense of his life by the vagabond poet, Villon. Other short stories by Stevenson are worth careful study, but if you like these I have men- tioned you will need no guide to those which strike your fancy. [129] Modern English Books of Power The vogue of Stevenson's essays will last as long as that of his romances; for he excelled in this literary art of putting his personality into familiar talks with his reader. He ranks with Lamb and Thack- eray, Washington Irving and Donald G. Mitchell. Read those fine short sermons, Puhis et Umbra and Aes Trip lex ythQ latter with its eloquent pi6lure of sudden death in the fulness of power which was realized in Stevenson's own fate. Read Books Which Have Influenced Me^ A Gossip on Romance and Talk and Talkers. They are unsur- passed for thought and feeling and for brilliancy of style. But above everything looms the man himself-a chronic invalid, who might well have pleaded his weakness and constant pains as an excuse for idleness and railings against fate. Stoic courage in the strong is a virtue, but how much greater the cheerful courage that laughs at sickness and pain! Stevenson writing in a sickbed stories and essays that help one to endure the blows of fate is a spedacle such as this world has few to offer. So the man's life and work have come to be a constant inspiration to those who are faint-hearted, a call to arms of all one's courage and devotion. [130] Thomas Hardy And His Tragic Tales OfWessex Greatest Living Writer of English Fiction-Because of Resentment of Harsh Criticisms the Prose Master Turns to Verse. No one will question the assertion that Thomas Hardy is the greatest living English writer of fid:ion,and the pity of it is that a man with so splendid an equipment for writing novels of the first rank should have failed for many years to give the world any work in the special field in which he is an acknowledged master. Hardy seems to have revolted from certain harsh criti- cism of his last novel, Jude the Obscure^ and to have determined that he would write no more fidlion for an unappreciative world. So he has turned to the writing of verse, in which he barely takes second rank. It is one of the tragedies of literature to think of a man of Hardy^s rank as a [131] Modern English Books of Power novelist, who might give the world a sec- ond "Tess or The Return of the Native, contenting himself with a ponderous poem like The Dynasts, or wasting his powers on minor poems containing no real poetry. Hardy's best novels are among the few in English lidlion that can be read again and again, and that reveal at every reading some fresh beauties of thought or style. The man is so big, so genuine and so un- like all other writers that his work must be set apart in a class by itself. Were he not so richly endowed his pessimism would be fatal, for the world does not favor the novelist who demands that his fidlion should be governed by the same hard rules that govern real life. In the work of most novelists we know that whatever harsh fate may befall the leading charaders the skies will be sunny before the story closes, and the worthy souls who have battled against malign destiny will receive their reward. Not so with Hardy. We know when we begin one of his tales that tragedy is in store for his people. The dark cloud of destiny soon obscures the heavens, and through the lowering storm the vidims move on to the final scene in which the wreck of their fortunes is completed. [132] Thomas Hardy— A Portrait Which Brings out Strikingly the Man of Creative Power, THE Artist, the Philosopher and the Poet Hardy and His Wessex Tales Literary genius can work no greater miracle than this-to make the reader accept as a transcript of life stories in which gen- erous, unselfish people are dealt heavy blows by fate, while the mean-souled, sor- did men and women often escape their just deserts. Hardy is not unreligious; he is simply and frankly pagan. Yet he differs from the classical writers in the fad that he is keenly alive to all the strong influ- ences of nature on a sympathetic mind, and he is also a believer in the power of romantic love. No one has ever equaled Hardy in mak- ing the reader feel the living power of trees and other objedts of nature. You can not escape the influence of his scenic effeds. These are never theatrical-in fad: they seem to form a vital part of every story. The scenes of all his novels are laid in his native Dorsetshire, which he has thinly disguised under the old Saxon name of Wessex. In Far From the Madding Crowd Hardy first demonstrated the tremendous possibilities of rural scenes as a vital back- ground for a story, but in 'The Return of the Native he adually makes Egdon heath the most absorbing feature of the book. All the charaders seem to take life and coloring [133] Modern English Books of Power from this heath, which has in it the potency of transforming characters and of wrecking lives. And in '^ess the peaceful, rural scenes appear to accentuate the tragedy of the heroine's unavailing struggles against a fate that was worse than death, Hardy's parents intended him for the church, but the boy probably gave some indications of his pagan cast of mind, for they finally compromised by apprenticing him to an ecclesiastical archited. In this calling the youth worked with sympathy and ability; the results of this training may be seen in the perfe6lion of his plots and in his fondness for graphic description of churches and other pidturesque buildings. One curious feature of this training may be seen in Hardy's sympathy and rever- ence for any church building. As Professor William Lyon Phelps very aptly says of Hardy: "No man to-day has less respect for God and more devotion to his house." The antipathy of Hardy to any kind of publicity has kept the facts of his life in the background, but it is an open secret that much of the longing of Jude for a col- lege education was drawn from his own boyhood. It is also a matter of record that as a boy he served as amanuensis for [134] Hardy and His Wessex Tales many servant maids, writing the love let- ters which they didated. In this way, before he knew the real meaning of sex and the significance of life he had obtained a deep insight into the nature of women, which served him in good stead when he came to draw his heroines. All his women are made up of mingled tenderness and caprice, and though female critics of his work may claim that these traits are over- drawn, no man ever feels like disseding Hardy's women, for the reason that they are so charmingly feminine. One may fancy that Hardy took great delight in his architectural work, for it required many excursions to old churches in Dorsetshire to see whether they were worth restoring. When he was thirty-one Hardy decided to abandon architedlure for fidion. His first novtl, Desperate Remedies, was crude, but it is interesting as showing the novelist in his first attempts to reveal real life and charader. His second book. Under the Greenwood Tree^ is a charming love story, and A Fair of Blue Eyes was a forerunner of his first