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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/78215-0.txt b/78215-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..98f7540 --- /dev/null +++ b/78215-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1471 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78215 *** + + + + + LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. 109 + Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius + + + Facts You Should Know + About the Classics + + Joseph McCabe + + + HALDEMAN-JULIUS PUBLICATIONS + GIRARD, KANSAS + + + + + Copyright, 1927, + Haldeman-Julius Company + + + PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA + + + + +CONTENTS + + + Chapter Page + + I. Classics of the Ancient World 7 + + 1. Greek Literature 9 + + 2. Roman Works 18 + + 3. Early Christian Classics 25 + + II. Classics of the Middle Ages 27 + + 1. Arab and Persian Writers 27 + + 2. Dante and the Middle Ages 28 + + 3. Heralds of the Renaissance 30 + + 4. The New Age in Italy and France 32 + + 5. Cervantes and the New Spain 36 + + 6. Shakespeare and the English Re-birth 38 + + III. Classics of the Modern Period 44 + + 1. Voltaire and French Classics 45 + + 2. Germany, Russia and Scandinavia 49 + + 3. Modern English Writers 53 + + 4. American Classics 59 + + + + +PREFACE + + +This Little Blue Book is not for students of literature, but just for +folks who have not time or opportunity to read the works of the great +writers of earlier days. Every thoughtful man or woman would like to +know a little about them. Almost every day you read or hear an allusion +to Homer or Plato, Vergil or Horace, Chaucer or Dante, and so on. You +would like, if it is possible to tell you in a few simple pages, to +know who these men were, in what circumstances and on what themes they +wrote, what special interest or distinction the most famous plays or +poems or books of each of them possesses. + +By the classics we mean in literature, not merely the old Greek or +Roman works, but the literary masterpieces of every age which live +forever on account of their supreme art or interest. It is not good to +be entirely ignorant about them: it is easy and pleasant to have a few +intelligent ideas about them. About a hundred writers of the last three +thousand years have earned this kind of immortality, and we will take +them in order. Hence, although this small book cannot be a history of +literature--I may provide one later--it will give a kind of sketch of +that history and the place in it of each of the great writers who is +described. + + + + +FACTS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THE CLASSICS + +CHAPTER I + +CLASSICS OF THE ANCIENT WORLD + + +Men learned the art of writing, or began to express their ideas to +each other by (at first) drawing little pictures of objects, about six +thousand years ago, but none of the works which we call “classics” goes +back to more than three thousand years ago. We should not expect to +find many writings surviving from a date earlier than that, and as a +matter of fact, except for business purposes writing was chiefly left +to the priests. From ancient Egypt alone we have a few specimens of +small books written by laymen; especially the _Maxims of Ptah-Hotep_, +a very interesting series of counsels and reflections on conduct by a +middle-class Egyptian of four thousand or more years ago. + +This, however, is not great literature. For the older civilizations +we have to consider only their religious literature, as certain +collections of ritual and other sacred writings which, on the analogy +of the Hebrew collection, we may call their “bibles.” The oldest is +what we call _The Book of the Dead_ of the Egyptians, parts of which +go back thousands of years before Christ. It is not what we should +describe as fine literature, and, as it is mainly concerned with the +passage of the dead to another world, which to the Egyptians meant a +tiresome story of devils and spells and magic, only scholars or special +students read it today. + +There is nothing corresponding to this in Babylonia, where men did +not take an acute religious interest in death, but amongst the mass +of writings (or inscribed clay tablets) that we have found we have +fragments of a remarkable semi-sacred romance, now called _The Story_ +(or _Epic_) _of Gilgamesch_, into which are woven the early religious +traditions of a creation, deluge, garden of bliss, etc. In substance +the story goes back five or six thousand years. + +The remaining “bibles” were all written after 1000 B. C., and at +least in some of their pages they are really fine literature. The +_Old Testament_, which is certainly a literary classic in its English +translation, and has some notable poetry in the Hebrew, was written, as +we have it, in the fifth century before Christ, but the pieces of which +it was then composed spread over several centuries before that date. + +The Persian sacred book, _The Avesta_, is a similar compilation of +religious traditions and writings, covering much the same period. But +it had not, like the _Old Testament_, the advantage of being translated +in an age when men still wrote poetical English, and it is only of +historical and religious interest, as an account of the high ideals and +remarkable beliefs of the ancient Persians. + +The oldest Hindu writings, _The Vedas_, mainly a collection of hymns, +belong to the same period; the oldest parts (especially of the _Rig +Veda_) may go back to 1000 B. C. There is some fine poetic writing in +the earlier parts, but in the later this is succeeded by very abstract +and subtle speculation which few would care to read. + +The Chinese collection is called the _King_ (which means “books” or +“bible”), and it includes what are known as the Chinese classics. These +are five books written by Kung-fu-tse (Confucius) and his disciples in +the sixth century B. C. They are included, with the Persian and Hindu +books, in the collection of translations known as _The Sacred Books of +the East_. A good deal of early Buddhist literature also is included. +But the chief interest of all these works is historical and religious, +not literary, and we must pass on to Greece for the earliest works +which live because of their splendid literary qualities. + + +§1. GREEK LITERATURE + +The works of ancient Greece which we have are only a tithe of the works +written even by the greater Greek writers, yet almost every surviving +play or poem is treasured as a classic. If you draw up a list of the +fifty greatest writers from the dawn of civilization to the nineteenth +century, you will find that at least ten of them are Greeks. However, +it was only certain parts of Greece which produced these wonderful +artists, and these regions, taken together, never had a population as +large as that of Chicago. + +But we cannot here go into the historical reasons for their brilliance. +It is enough for my purpose to say that the _earliest_ Greeks were +semi-barbarians who filtered down into what we call Greece from the +north between 2000 and 1000 B. C. When they reached the Mediterranean +they came into touch with the old civilizations and were refined. +Large numbers of them crossed to Asia Minor, where they mingled with +the polished Cretans and Persians, and it is here that the first great +Greek poets and thinkers wrote. + +Homer, their first poet, was regarded by the Greeks themselves in their +most learned days as their greatest poet, a unique classic; and he is +still one of the greatest poets of all time. Whether there ever was +an individual named Homer is disputed. Most modern scholars have held +for a long time that the poems to which his name is attached were slow +growths contributed to by different poets of the tenth century B. C. +But this is not at all settled, and many again think that Homer was +an individual Greek of wonderful poetical power in or about the tenth +century B. C. + +His immortal works are the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_. These are two +long “epic” poems; that is to say long poems to be recited, not sung +to music, telling of glorious deeds and romantic adventures. The first +deals with the closing days of the ten-year siege of the city of Troy +(or Ilium) in Asia Minor by the early Greeks. The hero is Achilles, the +Greek prince, who sulks in his tent after a quarrel about a beautiful +girl-captive, and is at last stung into action by the reverses of the +Greeks and leads them on to the final destruction of Troy. Another of +the chief Greek princes was Ulysses, and the _Odyssey_ describes his +wanderings over the ancient world after the fall of Troy. + +Exploration in Asia Minor has discovered the remains of the city of +Troy, and there is now no doubt that early Greek princes did bring +their men overseas and destroy it. In the south of Greece we have found +the palaces and graves of these princes, their inlaid bronze swords and +golden death-masks, and we recognize the vivid realism of Homer. This +great victory of the early Greeks would be the chief theme of the bards +at every princes’ court, and all sorts of picturesque legends would be +added to the truth. Homer weaves all these together in two great epics +with masterly skill. You can _see_ the heroes, sharply and vividly +sketched, fighting their great duels, the scenes in camp and court, the +dawn or the blaze of the sun on the blue Mediterranean. Much of this +powerful and beautiful description is lost in translation, though the +old translations by poets like Pope, Cowper and Bryant, are very fine, +and the current translations, chiefly by Andrew Lang and collaborators, +are excellent. Homer is next to Shakespeare, who surpasses him and all +others in beautiful imagery and allegory. + +The epic poem remained for two or three centuries the chief writing +of the Greeks. They were then royalists with numbers of small courts +of chiefs or princes where these story-poems were recited. As the +race advanced in civilization, “lyric” poetry (short poems sung to the +accompaniment of the lyre) developed. The most interesting writer of +these is the female poet Sappho, who lived in the island of Lesbos in +the seventh century. Between Sappho and Homer was the great poet Hesiod +(9th century), whose chief poem, _Works and Days_, is full of moral and +religious feeling; and in the sixth and fifth centuries Pindar won a +high position in Greece and wrote great numbers of songs, hymns, odes, +etc. Aesop’s famous _Fables_ also appeared in the sixth century, though +many doubt if there was such a person as Aesop. + +But we must confine ourselves here to the greatest names, or this book +would not get beyond Greece. Two other kinds of writers arose as Greek +civilization moved on toward its most brilliant days. On the one hand +was a series of scientists and philosophers, but we have none of the +works of these. On the other hand tragedy was born, and Greece had, in +a very short period, the three greatest tragedians the world has ever +known: Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. + +Tragedy, like the epic before it, and the comedy which followed it, +reflects the age in which it was born: just as we get snowdrops in the +spring, roses in the summer, and berries in the autumn. King’s courts +were by this time abolished and the crowd of citizens had to have their +entertainments. At the same time a deeper religious mood passed over +Greece, and in Aeschylus (born 523 B. C.) this came to inspire tragic +poetry which is artistically magnificent. There was an old custom of +having, on the festival of Dionysos, the god of dance and wine, a group +of men quaintly dressed who danced round his altar chanting old verses. +Out of this the poets created the play, and Athens built the first +great theater. + +Aeschylus used ancient legends of tragic happenings that seemed to have +a profound and somber moral significance. Only seven of his seventy +tragedies have been preserved, and as Sir Gilbert Murray has in recent +years superbly translated three of the best of these (_Agamemnon_, +_Cheophori_, _Eumenides_) an English reader can get a very good idea +of his tragic grandeur. These three plays form a trilogy, or connected +series, founded on the terrible legend of the curse on the house of +King Agamemnon. Behind it all Aeschylus sees the action of a great +mysterious principle, Fate, greater than the gods, which brings +the punishment of crime. “Eumenides” means the “Avenging Fates.” +_Prometheus Bound_, from which Shelley took the title of his great +“lyrical drama,” _Prometheus Unbound_, is another masterpiece of this +“father of tragedy.” + +His rival and successor Sophocles (495-405) is considered even greater: +indeed, the greatest tragic poet of all time. In fact there are +experts who regard some of the masterpieces of Sophocles, such as the +_Antigone_ (which ought to be read in one of the current translations), +_Oedipus the King_, and _Electra_, as the finest works that were ever +written. The theme of them is, as in Aeschylus, that a semi-divine +Fate rules gods and men and avenges crime. Both tragedians take crime +on the grand scale--murder, rape, incest, etc., in the legends of the +old royal families--and the characters they create will live forever. +Sophocles, of whose one hundred and thirteen plays we have only seven, +is a little less somber, more humane, more polished than Aeschylus. He +creates tragic grandeur out of the moral and religious feelings of the +time. + +The contrast of the third and latest of the trio, Euripides (480-406), +is interesting. He was a cultivated man and clearly did not believe +the old legends in their religious side. Skepticism was growing in +Greece. But the mass of the people were religious, and Euripides was +not generally popular, though eighteen of his seventy-five plays have +survived. Technically he improves on his predecessors but he has not +the same glow of inspiration. He took similar themes to those of his +predecessors--crimes and tragedies on the royal scale--but he was a +more self-conscious artist and an intellectual. If you want to see how +he wrote Greek tragedy, read a translation of the _Medea_, which is +based upon the appalling crimes and tragic adventures of that legendary +queen; and, incidentally, it is one of the first pleas for a more just +treatment of women. _Alcestis_, _Iphigenia_, _Orestes_, etc., are other +masterpieces of Euripides. + +Comedy was the next form invented by the Greek poets, and Aristophanes +(450-380), the greatest of the comedians, was a contemporary and +(being very conservative) a bitter enemy of Euripides and all +innovators. He satirized the growing woman-movement mercilessly in his +_Lysistrate_ and _Ecclesiazusae_, the philosophers in his _Clouds_, the +democrats in his _Knights_, the democratic judges in his _Wasps_, and +so on. But his wit was irresistible, and the stubborn old conservative +was an idol of the Athenian people for forty years. Of his fifty plays, +of which eleven survive, the _Clouds_ (against the intellectuals and +skeptics) is perhaps the best, though most mischievous. Translations +of all these ancient classics can be got in the Bohn, “Everyman,” and +other collections of great books. + +Aristophanes was as free of speech in regard to sex as he was zealous +for old creeds. A refinement of comedy came after his time, and the +ablest representative of this “New Comedy,” reflecting the real +domestic life of the Greeks, was “the gentle Menander.” But we have +only fragments of his comedies. Aristophanes, the loosest, is the only +comedian of whom entire plays have been preserved, and we must now take +their tone as typically Greek. The austere moralists Sophocles and +Euripides, remember, lived at the same time and were played before the +same audiences. + +History was a third line of development at the time, and two of the +Greek historians, Herodotus (“the Father of History,” 484-425) and +Thucydides (471-400) are classics. The former, who had traveled all +over the civilized world, wrote mainly on the clash of the Greeks +and the Persians, but he brings in the whole world which he has seen. +The plan is imposing, but he is not critical, and not always reliable +even about countries which he visited. Thucydides chiefly describes +the Peloponnesian War (with Sparta) and is terser and more faithful to +facts. His work is history in the modern sense and finely written. + +A classic of a different kind is the orator Demosthenes (385-322), +whose _Philippics_ (or orations against King Philip of Macedon) are +perhaps his best written speeches, and are models of oratory for +all time. Philip was insidiously preparing to take over Greece, and +Demosthenes fierily denounced him to the apathetic people. He does not +use florid rhetoric, but a terse, strong, direct, and simple speech. +This and his other speeches are literary masterpieces and are, in their +plain, forcible style, considered “matchless eloquence.” + +Before this a long series of philosophers had begun to use the now +perfected Greek language, and the works of some of these are classics. +Socrates wrote nothing--Plato gives us his ideas--and the books of the +great majority of them have not been preserved. Epicurus, who comes +nearest of them all to modern scientific thought, wrote three hundred +works, but not one of them has been preserved. We have, in fact, only +the writings of Plato and Aristotle. + +Plato (427-347), a pupil of the famous Socrates, mainly expressed +his ideas by means of dialogues between imaginary or real Athenian +characters. In the Greek some of these dialogues (the _Phaedo_, +_Phaedrus_, _Timaeus_, _Critias_, _Symposium_, etc.) are considered +to belong to the finest prose-literature of the world, and the famous +Greek scholar Dr. Jowett has given us a wonderful translation (in five +volumes) of them all. Plato usually writes about religion and morality, +but he was also the first social idealist, with very advanced views, +and in his _Republic_ he sketches an ideal commonwealth. + +While Plato is the finest writer of all philosophers--and by far the +easiest to read--his successor Aristotle (384-322) was the most learned +man (in his time) of all writers and possibly the greatest thinker of +all time. These wonderful Greeks were pioneers in everything. While +some created the epic, the lyric, tragedy, comedy, history, etc., +Aristotle created philosophy as a system of knowledge. The titles +of his greater works (_Physics_, _Metaphysics_, _Ethics_, _Logic_, +_Poetics_, etc.