great story, F<3ri^ri?w the Madding Crowd, It may have been the title, torn from a line of Gray's Elegy ^ or the novelty of the tale, in which English [i3S] Modern English Books of Power rustics were depided as ably as in George Eliot's novels, that made it appeal to the great public. Whatever the cause, the book made a great popular hit. I can recall when Henry Holt brought it out in the pretty Leisure Hour series in 1875. Three years later Hardy produced his finest work, ^he Return of the Native, He followed this with more than a dozen novels, among which may be mentioned l^he Mayor of Casterbridgey ^he Woodlanders^ 'Tess of the d' UrbervtlleSy and Jude the Obscure. In taking up Hardy one should begin with Far From the Madding Crowd, The story of Bathsheba Everdene's relations with her three lovers, Sergeant Troy, Bold- wood and Gabriel Oak, moves one at times to some impatience with this charming woman's frequent change of mind, but she would not be so attractive or so natural if she were not so full of caprice. His women all have strong human passion, but they are destitute of religious faith. They adore with rare fervor the men whom they love. In this respedt Bathsheba is like Eustacia, Tess, Marty South or Lady Constantine. Social rank, education or breeding does not change them. Evidently Hardy believes women are made to charm and comfort [136] Hardy and His Wessex Tales man, not to lead him to spiritual heights, where the air is thin and chill and kisses have no sweetness. In his first novel Hardy lightened the tragedy of life with rare comedy. These comic interludes are furnished by a choice colledtion of rustics, who discuss the affairs of the universe and of their own township with a humor that is infedious. In this work Hardy surpasses George Eliot and all other novelists of his day, just as he surpasses them all in such wholesome types of country life as Giles Winterbourne and Marty South of l^he Woodlanders, No pathos is finer than Marty's unselfish love for the man who cannot see her own rare spirit, and nothing that Hardy has written is more powerful than Marty's lament over the grave of Giles: <*Now, my own, my love," she whispered, **you are mine, and on'y mine, for she has forgot *ec at last, although for her you died. But I-whenever I get up ril think of *ec, and whenever I lie down I'll think of 'ee. Whenever I plant the young larches I'll think none can plant as you planted; and whenever I split a gad, and whenever I turn the cider-wring, I'll say none could do it like you. If I forget your name, let me for- get home and heaven! But, no, no, my love, I never can forget 'ce, for you was a good man and did good things!'* [137] Modern English Books of Power l^he Return of the Native is generally regarded as Hardy's finest work. Certainly in this novel of passion and despair he has conjured up elements that speak to the heart of every reader. The hand of fate clutches hold of all the charaders. When Eustacia fails to go to the door and admit her husband's mother she sets in motion events that bring swift ruin upon her as well as upon others. At every turn of the story the somber Egdon heath looms in the background, more real than any char- after in the romance, a sinister force that seems to sweep the charaders on to their doom. 'Tess is more appealing than any other of Mr. Hardy's works, but it is hurt by his desire to prove that the heroine was a good woman in spite of her sins against the social code. What has also given this work a great vogue is the splendid adting of Mrs. Fiske in the play made from the novel. In Jude the Obscure Hardy had a splen- did conception, but he developed it in a morbid way, bringing out the animalism of the hero's wife and forcing upon the reader his curious ideas about marriage. But above and beyond everything else Thomas Hardy is one of the greatest [138] Hardy and His Wessex Tales story tellers the world has ever seen. You may take up any of his works and after reading a chapter you have a keen desire to follow the tale to the end, despite the fad: that you feel sure the end will be tragic. Nothing is forced for effed:; the whole story moves with the simplicity of fate itself, and the charaders, good and bad, are swept on to their doom as though they were caught in the rush of waters that go over Niagara falls. Hardy's style is clear, simple, dired, and abounds in Biblical allu- sions and phrases. In nature study Hardy's novels are a liberal education, for beyond any other author of the last century he has brought out the beauty and the significance of tree and flower, heath and mountain. They may be read many times, and at each perusal new beauties will be discovered to reward the reader. [139] Kipling's Best Short Stories And Poems Tales of East Indian Life and Char- acter—Ideal Training of the Genius ThatHasProducedSome oftheBest Literary Work of Our Day. RUDYARD Kipling cannot be classified with any writer of his own age or of any literary age in the past. His tremen- dous strength, his visual faculty, even his mannerisms, are his own. He has written too much for his own fame, but although the next century will discard nine-tenths of his work, it will hold fast to the other tenth as among the best short stories and poems that our age produced. Kipling is essentially a short-story writer; not one of his longer novels has any real plot or the power to hold the reader's interest to the end. Kityiy the best of his long works, is merely a series of panoramic views of Indian life and charader, which could be split up into a dozen short stories and sketches. [140] % > ° 3 w m ^ d S c» ?o O 2 5 W Kipling's Best Stories and Poems But in the domain of the short story KipHng is easily the first great creative artist of his time. No one approaches him in vivid descriptive power, in keen char- ader portraiture, in the faculty of making a strange and alien life as real to us as the life we have always known. And in some of his more recent work, as in the story of the two young Romans in Puck of Pook's Hill^ Kipling reaches rare heights in reproducing the romance of a bygone age. In these tales of ancient Britain the poet in Kipling has full sway and his visual power moves with a freedom that stamps clearly and deeply every image upon the reader's mind. The first ten years of Kipling's literary adivity were given over to a wonderful reprodudion of East Indian life as seen through sympathetic English eyes. Yet the sympathy that is revealed in Kipling's best sketches of native life in India is never tinged with sentiment. The native is always drawn in his relations to the Englishman; always the traits of revenge or of gratitude or of dog-like devotion are brought out. Kipling knows the East Indian through and through, because in his childhood he had a rare opportunity to [hi] Modern English Books of Power watch the native. The barrier of reserve, which was always maintained against the native Englishman, was let down in the case of this precocious child, who was a far keener observer than most adults. And these early impressions lend an