--he invented these divisions of knowledge) show the +vast range of his learning and thought, but his books are scarce and +are read only by students of philosophy. + +After the days of the philosophers Greece degenerated. The only other +Greeks who could be deemed classics are the moralist and philosopher +Plutarch (died 106 A. D.) and the very unmoral and witty satirist +Lucian, whom we treat a little later. Plutarch’s _Lives_ (of famous +Greeks and Romans) are a biographical classic, but he was a very +religious priest of Apollo and wrote much also on morals, and +religion. After these the only great Greek writers were of Alexandria, +but these are better known in mathematics and philosophy than as +literary classics. Euclid’s _Geometry_, certainly a classic of its +kind, also belongs to Alexandria, but was written in the third century +before Christ. + + +§2. ROMAN LITERATURE + +From what we have now seen the reader will understand, and may learn +with amazement, that one of the smallest nations which ever figured +prominently in history produced a remarkable proportion of the world’s +greatest literature, and indeed created nearly every branch of +literature. Remember, too, that the Greek classics which we have are +mere fragments of the whole. Literally thousands of important works of +poets, dramatists, and thinkers have perished. Let us hope that we have +the finest fragments. I have given as informing an account of these as +my space allows, and will only add that if any reader who has access +to a public library with collections of translations wishes to know a +little more, without an extensive course of study, I would advise him +to read a book of Homer’s _Iliad_, then the _Agamemnon_ of Aeschylus, +the _Antigone_ of Sophocles, the _Medea_ of Euripides, the _Clouds_ +of Aristophanes, a few chapters of Herodotus, one of the orations +of Demosthenes, and one (the _Timaeus_ or the _Phaedo_) of Plato’s +Dialogues. + +The Roman literature is next in time to that of the Greeks and, +in spite of the common misstatement that the Romans were a wholly +practical and not an artistic people, it is next to it in importance. +The Romans learned the fine arts from the Greeks, and at first they +were content with translations of Greek works. Comedy especially +appealed to them, and the first classical Roman writers were the great +comedians Plautus (254-184 B. C.) and Terentius, or Terence (190-159). +Plautus, using Greek and other plots, composed a hundred and thirty +comedies, but only a score have survived the literary massacre of the +early Middle Ages. The type of comedy he wrote may be understood from +Shakespeare’s _Comedy of Errors_, which is, like many plays of the +Renaissance writers, based upon the _Menaechmei_ (a story of twins) +of Plautus. Terentius, of whom we have six plays, writes purer Latin +than Plautus and has more technical skill, but he has a less rich vein +of comedy. He is the author of the much quoted line: “I am a man, and +nothing human is foreign to me.” + +Apart from these there was no Roman writer who need be mentioned +here--I wish to restrict the list of names as much as possible--until +the first century before Christ, when what is called the Golden Age +of Roman literature began. The art, as usual, reflects the economic +conditions. Rome’s conquest of the world was almost over, and the +Eternal City was congested with wealth and athirst for every luxury and +refinement. Within two centuries there appeared the great poets Vergil, +Horace, Ovid, Catullus, the historians Caesar, Livy, Sallust, Tacitus, +the satirists Martial and Juvenal, the orator and thinker Cicero, and +the famous moralists Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. These are +all classics, but we must confine ourselves to the chief works of the +greater writers. + +Vergil (70-19 B. C.) is one of the six greatest poets of all time. +His chief work is inspired by Homer. It is a long epic poem (a volume +in itself) describing the wanderings of Aeneas of Troy after the +destruction of that city, working up the legend that he eventually +reached Italy and founded Rome and the Romans. It is therefore known +as _The Aeneid_. Vergil was so polished and conscientious a scholar +that at his death he ordered the destruction of the manuscript of the +great poem, as he had wished to give three further years to perfecting +it before publication. The Emperor overruled his will and gave the +masterpiece to the world. Vergil wrote also two series of poems of +pastoral life, the _Eclogues_ and the _Georgics_. He has not the +greatness of Homer, but his work is so impressive that the Catholic +poet Dante, twelve centuries later, took Vergil as his guide through +the underworld. + +The next greatest Latin poet, Horace (65-8 B. C.), is the most +difficult to translate, yet in his pure humanity and praise of the +common pleasures of life he comes nearest to modern sentiments. Apart +from a long poem _On the Art of the Poet_, which is now chiefly read +in Latin classes, he wrote a large number of satires, odes and letters +which are exquisite poetical appreciations of a life of refined +pleasure. It is generally said that he is Epicurean, but the phrase +is misleading. Vergil also was a follower of Epicurus--most Roman +gentlemen of that age were--yet he is sternly patriotic and speaks of +the old Roman gods as if he accepted them. + +Somewhere about the same time--we are not sure of the date--there lived +a Latin poet of distinction named Lucretius who put into a poem called +_On the Nature of Things_ the serious philosophy of Epicurus about the +world and human life. It is not strictly a literary classic, though +a fine poem, but it is memorable as the only complete Epicurean work +which we have and the nearest to modern thought. Mr. W. H. Mallock some +years ago published a very free but admirable version of it in English +verse. + +Returning to the greater poets of the Golden Age, we have still to +consider Catullus (87-54 B. C.) and Ovid (43 B. C.-18 A. D.). We have +116 exquisite lyrical poems of Catullus, a man of leisure and wealth +who largely wrote verse about love for his lady-friends. Catullus is +freer in his sentiments and expressions than Horace, but the fourth +great Latin poet, Ovid, was the most outspoken of them all. In the gay +society of Rome he published _Songs of Love_, _The Art of Love_, and +_Remedies of Love_. But these are so far from reflecting the whole life +of Rome that Ovid was exiled for his licentious poems--the real reason +is said to have been an entanglement with the Emperor’s daughter--and +in exile he wrote his more serious works. His masterpiece is the +_Metamorphoses_, a mixture of history, legend and mythology in rich +and very accomplished verse. Another distinguished poet of the first +century is Lucan, whose _Pharsalia_ (a poem on the civil war) has a +high place in literature. + +Of the historians Julius Caesar (100-44 B. C.), a very cultivated +man as well as a great general, has left us _Commentaries_ on his +campaigns, especially in Gaul; plain, straightforward accounts of his +actions in one of the easiest of Latin styles. Sallust (86-34) is more +of a literary man as well as historian, but his chief work is lost +and his _Conspiracy of Catiline_ and _War Against Jugurtha_ are not +masterpieces. + +The two most famous historians of Rome are Livy (59-17 B. C.) and +Tacitus (55-117 A. D.). Livy belongs to the older Roman world, and his +immense history of Rome in 142 books (only 35 of which have come down +to us) is more patriotic than critical. Tacitus, on the other hand, +falls in the period when the Stoic emperors raised the tone of the +declining Empire. His _History_ and _Annals_ (of later Roman times) are +both historical and literary classics: severe and very condensed (and +difficult to read) in style, austerely moral in sentiment, and based +on precise documents. In the _Annals_ there is a famous reference to +Christ and Nero’s persecution of the Christians, the genuineness of +which is disputed. It seems to me sound enough in style but too late in +date to be important. + +Cicero, the greatest Roman orator, and a statesman and philosopher, +belongs to the earlier period (106-43 B. C.), the close of the +Republic. His style is a standard of Latin, yet it is comparatively +easy to read. His speeches (chiefly delivered in the law-court) are +models of oratory, avoiding florid rhetoric and relying, like those of +Demosthenes, on force of language and skill of construction. He has +left us also the best philosophical essays in the Latin language--the +books _On Duty_ are most interesting from the ethical point of +view--and his many letters are excellent literature and afford valuable +pictures of the time. + +The moralist Seneca (4 B. C.-65 A. D.) is famous for the many long +essays or books which he wrote, from the severe Stoic point of view, on +every aspect of virtue and vice. He wrote in the time of Nero, and thus +he reminds us that the corruption of that Emperor and his circle did +not extend to all Rome. A little later was Epictetus, a Greek of the +Roman Empire, whose very austere Stoic sentiments were collected by his +pupils and published as his _Encheiridion_ or _Manual_. Marcus Aurelius +(121-180 A. D.), the most virtuous of the Stoic Emperors, compiled a +little volume of moral _Meditations_, very austere in sentiment, which +is still much read, though it was rather casually written. Another +famous Stoic of the time (died 117 A. D.) was the Greek orator Dion +Chrysostom (“Golden-mouthed”), whose eighty extant orations, mainly +delivered in Rome, are fine literary expressions of the highest ideals +of the time. There was a very considerable output of this severe moral +literature at Rome. + +More brilliant from the literary point of view were the satirists +Juvenal (60-140 A. D.), and Martial (40-104). Juvenal’s _Satires_ +(five books) are famous in literature, but as pictures of Roman morals +they are not now trusted. He wrote, not only as a poor man flaying the +rich, but he told of the wealthy Romans of the generation before his +own time. Martial has left us fourteen books of _Epigrams_: sprightly +verses, of two or three lines each, hitting off the characters and +manners of his age. He was a wealthy as well as a witty man, and his +mild satires are valuable. + +Pliny is the name of two Roman writers who rank as classics. The older +Pliny (23 A. D.-79 A. D.) gives us a summary of the slender scientific +knowledge of the Romans in his _Natural History_. The younger Pliny, +his nephew, was the governor of a province, and his _Letters_ (ten +books) are good literature and valuable documents. + +Lucian, of the second century, is rarely read today, but his witty and +pungent _Dialogues_ and his stories and essays put him in the rank of +great writers. Apuleius was another witty story-writer. His _Golden +Ass_ has always been deemed a classic, though modern authorities would +not permit a literal translation of it. The hero imagines himself +turned into an ass by the blunder of a sorcerer and having a series of +most picturesque adventures. + +After the middle of the second century Rome was exhausted by war and +literature ceased. There were several writers of some distinction in +the fourth century, but their works are not classics. The great days +of pagan literature were over. The pen passed to the hands of the new +Christian writers. + + +§3. EARLY CHRISTIAN CLASSICS + +This section is very short because since we are dealing with literary +classics, not masterpieces of theological learning, it has to tell only +of two books in a space of a thousand years, from the second century +to the twelfth. These two books are St. Augustine’s _Confessions_ and +_City of God_. You will not find translations of any others in any +modern collection of literary masterpieces. Even Clement of Alexandria, +the most accomplished of the great fathers of the Church, is read only +by theologians. St. Jerome, in my opinion, writes the best Latin, but +his writings have a purely religious interest. + +Augustine (354-430) was certainly the most learned, and probably the +ablest, man of his age. His early philosophical essays are not now +read, and the voluminous writings or dictated works--shorthand was +common in his time--of his later years interest only theologians. +But the small volume in which after his conversion to Christianity +he describes and bemoans his earlier years, his _Confessions_, is a +classical autobiography. He had really very little to “confess” beyond +the fact that for a time he had a lady-companion (which was not then +considered immoral), and the fierce light of his new asceticism causes +him to write with a singular art and feeling about his youth. + +In later years Augustine despised style, as most of the Christian +leaders did, out of religious feeling, but he once more exerted all his +art of learning in writing _The City of God_. The Roman Empire was in +ruins and Augustine set out to prove that it mattered relatively little +what became of the City of Man: that the essential thing was to be a +citizen of the City of God. This idea he expands into a vast plan which +includes a wonderful mass of mythology, history, and philosophy. + +The Latin language was already degenerate in Augustine’s time, the +schools were being closed everywhere, zeal for letters and science grew +rarer and rarer. The few Christian laymen who wrote prose or verse +are not mentioned even in larger sketches than this of the history +of literature, and in a few centuries most of the chronicles and +treatises written were of a shocking literary quality, though everybody +still wrote in a sort of Latin. The only noticeable work--by no means +a masterpiece--is _On the Consolation of Philosophy_ by Boethius, a +sixth-century Italian statesman who was put in prison and recommends +all sufferers to find consolation, as he did, in Aristotle. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +CLASSICS OF THE MIDDLE AGES + + +The Middle Ages are, roughly, the period from about 500 to 1500, +though we must not take the limits too sharply. Here I propose to make +it cover the writers of the literary Renaissance period, or of the +fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Europe was so demoralized after +the fall of Rome that art almost perished; and the Greek Empire was +too fossilized to produce great literature. From the second to the +thirteenth century no literary worth of the first, or even second, rank +appeared in Europe. Then art was reborn and the Renaissance in the +broader sense, the re-awakening of Europe, began. + + +§1. ARAB AND PERSIAN WRITERS + +There are, however, two works belonging to that period which will +be known to every reader, at least by name: the _Rubaiyat_ of Omar +Khayyam and the _Arabian Nights_. Omar was a Persian poet-astronomer +of the twelfth century: one of very many gifted poets of the revived +civilization of Persia. The refined Epicurian creed of life in his +well-known poem reminds us that outside of Europe there was a brilliant +and artistic civilization. The _Arabian Nights_ reflects a similarly +brilliant civilization at Cairo and Bagdad and Damascus. This new +Mohammedan, though really very skeptical, culture spread from Persia to +Spain, and had much to do with the re-awakening of Europe. + +The _Rubaiyat_, which took the modern world by storm in the nineteenth +century, is a unique case of a translation being superior to the +original. The current version, by the English poet Edward Fitzgerald, +is not, in fact, a translation, but to a very great extent a new poem +based on that of Omar. Sir Richard Burton’s translation (in 16 volumes) +of the _Arabian Nights_ is, on the other hand, so accomplished and +faithful a version of that immortal collection of oriental tales that +it is generally kept behind locked doors in a library. The current +translations are much pruned, and are therefore false. The tales +(by various authors) are generally said to be of the thirteenth and +fourteenth centuries, but Burton held that many are earlier. The well +known stories of Sinbad and Aladdin come from this classic. It is a +rich reflection of Arab-Persian life. + + +§2. DANTE AND THE MIDDLE AGES + +The immense literary activity and refined life of the Persians and +Arabs was bound, especially as their culture was carried to its +greatest height by the Moors in Spain, to affect Europe, and in the +eleventh and twelfth centuries literature began to reappear. From the +south of France, where there was contact with the Moors, the gay songs +of the troubadours spread. The _Song of Roland_ ran to four thousand +lines. The _Poem of the Cid_ was another long epic or warrior-song +that appeared in the Christian part of Spain. More notable still is +the _Romance of the Rose_, chiefly by Jehan de Meung, a long allegory +on love which appeared in France. In Germany some unknown poet of the +twelfth century gathered together the old pagan legends in the _Lay of +the Nibelungs_: the treasury of legends upon which Wagner has drawn for +his famous dramas about Siegfried, the Valkyries, etc. + +A notable work of a very different kind is the _Love Letters of Abelard +and Heloise_. Abelard was the most brilliant writer of the twelfth +century, though his works are on philosophy or theology and do not +concern us here. Heloise was a remarkably gifted young woman of Paris, +who had a child by Abelard. Her uncle, however, had Abelard castrated, +and he became a somber abbot and she, very reluctantly, an abbess. +These Latin letters were written long after the outrage and are wrongly +called love-letters. Sentiment was dead in Abelard and it only peeps +out occasionally from the heart of Heloise. They are, however, known as +“the immortal lovers,” and the letters are included in all collections +of great works. + +None of these ought properly to be included in this account of the +greatest writers, but they are now constantly referred to and they help +us to understand the revival of letters. These poets and chroniclers +were gradually beating the new European languages into shape and +preparing the way for the masters. + +Dante is the first (1265-1321). His great poem _The Divine Comedy_ +might be called an epic of religious thought. He imagines himself +conducted successively through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, and though +the theme repels many of his readers--Goethe, Goldsmith, Landor, and +other distinguished critics speak very disparagingly of him--he is by +common consent numbered amongst the six greatest poets of all time. +There might be some difference of opinion about the sixth place, but +the five greatest are (omitting the Greek tragedians who wrote in +verse) Shakespeare, Homer, Goethe, Vergil, and Dante. I should call +Milton the sixth. + +Dante’s “trilogy,” or three-part poem, has several thousand four-line +verses and is usually regarded as, on the literary side, the flower +of the Middle Ages. Longfellow wrote a beautiful poem in appreciation +of it, comparing it to a Gothic cathedral. But it is also interesting +as showing how Europe was at the time being awakened by the Arab +culture. Dante, who lived in Florence, where there was a great deal +of liberality of thought, speaks throughout with great respect of the +Arab and Greek philosophers, and in his ethical ideas he is deeply +influenced by them. He wrote in Italian and thus inaugurated the great +Italian literature of the Renaissance. His minor works, in prose, are +_The New Life_ and _The Banquet_. + + +§3. HERALDS OF THE RENAISSANCE + +Dante died in 1321, and within two decades of that date were born the +great Italian writers Petrarch and Boccaccio, the French chronicler +Froissart, and the gifted English poet Chaucer. Dante himself may in +a sense, as I have said, be called a herald of the Renaissance or +re-birth of letters, but he is mainly medieval while these four are +predominantly characterized by the new spirit of humanity. + +Petrarch (1304-74) is the first great figure