extraordi- nary life and vitality to the sketches and stories on which Kipling's fame will ulti- mately rest. The early years of Kipling were spent in an ideal way for the development of the creative literary artist. Born at Bombay in December, 1865, he absorbed Hindu- stanee from his native nurse, and he saw the native as he really is, without the guard which is habitually put up in the presence of the Briton, even though this alien may be held in much esteem. The son of John Lockwood Kipling, professor of architec- tural sculpture in the British School of Art at Bombay, and of a sister of Edward Burne-Jones, it was not strange that this boy should have developed strong powers of imagination or that his mind should have sought relief in literary expression. The school days of Kipling were spent at Westward Ho, in Devon, where, though he failed to distinguish himself in his stud- ies, he established a reputation as a clever Kipling's Best Stories and Poems writer of verse and prose. He also enjoyed in these formative years the friendship and counsel of Burne-Jones, and he had the use of several fine private libraries. His wide reading probably injured his school standing, but it was of enormous benefit to him in his future literary work. At seven- teen young Kipling returned to India, where he secured a position on the Civil AND Military Gazette of Lahore, where his father was principal of a large school of arts. The Anglo-Indian newspaper is not a model, but it afforded a splendid field for the development of Kipling's abilities. He was not only a reporter of the ordinary occurrences of his station, but he was con- stantly called upon to write short sketches and poems to fill certain corners in the paper, that varied in size according to the number and length of the advertisements. Some of the best of his short sketches and bits of verse were written hurriedly on the composing stone to satisfy such needs. These sketches and poems he published himself and sent them to subscribers in all parts of India, but though their cleverness was recognized by Anglo-Indians, they did not appeal to the general public. After [H3] Modern English Books of Power five years' work at Lahore, Kipling was transferred to the Allahabad PiONEER^one of the most important of the Anglo-Indian journals. For the weekly edition of this paper he wrote many verses and sketches and also served as special correspondent in various parts of India. It was in 1889 that the Pioneer sent him on a tour of the world and he wrote the series of letters afterwards reprinted under the title From Sea to Sea, Kipling, like Stevenson, had to have a story to tell to bring out all his powers; hence these letters are not among his best work. Vividly do I recall Kipling's visit to San Francisco. He came into the Chronicle office and was keenly interested in the fine colledlions which made this newspaper's library before the fire the most valuable on this Coast, if not in the country. He was also much impressed with the many devices for securing speed in typesetting and other mechanical work. The only feature of his swarthy face that impressed one was his brilliant black eyes, which behind his large glasses, seemed to note every detail. He talked very well, but although he made friends among local newspapermen, he was unsuccessful in selling any of his stories to [144] RuDYARD Kipling From a Cartoon by W. Nicholson Kipling's Best Stories and Poems the editors of the Sunday supplements. He soon went to New York, but there also he failed to dispose of his stories. Finally Kipling reached London in Sep- tember, 1889, and after several months of discouragement, he induced a large pub- lishing house to bring out Plain 'Tales From the Hills, It scored an immediate success. Like Byron, the unknown young writer awoke to find himself famous; magazine editors clamored for his stories at fancy prices and publishers eagerly sought his work. It may be said to Kipling's credit that he did not utilize this opportunity to make money out of his sudden reputation. He doubtless worked over many old sketches, but he put his best into what- ever he gave the public. He married the sister of Wolcott Balestier, a brilliant American who became very well known in London as a publishers' agent, and after Balestier's death Kipling moved to his wife's old home in Brattleboro, Vermont, where he built a fine country house; but constant trouble with a younger brother of his wife caused him to abandon this American home and go back to England, where he set up his lares at Rottingdean, in Surrey. There he has remained, aver- [H5] Modern English Books of Power aging a book a year, until now he has over twenty-five large volumes to his credit. In 1907 Kipling was given the Nobel prize "for the best work of an idealist tendency." In reading Kipling it is best to begin with some of the tales written in his early life, for these he has never surpassed in vigor and interest. Take, for instance. Without Benefit of Clergy^ 'The Man Who WaSy 'The Drums of the Fore and Aft, The Man Who Would Be King and Beyond the Pale, These stories all deal with Anglo- Indian life, two with the British soldier and the other three with episodes in the lives of British officials and adventurers. The Man Who Would Be King, the finest of all Kipling*s tales of Anglo-Indian life and adventure, is the story of the fatal ambition of Daniel Dravot, told by the man who accompanied him into the wildest part of Afghanistan. Daniel made the natives believe that he was a god and he could have ruled them as a king had he not foolishly become enamored of a native beauty. This girl was prompted by a native soothsayer to bite Dravot in order to decide whether he was a god or merely human. The blood that she drew on his neck was ample proof of his spurious claims and the [146] Kipling's Best Stories and Poems two adventurers were chased for miles through a wild country. When captured Daniel is forced to walk upon a bridge, the ropes of which are then cut, and his body is hurled hundreds of feet down upon the rocks. The story of the survivor, who escaped after crucifixion, is one of the ghastliest tales in all literature. Other tales that Kipling has written of Indian life are scarcely inferior to these in strange, uncanny power. One of the weird- est relates the adventures of an army officer who fell into the place where those who have been legally declared dead, but who have recovered, pass their lives. As a pic- ture of hell on earth it has never been surpassed. Another of KipHng's Indian tales that is worth reading is William the Conqueror^ a love story that has a back- ground of grim work during the famine year. One of Kipling's claims to fame is that he has drawn the British soldier in India as he adtually lives. His Soldiers 'Three— Mulvaney, the Irishman, Ortheris, the cockney, and Learoyd, the Yorkshireman— are so full of real human nature that they delight all men and many women. Mul- vaney is the finest creation of Kipling, and [H7] Modern English Books of Power most of his stories are brimful