in the revival of Greek +and Latin literature. He wrote mostly in Latin, but the _Sonnets_ he +composed in Italian are so beautiful that four hundred editions of them +have appeared. His contemporary Boccaccio (1313-75), also of Italy, is +best known as the author of the _Decameron_. The word means “The Ten +Days Work,” and the book consists of a hundred witty and skilful short +stories which are supposed to be told to each other, during ten days, +by a group of ladies and gentlemen. The stories reflect all the gaiety, +sparkle, and license of that early springtime of the new Europe. + +In France about the same time Froissart (born 1338) wrote a _Chronicle_ +which is regarded as a classic. He traveled very extensively and tells, +with bright coloring, the history of each leading country in Europe in +the fourteenth century. + +The Re-Birth soon spread from Italy to the northern lands, as Europe +was now comparatively settled and men traveled and read. Chaucer +(1340-1400), the first great English poet, had met Petrarch and was +deeply influenced by him and Boccaccio. His famous _Canterbury Tales_ +is a broad and wonderfully vivid picture of the life and characters of +his age. All the chief types of the time are introduced as pilgrims +on the way to Canterbury, and their tales they tell to each other +depict early English life graphically for us. The old English is rather +difficult to read, but the humor and shrewd observation make it worth +while to try. + + +§4. THE NEW AGE IN ITALY AND FRANCE + +The seed sown by these artists of the fourteenth century led to a rich +crop of writers in the fifteenth and sixteenth and seventeenth; and we +must remember that there was at the same time a splendid development of +painting and a general enrichment of life, as well as a new liberality +of thought and feeling. Italy in particular had a crowd of writers as +well as great painters: writers on philosophy, writers on art (like +Vasari), writers on history (notably Guicciardini) and story-tellers, +poets, comedians, etc. To this period belongs the famous work of +the diplomatist Macchiavelli (1469-1527), _The Prince_, giving such +unscrupulous counsels to princes--a real reflection of the spirit of +the times--that we have ever since called such maxims “Macchiavellian.” +Another classic of the time is the _Autobiography_ of the sculptor and +goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini (1500-71): a most interesting and candid +account of adventurous life in that gay age. + +The chief Italian classics of the time are, however, the works of +the greatest Italian poets after Dante, Ariosto (1474-1533) and +Tasso. Both lived at the brilliant court of the Dukes of Ferrara +who patronized them, but they differ entirely in character. Ariosto +wrote comedies and satires and epic verse. He is chiefly known for +his _Orlando Furioso_, a poem of great length on the war against the +Saracens: which, by the way, no one reads today. Tasso had a more sober +and melancholic character. His writings fill forty volumes, but few +now read even his masterpiece, _Jerusalem Delivered_: an epic of the +Crusades, an attempt to adapt the Greek epic to a profoundly religious +theme. This inspired Milton’s _Paradise Lost_. + +The above dates will show that these writers end at the time of the +change occasioned by the Reformation, and from that time there was no +great literature in Italy until the nineteenth century. The works of +Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), Galileo (1564-1642), etc., belong rather to +philosophy and science. + +Meantime the Renaissance or Re-Birth of Letters, had spread over +Europe. Erasmus (1467-1536), a very liberal theologian and humanist +of Holland, wrote brilliant and witty critical works on religion with +an immense circulation, of which the most readable are his _Praise of +Folly_ and his _Colloquies_ (or “Conversations,” his masterpiece). + +In France there was in the fifteenth century an adventurous poet, +Francois Villon (born 1431), who has become very popular amongst +literary men in our time. He was a thief, vagabond, even a murderer, +and was often in prison. But he wrote beautiful ballads and rondels +expressing the strange melancholy which his defiant life gave him. +Swinburne calls him the “prince of sweet songs made out of tears and +fire.” + +In the sixteenth century the great essayist Montaigne (1533-92) +published his three books of _Essays_: a prose-classic of profound +influence on thought, expressing the most liberal ideas--though he +professed to be a Catholic--about religion and pleading for tolerance +amidst the fierce controversies of the time. Montaigne was a universal +scholar and the whole of life is reflected in his pages. + +Very different was Francois Rabelais (1495-1553), one of the greatest +of the Renaissance writers. Though a priest and a monk for thirty +years, his long rambling stories (chiefly _Pantagruel, King of the +Dipsodes_, and _The Heroic Deeds and Sayings of the Good Pantagruel_) +are so free that his name has given us the word “Rabelaisean” for +improper stories. I have a literal translation, in five volumes, by Sir +T. Urquhart (published in London in 1897), but it is rare. Rabelais +is, apart from sex, often filthy, but many critics forget that even in +this he is only expressing his world, the faults of which he sought +to expose by wit and caricature. He wanted frank mirth and laughter +substituted for hypocritical enjoyments. + +A French classic of quite the opposite type is the _Discourse on +Method_ of the mathematician and philosopher Descartes (1596-1650). +His works, however, are now chiefly of interest in the evolution of +thought. In the sense in which we take “classics” here we turn rather +to the three great poets who supremely represent the Renaissance in +France: Corneille, Racine, and Molière. + +Corneille (1606-84) and Racine (1630-99) are both best known for their +tragedies, which were directly inspired by those of the early Greek +tragedians and were written in a severe classical style. Corneille is +the more austere and dignified of the two, and he is seen at his best +in _Polyeucte_ (based upon the martyrdom of an early Christian) and +_Andromeda_ (a classical tragedy). Racine is, perhaps, a little less +severe and more human than Corneille. He also wrote classical tragedies +after the Greek model (_Iphigenia_, _Phaedra_, etc.), a biblical play +_Esther_, and a number of historical and other plays. + +Molière (whose real name was Jean Baptiste Poqelin, 1622-73) is one of +the great comedians of the world. He took the name Molière because he +went on the stage. He is seen at his best in _Les Precieuses Ridicules_ +(which pokes fun at pretentious ladies who talk literature), _Tartuffe_ +(a satire of religious hypocrites), _The Misanthrope_, and _Don Juan_. +For the freedom of his attacks on the Church he was excommunicated, but +he was protected by the king, to whom his father had been valet. + +Boileau, or Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (1636-1711), is added to these +three as the fourth great poet of the time. His masterpiece is _The +Poetic Art_. Like his contemporary Molière he was skeptical (though +he rather insincerely wrote a prose-work _On the Love of God_), while +Racine and Corneille were devout Catholics. + +La Fontaine (1621-95), of the same generation, wrote _Stories_ and +_Select Fables_ (on the model of Aesop) in verse which rank as +classics. The familiar children’s stories of Red Ridinghood, Bluebeard, +The Sleeping Beauty, Puss in Boots, Beauty and the Beast, etc., are +from his work. He collected them from popular circulation and expanded +them. + +Blaise Pascal (1623-62), a famous mathematician as well as writer on +religion, gave the world two literary classics in his _Thoughts on +Religion_ and _Provincial Letters_ (an attack on the Jesuits, though +the author is a particularly pious Catholic). Montesquieu (1689-1755), +a wealthy noble and eminent lawyer, is chiefly known for his _Spirit +of the Laws_, a profound study of law from a humanitarian standpoint. +Among his many other works his _Persian Letters_, a caustic criticism +of contemporary life, long ranked as classic. Although few read it +today the same must be said of the novel _Gil Blas_, by A. R. Lesage +(1668-1747), a famous dramatist. It appeared in innumerable editions +and was the model for later novelists. + + +§5. CERVANTES AND THE NEW SPAIN + +Spain was retaken by the Spaniards from the Moors (whose whole +immense literature was destroyed) in the Middle Ages, and for a time +it enjoyed its share of the Renaissance. _Don Quixote_, by Cervantes +(1547-1616), belongs to this period. It is a brilliant picture of the +life of the time as well as a masterly satire of the exaggerations and +eccentricities of Spanish romantic feeling. It should be regarded, +like several of the works I have just noticed and others in the next +section, as on the threshold between the Middle Ages and the Modern +Age. The Renaissance is a first breath of Modernism. + +Lope de Vega (1562-1635) was a phenomenal Spanish playwright of the +time who is now not much read. He is said to have written eighteen +hundred plays (of which we have three hundred). He often wrote a play +in a day, yet his construction and verse are of such quality that the +Spaniards count him a classic. At the end of a long and very loose life +he became a friar and assisted at the burning of heretics. + +Calderon (1601-81), the third great early Spanish writer, a poet and +dramatist, ranks far higher than Vega, though even his best tragedy, +_The Constant Prince_, is rarely read outside Spain. His name is one of +the most honored in Spanish literature. Like Vega he became a priest +in later life. With Calderon the short spell of fine writing in Spain +ended and nothing of great distinction appeared until the latter end of +the nineteenth century. + + +§6. SHAKESPEARE AND THE ENGLISH REBIRTH + +Chaucer, we saw, died in 1400, and his _Canterbury Tales_ brought the +first taste of the new spirit to England. But constant war kept in +check the development of culture and during the next two hundred years +few writers appeared whom one could call classics. An obscure knight, +Sir Thomas Malory, is almost the only one now read. He collected +(chiefly from French literature) the old English legends about King +Arthur and his court, since made more familiar by Tennyson in his +_Idylls_, and wrought them in a poem of distinction called the _Morte +d’Arthur_ (“The Death of Arthur”). In the sixteenth century Sir Thomas +More (beheaded in 1535), at one time Lord Chancellor, wrote his famous +_Utopia_, which is based on Plato’s _Republic_. More was at the time +very liberal in his ideas. The _Utopia_ (a sketch of an ideal state), +however, had to be written in Latin and published abroad. It was not +translated into English until forty years later. + +Then, within little more than ten years of each other, were born +Spenser, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Francis Bacon and Ben Jonson, the five +giants of a wonderful literary age. Spenser’s (1552-99) great work +is _The Faery Queene_. It is an allegorical poem of remarkable grace +and beauty, though at times rather obscure in meaning, purporting to +represent the excellences of the English character. + +Chris Marlowe (1564-93), “the father of English tragedy,” was, as +these dates show, a great poet who never reached his full development. +He shared the turbulent life of the time and was killed in a tavern +brawl. His chief tragedies, _Tamburlaine_ and _Dr. Faustus_ (a model for +Goethe’s famous work), reveal a poetical and dramatic genius of a high +order. + +Born in the same year, Shakespeare (1564-1616) survived his early +robustness and gave the world the series of poems and plays which award +him still the first place in all literature. Alike in light verse, +comedy, tragedy, and moral play--you see his personal moral development +reflected in this order of production--he is the supreme master. It +is, in fact, needless to say much about him here. The little that I +should have space to say must be known to everybody, and even a short +appreciation or analysis of his work would fill a long chapter in this +book. Let me note two things. It is extremely interesting, as I have +already hinted, to take Shakespeare’s plays in chronological order: to +proceed from the loose comedies (suggested by the Italian Renaissance +comedians who imitated Plautus) to the historical plays and tragedies, +in which one may trace a half-conscious and gradually deepening moral +sentiment, to such later plays as _The Winter’s Tale_, _As You Like +It_, etc., in which he uses his genius to make character attractive. + +The other point is that recent attempts to make Shakespeare less +titanic than tradition represents him are not soundly critical. Every +reader knows that he is unequal in his inspiration and one can select +lines and passages of no distinction. It is, moreover, a question if +some of the plays which bear his name were really written by him. Take +him as a whole, and in the essential qualities of the poet--which are +the expression of things in beautiful images and exquisite little +allegories and the use of language of a fitting tone--he surpasses +every other poet. I have read at least something of Homer, Hesiod, +Aeschylus, Euripides, Vergil, Horace, Dante, Tasso, Racine, Corneille, +Calderon, Goethe, and Schiller in their own tongues, and that is my +confident judgment. Some modern writers who attack Shakespeare’s +supremacy cannot, apparently, read his rivals in the original. + +But Shakespeare requires a volume or nothing, and we will take him for +granted as the first classic. Of Francis Bacon also we must say little. +His chief works (_Novum Organon_, etc.) were written in Latin and +belong to the history of thought, not of letters. His English _Essays_ +may be considered a classic. Ben Jonson (1574-1637), finally, though +called “rare Ben Jonson” in his time for his beautiful lyrics, pungent +comedies, and classical tragedies, is now rarely read. + +English literature, in fact, now became a ceaseless and ever broadening +stream, and, with all the interests of our modern literature, we have +little time, unless we are special students, to read any but the +supreme writers of the earlier days. The Authorized Version of the +Bible itself is a wonderful monument of the artistic splendor of that +age. Fifty divines, not poets, were set to prepare the translation, +from 1605 to 1610, and, wherever the Hebrew text is itself poetic--the +far greater part of it (Pentateuch, historical books, etc.) is not at +all fine literature--they rendered it in magnificent, sonorous English. + +The _Anatomy of Melancholy_ by Robert Burton (1577-1640) and the +_Religio Medici_ of Sir Thomas Browne, a distinguished physician +(1605-82), may be selected as the best classics. After these we get +poets like Vaughan and Herrick, who are scarcely great enough to be +included here, and then John Milton (1608-74), the second greatest poet +of the English tongue as well as a sound and deep thinker and a most +learned man for his age. + +Milton’s masterpiece is, of course, _Paradise Lost_. Like Dante, +he would show that the Christian creed could inspire an epic as +effectively as pagan legends, and no doubt on that account he is, like +Dante, less read today than if he had remained purely secular. There +is, however, a further parallel which is often missed. Just as Dante +rationalizes Purgatory and is not orthodox on many points, so Milton +more or less rationalizes Satan and hell. His Prince of Darkness is +by no means the horned devil of ordinary believers, and we know that +he had, in fact, very liberal ideas. In any case, the poetry is as +magnificent as the conception, from the artistic point of view, is +grand. It certainly puts John Milton in the highest circle of the +immortals. One ought to read some of his other great poems to correct +the common idea that he was absorbed entirely in biblical stories, and +I would recommend every one to read, of his superb prose work, at least +the _Areopagitica_, an address to Parliament on the liberty of the +press. Milton was far from medieval in his social ideals. + +As I have already said, we are here dealing with writers who are on the +turn from the medieval to the modern age. It is difficult to draw the +line, but for my purpose of giving just an idea of the position and +character of each classic I may take the spread of Deism in Europe as +the beginning of the modern period and carry this section as far as the +poet Pope. + +One classic of Milton’s time that ought to be read is the _Hudibras_ +of Samuel Butler (1612-80). Butler had the brilliant idea that the +sour Puritan was the Don Quixote of English life and this poem is a +delicious satire of the type. Royalty was by that time restored, and +everybody was prepared to laugh at the men who had made England sober +and dismal for a generation. The humor of _Hudibras_ is so rich that it +is always worth reading. + +A very different classic of the age is John Bunyan’s _Pilgrim’s +Progress_, perhaps the most widely read religious book, apart from the +Bible, that was ever written. Bunyan (1628-88) was a pious thinker, +but a literary genius. His allegorical figures will never cease to be +quoted. Izaak Walton’s _Compleat Angler_ is another work of the time +that comes near being a classic, and Milton’s friend, Andrew Marvell, +wrote some superb nature-poetry. More frequently quoted now are the +Diaries of Pepys (1633-1703) and Evelyn (1620-1706). The former was a +superior civil servant, and he most minutely and pleasantly records +nine years of his life in London. Evelyn was a country gentleman and he +reflects the life of his class. They are both valuable and interesting. + +Dryden (1631-1700) may be taken as, in the broader sense, the last +classic of the medieval and Renaissance period. His best known poem +is _The Hind and the Panther_, a defense of Roman Catholicism. Not +many years before he had written a defense of the Church of England, +_Religio Laici_. His character is not regarded as very solid, but most +critics would esteem him the third English poet of this period. His +satires and odes are often of a very high quality. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +CLASSICS OF THE MODERN PERIOD + + +As we approach our own time it becomes more difficult to choose our +classics. For the earliest period time itself has made the selection +very ruthlessly. Nearly every Greek and Latin work left to us is a +classic. Then there is the long blank of the early Middle Ages ending +in the luxuriant artistic growth of the Renaissance. By the time we +have reached, however, the output of distinguished literature becomes +very great. Not only have the introduction of paper and printing and +the spread of education to a much larger class encouraged writing, +but we must remember that now there are a dozen civilizations, not +one or two as in ancient times. John Drinkwater in his _Outline of +Literature_ devotes one volume to the period from Homer to the middle +of the eighteenth century (nearly 5,000 years) and one volume to the +literature of the last 150 years! It does not mean that we are so very +much richer in classics. The reader must, therefore, not expect to +find here a mention of every poet whom some professor or other calls +“a classic,” but I have gone carefully over Drinkwater’s work and +Richardson and Owen’s _Literature of the World_ (which the reader will +find more useful if he wants a larger sketch), and give here a short +notice of the men about whose high distinction in letters there is a +common agreement. + + +§1. VOLTAIRE AND FRENCH CLASSICS + +After the age of Racine and Molière French literature rarely rose +to the height of great distinction--the chief cause, as elsewhere, +being the bitter sectarian struggle--until Voltaire appeared. Seeing, +however, that Voltaire, was born just before the death of La Fontaine +and Mme. de Sévigné (whose letters are very elegant literature) the +interval was not long. + +Francois Marie Arouet (1694-1778), who took the pen-name of Voltaire, +is one of the most remarkable writers of Europe. Competent critics +pronounce him the best poet of his age--an age not rich in great +poets, however--and in history (_The Age of Louis XIV_), tragedy, and +treatment of actual problems (_Letters on the English_, _Philosophical +Dictionary_, etc.) he had no superior. But it is as a prose-writer, +particularly as a caustic critic of the creed of his country, that he +made a reputation which filled the world and has made his name one +of the most familiar even in our own time. Such sparkling wit as he +had when allied with high poetic talent, profound knowledge of human +nature, and rare power of construction formed an ideal equipment for +the work to which he chiefly devoted his life. As in the case of +Shakespeare, it is useless to write a few paragraphs about him. What +little one could write would be known to the reader. Voltaire has to be +read, for you cannot adequately describe the flash and sparkle of his +prose. I have translated a few of his smaller pieces (_Selections from +Voltaire_) so as to give the general reader an idea of his versatility, +and several of his stories (read, especially, _Candide_, a satire on +foolish optimism) can be had in the Big Blue Book series (Nos. B-6 and +B-30). The world will never tire of reading Voltaire. + +Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), his contemporary (but not friend), +was a constructive thinker and emotional writer. His _Social Contract_ +is a classic of sociological literature, and his _Confessions_ is one +of the most masterly autobiographies ever written, as well as one of +the most candid. His _Émile_ and _The New Heloise_, a treatise on +education, are hardly less distinguished though now little read. + +Two such writers at one time would enrich any country, but Count Buffon +(1707-88) must be associated with them as a great writer as well as +the most learned naturalist of his time. His _Natural History_, in +twenty-four volumes, is a literary masterpiece as well as a scientific +encyclopedia. At the same time lived Denis Diderot (1713-84) and a +group of writers associated with him. Though none of these is a classic +in the literary sense, the great _Encyclopedia_ which they jointly +wrote is very notable in the history of letters and thought. + +A little later, during the Revolution, were Mme. de Stael, a French +woman married to a Swede, whose novels were long considered to be great +literature, and Chateaubriand, an orthodox Catholic, who (though I +find his name omitted from most literary histories) was a writer of +great power and often of rare beauty. His _Genius of Christianity_ was +certainly esteemed a classic for the next half century. + +In the nineteenth century the elder Dumas (1802-70), author of _The +Three Musketeers_, _Twenty Years After_, _The Count of Monte Cristo_, +etc., and Victor Hugo (1802-85) inaugurated the great period of modern +French literature. Hugo was an astounding literary genius, both in +prose and poetry. His formidable novels, _Les Miserables_ (an epic of +the poor), _The Hunchback of Notre Dame_, etc., may contain all the +defects which critics find in them, but they are superb conceptions and +the world still reads them as classics. “George Sand” (1804-76) is not, +perhaps, read outside France today, but her position in letters is very +high. I might recommend her _Consuelo_, but it is of such length that +the modern reader would despair of getting through it. Her real name +was the Baroness Dudevant, though she lived apart from her husband, a +woman of passionate adventures. Her friend Alfred de Musset (1810-57) +wrote lyric poems of the highest quality as well as literary plays and +stories. + +With the activity of these we reach the period of the second Revolution +in France, the middle of the nineteenth century and the list of +distinguished names is long. While it is premature to say which, if +any, of their works will rank as classics, Alfred de Vigny (1797-1863) +wrote, besides dramas and novels, exquisite poetry of the Romantic +school. “Stendhal” (really Henri Beyle, 1783-1842) had a very high +reputation as writer of novels (_The Chartreuse of Parma_, etc.) and +essays. Baudelaire (1821-67) was the second best (if not the best) +French poet of the century: his book of verse _Flowers of Evil_ is +certainly a classic. Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) wrote ninety powerful +novels (especially the series called _The Human Comedy_, a natural +history of contemporary life) and was a master of the short story. +Gustave Flaubert (1821-80) was so high and conscientious an artist that +he wrote only four perfect novels. Guy de Maupassant, Prosper Mérimée, +the de Goncourt brothers (Jules and Edmond), T. Gautier, A. Daudet, +Sainte-Beuve, Verlaine (poet), Zola, Rostand (dramatist), and the +recently deceased Anatole France, the prince of modern story-writers, +make up--without mentioning living writers--a group of brilliant +writers who will long be remembered; and to these we ought to add +scholars like Renan, Taine, Thiers, Michelet, etc., who were little +less distinguished in literature. + + +§2. GERMANY, RUSSIA AND SCANDINAVIA + +Apart from Luther, we have no German writer whom we would call a +classic until the second half of the nineteenth century. At the time +when the influence of the Renaissance might be expected to reach and +stimulate it the country was desolated by a hundred years of warfare +about religion. It recovered in the years before the French Revolution +and immediately there appeared two poets, Goethe and Schiller, who +belong to the highest company. + +Goethe (1749-1832) takes rank with Shakespeare. Intellectually--he +was an ardent scientist and deep thinker as well as a great poet--he +surpassed Shakespeare and, perhaps on that account, is inferior to him +in the strictly poetic faculty of exquisite imagery. No other poet +could have conceived the vast design of _Faust_, at which he worked +for seventy years, and at least the opening soliloquy of Faust will +always be read. His earlier or romantic style is beautifully seen in +his story, _The Sorrows of Young Werther_, and the long novel (or pair +of novels) of his later years, _Wilhelm Meister_, is a masterpiece. +With his encyclopedic knowledge and his profound intellect Goethe +gives the whole epic of humanity, as known in his day, in his work. In +mid-life he came under the influence of the Greek and Roman classics, +and the result may be read in his stately and beautiful long poems +_Tasso_, _Iphigenia_, _Hermann and Dorothea_, etc. But he was masterly +in all that he touched, sonnet or tragedy, story or art-criticism or +scientific essay. + +Schiller (1759-1805), his younger friend and contemporary, is in the +stricter sense a poet and dramatist, not a thinker, though he studied +philosophy and wrote a famous history of the Thirty Years War. His +chief plays (_Wallenstein_, _Maria Stuart_, _Don Carlos_, etc.,) are +classics, and his lyrics are superb. Goethe befriended and influenced +him, and they composed together some brilliant satirical verses or +epigrams on contemporary shams. Like Goethe he began to write in the +Romantic vein, but his later and finer work shows the chaste influence +of the Greek and Roman classics. + +Notable amongst the predecessors or early contemporaries of Goethe was +Lessing (1729-80), whose works on art (_Laocoon, etc._), comedies, +tragedies, and essays gave him a very high rank. Klopstock, Wieland +and others, took a great part in the revival of letters in Germany, +but I must be content with only a few of the great names. The works +of the long and impressive line of German philosophers from Kant to +Schopenhauer, cannot be treated here. They are classics of philosophy, +but Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) was one of the most brilliant writers +of his time. He was the best German lyric writer after Goethe (see +his _Book of Songs_), wrote superb books of travel, and had a fund of +delicate irony and caustic wit that makes his prose always a delight. +Greater still--the greatest German writer after Goethe--was Friedrich +Nietzsche (1844-1900), whose volcanic and often beautiful prose-poetry +is of a unique order. His best work is _Thus Spake Zarathustra_, +a malicious choice of the austere Persian moralist Zarathustra +(or Zoroaster), as the mouthpiece of his own fiery indictment of +conventional moral ideas. + +Italy in this period produced Count Leopardi (1798-1837), an exquisite +poet of pessimism, Casanova (or Giovanni Giacomo Casanova de Seingalt, +1725-1803), a poet and adventurer whose memoirs (written in French) +are a classic, and Mazzini, the genius of the Italian rebellion. But +reaction kept back Italy until the latter part of the nineteenth +century and it is no part of my plan to notice recent works. The same +must be said of Spain, Portugal and Austria. + +Switzerland had in H. F. Amiel (1821-81), a poet and essayist whose +diary, or _Intimate Journal_, is a classic of its kind: a rare and +beautiful expression of a mystic mind struggling with modern doubt. +In the far north Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906), brought Norway into the +field of letters by a series of plays which made him at the time the +greatest dramatist of the world. They are modern problem-plays, of +advanced thought and rather somber atmosphere. Björnsen (1832-1910), +his compatriot and contemporary, also made a world-reputation by his +novels, dramas and poems, and won the Nobel Prize. His work does not +live as that of Ibsen does, yet there were distinguished literary +critics who at his death ranked him with Victor Hugo. In Denmark, a +classic of a kind was produced by Hans Andersen (1805-75), the great +fairytale writer. + +At the same time Russia opened its literary age, with a number of +brilliant novelists. Pushkin (1799-1837), Nikolai Gogol (1800-52), Ivan +Turgenieff (1818-83), Feodor Dostoeffsky (1821-81), and Anton Chekhov +(1860-1904), were a group of realistic novelists, poets and essayists +who commanded the attention of the world. Tolstoi’s _Anna Karenina_, at +least, is another Russian work of the classic order, and Maxim Gorki +sustained the brilliant tradition of story-writing in recent times. + + +§3. MODERN ENGLISH WRITERS + +The crowd of writers of distinction in every country now becomes +embarrassing, and I must either be content with a mere list of names +or omit many whom one or other critic chooses to regard as classics. +The reader must bear in mind, however, that this is not a history of +literature, even in outline, and for the modern period we will choose a +compromise, including the names of some who will certainly not live as +Vergil and Horace live today, yet omitting many quite familiar names. + +I chose to begin the “modern” period with the poet Alexander Pope +(1688-1744), because in his work modern ideas begin to show a marked +influence. There was at the time a brilliant group of Deistic writers +in England, but Pope alone (who vaguely embodies their ideas in his +_Essay on Man_, the source of countless quotations), can be called +a literary classic. _The Rape of the Lock_ was regarded by his +contemporaries as his masterpiece. + +Another classic of the period is the immortal boys’ story _Robinson +Crusoe_ by Daniel Defoe (1659-1730). None of his other stories has +lived, but his _Journal of the Plague_ is a work of great importance. +Later in the seventeenth century and early in the eighteenth, Addison +and Steele were the leading English writers, and their periodicals, +_The Tatler_ and _The Spectator_, are classics of journalism: a very +dignified and stately sort of journalism in magnificent English. +Richardson (1689-1761) was the first great English novelist, and +his _Pamela_, _Clarissa Harlowe_, and _Sir Charles Grandison_, had a +high reputation. A little later, H. Fielding wrote _Tom Jones_, which +ranked as a classic until recent times. L. Sterne (1715-68), whom some +ventured to compare to Cervantes, is equally distinguished in his chief +novel _Tristram Shandy_, and his _Sentimental Journey_. + +Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), one of the most brilliant satirists, is +chiefly remembered by his _Tale of a Tub_ and _Gulliver’s Travels_, +which still circulates. He was not, as is commonly said, an Irish wit +but was born in Ireland of English parents. Coarse as _Gulliver_ is in +many pages, Swift was a Dean of the Church of England. But the same +looser taste is seen in most of the literature of the time: in Smollett +(whose famous novel _Roderick Random_ is based on _Gil Blas_); in the +dramatist Sheridan (_The Rivals_, _School for Scandal_, etc.), and +Beaumont and Fletcher. The poet James Thomson, author of _The Seasons_, +and the novelist Jane Austen (1775-1817), whose _Sense and Sensibility_ +and _Pride and Prejudice_ still stand very high, and the poets Oliver +Goldsmith (1728-74), author of the _Deserted Village_, and Thomas Gray +(1716-71), author of the _Elegy in a Country Churchyard_, show the more +refined feeling of the time. + +A unique place must be given to Robert Burns (1759-96), the Scottish +poet and the finest lyric poet of the time in spite of his notorious +intemperance. Burns is assuredly an immortal and such pieces as _Tam_ +and _The_ _Cotter’s Saturday Night_ are classics. _Auld Lang Syne_ is +also his. And a very different work of the eighteenth century which +is unquestionably a classic of highest rank is the great work of the +historian Gibbon (1757-94), _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, +the product of twenty years of incessant labor. + +The chronicle of English literature now becomes so congested with +distinguished names that we must notice only the higher peaks. Classics +beyond any question are the two great poets of rebellion who opened the +modern period in the stricter sense of the word, Byron and Shelley. +Lord George Gordon Byron (1788-1824), was, as his title indicates, the +aristocratic poet, yet owing to his critical revolt and his sympathy +with rebels like the Greeks, he was ostracised by his own class (a +generally immoral class, by the way), and his work has a tinge of +melancholy. _Childe Harold_, _The Prisoner of Chillon_, and _Manfred_, +his best works, are classics. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), was +almost equally aristocratic in origin, yet he became the prophet of the +democratic and humanitarian movement. His _Prometheus Unbound_ is not +only a magnificent expression of modern thought, but it is one of the +greatest poems in literature from the purely artistic standpoint. While +Byron remained romantic, Shelley, like Goethe, felt the spell of the +Greek and Roman classics. + +Next to these, or even above them or next to Milton, some critics +put William Wordsworth (1770-1850), the leading poet of the more +conservative school (with Cowper and Southey). I doubt if many +English readers now read his masterpiece, _The Excursion_, while +thousands treasure the beautiful work of John Keats (1795-1821), whose +classic, _Endymion_, Wordsworth patronizingly called a “pretty piece +of paganism.” Keats never saw Greece, and had never left London when +he wrote his wonderful poems of Greek legend and life (_Hyperion_, +_Lamia, etc._). Of the British poets of the early nineteenth century, +it is impossible, even in a list of classics, to ignore the _Ancient +Mariner_, _Kubla Khan_, etc., of S. T. Coleridge (1772-1834), the +_Lalla Rookh_ and _Irish Melodies_ of T. Moore (1779-1852), and the +_Songs of Experience_ of that strange mystic-skeptic William Blake +(1757-1827). + +Classics of the first order are the novels (if not some of the poems) +of Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), of the romantic school, and Charles +Dickens of early date, one of the greatest of all masters of fiction. +The novels of Thackeray (1811-63), would be put by many as classics of +a secondary rank, and at least the autobiographical _Confessions of an +English Opium-Eater_ of DeQuincey (1785-1859), is a classic: a unique +expression of drug-inspired dreams and reveries. + +We now, however, reach the Victorian Age of letters in England, and +it is difficult to select. Whether Tennyson’s smooth and careful +verse and Robert Browning’s rugged and intellectual poems ought to +be included here may be disputed, but much of the poetry of Algernon +Charles Swinburne (1857-1909), especially his _Poems and Ballads_ and +_Songs Before Sunrise_, has a glow of passion and a beauty of language +that puts it in the highest category. The _Essays_ of Lord Macaulay +(1800-59), the _Sartor Resartus_ (a unique philosophical diatribe), and +_The History of the French Revolution_ of Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), +the noble prose of the _Seven Lamps_, _Stones of Venice_ and _Modern +Painters_ of John Ruskin (1819-1900), the _Marius the Epicurean_ of +Walter Pater (1839-94), some of the novels of George Eliot (or Mary +Ann Cross, 1819-1850), of George Meredith (1828-1909), the _Way of All +Flesh_ and _Erewhon_ of Samuel Butler (1835-1902), Huxley’s _Essays_ +(on science and religion), and Froude’s _History of England_, and +Darwin’s _Origin of Species_ (1859), may be selected out of the mass of +fine or notable works. I again refrain from noticing living writers, +but one wonders if any living British author will be read fifty years +from now. Possibly, in fact, half or two-thirds of the works I have +noticed in this section will gradually pass out of that select circle +which contains the world’s classics. Already some whom contemporaries +considered as likely to live--Trollope, Southey, Lamb, Hazlitt, +Cobbett, the Bronté sisters, etc.