of Irish wit. Of late years Kipling has written some fine imaginative stories, such as T^he Brushwood Boy^ 'They and An Habitation Enforced. He has also revealed his genius in such tales of the future as With the Night Mail, a remarkably graphic sketch of a voy- age across the Atlantic in a single night in a great aeroplane. Another side of Kip- ling's genius is seen in his Jungle Stories, in which all the wild animals are endowed with speech. Mowgh, the boy who is suckled by a wolf, is a distind: creation, and his adventures are full of interest. Compare these stories with the work of Thompson-Seton and you get a good idea of the genius of Kipling in making real the savage struggle for life in the Indian jungle. Of Kipling^s long novels The Naulakha ranks first for interest of plot, but Kim is the best because of its series of wonderful pidures of East Indian life and charader. Captains Courageous is a story of Cape Cod fishing life, with an improbable plot but much good description of the perils and hardships of the men who seek fortune on the fishing banks. As a poet Kipling appeals strongly to men who love the life of adion and adven- [148] KiPLiNG*s Best Stories and Poems ture in all parts of the world. In his Departmental Ditties he has painted the life of the British soldier and the civilian in India, and his Danny Dever, his Man- dalay and others which sing themselves have passed into the memory of the great public that seldom reads any verse unless it be the words of a popular song. The range of his verse is very wide, whether it is the superb imagery in 'The Last Chantey or the impressive Galvanism oiMcAndrew" s Hymn, His Recessional^ of course, is known to everyone. It is one of the finest bits of verse printed in the last twenty years. Kipling, in spite of his many volumes, is only forty-six years old, and he may be counted on to do much more good work. If he turns to historical fidion he may yet do for EngUsh history what the author of Waverley has done for the history of Scotland. Certainly he has the finest cre- ative imagination of his age; in whatever domain it may work it is sure to produce literature that will live. [149] Bibliography Short Notes of Both Standard and Other Editions^ With Lives, Sketches and Reminiscences, 7'hese bibliographical notes on the authors discussed in this volume are brief because the space allotted to them was limited. 'They are designed to mention the first complete edi- tions—the standard editions-as well as the lives of authors, estimates of their works and sketches and personal reminiscences. A mass of good material on the great writers of the Victorian age is buried in the bound volumes of English and American reviews and maga- zines, The best guide to these articles is Poole s ''Index:' The most valuable single volumes to one who wishes to make a study of eighteenth and nineteenth century English writers are: ''A Study of English Prose Writers'' and ''A Study of English and American Poets," by J. Scott Clark. (New York: Charles Scrib- nersSons. Price, $2 net a volume.) These two volumes will give any one who wishes to make [151] Bibliography a study of the authors I have discussed the material for a mastery of their works. Under full biographical sketches the author gives estimates of the be St critics^ extracts from their works and a full bibliography^ including the best magazine articles, MACAULAY The editions of Macaulay are so numerous that it is useless to attempt to enumerate them. A standard edi- tion was collected in 1866 by his sister. Lady Trevelyan. Four volumes are devoted to the history and three to the essays and lives of famous authors which he wrote for the Encyclopedia Brittanica, Macaulay 's essays, which have enjoyed the greatest popularity in this country, may be found in many forms. A one-volume edition, containing the principal essays, is issued by sev- eral publishers. Sir George Otto Trevelyan* s The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay in two volumes (i 876) is a more interesting biography than Lockhart's Scott, The best single-volume estimate of Macaulay is J. Cot- ter Morison's Macaulay in the English Men of Letter's series. Good short critical sketches of Macaulay and his work may be found in Sir Leslie Stephen's Hours in a Library y volume 2, and in Lord Morley's Critical Miscellanies y volume 2. SCOTT The edition of Scott, which was his own favorite, was issued in Edinburgh in forty-eight volumes, from 1829 to 1833. Scott wrote new prefaces and notes for this edition. Another is the Border edition, with introductory essays and notes by Andrew Lang (forty- \}sA Bibliography eight volumes, 1 892-1 894). The recent editions o{ Scott are numerous for, despite all criticisms of his careless style, he holds his own with the popular favor- ites of the day. Of his poems a good edition was edited by William Minto in two volumes, in 1888. The Life of Scott by his son-in-law, J. G. Lockhart, is the standard work. This was originally issued in seven volumes but Lockhart was induced to condense it into one volume, which gives about all that the ordinary reader cares for. This may be found in Everyman's library. Scott's Journal z.-i\6. his Familiar Letters ^ both edited by David Douglas, contain much interesting material. The best short lives of Scott are by R. H. Hutton in the English Men of Letters series and by George Saintsbury in the Famous Scots series. Among the best sketches and estimates of Scott are by Andrew Lang in Letters to Dead Authors; Sir Leslie Stephen in Hours in a Library; Conan Doyle in Through the Magic Door; Walter Bagehot in Literary Studies; Ste- venson in Gossip on Romance and in Memoirs and For- traitSy and S. R. Crockett in The Scott Country, Abbotsfordy by Washington Irving, gives the best per- sonal sketches of Scott at home. CARLYLE Carlyle's Essays and his French Revolution, upon which his fame will chiefly rest, are issued in many editions. It would be well if his longer works could be condensed into single volumes by competent hands. A revised edition of his Frederick was issued in one short volume. For the facts of Carlyle's life, the best book is his own Reminiscences issued in 1 8 8 1 and edited by Froude, who was his literary executor with the full power to publish or suppress. Froude had so great Vsi\ Bibliography an antipathy to what Carlyle himself called "mealy- mouthed biography" that he erred on the side of extreme frankness. In Thomas Carlyle— The First Forty Tears of His Life, Life in London and Letters of 'Jane Welsh Carlyle y Froude permitted the publication of many mali- cious comments by Carlyle on his famous contemporaries. These and morbid expressions of remorse by Carlyle over imaginary neglect of his wife caused a great revulsion of public sentiment and the fame of Carlyle was clouded for ten years. Finally, after much acrimonious contro- versy, the truth prevailed and Carlyle came into his own again. Among the best books on Carlyle are Lowell's Essays, volume 2; David Masson, Carlyle Personally and in His Writings; E. P. Whipple, Essays