--are mere names in the history of +English literature. + + +§4. AMERICAN CLASSICS + +This difficulty of selection presses particularly upon one when we +turn to American literature. Few great American writers are old enough +to have endured and passed the test of time, and American literature +as a whole appears under peculiar circumstances. The reader will have +noticed throughout this sketch how great poetry, especially, belongs to +definite periods. We talk of the Golden Age of Greek and Latin letters, +the art of the Renaissance, the Elizabethan Age, the Storm and Stress +Period in Germany, and so on. These artistic periods mark a point where +a new civilization has reached its full development yet has not yet +become fully intellectualized, or a time when a revolution of some +kind or other has entered its blood. All this was over when the United +States was born. Its vast population in the nineteenth century was made +up from European nations which had long since passed through their +feverish periods. + +The Revolution itself might be expected to inspire poetry, but a close +consideration of the conditions of the time would explain why it did +not. The only notable writers of the latter part of the eighteenth +century are Franklin (1706-90) and Thomas Paine (1737-1809). Paine +remained an Englishman and is not included in chronicles of American +literature, but his spirited and superb first work, _Common Sense_, is +essentially an expression of the American sentiment, and I prefer to +include it here. His _Rights of Man_ and _Age of Reason_ count rather +as English classics, but Paine was a cosmopolitan and would doubtless +prefer to be numbered amongst American writers. + +Washington Irving (1783-1859) really opens the period of distinguished +American literature. His _Knickerbocker History of New York_, _Sketch_ +_Book_, and _Alhambra_ take rank in world literature. J. Fenimore +Cooper (1789-1851) was for decades read throughout the English-speaking +world, and even beyond it, for his stories of the war with the Indians, +though one would hardly call them classics of fiction. William +Cullen Bryant (1794-1878) is the first poet of distinction, and his +_Thanatopsis_, though early, has every mark of great poetry. + +By the middle of the century America had a group of writers to +compare with those of any country. Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49) even in +his prematurely closed career achieved poetry of a very high order, +especially _The Raven and Other Poems_. A prose-poem, _Eureka_, which +he wrote shortly before his death should be read for the interest of +his opinions. Bayard Taylor (1825-78) also wrote fine poetry (_Poems of +the Orient_, etc.) and gave us one of the most satisfactory versions of +Goethe’s _Faust_, a most difficult achievement. + +Two early historians also must be included here: William Hickling +Prescott (1796-1859), whose _Ferdinand and Isabella_, _Conquest of +Mexico_, and _Conquest of Peru_ would distinguish any writer, and are +remarkable when we reflect that the author was blind, and John Lothrop +Motley (1814-77), whose _History of the Rise of the Dutch Republic_ and +_History of the United Netherlands_ are finely written works. + +Of the great crowd of American writers of the next generation I would +select Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82) and Walt Whitman (1819-92) as +the greatest from the literary point of view. Emerson’s _Essays_ are +written generally in a noble English which no English writer of the +nineteenth century has surpassed. Whitman’s _Leaves of Grass_, on +the other hand, is indisputably an American classic. Even Emerson, +whose moral dignity must have been shocked by many of Whitman’s +sentiments, pronounced the book “the most extraordinary piece of wit +and wisdom that America has yet contributed.” After these, as great and +distinctive writing I would give Bret Harte’s stories, Mark Twain’s +works, Lowell’s _Bigelow Papers_, and Thoreau’s _Walden_ and _In the +Maine Woods_. + +Amongst the poets the highest place is usually awarded to Henry +Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-82), though the simplicity of his work +which charms one critic causes others to hesitate to put him in the +company of the greater poets. There is, naturally, more fire in the +verse of J. G. Whittier (1807-92) who became a passionate prophet of +the Abolitionist party (especially in _Voices of Freedom_). I prefer +some of the short poems--one might almost say hymns--of Whittier and +of James Russell Lowell (1818-91) to anything of Longfellow’s; though +Lowell is very unequal as a poet and is, perhaps (after his historic +_Bigelow Papers_), best known as a literary essayist. + +Of the novelists of the time Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) and W. D. +Howells (1837-1920) are confessedly the greatest. Hawthorne’s _Scarlet +Letter_ is a classic of American fiction. Dr. O. W. Holmes (1809-94) +was not a brilliant success as a novelist, but the general thought and +excellent writing of his _Autocrat_, _Poet_ and _Professor at the +Breakfast Table_ keep his work on the shelves of every book-lover. Of +the great orators, from Webster to Ingersoll, and the scientific and +philosophical writers, we cannot give any account here. + +And into the merits of more recent and living writers I, as in other +sections, decline to enter. Taste changes so rapidly in our time that +already our critics seem to believe that no classic was written before +the twentieth century. H. G. Wells once in a conversation with me +ridiculed the idea that the style of the historian Gibbon was superior +to the English we write today. There is much to be said for the +directness and flexibility of the modern style, when a master writes +it, but on those tests few of the great works I have recorded would +maintain their high positions. There are, however, objective standards +of art and I have given some idea of the world’s masterpieces in all +ages which rank highest by those standards. + + + + + Transcriber's Notes: + + Italics are shown thus: _sloping_. + + Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained. + + Perceived typographical errors have been changed. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78215 *** diff --git a/78215-h/78215-h.htm b/78215-h/78215-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..12f3bf9 --- /dev/null +++ b/78215-h/78215-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,2283 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html lang="en"> +<head> + <meta charset="UTF-8"> + <title> + Facts you should know about the classics | Project Gutenberg + </title> + <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover"> + <style> + +body { + margin-left: 20%; + margin-right: 20%; +} + + h1,h2 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; +} + + +h1 {font-weight: normal; + font-size: 250%; + margin-top: 01em; + margin-bottom: 0em; + word-spacing: 0.3em; + } + +h2 {font-weight: normal; + font-size: 130%; + margin-top: 2em; + word-spacing: 0.3em; + } + +p { + margin-top: .51em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .49em; +} + + +.p4 {margin-top: 4em;} + + +hr { + width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: 33.5%; + margin-right: 33.5%; + clear: both; +} + + +hr.full {width: 95%; margin-left: 2.5%; margin-right: 2.5%;} + + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always;} +h2.nobreak {page-break-before: avoid;} + + +table { + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; +} + + +.tdl {text-align: left;} +.tdr {text-align: right;} + +.pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ + /* visibility: hidden; */ + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: small; + text-align: right; + font-style: normal; + font-weight: normal; + font-variant: normal; + text-indent: 0; +} /* page numbers */ + + + + +.up {font-size: 240%;} +.xlarge {font-size: 140%;} +.large {font-size: 120%;} +.less {font-size: 90%;} + +.c {text-align: center;} + +.sp {word-spacing: 0.3em;} + +/* Images */ + +img { + max-width: 100%; + height: auto; +} +img.w100 {width: 100%;} + + +.figcenter { + margin: auto; + text-align: center; + page-break-inside: avoid; + max-width: 100%; + margin-bottom: 4em; +} + + +/* Transcriber's notes */ +.transnote {background-color: #E6E6FA; + color: black; + font-size:small; + padding:0.5em; + margin-bottom:5em; + font-family:sans-serif, serif; +} + + </style> +</head> +<body> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78215 ***</div> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="cover"> +</div> + + + +<table> + +<tr> + <td class="tdl">LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO.<br> +Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius</td> + <td class="tdl"><span class="up">109</span></td></tr> + +</table> + + + +<h1>Facts You Should Know<br> +About the Classics</h1> + + +<p class="c sp large">Joseph McCabe</p> + + +<p class="c sp large p4">HALDEMAN-JULIUS PUBLICATIONS<br> +GIRARD, KANSAS +</p> +<hr class="full"> + + + +<div class="chapter"> +<p class="c sp large"> +Copyright, 1927,<br> +Haldeman-Julius Company</p> +<br> +<p class="c sp less"> +PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA +</p> +</div> +<hr class="full"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p class="c sp xlarge">CONTENTS</p> +</div> + + +<table class="large"> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr">Chapter</td> + <td class="tdl"></td> + <td class="tdr">Page</td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#c1">I.</a></td> + <td class="tdl">Classics of the Ancient World</td> + <td class="tdr">7</td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"></td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#c2">1.</a> Greek Literature</td> + <td class="tdr">9</td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"></td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#c3">2.</a> Roman Works</td> + <td class="tdr">18</td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"></td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#c4">3.</a> Early Christian Classics</td> + <td class="tdr">25</td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#c5">II.</a></td> + <td class="tdl">Classics of the Middle Ages</td> + <td class="tdr">27</td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"></td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#c6">1.</a> Arab and Persian Writers</td> + <td class="tdr">27</td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"></td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#c7">2.</a> Dante and the Middle Ages</td> + <td class="tdr">28</td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"></td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#c8">3.</a> Heralds of the Renaissance</td> + <td class="tdr">30</td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"></td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#c9">4.</a> The New Age in Italy and France</td> + <td class="tdr">32</td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"></td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#c10">5.</a> Cervantes and the New Spain</td> + <td class="tdr">36</td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"></td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#c11">6.</a> Shakespeare and the English Re-birth</td> + <td class="tdr">38</td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#c12">III.</a></td> + <td class="tdl">Classics of the Modern Period</td> + <td class="tdr">44</td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"></td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#c13">1.</a> Voltaire and French Classics</td> + <td class="tdr">45</td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"></td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#c14">2.</a> Germany, Russia and Scandinavia</td> + <td class="tdr">49</td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"></td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#c15">3.</a> Modern English Writers</td> + <td class="tdr">53</td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"></td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#c16">4.</a> American Classics</td> + <td class="tdr">59</td></tr> + +</table> + +<hr class="full"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p class="c sp xlarge">PREFACE</p> +</div> + +<div class="large"> +<p>This Little Blue Book is not for students of +literature, but just for folks who have not time +or opportunity to read the works of the great +writers of earlier days. Every thoughtful man +or woman would like to know a little about +them. Almost every day you read or hear an +allusion to Homer or Plato, Vergil or Horace, +Chaucer or Dante, and so on. You would like, +if it is possible to tell you in a few simple +pages, to know who these men were, in what +circumstances and on what themes they wrote, +what special interest or distinction the most +famous plays or poems or books of each of +them possesses.</p> + +<p>By the classics we mean in literature, not +merely the old Greek or Roman works, but the +literary masterpieces of every age which live +forever on account of their supreme art or interest. +It is not good to be entirely ignorant +about them: it is easy and pleasant to have a +few intelligent ideas about them. About a +hundred writers of the last three thousand +years have earned this kind of immortality, +and we will take them in order. Hence, although +this small book cannot be a history of +literature—I may provide one later—it will +give a kind of sketch of that history and the +place in it of each of the great writers who is +described.</p></div> +<hr class="full"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</span></p> + +<p class="c sp xlarge" id="c1">FACTS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT<br> +THE CLASSICS</p> +</div> + +<h2>CHAPTER I</h2> + +<p class="c sp">CLASSICS OF THE ANCIENT WORLD</p> + +<div class="large"> +<p>Men learned the art of writing, or began +to express their ideas to each other by (at +first) drawing little pictures of objects, about +six thousand years ago, but none of the works +which we call “classics” goes back to more +than three thousand years ago. We should not +expect to find many writings surviving from a +date earlier than that, and as a matter of fact, +except for business purposes writing was chiefly +left to the priests. From ancient Egypt +alone we have a few specimens of small books +written by laymen; especially the <i>Maxims of +Ptah-Hotep</i>, a very interesting series of counsels +and reflections on conduct by a middle-class +Egyptian of four thousand or more years +ago.</p> + +<p>This, however, is not great literature. For +the older civilizations we have to consider only +their religious literature, as certain collections +of ritual and other sacred writings which, on +the analogy of the Hebrew collection, we may +call their “bibles.” The oldest is what we +call <i>The Book of the Dead</i> of the Egyptians, +parts of which go back thousands of years before +Christ. It is not what we should describe +as fine literature, and, as it is mainly concerned<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</span> +with the passage of the dead to another +world, which to the Egyptians meant a tiresome +story of devils and spells and magic, only +scholars or special students read it today.</p> + +<p>There is nothing corresponding to this in +Babylonia, where men did not take an acute +religious interest in death, but amongst the +mass of writings (or inscribed clay tablets) +that we have found we have fragments of a remarkable +semi-sacred romance, now called <i>The +Story</i> (or <i>Epic</i>) <i>of Gilgamesch</i>, into which are +woven the early religious traditions of a creation, +deluge, garden of bliss, etc. In substance +the story goes back five or six thousand years.</p> + +<p>The remaining “bibles” were all written after +1000 B. C., and at least in some of their pages +they are really fine literature. The <i>Old Testament</i>, +which is certainly a literary classic in +its English translation, and has some notable +poetry in the Hebrew, was written, as we have +it, in the fifth century before Christ, but the +pieces of which it was then composed spread +over several centuries before that date.</p> + +<p>The Persian sacred book, <i>The Avesta</i>, is a +similar compilation of religious traditions and +writings, covering much the same period. But +it had not, like the <i>Old Testament</i>, the advantage +of being translated in an age when men +still wrote poetical English, and it is only of +historical and religious interest, as an account +of the high ideals and remarkable beliefs of +the ancient Persians.</p> + +<p>The oldest Hindu writings, <i>The Vedas</i>, mainly +a collection of hymns, belong to the same<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</span> +period; the oldest parts (especially of the <i>Rig +Veda</i>) may go back to 1000 B. C. There is +some fine poetic writing in the earlier parts, +but in the later this is succeeded by very abstract +and subtle speculation which few would +care to read.</p> + +<p>The Chinese collection is called the <i>King</i> +(which means “books” or “bible”), and it includes +what are known as the Chinese classics. +These are five books written by Kung-fu-tse +(Confucius) and his disciples in the sixth century +B. C. They are included, with the Persian +and Hindu books, in the collection of translations +known as <i>The Sacred Books of the East</i>. +A good deal of early Buddhist literature also is +included. But the chief interest of all these +works is historical and religious, not literary, +and we must pass on to Greece for the earliest +works which live because of their splendid +literary qualities.</p></div> + +<p class="c sp" id="c2"><span class="xlarge">§1</span>. GREEK LITERATURE</p> + +<div class="large"> +<p>The works of ancient Greece which we have +are only a tithe of the works written even by +the greater Greek writers, yet almost every surviving +play or poem is treasured as a classic. +If you draw up a list of the fifty greatest writers +from the dawn of civilization to the nineteenth +century, you will find that at least ten +of them are Greeks. However, it was only certain +parts of Greece which produced these wonderful +artists, and these regions, taken together, +never had a population as large as that of +Chicago.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</span></p> + +<p>But we cannot here go into the historical +reasons for their brilliance. It is enough for +my purpose to say that the <i>earliest</i> Greeks were +semi-barbarians who filtered down into what +we call Greece from the north between 2000 +and 1000 B. C. When they reached the Mediterranean +they came into touch with the old +civilizations and were refined. Large numbers +of them crossed to Asia Minor, where they mingled +with the polished Cretans and Persians, +and it is here that the first great Greek poets +and thinkers wrote.</p> + +<p>Homer, their first poet, was regarded by the +Greeks themselves in their most learned days +as their greatest poet, a unique classic; and he +is still one of the greatest poets of all time. +Whether there ever was an individual named +Homer is disputed. Most modern scholars have +held for a long time that the poems to which +his name is attached were slow growths contributed +to by different poets of the tenth century +B. C. But this is not at all settled, and +many again think that Homer was an individual +Greek of wonderful poetical power in or +about the tenth century B. C.</p> + +<p>His immortal works are the <i>Iliad</i> and the +<i>Odyssey</i>. These are two long “epic” poems; +that is to say long poems to be recited, not +sung to music, telling of glorious deeds and +romantic adventures. The first deals with the +closing days of the ten-year siege of the city of +Troy (or Ilium) in Asia Minor by the early +Greeks. The hero is Achilles, the Greek prince, +who sulks in his tent after a quarrel about a +beautiful girl-captive, and is at last stung into<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</span> +action by the reverses of the Greeks and leads +them on to the final destruction of Troy. Another +of the chief Greek princes was Ulysses, +and the <i>Odyssey</i> describes his wanderings over +the ancient world after the fall of Troy.</p> + +<p>Exploration in Asia Minor has discovered the +remains of the city of Troy, and there is now +no doubt that early Greek princes did bring +their men overseas and destroy it. In the +south of Greece we have found the palaces and +graves of these princes, their inlaid bronze +swords and golden death-masks, and we recognize +the vivid realism of Homer. This great +victory of the early Greeks would be the chief +theme of the bards at every princes’ court, and +all sorts of picturesque legends would be added +to the truth. Homer weaves all these together +in two great epics with masterly skill. You +can <i>see</i> the heroes, sharply and vividly +sketched, fighting their great duels, the scenes +in camp and court, the dawn or the blaze of the +sun on the blue Mediterranean. Much of this +powerful and beautiful description is lost in +translation, though the old translations by +poets like Pope, Cowper and Bryant, are very +fine, and the current translations, chiefly by +Andrew Lang and collaborators, are excellent. +Homer is next to Shakespeare, who surpasses +him and all others in beautiful imagery and +allegory.</p> + +<p>The epic poem remained for two or three +centuries the chief writing of the Greeks. They +were then royalists with numbers of small +courts of chiefs or princes where these story-poems<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</span> +were recited. As the race advanced in +civilization, “lyric” poetry (short poems sung +to the accompaniment of the lyre) developed. +The most interesting writer of these is the +female poet Sappho, who lived in the island +of Lesbos in the seventh century. Between +Sappho and Homer was the great poet Hesiod +(9th century), whose chief poem, <i>Works and +Days</i>, is full of moral and religious feeling; +and in the sixth and fifth centuries Pindar won +a high position in Greece and wrote great numbers +of songs, hymns, odes, etc. Aesop’s famous +<i>Fables</i> also appeared in the sixth century, +though many doubt if there was such a person +as Aesop.</p> + +<p>But we must confine ourselves here to the +greatest names, or this book would not get +beyond Greece. Two other kinds of writers +arose as Greek civilization moved on toward its +most brilliant days. On the one hand was a +series of scientists and philosophers, but we +have none of the works of these. On the other +hand tragedy was born, and Greece had, in a +very short period, the three greatest tragedians +the world has ever known: Aeschylus, Sophocles +and Euripides.</p> + +<p>Tragedy, like the epic before it, and the +comedy which followed it, reflects the age in +which it was born: just as we get snowdrops +in the spring, roses in the summer, and berries +in the autumn. King’s courts were by this time +abolished and the crowd of citizens had to have +their entertainments. At the same time a +deeper religious mood passed over Greece, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</span> +in Aeschylus (born 523 B. C.) this came to +inspire tragic poetry which is artistically magnificent. +There was an old custom of having, +on the festival of Dionysos, the god of dance +and wine, a group of men quaintly dressed +who danced round his altar chanting old verses. +Out of this the poets created the play, and +Athens built the first great theater.</p> + +<p>Aeschylus used ancient legends of tragic +happenings that seemed to have a profound and +somber moral significance. Only seven of his +seventy tragedies have been preserved, and as +Sir Gilbert Murray has in recent years superbly +translated three of the best of these (<i>Agamemnon</i>, +<i>Cheophori</i>, <i>Eumenides</i>) an English reader +can get a very good idea of his tragic grandeur. +These three plays form a trilogy, or connected +series, founded on the terrible legend of the +curse on the house of King Agamemnon. Behind +it all Aeschylus sees the action of a great +mysterious principle, Fate, greater than the +gods, which brings the punishment of crime. +“Eumenides” means the “Avenging Fates.” +<i>Prometheus Bound</i>, from which Shelley took +the title of his great “lyrical drama,” <i>Prometheus +Unbound</i>, is another masterpiece of this +“father of tragedy.”</p> + +<p>His rival and successor Sophocles (495-405) +is considered even greater: indeed, the greatest +tragic poet of all time. In fact there are experts +who regard some of the masterpieces of +Sophocles, such as the <i>Antigone</i> (which ought +to be read in one of the current translations), +<i>Oedipus the King</i>, and <i>Electra</i>, as the finest +works that were ever written. The theme of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</span> +them is, as in Aeschylus, that a semi-divine +Fate rules gods and men and avenges crime. +Both tragedians take crime on the grand scale—murder, +rape, incest, etc., in the legends of +the old royal families—and the characters they +create will live forever. Sophocles, of whose +one hundred and thirteen plays we have only +seven, is a little less somber, more humane, +more polished than Aeschylus. He creates +tragic grandeur out of the moral and religious +feelings of the time.</p> + +<p>The contrast of the third and latest of the +trio, Euripides (480-406), is interesting. He +was a cultivated man and clearly did not believe +the old legends in their religious side. +Skepticism was growing in Greece. But the +mass of the people were religious, and Euripides +was not generally popular, though eighteen +of his seventy-five plays have survived. +Technically he improves on his predecessors +but he has not the same glow of inspiration. +He took similar themes to those of his predecessors—crimes +and tragedies on the royal +scale—but he was a more self-conscious artist +and an intellectual. If you want to see how +he wrote Greek tragedy, read a translation of +the <i>Medea</i>, which is based upon the appalling +crimes and tragic adventures of that legendary +queen; and, incidentally, it is one of the first +pleas for a more just treatment of women. <i>Alcestis</i>, +<i>Iphigenia</i>, <i>Orestes</i>, etc., are other masterpieces +of Euripides.</p> + +<p>Comedy was the next form invented by the +Greek poets, and Aristophanes (450-380), the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</span> +greatest of the comedians, was a contemporary +and (being very conservative) a bitter enemy +of Euripides and all innovators. He satirized +the growing woman-movement mercilessly in +his <i>Lysistrate</i> and <i>Ecclesiazusae</i>, the philosophers +in his <i>Clouds</i>, the democrats in his +<i>Knights</i>, the democratic judges in his <i>Wasps</i>, +and so on. But his wit was irresistible, and +the stubborn old conservative was an idol of +the Athenian people for forty years. Of his +fifty plays, of which eleven survive, the <i>Clouds</i> +(against the intellectuals and skeptics) is perhaps +the best, though most mischievous. Translations +of all these ancient classics can be got +in the Bohn, “Everyman,” and other collections +of great books.</p> + +<p>Aristophanes was as free of speech in regard +to sex as he was zealous for old creeds. +A refinement of comedy came after his time, +and the ablest representative of this “New +Comedy,” reflecting the real domestic life of +the Greeks, was “the gentle Menander.” But +we have only fragments of his comedies. Aristophanes, +the loosest, is the only comedian of +whom entire plays have been preserved, and we +must now take their tone as typically Greek. +The austere moralists Sophocles and Euripides, +remember, lived at the same time and were +played before the same audiences.</p> + +<p>History was a third line of development at +the time, and two of the Greek historians, +Herodotus (“the Father of History,” 484-425) +and Thucydides (471-400) are classics. The +former, who had traveled all over the civilized<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</span> +world, wrote mainly on the clash of the Greeks +and the Persians, but he brings in the whole +world which he has seen. The plan is imposing, +but he is not critical, and not always +reliable even about countries which he visited. +Thucydides chiefly describes the Peloponnesian +War (with Sparta) and is terser and more +faithful to facts. His work is history in the +modern sense and finely written.</p> + +<p>A classic of a different kind is the orator +Demosthenes (385-322), whose <i>Philippics</i> (or +orations against King Philip of Macedon) are +perhaps his best written speeches, and are +models of oratory for all time. Philip was insidiously +preparing to take over Greece, and +Demosthenes fierily denounced him to the apathetic +people. He does not use florid rhetoric, +but a terse, strong, direct, and simple speech. +This and his other speeches are literary masterpieces +and are, in their plain, forcible style, +considered “matchless eloquence.”</p> + +<p>Before this a long series of philosophers had +begun to use the now perfected Greek language, +and the works of some of these are classics. +Socrates wrote nothing—Plato gives us his +ideas—and the books of the great majority of +them have not been preserved. Epicurus, who +comes nearest of them all to modern scientific +thought, wrote three hundred works, but not +one of them has been preserved. We have, in +fact, only the writings of Plato and Aristotle.</p> + +<p>Plato (427-347), a pupil of the famous Socrates, +mainly expressed his ideas by means of +dialogues between imaginary or real Athenian<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</span> +characters. In the Greek some of these dialogues +(the <i>Phaedo</i>, <i>Phaedrus</i>, <i>Timaeus</i>, <i>Critias</i>, +<i>Symposium</i>, etc.) are considered to belong to +the finest prose-literature of the world, and +the famous Greek scholar Dr. Jowett has given +us a wonderful translation (in five volumes) +of them all. Plato usually writes about religion +and morality, but he was also the first +social idealist, with very advanced views, and +in his <i>Republic</i> he sketches an ideal commonwealth.</p> + +<p>While Plato is the finest writer of all philosophers—and +by far the easiest to read—his +successor Aristotle (384-322) was the most +learned man (in his time) of all writers and +possibly the greatest thinker of all time. These +wonderful Greeks were pioneers in everything. +While some created the epic, the lyric, tragedy, +comedy, history, etc., Aristotle created philosophy +as a system of knowledge. The titles of +his greater works (<i>Physics</i>, <i>Metaphysics</i>, +<i>Ethics</i>, <i>Logic</i>, <i>Poetics</i>, etc.—he invented these +divisions of knowledge) show the vast range +of his learning and thought, but his books are +scarce and are read only by students of philosophy.</p> + +<p>After the days of the philosophers Greece +degenerated. The only other Greeks who could +be deemed classics are the moralist and philosopher +Plutarch (died 106 A. D.) and the very +unmoral and witty satirist Lucian, whom we +treat a little later. Plutarch’s <i>Lives</i> (of famous +Greeks and Romans) are a biographical +classic, but he was a very religious priest of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span> +Apollo and wrote much also on morals, and +religion. After these the only great Greek +writers were of Alexandria, but these are better +known in mathematics and philosophy than as +literary classics. Euclid’s <i>Geometry</i>, certainly +a classic of its kind, also belongs to Alexandria, +but was written in the third century before +Christ.</p></div> + +<p class="c sp" id="c3"><span class="xlarge">§2</span>. ROMAN LITERATURE</p> + +<div class="large"> +<p>From what we have now seen the reader will +understand, and may learn with amazement, +that one of the smallest nations which ever figured +prominently in history produced a remarkable +proportion of the world’s greatest +literature, and indeed created nearly every +branch of literature. Remember, too, that the +Greek classics which we have are mere fragments +of the whole. Literally thousands of important +works of poets, dramatists, and thinkers +have perished. Let us hope that we have +the finest fragments. I have given as informing +an account of these as my space allows, +and will only add that if any reader who has +access to a public library with collections of +translations wishes to know a little more, without +an extensive course of study, I would advise +him to read a book of Homer’s <i>Iliad</i>, then +the <i>Agamemnon</i> of Aeschylus, the <i>Antigone</i> of +Sophocles, the <i>Medea</i> of Euripides, the <i>Clouds</i> +of Aristophanes, a few chapters of Herodotus, +one of the orations of Demosthenes, and one +(the <i>Timaeus</i> or the <i>Phaedo</i>) of Plato’s Dialogues.</p> + +<p>The Roman literature is next in time to that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</span> +of the Greeks and, in spite of the common misstatement +that the Romans were a wholly practical +and not an artistic people, it is next to +it in importance. The Romans learned the fine +arts from the Greeks, and at first they were +content with translations of Greek works. +Comedy especially appealed to them, and the +first classical Roman writers were the great +comedians Plautus (254-184 B. C.) and Terentius, +or Terence (190-159). Plautus, using Greek +and other plots, composed a hundred and thirty +comedies, but only a score have survived the +literary massacre of the early Middle Ages. +The type of comedy he wrote may be understood +from Shakespeare’s <i>Comedy of Errors</i>, +which is, like many plays of the Renaissance +writers, based upon the <i>Menaechmei</i> (a story +of twins) of Plautus. Terentius, of whom we +have six plays, writes purer Latin than Plautus +and has more technical skill, but he has a less +rich vein of comedy. He is the author of the +much quoted line: “I am a man, and nothing +human is foreign to me.”</p> + +<p>Apart from these there was no Roman writer +who need be mentioned here—I wish to restrict +the list of names as much as possible—until +the first century before Christ, when what is +called the Golden Age of Roman literature began. +The art, as usual, reflects the economic +conditions. Rome’s conquest of the world was +almost over, and the Eternal City was congested +with wealth and athirst for every luxury and +refinement. Within two centuries there appeared +the great poets Vergil, Horace, Ovid, +Catullus, the historians Caesar, Livy, Sallust,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</span> +Tacitus, the satirists Martial and Juvenal, the +orator and thinker Cicero, and the famous moralists +Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. +These are all classics, but we must confine +ourselves to the chief works of the greater +writers.</p> + +<p>Vergil (70-19 B. C.) is one of the six greatest +poets of all time. His chief work is inspired +by Homer. It is a long epic poem (a volume +in itself) describing the wanderings of Aeneas +of Troy after the destruction of that city, +working up the legend that he eventually +reached Italy and founded Rome and the +Romans. It is therefore known as <i>The Aeneid</i>. +Vergil was so polished and conscientious a +scholar that at his death he ordered the destruction +of the manuscript of the great poem, as +he had wished to give three further years to +perfecting it before publication. The Emperor +overruled his will and gave the masterpiece to +the world. Vergil wrote also two series of +poems of pastoral life, the <i>Eclogues</i> and the +<i>Georgics</i>. He has not the greatness of Homer, +but his work is so impressive that the Catholic +poet Dante, twelve centuries later, took Vergil +as his guide through the underworld.</p> + +<p>The next greatest Latin poet, Horace (65-8 +B. C.), is the most difficult to translate, yet +in his pure humanity and praise of the common +pleasures of life he comes nearest to modern +sentiments. Apart from a long poem <i>On +the Art of the Poet</i>, which is now chiefly read +in Latin classes, he wrote a large number of +satires, odes and letters which are exquisite<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</span> +poetical appreciations of a life of refined pleasure. +It is generally said that he is Epicurean, +but the phrase is misleading. Vergil also was +a follower of Epicurus—most Roman gentlemen +of that age were—yet he is sternly patriotic +and speaks of the old Roman gods as if he +accepted them.</p> + +<p>Somewhere about the same time—we are not +sure of the date—there lived a Latin poet of +distinction named Lucretius who put into a +poem called <i>On the Nature of Things</i> the +serious philosophy of Epicurus about the world +and human life. It is not strictly a literary +classic, though a fine poem, but it is memorable +as the only complete Epicurean work which +we have and the nearest to modern thought. +Mr. W. H. Mallock some years ago published a +very free but admirable version of it in English +verse.</p> + +<p>Returning to the greater poets of the Golden +Age, we have still to consider Catullus (87-54 +B. C.) and Ovid (43 B. C.-18 A. D.). We +have 116 exquisite lyrical poems of Catullus, +a man of leisure and wealth who largely wrote +verse about love for his lady-friends. Catullus +is freer in his sentiments and expressions than +Horace, but the fourth great Latin poet, Ovid, +was the most outspoken of them all. In the +gay society of Rome he published <i>Songs of +Love</i>, <i>The Art of Love</i>, and <i>Remedies of Love</i>. +But these are so far from reflecting the whole +life of Rome that Ovid was exiled for his licentious +poems—the real reason is said to have +been an entanglement with the Emperor’s<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</span> +daughter—and in exile he wrote his more serious +works. His masterpiece is the <i>Metamorphoses</i>, +a mixture of history, legend and mythology +in rich and very accomplished verse. Another +distinguished poet of the first century is +Lucan, whose <i>Pharsalia</i> (a poem on the civil +war) has a high place in literature.</p> + +<p>Of the historians Julius Caesar (100-44 B. C.), +a very cultivated man as well as a great general, +has left us <i>Commentaries</i> on his campaigns, +especially in Gaul; plain, straightforward +accounts of his actions in one of the +easiest of Latin styles. Sallust (86-34) is more +of a literary man as well as historian, but his +chief work is lost and his <i>Conspiracy of Catiline</i> +and <i>War Against Jugurtha</i> are not masterpieces.