and Re- views; Emerson, English Traits; Lowell, My Study Windows; Morley, English Literature in the Reign of Vi^oria; Greg, Literary and Social Judgments; Mon- cure Conway, Carlyle, and Yi&r^ty , Views and Review s» Among magazine and review articles may be men- tioned George Eliot in Westminster Review, volume 57 ; John Burroughs in Atlantic Monthly, volume 5 i ; Emerson in Scribner's Magazine, volume 22; Froude in Nineteenth Century, volume 10, and Leslie Ste- phen in Cornhill, volume 44. DE aUINCEY It is a curious fact that the first complete edition of De Quincey's works was issued in Boston in twenty volumes (185 0-1855) by Ticknor & Fields. Much of the material was gathered from English periodicals, as De Quincey was the greatest magazine writer of his age. This was followed by the Riverside edition in twelve volumes ( Boston, 1877). The standard English [154] Bibliography edition is The Colle6ied Writings of Thomas De ^incey, fourteen volumes, edited by David Masson (1889- 1890). A. H. Japp vi^rote the standard English Life of De ^incey (London, two volumes, 1879). The best short life is Masson' s in the English Men of Let- ters series. George Saintsbury gives a good sketch of De Quincey in Essays in English Literature. Other estimates may be found in the following works: Leslie Stephen, Hours in a Library; H. A. Page, De ^in- cey. His Life and Writings and in Mrs. Oliphant's Literary History of England, LAMB Reprints of the Essays of Elia have been very numerous. One of the best editions of Lamb's com- plete works was edited by E. V. Lucas in seven vol- umes, to which he added in 1905 The Life of Charles Lamb in two volumes. Another is Complete Works and Correspondence y edited by Canon Ainger (London, six volumes). Ainger also wrote an excellent short life of Lamb for the English Men of Letters series. Hazlitt and Percy Fitzgerald have revised Thomas Noon Tal- fourd's standard Letters of Charles Lamb, With a Sketch of His Life. Among sketches of the life of Charles and Mary Lamb may be noted Barry Cornwall's Charles Lamb— A Memoir; Fitzgerald, Charles Lamb: His Friends, His Haunts and His Books; Walter Pater, Appreciations; R. H. Stoddard, Personal RecolleSiions; Augustine Birrell, Res Judicatcs; Nicoll, Landmarks of English Literature; Talfourd, Final Memorials of Charles Lamb; Hutton, Literary Landmarks of London, DICKENS The first colledlive edition of Dickens* works was issued in 1847. The standard edition is that of Chap- Vss\ Bibliography man & Hall, London, who were the original publishers of Pickwick, One of the best of the many editions of Dickens is the Macmillan Pocket edition with repro- dudlions of the original covers of the monthly parts of the novels as they appeared, the original illustrations by Cruikshank, Leech,** Phiz" (Hablot Browne) and others, and valuable and interesting introduftions by Charles Dickens the younger. Another good edition is in the World's Classics, with brilliant introduftions by G. K. Chesterton. In buying an edition of Dickens it is well to get one with reproduftions of the original illustrations, as these add much to the pleasure and interest of the novels. For ready reference to Dickens' works there is a Dickens Di^ionary, giving the names of all charafters and places in the novels, by G. A. Pierce, and another similar work by A. J. Philip. Mary Williams has also prepared a Dickens Concordance, Forster's Life of Charles Dickens, in three volumes, is the standard work, as Forster was closely connedled with the novelist from the time he made his hit with Pickwick, George Gissing, the novelist, made an abridgment of Forster' s Life in one volume, which is well done. Scores of shorter lives and sketches have been written. Among the best of these are Dr. A.W. Ward's Charles Dickens in the English Men of Letters series; Taine's chapter on Dickens in his History of English Literature; Sir Leslie Stephen's article in the Dictionary of National Biography; Mrs. Oliphant's The Victorian Age in English Literature; F. G. Kitton's Charles Dickens: His Life, Writings and Personality, The Letters, edited by Miss Hogarth and Mary Dick- ens, are valuable for the light they throw on the novel- ist's character and work. [^56] Bibliography In reminiscence of Dickens, the best books are Mary- Dickens' My Father as I Recall Him; J. T. Fields' In and Out of Doors With Charles Dickens and G. Dol- by's Charles Dickens as I Knew Him, the last devoted to the famous reading tours. Edmund Yates, Anthony Trollope, James Payn, R. H. Haine and many others have written readable reminiscences. For the home life of Dickens and his haunts see F. G. Kitton's The Dickens Country; Thomas Fort's In Kent With Charles Dickens and H. S. Ward's The Real Dickens Land. Of poems on Dickens* death the very best is Bret Harte's Dickens in Camp, ThQ Wisdom of Dickens, compiled by Temple Scott, is a good colleftion of extrafts. THACKERAY Almost as many editions of Thackeray's works have been published as of Dickens' novels, and the reader in his selection must be guided largely by his own taste. In choosing an edition, however, always get one that contains Thackeray's own illustrations, as, though the drawing is frequently crude, the sketches are full of humor and help one to understand the author's con- ception of the charafters. The best general edition is The Biographical, with introduftions by his daughter, Mrs. Richmond Ritchie (London, i 897-1900). The Charterhouse edition of Thackeray in twenty-six vol- umes, published in England by Smith, Elder & Co. and in this country by Lippincott, is an excellent library set containing all the original illustrations. No regular biography of Thackeray has ever been written because of his expressed wish, but his daughter, Mrs. Richmond Ritchie, has supplied this lack with many sketches and introduftions to various editions of {^S7] Bibliography her father's works, Anthony Trollope in his autobiog- raphy gives many charming glimpses of Thackeray but his sketch of Thackeray in the English Men of Letters series is not warmly appreciative. One of the best short estimates of Thackeray is Charles Whibley's Thackeray (1905). Also valuable are sketches by Frederic Harrison in Early Victorian Literature; Brownell, Early Victorian Masters; Whip- ple, CharaSler and CharaSierhtic Men; R. H. Stod- dard, Aiiecdote Biography of Thackeray; Andrew Lang, Letters to Dead Authors; G. T. Fields, Yesterdays With Authors; JeafFreson, Novels and Novelists and W. B. Jerrold The Best of All Good Company, The reviews and magazines, especially in the last ten years, have abounded in articles on Thackeray. Among these the best have appeared in Scribner's Magazine. A small volume. The Sense and Sentiment of Thackeray (Harper's, 1909), gives numerous good extradls from the novels as well as from the essays. CHARLOTTE BRONTE Smith, Elder & Co. of London were the publishers of Jane Eyre and they also issued the first collefted edition of Charlotte Bronte's works. This firm still publishes the standard English edition, the Haworth edi- tion, with admirable introduftions