</p> + +<p>The two most famous historians of Rome are +Livy (59-17 B. C.) and Tacitus (55-117 A. D.). +Livy belongs to the older Roman world, and +his immense history of Rome in 142 books +(only 35 of which have come down to us) is +more patriotic than critical. Tacitus, on the +other hand, falls in the period when the Stoic +emperors raised the tone of the declining Empire. +His <i>History</i> and <i>Annals</i> (of later Roman +times) are both historical and literary classics: +severe and very condensed (and difficult to +read) in style, austerely moral in sentiment, +and based on precise documents. In the <i>Annals</i> +there is a famous reference to Christ and +Nero’s persecution of the Christians, the genuineness +of which is disputed. It seems to me +sound enough in style but too late in date to +be important.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</span></p> + +<p>Cicero, the greatest Roman orator, and a +statesman and philosopher, belongs to the +earlier period (106-43 B. C.), the close of the +Republic. His style is a standard of Latin, +yet it is comparatively easy to read. His +speeches (chiefly delivered in the law-court) +are models of oratory, avoiding florid rhetoric +and relying, like those of Demosthenes, on +force of language and skill of construction. +He has left us also the best philosophical essays +in the Latin language—the books <i>On Duty</i> are +most interesting from the ethical point of view—and +his many letters are excellent literature +and afford valuable pictures of the time.</p> + +<p>The moralist Seneca (4 B. C.-65 A. D.) is +famous for the many long essays or books +which he wrote, from the severe Stoic point of +view, on every aspect of virtue and vice. He +wrote in the time of Nero, and thus he reminds +us that the corruption of that Emperor and his +circle did not extend to all Rome. A little +later was Epictetus, a Greek of the Roman +Empire, whose very austere Stoic sentiments +were collected by his pupils and published as +his <i>Encheiridion</i> or <i>Manual</i>. Marcus Aurelius +(121-180 A. D.), the most virtuous of the Stoic +Emperors, compiled a little volume of moral +<i>Meditations</i>, very austere in sentiment, which +is still much read, though it was rather casually +written. Another famous Stoic of the +time (died 117 A. D.) was the Greek orator +Dion Chrysostom (“Golden-mouthed”), whose +eighty extant orations, mainly delivered in +Rome, are fine literary expressions of the +highest ideals of the time. There was a very<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</span> +considerable output of this severe moral literature +at Rome.</p> + +<p>More brilliant from the literary point of view +were the satirists Juvenal (60-140 A. D.), and +Martial (40-104). Juvenal’s <i>Satires</i> (five books) +are famous in literature, but as pictures of +Roman morals they are not now trusted. He +wrote, not only as a poor man flaying the rich, +but he told of the wealthy Romans of the generation +before his own time. Martial has left +us fourteen books of <i>Epigrams</i>: sprightly +verses, of two or three lines each, hitting off +the characters and manners of his age. He +was a wealthy as well as a witty man, and his +mild satires are valuable.</p> + +<p>Pliny is the name of two Roman writers who +rank as classics. The older Pliny (23 A. D.-79 +A. D.) gives us a summary of the slender +scientific knowledge of the Romans in his <i>Natural +History</i>. The younger Pliny, his nephew, +was the governor of a province, and his <i>Letters</i> +(ten books) are good literature and valuable +documents.</p> + +<p>Lucian, of the second century, is rarely read +today, but his witty and pungent <i>Dialogues</i> and +his stories and essays put him in the rank of +great writers. Apuleius was another witty +story-writer. His <i>Golden Ass</i> has always been +deemed a classic, though modern authorities +would not permit a literal translation of it. +The hero imagines himself turned into an ass +by the blunder of a sorcerer and having a series +of most picturesque adventures.</p> + +<p>After the middle of the second century Rome<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</span> +was exhausted by war and literature ceased. +There were several writers of some distinction +in the fourth century, but their works are not +classics. The great days of pagan literature +were over. The pen passed to the hands of the +new Christian writers.</p></div> + +<p class="c sp" id="c4"><span class="xlarge">§3</span>. EARLY CHRISTIAN CLASSICS</p> + +<div class="large"> +<p>This section is very short because since we +are dealing with literary classics, not masterpieces +of theological learning, it has to tell +only of two books in a space of a thousand +years, from the second century to the twelfth. +These two books are St. Augustine’s <i>Confessions</i> +and <i>City of God</i>. You will not find translations +of any others in any modern collection of +literary masterpieces. Even Clement of Alexandria, +the most accomplished of the great fathers +of the Church, is read only by theologians. St. +Jerome, in my opinion, writes the best Latin, +but his writings have a purely religious interest.</p> + +<p>Augustine (354-430) was certainly the most +learned, and probably the ablest, man of his +age. His early philosophical essays are not +now read, and the voluminous writings or dictated +works—shorthand was common in his +time—of his later years interest only theologians. +But the small volume in which after his +conversion to Christianity he describes and bemoans +his earlier years, his <i>Confessions</i>, is a +classical autobiography. He had really very +little to “confess” beyond the fact that for a +time he had a lady-companion (which was not<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</span> +then considered immoral), and the fierce light +of his new asceticism causes him to write with +a singular art and feeling about his youth.</p> + +<p>In later years Augustine despised style, as +most of the Christian leaders did, out of religious +feeling, but he once more exerted all his +art of learning in writing <i>The City of God</i>. +The Roman Empire was in ruins and Augustine +set out to prove that it mattered relatively little +what became of the City of Man: that the essential +thing was to be a citizen of the City of +God. This idea he expands into a vast plan +which includes a wonderful mass of mythology, +history, and philosophy.</p> + +<p>The Latin language was already degenerate +in Augustine’s time, the schools were being +closed everywhere, zeal for letters and science +grew rarer and rarer. The few Christian laymen +who wrote prose or verse are not mentioned +even in larger sketches than this of the +history of literature, and in a few centuries +most of the chronicles and treatises written +were of a shocking literary quality, though +everybody still wrote in a sort of Latin. The +only noticeable work—by no means a masterpiece—is +<i>On the Consolation of Philosophy</i> +by Boethius, a sixth-century Italian statesman +who was put in prison and recommends all +sufferers to find consolation, as he did, in +Aristotle.</p></div> +<hr class="full"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="c5">CHAPTER II</h2> +</div> + +<p class="c sp">CLASSICS OF THE MIDDLE AGES</p> + +<div class="large"> +<p>The Middle Ages are, roughly, the period from +about 500 to 1500, though we must not take the +limits too sharply. Here I propose to make it +cover the writers of the literary Renaissance +period, or of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. +Europe was so demoralized after the +fall of Rome that art almost perished; and the +Greek Empire was too fossilized to produce +great literature. From the second to the thirteenth +century no literary worth of the first, +or even second, rank appeared in Europe. Then +art was reborn and the Renaissance in the +broader sense, the re-awakening of Europe, +began.</p></div> + + +<p class="c sp" id="c6"><span class="xlarge">§1.</span> ARAB AND PERSIAN WRITERS</p> + +<div class="large"> +<p>There are, however, two works belonging to +that period which will be known to every +reader, at least by name: the <i>Rubaiyat</i> of Omar +Khayyam and the <i>Arabian Nights</i>. Omar was +a Persian poet-astronomer of the twelfth century: +one of very many gifted poets of the revived +civilization of Persia. The refined Epicurian +creed of life in his well-known poem +reminds us that outside of Europe there was +a brilliant and artistic civilization. The <i>Arabian +Nights</i> reflects a similarly brilliant civilization +at Cairo and Bagdad and Damascus. This new<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</span> +Mohammedan, though really very skeptical, culture +spread from Persia to Spain, and had much +to do with the re-awakening of Europe.</p> + +<p>The <i>Rubaiyat</i>, which took the modern world +by storm in the nineteenth century, is a unique +case of a translation being superior to the +original. The current version, by the English +poet Edward Fitzgerald, is not, in fact, a translation, +but to a very great extent a new poem +based on that of Omar. Sir Richard Burton’s +translation (in 16 volumes) of the <i>Arabian +Nights</i> is, on the other hand, so accomplished +and faithful a version of that immortal collection +of oriental tales that it is generally kept +behind locked doors in a library. The current +translations are much pruned, and are therefore +false. The tales (by various authors) are +generally said to be of the thirteenth and fourteenth +centuries, but Burton held that many +are earlier. The well known stories of Sinbad +and Aladdin come from this classic. It is a +rich reflection of Arab-Persian life.</p></div> + + +<p class="c sp" id="c7"><span class="xlarge">§2</span>. DANTE AND THE MIDDLE AGES</p> + +<div class="large"> +<p>The immense literary activity and refined life +of the Persians and Arabs was bound, especially +as their culture was carried to its greatest +height by the Moors in Spain, to affect Europe, +and in the eleventh and twelfth centuries literature +began to reappear. From the south of +France, where there was contact with the +Moors, the gay songs of the troubadours spread. +The <i>Song of Roland</i> ran to four thousand lines. +The <i>Poem of the Cid</i> was another long epic or<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</span> +warrior-song that appeared in the Christian part +of Spain. More notable still is the <i>Romance of +the Rose</i>, chiefly by Jehan de Meung, a long +allegory on love which appeared in France. In +Germany some unknown poet of the twelfth +century gathered together the old pagan legends +in the <i>Lay of the Nibelungs</i>: the treasury of +legends upon which Wagner has drawn for his +famous dramas about Siegfried, the Valkyries, +etc.</p> + +<p>A notable work of a very different kind is +the <i>Love Letters of Abelard and Heloise</i>. +Abelard was the most brilliant writer of the +twelfth century, though his works are on philosophy +or theology and do not concern us +here. Heloise was a remarkably gifted young +woman of Paris, who had a child by Abelard. +Her uncle, however, had Abelard castrated, and +he became a somber abbot and she, very reluctantly, +an abbess. These Latin letters were +written long after the outrage and are wrongly +called love-letters. Sentiment was dead in +Abelard and it only peeps out occasionally from +the heart of Heloise. They are, however, known +as “the immortal lovers,” and the letters are +included in all collections of great works.</p> + +<p>None of these ought properly to be included +in this account of the greatest writers, but they +are now constantly referred to and they help +us to understand the revival of letters. These +poets and chroniclers were gradually beating +the new European languages into shape and preparing +the way for the masters.</p> + +<p>Dante is the first (1265-1321). His great<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</span> +poem <i>The Divine Comedy</i> might be called an +epic of religious thought. He imagines himself +conducted successively through Hell, Purgatory, +and Heaven, and though the theme repels many +of his readers—Goethe, Goldsmith, Landor, and +other distinguished critics speak very disparagingly +of him—he is by common consent +numbered amongst the six greatest poets of all +time. There might be some difference of opinion +about the sixth place, but the five greatest +are (omitting the Greek tragedians who wrote +in verse) Shakespeare, Homer, Goethe, Vergil, +and Dante. I should call Milton the sixth.</p> + +<p>Dante’s “trilogy,” or three-part poem, has +several thousand four-line verses and is usually +regarded as, on the literary side, the flower of +the Middle Ages. Longfellow wrote a beautiful +poem in appreciation of it, comparing it to a +Gothic cathedral. But it is also interesting as +showing how Europe was at the time being +awakened by the Arab culture. Dante, who +lived in Florence, where there was a great deal +of liberality of thought, speaks throughout with +great respect of the Arab and Greek philosophers, +and in his ethical ideas he is deeply +influenced by them. He wrote in Italian and +thus inaugurated the great Italian literature +of the Renaissance. His minor works, in prose, +are <i>The New Life</i> and <i>The Banquet</i>.</p></div> + +<p class="c sp" id="c8"><span class="xlarge">§3</span>. HERALDS OF THE RENAISSANCE</p> + +<div class="large"> +<p>Dante died in 1321, and within two decades +of that date were born the great Italian writers +Petrarch and Boccaccio, the French chronicler<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</span> +Froissart, and the gifted English poet Chaucer. +Dante himself may in a sense, as I have said, +be called a herald of the Renaissance or re-birth +of letters, but he is mainly medieval +while these four are predominantly characterized +by the new spirit of humanity.</p> + +<p>Petrarch (1304-74) is the first great figure +in the revival of Greek and Latin literature. +He wrote mostly in Latin, but the <i>Sonnets</i> he +composed in Italian are so beautiful that four +hundred editions of them have appeared. His +contemporary Boccaccio (1313-75), also of Italy, +is best known as the author of the <i>Decameron</i>. +The word means “The Ten Days Work,” and +the book consists of a hundred witty and skilful +short stories which are supposed to be told +to each other, during ten days, by a group of +ladies and gentlemen. The stories reflect all +the gaiety, sparkle, and license of that early +springtime of the new Europe.</p> + +<p>In France about the same time Froissart +(born 1338) wrote a <i>Chronicle</i> which is regarded +as a classic. He traveled very extensively +and tells, with bright coloring, the history +of each leading country in Europe in the +fourteenth century.</p> + +<p>The Re-Birth soon spread from Italy to the +northern lands, as Europe was now comparatively +settled and men traveled and read. +Chaucer (1340-1400), the first great English +poet, had met Petrarch and was deeply influenced +by him and Boccaccio. His famous +<i>Canterbury Tales</i> is a broad and wonderfully +vivid picture of the life and characters of his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</span> +age. All the chief types of the time are introduced +as pilgrims on the way to Canterbury, +and their tales they tell to each other depict +early English life graphically for us. The old +English is rather difficult to read, but the +humor and shrewd observation make it worth +while to try.</p></div> + +<p class="c sp" id="c9"><span class="xlarge">§4</span>. THE NEW AGE IN ITALY AND FRANCE</p> + +<div class="large"> +<p>The seed sown by these artists of the fourteenth +century led to a rich crop of writers in +the fifteenth and sixteenth and seventeenth; +and we must remember that there was at the +same time a splendid development of painting +and a general enrichment of life, as well as a +new liberality of thought and feeling. Italy in +particular had a crowd of writers as well as +great painters: writers on philosophy, writers +on art (like Vasari), writers on history (notably +Guicciardini) and story-tellers, poets, comedians, +etc. To this period belongs the famous +work of the diplomatist Macchiavelli (1469-1527), +<i>The Prince</i>, giving such unscrupulous +counsels to princes—a real reflection of the +spirit of the times—that we have ever since +called such maxims “Macchiavellian.” Another +classic of the time is the <i>Autobiography</i> of the +sculptor and goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini (1500-71): +a most interesting and candid account of +adventurous life in that gay age.</p> + +<p>The chief Italian classics of the time are, +however, the works of the greatest Italian +poets after Dante, Ariosto (1474-1533) and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</span> +Tasso. Both lived at the brilliant court of +the Dukes of Ferrara who patronized them, but +they differ entirely in character. Ariosto +wrote comedies and satires and epic verse. He +is chiefly known for his <i>Orlando Furioso</i>, a +poem of great length on the war against the +Saracens: which, by the way, no one reads +today. Tasso had a more sober and melancholic +character. His writings fill forty volumes, +but few now read even his masterpiece, +<i>Jerusalem Delivered</i>: an epic of the Crusades, +an attempt to adapt the Greek epic to a profoundly +religious theme. This inspired Milton’s +<i>Paradise Lost</i>.</p> + +<p>The above dates will show that these writers +end at the time of the change occasioned by +the Reformation, and from that time there was +no great literature in Italy until the nineteenth +century. The works of Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), +Galileo (1564-1642), etc., belong rather +to philosophy and science.</p> + +<p>Meantime the Renaissance or Re-Birth of +Letters, had spread over Europe. Erasmus +(1467-1536), a very liberal theologian and +humanist of Holland, wrote brilliant and witty +critical works on religion with an immense +circulation, of which the most readable are +his <i>Praise of Folly</i> and his <i>Colloquies</i> (or +“Conversations,” his masterpiece).</p> + +<p>In France there was in the fifteenth century +an adventurous poet, Francois Villon (born +1431), who has become very popular amongst +literary men in our time. He was a thief,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</span> +vagabond, even a murderer, and was often in +prison. But he wrote beautiful ballads and +rondels expressing the strange melancholy +which his defiant life gave him. Swinburne +calls him the “prince of sweet songs made out +of tears and fire.”</p> + +<p>In the sixteenth century the great essayist +Montaigne (1533-92) published his three books +of <i>Essays</i>: a prose-classic of profound influence +on thought, expressing the most liberal ideas—though +he professed to be a Catholic—about +religion and pleading for tolerance amidst the +fierce controversies of the time. Montaigne was +a universal scholar and the whole of life is reflected +in his pages.</p> + +<p>Very different was Francois Rabelais (1495-1553), +one of the greatest of the Renaissance +writers. Though a priest and a monk for +thirty years, his long rambling stories (chiefly +<i>Pantagruel, King of the Dipsodes</i>, and <i>The +Heroic Deeds and Sayings of the Good Pantagruel</i>) +are so free that his name has given us +the word “Rabelaisean” for improper stories. +I have a literal translation, in five volumes, +by Sir T. Urquhart (published in London in +1897), but it is rare. Rabelais is, apart from +sex, often filthy, but many critics forget that +even in this he is only expressing his world, +the faults of which he sought to expose by wit +and caricature. He wanted frank mirth and +laughter substituted for hypocritical enjoyments.