by Mrs. Humphrey Ward and with many illustrations from photographs of the places and people made memorable in Charlotte's novels. A good American edition is the Shirley edi- tion, with excellent illustrations, many of them repro- ductions of rare daguerreotypes. The standard life of Charlotte Bronte until fifteen years ago was Mrs. Gaskell's, one of the most appeal- ing stories in all literature. Clement K. Shorter's [158] Bibliography Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle is now indispensable because of the mass of fafts that the author has gathered in regard to the life of the sisters in the lonely parsonage and their remarkable literary development. Augustine Birrell has written a good short life of Charlotte, while A. M. F. Robinson (Mme. Duclaux) has a volume on Emily Bronte in the Famous Women series. T. Wemyss Reid was the first writer to make orig- inal research among the Bronte material and his book, Charlotte Bronte— A Monograph, paved the way for the exhaustive study of this strange family of genius by Clement Shorter. Other books that give much original material are The Brontes in Ireland, by Rev. Dr. William Wright, and Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters, by Clement Shorter. Mr. Shorter also in The Brontes- Life and Letters gives all of Charlotte's letters in the order of their dates. GEORGE ELIOT The first collefted edition of George Eliot's works was brought out in iSyS-iSSoin London and Edin- burgh. Many editions have since appeared in England and in this country, the best one being the English Cabinet edition, published by A. & C. Black. The standard life of George Eliot is George Eliot's Life as Related in Her Letters and Journals , edited by her husband, J. W. Cross, who served for ten years as curate of Haworth. Leslie Stephen has written a remarkably good short life of George Eliot in the English Men of Letters series. Among critical articles on George Eliot may be men- tioned Henry James in Partial Portraits; Mathilde Blind, George Eliot; Oscar Browning, Life of George Eliot in Great Writers series; Dowden, Studies in Lit- erature; Oscar Browning, Great Writers; Mayo W. [159] Bibliography Hazeltlne, Chats About Books; R. H. Hutton, Mod- ern Guides of Religious Thought; R. E. Cleveland, George Eliot'* s Poetry; Frederic Harrison, The Choice of Books and Sydney Lanier, The Development of the English NoveL RUSKIN The great edition of Ruskin is the Library edition by E. T. Cook and A. Wedderburn, begun in 1903. It is splendidly illustrated and is a superb specimen of book-making. English and American editors of Ruskin are numerous. The standard life of Ruskin is by W. G. Colling- wood, his secretary and ardent disciple. One of his pupils, E. T. Cook, published Studies in Ruskin, which throws much light on his methods of teaching art. J. A. Hobson in John Ruskin, Social Reformer discusses his economic and social teaching. Dr. Charles Waldstein of Cambridge in The Work of John Ruskin develops his art theories. Good critical studies may also be found in W. M. Rossetti's Ruskin and Frederic Harrison's Tennyson, Ruskin, Mill and Other Literary Estimates; Justin McCarthy, Modern Leaders; Mary R. Mitford, Recollections of a Literary Life and R. H. Hutton, Contemporary Thought and Thinkers, Among magazine articles may be noted W. J. Still- man in the Century, volume 1 3 ; Charles Waldstein in Harper's, volume 1 8 ; Justin McCarthy in the Galaxy, volume 13, and Leslie Stephen in Frazer's, volumes 9 and 49. TENNYSON The best edition of Tennyson is the Eversley in six volumes, published by the Macmillans and edited by his son Hallam, which contains a mass of notes left by [160] Bibliography the poet and many explanations of peculiar words and metaphors which the father gave to the son in discussing his work. This edition also gives the changes made by the poet in his constant revision of his works, some of which were not improvements. A mass of critical commentary and reminiscence has been published on Tennyson and his poetical work. Among the best of these volumes are Tennyson, Ruskin and Mill, by Frederic Harrison; Tennyson and His Friends, by Mrs. Richmond Ritchie; The Homes and Haunts of Tennyson, by Napier; Tennyson, His Art and Relation to Modern Life, by Stopford A. Brooke; The Poetry of Tennyson, by Henry Van Dyke; the chapter on Tennyson in Stedman's Viilorian Poets; a commen- tary on Tennyson's In Memoriam by Prof. A. C. Bradley; Alfred Tennyson, by Andrew Lang; Fiews and Reviews, by W. E. Henley; Tester days With Au- thors, by J. T. Fields; The Viaorian Age, by Mrs. Oliphant. Dr. Henry Van Dyke contributed five articles on Tennyson to Scribner's Magazine, volume 6. BROWNING An enormous literature of comment, appreciation and interpretation has grown up around Browning, largely due to the work of various Browning societies in this country and in Europe. The London Browning Society especially has brought out many papers that will be of interest to Browning students. Other works are Arthur Symons, Intro du^ion to the Study of Browning (Lon- don, 1886); G. W. Cooke, Browning Guide Book (New York, 1 901); Fotheringham, Studies (London, 1898); Stedman, Viaorian Poets; Prof. Hiram Cor- son, Introduction to Browning; George E. Woodberry, Studies in Literature and Life; Hamilton W. Mabie, [161] Bibliography Essays in Literary Interpretation; A. Birrell, Obiter Di8a; George Saintsburyj, Corrected Impressions. The first edition of Browning's poems appeared in two volumes in 1849, a second in three volumes in 1863 and a third in six volumes in 1868. A revised edition containing all the poems was issued in sixteen volumes in 1888-1889. A fine complete edition in two volumes, edited by Augustine Birrell and F. G. Ken- yon, was issued in 1896, and Smith, Elder & Co., London, brought out a two-volume edition in 1900. In this country the Riverside edition of Browning's Poetical Works in six volumes, issued by Houghton, Mifflin & Co., and the Camberwell edition in twelve handy volumes, with notes by Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke, published by Crowell, are valuable for Browning students. The standard life is The Life and Letters of Robert Browningy by Mrs. Sutherland Orr, but valuable are The Love Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, issued by Browning's son in i 899. For Edmund Gosse's Robert Browning— Personalia the poet supplied much of the material in notes. Good short sketches and estimates are Chesterton's Browning in the English Men of Letters series and Waugh's Robert Browning. GEORGE MEREDITH The standard edition of Meredith's works is the Boxhill edition in seventeen volumes, with photogravure frontispieces, issued in this country by the Scribners. The same text is used in the Pocket Edition in sixteen volumes, which does not include the unfinished novel, Celt and Saxon. A mass of comment on Meredith may be found in the English and American reviews and maga- zines, to which Poole's Index furnishes the best guide. [i6a] Bibliography Mrs. M. S. Henderson, George Meredith: Novelist^ Poet, Reformer; George Macaulay Trevelyan, The Poetry and Philosophy of George Meredith; John Lane, Biography of George Meredith, and R. Le Gallienne, Characteristics of George Meredith, STEVENSON Robert Louis Stevenson's early work appeared in fugitive form in magazines and reviews and even after he had written The Nezu Arabian Nights and Travels With a Donkey he was forced to see such excellent matter as The Silverado Squatters cut up into magazine articles and more than half of it discarded. The vogue of Stevenson was greater in this country than in Eng- land until he had fully established his reputation. In 1878 An Inland Voyage appeared and in 1879 Travels With a Donkey, but it was not until 1883 that Treasure Island made him well known. The standard edition of Stevenson is the Thistle edition, beautifully printed and illustrated, and issued at Edinburgh and New York, 1 894- 1 898. The Letters of Steve?ison to His Family, originally issued in 1899, have now been incorporated with Failima Letters and issued in four volumes. They are arranged chronologically, with admirable biograph- ical commentary by Sydney Colvin, to whom a great part of them was written. Stevenson's personality was so at- traftive that a mass of reminiscence and comment has been produced since his death in i 894. The best books are Graham Balfour, Life of Robert Louis Stevenson; Walter Raleigh, R. L. Stevenson; Simpson, Stevenson's Edinburgh Days, and Memoirs of Failima, by Isobel Strong and Lloyd Osbourne, the novelist's stepchildren. Henry James in Partial Portraits has a fine appreciation of Stevenson and Robert Louis Stevenson in California, by Katharine D. Osbourne is rich in reminiscence. [163] Bibliography THOMAS HARDY Since 1895, Thomas Hardy has written no fidlion. The standard edition of his works is published in this country by the Harpers. Recently this firm has issued Hardy in a convenient thin paper edition which may be slipped into the coat pocket. His first novel. Des- perate Remedies y appeared in i 871 but it was not until the issue of Far From the Madding Crowd in 1874 that he gained popular fame. Many magazine articles have been written on the *'corner of Dorsetshire" which Hardy calls Wessex. Good books on the Hardy country are The Wessex of Romance , by W. Sherren, and The Wessex of Thomas Hardy, by Windle. KIPLING The standard edition of Kipling is the Outward Bound edition, published in this country by the Scrib- ners. It contains a general introduftion by the author and special prefaces to each volume, with illustrations from bas reliefs made by the novelist's father. Double- day, Page & Co. are issuing a pocket edition of Kipling, on thin paper with flexible leather binding, which is very convenient. Any additional books will be added to each of these editions. Kipling has told of his early life in India and of his precocious literary aftivity in My First Book (1894). Richard Le Gallienne made a study of the novelist in Rudyard Kipling— A Criticism and Edmund Gosse in ^estions at Issue discusses his short stories. Prof. William Lyon Phelps in Essays on Modern Novelists has a fine chapter on Kipling. Andrew Lang in Essays in Little treats of "Mr. Kipling's Stor- ies" and Barrie has an appreciation in Contemporary Review for March, 1891. A useful Kipling Index is issued by Doubleday, Page & Co. All titles are indexed so that one may locate any story or charafter. [164] Index A Blot on the ' Scutcheon, io8, I lo, 1 13. A Child's Garden of Verse, 125. Adam Bede, 65, y6, 82, 84. Addison, 58. A Dissertation on Roast Pig,4i>7i. A Dream of Fair Women, 99. Adventures of Philip, The, 60. Aes Triplex, 130. Agnes Gray, 7 1 . A Gossip on Romance, 130. A Lodging for the Night, 124, 129. Alison Cunningham, 125. Allahabad Pioneer, 1 44. Amazing Marriage, The, 122. An English Mail Coach, 31- An Habitation Enforced, 148. An Inland Voyage, 126. Anglo-Indian Life, 146. Antiquary, The, 18. A Pair of Blue Eyes, 135. Apostles, 99. Arnold, 1 1 6. Arthurian Legends, loi. Ashburton, Lady, 25. Ashby de la Zouch, 17. Asolando, 108, 11 1. A Soldier of France, 12. Asolo, 113. A Soul's Tragedy, 108, no, 113. ATaleofTwoCities,53. Austro-Italian War, 118. A Window in Thrums, 3 9. Balestier, Wolcott, 145. Ballantyne, 1 6, 90. Balzac, I 2. Balzac's Seraphita, 74. Bank of England, 109. Barrett, Elizabeth, 1 1 o. Barrie, 39. Bathsheba Everdene, 136. Becket, loi. Bells and Pomegranates, 109. Beyond the Pale, 146. Biblical Allusions, 139. Bleak House, 54. Blue Coat School, 44. [165] Index Boldwood, 136. Boswell, 4. Bray, Charles, of Coven- try, 80. Brantwood, 93. Break, Break, Break, 105. Bronte, Charlotte, xii, 66 to 72. Bronte, Emily, 68. Browning, Robert, xii, 97, 103, 106 to 115, 117, 118. Browning, Mrs., no. Brushwood Boy, The, 148. Bunyan, 28. Burne-Jones, 142, 143. Burns, 113. Byron, 7, 98, 109, 145. Cain, 98. California, 127. Calvanism, 149. Cape Cod, 148. Captains Courageous, 1 48. Carlyle, Thomas, xii, xiii, 3, 4, 8, 20 to 30, 43, 52> 53.93- CasaGuidi Windows, 1 10. Cervantes, 1 1 . Chapman & Hall, 118. Charlotte, 68. Child Angel, The, 45. Childe Harold, 7, 90. Choir Invisible, The, 85. Christmas Carol, 51. Christmas Story, 5 1 . Chronicle, 144. Clive, 4, 9. Cloister and the Hearth, The, 65. Coleridge, 35, 42,43. Colombe's Birthday, 1 10, 113- Colonel Newcome, 58. Confessions of an English Opium Eater, 36. Count Robert of Paris, 1 8 . Court of Chancery, 54. Cricket on the Hearth, The, 51. Croker, 4. Cromwell, 24. Cross, J. W., 82. Crossing the Bar, 9 8, i o i , 105, 113. Crown of Wild Olives, The, 94. Dale in the Alps, 94. Daniel Deronda, 79, 82. Daniel Dravot, 146. Danny Dever, 149. David and Allan, 1 29. David and Catriona in Holland, 129. David Balfour, 128. David Copperfield, 53, 128. David Warwick, 120. [166] Index Defoe, 62. Departmental Ditties, 1 49 . De Quincey, Thomas, XII, 30 to 38, 45, 93. Autobiography, 3 i . Confessions, 31, 32. Desperate Remedies, 135. Dickens, Charles, xii, i 3, 44, 47 to 55, 61, 128. Dinah Morris, 84. Diana of the Crossways, 1 15, 120, 121, 122. Dombey and Son, 54. Don Juan, 98. Doyle, Conan, 12. Dramatic Idylls, 1 1 1 . Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, 1 10. Dream Children, xiv, 41, 45- Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 125, 126, 128. Drums of the Fore and Aft, The, 146. Dynasts, The, 132. East India Life, 141. Edinburgh Review, 4, 23- Egdon Heath, 133, 138. Egoist, The, 121. Eliot, George, xii, 52, 76 to 86, 136, 137. Emerson, 27, 1 16. English History, i 20,, English Humorists, The, 60. Enoch Arden, loi. Esmond, 56. Essays of Elia, 40, 43. Eugenie Grandet, i 2. Eustacia, 136, 138. Evan Harrington, 121. Evelyn Hope, 113. Far From the Madding Crowd, 133, 135, 136. Father Damien, 1 24. Felix Holt, 82. Filine at the Fair, 108,1 11. Fiske, Mrs., in Becky Sharp, 58, 138. Flight of the Tartar Tribe, The, 31. Fors Clavigera, 92. Four Georges, The, 60. Fra Lippo Lippi, 113. Eraser's Magazine, 23. Frederick the Great, 24. French Revolution, The, 23, 27. From Sea to Sea, 1 44. Froude, 24. Gabriel Oak, 136. Gaelic Comment, 103. Gaskell, Mrs., 70. Gethsemane, xiv. Giles Winterbourne, 137. [167] Index Goethe, 23, 26. Goldsmith, 3. Gray's Elegy, 135. Great Hoggarty Diamond, The, 59. Hallam, Alfred, 99. Hallam, Arthur, 99, 100, 103. Hardy, Thomas, xiii, ^"j , 115, 116, 131 to 140. Harold, loi, Hastings, Warren, 4, 9. Heart of the Midlothian, The, 17, 18. Henry Esmond, 60, Herbert, Sidney, I 20. Heroes and Hero Wor- ship, 22. Herve Riel, 108. History of England, 7. Holt, Henry, 136. Household Words and All the Year Round, 5 1 . Howells' Criticism of Thackeray, 62. How They Brought the Good News, 108. Idylls ot the King, The, 96, 100, 104. India, 102. Indian Life, 140. In Memoriam, 96, 98, 100, 103, 104. InnAlbum,The, 1 08, in. Irving, Washington, 130. Ivanhoe, 17. James, Henry, 115, i 24. Jane Eyre, 59, 66, 68, 7 1 , 73. Janet's Repentance, 81. John Silver, 125, 128. Johnson, 3. Jude the Obscure, 131, 134, 136, 138. Jungle Stories, 148. Keats, 109. Kidnaped, 128. King Arthur, 104. King's Treasures, 92. Kim, 140, 148. Kipling, John Lockwood, 142. Kipling, Rudyard, xiii, 140 to 149. Labor, 26. Lacy, 113. Lady Constantine, 136. Lady Geraldine's Court- ship, 1 10. Lady Godiva, 100. Lady of Shalot, The, 99. Lady of the Lake, The, 7, 15- Lahore, 144. Lamb, Mary, 41, 42. [168] In DEX Lamb, Charles, xii, 35, 38 to 46, 123, 130. Lamp of Sacrifice, 94. Last Chantey, The, 149. Last Essays of Elia, The, 45. Last Ride, The, 108. Lay of the Last Minstrel, The, 15. Lays of Ancient Rome, 7. Leader, Organ of the Free Thinkers, 8 1 . Learoyd, 147. Leisure Hour Series, 136. Lewes, George Henry, 7 8, 81, 82. Lincolnshire, 98. Lockhart, 16. Locksley Hall, 96, 97, 100, loi, 103. London, Jack, i 29. London Magazine, 43. Lord Ormont and His Aminta, 122. Lotus Eaters, The, 99. Lovel, the Widower, 60. Lucy, 1 19, 120. Lyrical Poems of Robert Browning, by Dr. A. J. George, 112. Macaulay, Thomas Bab- ington, 3 to 1 1, 20. Malory *s Chronicle, 104. Manchester Grammar School, 34. Mandalay^ I49» Manfred, 98. Man Who Was, The, 1 46 . Man Who Would be King, The, 146. Margaret Ogilvie, 39. Marion Evans, 79. Markheim, 124, 129. Marmion, i 5. Marty South, 136, 137. Mason's Song, 26. Maud, 97, 100. Mayor of Casterbridge, The, 136. McAndrew' s Hymn, 1 49. Melbourne, Lord, i 20. Men and Women, 108. Meredith, George,xii, 1 1 5 to 123, 124. Micah Clarke, 12. Middle Ages, The, 99. Middlemarch, 79, 82, 85. Millais, 92. Miller, Henry, in The On- ly Way, 53. Mill on the Floss, The, -id, 82, 84. Milnes, 99. Milton, 9, 107. Mitchell, 130. Modern Painters, 87, 91, 93- Monckton, 99. [169] Index Monte Cristo, 1 2. One Word More, 108, Moravian School, 118. III, 113. Morning Post, London, Ordeal of Richard Feverel, 118. The, 115, 119. Morte d' Arthur, 100. Our Mutual Friend, 54. Mowglie, 148. Oxford, 90. Mrs. Battle's Opinion on Whist, 41, 45. Palace of Art, The, 99. Mulvaney, the Irishman, Past and Present, 22, 26, 147. 27. Murder As One of the Paracelsus, 109. Fine Arts, 31, 35. Parsifal, 107. My Star, 113. Pauline, 109. Mystery of Edwin Drood, Pavilion on the Links, The, The, 50. 129. Payn, James, 17. Napoleon of Rhyme, 109. Peel, Sir Robert, 120. Naulakha, The, 148. Pendennis, 60, 64. New Arabian Nights, Pew, 125, 128. 126. Pickwick Papers, 50, 52. Newcomes, The, 60. Pied Piper of Hamelin, Newdigate Prize, 91. The, 108. Niagara Falls, 139. Pilgrim's Progress, 79. Nicholas Nickleby, 50, 54. Pilgrim's Scrip, 119. Nobel Prize, 146. Pippa Passes, 108, 109, Norton, Caroline, i 20. 113, 114. Phelps, Prof. William Ly- Ode on the Death of the on, 115, 116, 134. Duke of Wellington, Plain Tales from the Hills, 105. 145. Old Curiosity Shop, 50. Poems by Two Brothers, Old Mortality, i 8. 99. Oliver Twist, 50. Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, Lyric Love, 108, 1 1 1, 99. 114. Preterita, 92, 94. ;i7o; Index Princess, The, loo, 105, 114. Professor, The, 7 1 . Prospice, 108, 1 1 1, 113. Puck of Pock's Hill, 141. Pulvis et Umbra, 130. Punch, 59. Queen Mary, loi. Queen Viftoria, 104. QuentinDurward, 17,18. Rabbi Ben Ezra, 113. Rasselas, 79. Recessional, 149. Red Cotton Nightcap Country, 1 1 1 . Reid, Mayne, 90. Return of the Native, The, 132, 133, 136, 138. Rhoda Fleming, 121. Rhone below Geneva, 94. Richardson, 62. Richard the Lion-Hearted, 17. Ring and the Book, The, 97, 106, 113. Robinson Crusoe, 125. Rob Roy, 18. Romola, 77, 82, 85. Rose La Touche, 92. Rottingdean, 145. Ruskin, John, xii, 1 7, 30, 87 to 95. Sad Adventures of the Rev. Amos Barton, The, 8 1 . Sandra Belloni, 121. Sands, George, 74. San Marco, III. Sartor Resartus, 21, 23, 28. Scenes From Clerical Life, 81. School of Scandal, The, 120. Scotch Moors, 127, Scotch Scenes, 127. Scotch Stories, 128. Scott, Sir Walter, 1 1 to 19,47, 52, 90, 128. Sea Wolf, The, 129. Seigfried, Wagner's, 107. Sellwood, Miss Emily, 100. Sesame and Lilies, 94. Seven Lamps, The, 87, 92»93- Seymour, 50. Shakespeare, 47, 106, 1 14, 120. Shaving of Shagpat, The, 118. Shelley, 109. Sheridan, 120. Shibli Bagarag, 119. Shirley, 74. Sicilian vengeance, i 29. Sidney, 104. Silas Marner, 82, 84. [171] Index Sir Austin, 119. Sire de Maletroit*s Door, The, 124, 129. Sketches by Boz, 50. Soldiers Three, 147. Somoa, 127. Sonnets From the Portu- guese, 1 10. Sordello, 106, 109. Southey, 43. South Sea Islands, 127. Spectator, 58. Spedding, 99. Spencer, Herbert, 81, 83. Steele, 58. Stevenson, XII, 11, 39,40, 72, 120, 123 to 130. Stones of Venice, The, 87, 92, 94, 95. Story of an African Farm, The, 116. Strafford, 109. Strauss— Life of Jesus, 80. Study of Sociology, The, 83. Supernatural Man, The,45 Suspira, 36. Swift, 3. Taine, 103. Tales From Shakespeare, 43- Tales of East India Life, 140. Talisman, The, 18. Talk and Talkers, 130. Tennyson, Alfred, xii, 96 to 106, 113, 114. Tennyson, Charles, 99. Tess of the d'Urbervilles, 65, 132, 134, 136, 138. Thackeray, William Make- peace, xii, XIV, 13, 48, 52, 56 to 66, 73, 99. They, 148. Thompson-Seton, 148. Three Guardsmen, The, 12. Three Ladies of Sorrow, 3 7 Timbuftoo, 99. Times, London, 21,1 20. Tolstoi, 13. To Mary in Heaven, 113. Travels With a Donkey, 126. Treasure Island, i 23, i 24, 126, 128. Trench, 99. Trevelyan, G. O., 5. Trinity College, Cam- bridge, 99. TurgenefF, 13. Turner, 91, 94. Two Voices, The, 100. Ulysses, 100. Under the Greenwood Tree, 135. Unto This Last, 94. [172] Index Vanity Fair, ^6, 58, 59, 63- Viftorian Age, 96. Villette, 66, 73. Villon, 129. Virginians, The, 60. Virginibus Puerisque, 40. Vision of Sudden Death, The, 31. Waverley, 15, 19, 149. Weir of Hermiston, 127. Westminster Review, 80. Wessex, 133. Westward Ho, 142. Weyman, 12. White Company,The, 1 2. Wilhelm Meister, 23. William the Conqueror, 147. Without Benefit of Clergy, 146. With the Night Mail, 1 48. Woodlanders, The, 136, 137- Wordsworth, 35, 113. Wuthering Heights, 67, 71. [173] Here Ends Modern English Books of Power, Being a Second Series of Essays on Great Books and Their Writers BY George Hamlin Fitch. Published BY Paul Elder ^ Company at Their ToMOYE Press in the City of San Fran- cisco AND Seen Through the Press by John Bernhardt Swart in the Month of February and the Year Nineteen Hundred and Twelve J 91 2