</p> + +<p>A French classic of quite the opposite type<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</span> +is the <i>Discourse on Method</i> of the mathematician +and philosopher Descartes (1596-1650). +His works, however, are now chiefly of interest +in the evolution of thought. In the sense in +which we take “classics” here we turn rather +to the three great poets who supremely represent +the Renaissance in France: Corneille, +Racine, and Molière.</p> + +<p>Corneille (1606-84) and Racine (1630-99) are +both best known for their tragedies, which were +directly inspired by those of the early Greek +tragedians and were written in a severe classical +style. Corneille is the more austere and +dignified of the two, and he is seen at his best +in <i>Polyeucte</i> (based upon the martyrdom of +an early Christian) and <i>Andromeda</i> (a classical +tragedy). Racine is, perhaps, a little less severe +and more human than Corneille. He also +wrote classical tragedies after the Greek model +(<i>Iphigenia</i>, <i>Phaedra</i>, etc.), a biblical play +<i>Esther</i>, and a number of historical and other +plays.</p> + +<p>Molière (whose real name was Jean Baptiste +Poqelin, 1622-73) is one of the great comedians +of the world. He took the name Molière because +he went on the stage. He is seen at his +best in <i>Les Precieuses Ridicules</i> (which pokes +fun at pretentious ladies who talk literature), +<i>Tartuffe</i> (a satire of religious hypocrites), <i>The +Misanthrope</i>, and <i>Don Juan</i>. For the freedom +of his attacks on the Church he was excommunicated, +but he was protected by the king, +to whom his father had been valet.</p> + +<p>Boileau, or Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (1636-1711),<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</span> +is added to these three as the fourth +great poet of the time. His masterpiece is <i>The +Poetic Art</i>. Like his contemporary Molière +he was skeptical (though he rather insincerely +wrote a prose-work <i>On the Love of God</i>), while +Racine and Corneille were devout Catholics.</p> + +<p>La Fontaine (1621-95), of the same generation, +wrote <i>Stories</i> and <i>Select Fables</i> (on the +model of Aesop) in verse which rank as +classics. The familiar children’s stories of Red +Ridinghood, Bluebeard, The Sleeping Beauty, +Puss in Boots, Beauty and the Beast, etc., are +from his work. He collected them from popular +circulation and expanded them.</p> + +<p>Blaise Pascal (1623-62), a famous mathematician +as well as writer on religion, gave the +world two literary classics in his <i>Thoughts on +Religion</i> and <i>Provincial Letters</i> (an attack on +the Jesuits, though the author is a particularly +pious Catholic). Montesquieu (1689-1755), a +wealthy noble and eminent lawyer, is chiefly +known for his <i>Spirit of the Laws</i>, a profound +study of law from a humanitarian standpoint. +Among his many other works his <i>Persian Letters</i>, +a caustic criticism of contemporary life, +long ranked as classic. Although few read it +today the same must be said of the novel <i>Gil +Blas</i>, by A. R. Lesage (1668-1747), a famous +dramatist. It appeared in innumerable editions +and was the model for later novelists.</p></div> + +<p class="c sp" id="c10"><span class="xlarge">§5</span>. CERVANTES AND THE NEW SPAIN</p> + +<div class="large"> +<p>Spain was retaken by the Spaniards from the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</span> +Moors (whose whole immense literature was +destroyed) in the Middle Ages, and for a time +it enjoyed its share of the Renaissance. <i>Don +Quixote</i>, by Cervantes (1547-1616), belongs to +this period. It is a brilliant picture of the life +of the time as well as a masterly satire of the +exaggerations and eccentricities of Spanish +romantic feeling. It should be regarded, like +several of the works I have just noticed and +others in the next section, as on the threshold +between the Middle Ages and the Modern Age. +The Renaissance is a first breath of Modernism.</p> + +<p>Lope de Vega (1562-1635) was a phenomenal +Spanish playwright of the time who is now +not much read. He is said to have written +eighteen hundred plays (of which we have +three hundred). He often wrote a play in a +day, yet his construction and verse are of such +quality that the Spaniards count him a classic. +At the end of a long and very loose life he became +a friar and assisted at the burning of +heretics.</p> + +<p>Calderon (1601-81), the third great early +Spanish writer, a poet and dramatist, ranks far +higher than Vega, though even his best tragedy, +<i>The Constant Prince</i>, is rarely read outside +Spain. His name is one of the most honored +in Spanish literature. Like Vega he became a +priest in later life. With Calderon the short +spell of fine writing in Spain ended and nothing +of great distinction appeared until the +latter end of the nineteenth century.</p></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</span></p> + +<p class="c sp" id="c11"><span class="xlarge">§6</span>. SHAKESPEARE AND THE ENGLISH REBIRTH</p> + +<div class="large"> +<p>Chaucer, we saw, died in 1400, and his <i>Canterbury +Tales</i> brought the first taste of the +new spirit to England. But constant war kept +in check the development of culture and during +the next two hundred years few writers +appeared whom one could call classics. An +obscure knight, Sir Thomas Malory, is almost +the only one now read. He collected (chiefly +from French literature) the old English +legends about King Arthur and his court, since +made more familiar by Tennyson in his <i>Idylls</i>, +and wrought them in a poem of distinction +called the <i>Morte d’Arthur</i> (“The Death of +Arthur”). In the sixteenth century Sir Thomas +More (beheaded in 1535), at one time Lord +Chancellor, wrote his famous <i>Utopia</i>, which is +based on Plato’s <i>Republic</i>. More was at the +time very liberal in his ideas. The <i>Utopia</i> (a +sketch of an ideal state), however, had to be +written in Latin and published abroad. It was +not translated into English until forty years +later.</p> + +<p>Then, within little more than ten years of +each other, were born Spenser, Marlowe, Shakespeare, +Francis Bacon and Ben Jonson, the five +giants of a wonderful literary age. Spenser’s +(1552-99) great work is <i>The Faery Queene</i>. It +is an allegorical poem of remarkable grace and +beauty, though at times rather obscure in meaning, +purporting to represent the excellences of +the English character.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</span></p> + +<p>Chris Marlowe (1564-93), “the father of English +tragedy,” was, as these dates show, a great +poet who never reached his full development. +He shared the turbulent life of the time and +was killed in a tavern brawl. His chief tragedies, +<i>Tamburlaine</i> and <i>Dr. Faustus</i> (a model for +Goethe’s famous work), reveal a poetical and +dramatic genius of a high order.</p> + +<p>Born in the same year, Shakespeare (1564-1616) +survived his early robustness and gave +the world the series of poems and plays which +award him still the first place in all literature. +Alike in light verse, comedy, tragedy, and moral +play—you see his personal moral development +reflected in this order of production—he is the +supreme master. It is, in fact, needless to say +much about him here. The little that I should +have space to say must be known to everybody, +and even a short appreciation or analysis of +his work would fill a long chapter in this book. +Let me note two things. It is extremely interesting, +as I have already hinted, to take +Shakespeare’s plays in chronological order: to +proceed from the loose comedies (suggested by +the Italian Renaissance comedians who imitated +Plautus) to the historical plays and +tragedies, in which one may trace a half-conscious +and gradually deepening moral sentiment, +to such later plays as <i>The Winter’s Tale</i>, +<i>As You Like It</i>, etc., in which he uses his genius +to make character attractive.</p> + +<p>The other point is that recent attempts to +make Shakespeare less titanic than tradition<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</span> +represents him are not soundly critical. Every +reader knows that he is unequal in his inspiration +and one can select lines and passages of +no distinction. It is, moreover, a question if +some of the plays which bear his name were +really written by him. Take him as a whole, +and in the essential qualities of the poet—which +are the expression of things in beautiful +images and exquisite little allegories and the +use of language of a fitting tone—he surpasses +every other poet. I have read at least something +of Homer, Hesiod, Aeschylus, Euripides, +Vergil, Horace, Dante, Tasso, Racine, Corneille, +Calderon, Goethe, and Schiller in their own +tongues, and that is my confident judgment. +Some modern writers who attack Shakespeare’s +supremacy cannot, apparently, read his rivals +in the original.</p> + +<p>But Shakespeare requires a volume or nothing, +and we will take him for granted as the +first classic. Of Francis Bacon also we must +say little. His chief works (<i>Novum Organon</i>, +etc.) were written in Latin and belong to the +history of thought, not of letters. His English +<i>Essays</i> may be considered a classic. Ben Jonson +(1574-1637), finally, though called “rare +Ben Jonson” in his time for his beautiful +lyrics, pungent comedies, and classical tragedies, +is now rarely read.</p> + +<p>English literature, in fact, now became a +ceaseless and ever broadening stream, and, with +all the interests of our modern literature, we +have little time, unless we are special students, +to read any but the supreme writers of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</span> +earlier days. The Authorized Version of the +Bible itself is a wonderful monument of the +artistic splendor of that age. Fifty divines, not +poets, were set to prepare the translation, from +1605 to 1610, and, wherever the Hebrew text +is itself poetic—the far greater part of it (Pentateuch, +historical books, etc.) is not at all fine +literature—they rendered it in magnificent, +sonorous English.</p> + +<p>The <i>Anatomy of Melancholy</i> by Robert Burton +(1577-1640) and the <i>Religio Medici</i> of Sir +Thomas Browne, a distinguished physician +(1605-82), may be selected as the best classics. +After these we get poets like Vaughan and Herrick, +who are scarcely great enough to be included +here, and then John Milton (1608-74), +the second greatest poet of the English tongue +as well as a sound and deep thinker and a most +learned man for his age.</p> + +<p>Milton’s masterpiece is, of course, <i>Paradise +Lost</i>. Like Dante, he would show that the +Christian creed could inspire an epic as effectively +as pagan legends, and no doubt on that +account he is, like Dante, less read today than +if he had remained purely secular. There is, +however, a further parallel which is often +missed. Just as Dante rationalizes Purgatory +and is not orthodox on many points, so Milton +more or less rationalizes Satan and hell. His +Prince of Darkness is by no means the horned +devil of ordinary believers, and we know that +he had, in fact, very liberal ideas. In any case, +the poetry is as magnificent as the conception, +from the artistic point of view, is grand. It<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</span> +certainly puts John Milton in the highest circle +of the immortals. One ought to read some of +his other great poems to correct the common +idea that he was absorbed entirely in biblical +stories, and I would recommend every one to +read, of his superb prose work, at least the +<i>Areopagitica</i>, an address to Parliament on the +liberty of the press. Milton was far from medieval +in his social ideals.</p> + +<p>As I have already said, we are here dealing +with writers who are on the turn from the medieval +to the modern age. It is difficult to +draw the line, but for my purpose of giving +just an idea of the position and character of +each classic I may take the spread of Deism +in Europe as the beginning of the modern period +and carry this section as far as the poet +Pope.</p> + +<p>One classic of Milton’s time that ought to be +read is the <i>Hudibras</i> of Samuel Butler (1612-80). +Butler had the brilliant idea that the +sour Puritan was the Don Quixote of English +life and this poem is a delicious satire of the +type. Royalty was by that time restored, and +everybody was prepared to laugh at the men +who had made England sober and dismal for +a generation. The humor of <i>Hudibras</i> is so +rich that it is always worth reading.</p> + +<p>A very different classic of the age is John +Bunyan’s <i>Pilgrim’s Progress</i>, perhaps the most +widely read religious book, apart from the +Bible, that was ever written. Bunyan (1628-88) +was a pious thinker, but a literary genius. +His allegorical figures will never cease to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</span> +be quoted. Izaak Walton’s <i>Compleat Angler</i> is +another work of the time that comes near +being a classic, and Milton’s friend, Andrew +Marvell, wrote some superb nature-poetry. More +frequently quoted now are the Diaries of Pepys +(1633-1703) and Evelyn (1620-1706). The former +was a superior civil servant, and he most +minutely and pleasantly records nine years of +his life in London. Evelyn was a country +gentleman and he reflects the life of his class. +They are both valuable and interesting.</p> + +<p>Dryden (1631-1700) may be taken as, in the +broader sense, the last classic of the medieval +and Renaissance period. His best known poem +is <i>The Hind and the Panther</i>, a defense of +Roman Catholicism. Not many years before he +had written a defense of the Church of England, +<i>Religio Laici</i>. His character is not regarded +as very solid, but most critics would +esteem him the third English poet of this period. +His satires and odes are often of a very +high quality.</p></div> +<hr class="full"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="c12">CHAPTER III</h2> +</div> + +<p class="c sp">CLASSICS OF THE MODERN PERIOD</p> + +<div class="large"> +<p>As we approach our own time it becomes +more difficult to choose our classics. For the +earliest period time itself has made the selection +very ruthlessly. Nearly every Greek and +Latin work left to us is a classic. Then there +is the long blank of the early Middle Ages +ending in the luxuriant artistic growth of the +Renaissance. By the time we have reached, +however, the output of distinguished literature +becomes very great. Not only have the introduction +of paper and printing and the spread +of education to a much larger class encouraged +writing, but we must remember that now there +are a dozen civilizations, not one or two as in +ancient times. John Drinkwater in his <i>Outline +of Literature</i> devotes one volume to the +period from Homer to the middle of the eighteenth +century (nearly 5,000 years) and one +volume to the literature of the last 150 years! +It does not mean that we are so very much +richer in classics. The reader must, therefore, +not expect to find here a mention of every poet +whom some professor or other calls “a classic,” +but I have gone carefully over Drinkwater’s +work and Richardson and Owen’s <i>Literature of +the World</i> (which the reader will find more +useful if he wants a larger sketch), and give +here a short notice of the men about whose<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</span> +high distinction in letters there is a common +agreement.</p></div> + +<p class="c sp" id="c13"><span class="xlarge">§1</span>. VOLTAIRE AND FRENCH CLASSICS</p> + +<div class="large"> +<p>After the age of Racine and Molière French +literature rarely rose to the height of great distinction—the +chief cause, as elsewhere, being +the bitter sectarian struggle—until Voltaire appeared. +Seeing, however, that Voltaire, was +born just before the death of La Fontaine and +Mme. de Sévigné (whose letters are very elegant +literature) the interval was not long.</p> + +<p>Francois Marie Arouet (1694-1778), who took +the pen-name of Voltaire, is one of the most +remarkable writers of Europe. Competent +critics pronounce him the best poet of his age—an +age not rich in great poets, however—and +in history (<i>The Age of Louis XIV</i>), tragedy, +and treatment of actual problems (<i>Letters on +the English</i>, <i>Philosophical Dictionary</i>, etc.) he +had no superior. But it is as a prose-writer, +particularly as a caustic critic of the creed of +his country, that he made a reputation which +filled the world and has made his name one of +the most familiar even in our own time. Such +sparkling wit as he had when allied with high +poetic talent, profound knowledge of human +nature, and rare power of construction formed +an ideal equipment for the work to which he +chiefly devoted his life. As in the case of +Shakespeare, it is useless to write a few paragraphs +about him. What little one could write +would be known to the reader. Voltaire has to +be read, for you cannot adequately describe the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</span> +flash and sparkle of his prose. I have translated +a few of his smaller pieces (<i>Selections +from Voltaire</i>) so as to give the general reader +an idea of his versatility, and several of his +stories (read, especially, <i>Candide</i>, a satire on +foolish optimism) can be had in the Big Blue +Book series (Nos. B-6 and B-30). The world +will never tire of reading Voltaire.</p> + +<p>Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), his contemporary +(but not friend), was a constructive +thinker and emotional writer. His <i>Social Contract</i> +is a classic of sociological literature, and +his <i>Confessions</i> is one of the most masterly +autobiographies ever written, as well as one of +the most candid. His <i>Émile</i> and <i>The New +Heloise</i>, a treatise on education, are hardly less +distinguished though now little read.</p> + +<p>Two such writers at one time would enrich +any country, but Count Buffon (1707-88) must +be associated with them as a great writer as +well as the most learned naturalist of his time. +His <i>Natural History</i>, in twenty-four volumes, +is a literary masterpiece as well as a scientific +encyclopedia. At the same time lived Denis +Diderot (1713-84) and a group of writers associated +with him. Though none of these is a +classic in the literary sense, the great <i>Encyclopedia</i> +which they jointly wrote is very notable +in the history of letters and thought.</p> + +<p>A little later, during the Revolution, were +Mme. de Stael, a French woman married to a +Swede, whose novels were long considered to +be great literature, and Chateaubriand, an orthodox +Catholic, who (though I find his name +omitted from most literary histories) was a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</span> +writer of great power and often of rare beauty. +His <i>Genius of Christianity</i> was certainly +esteemed a classic for the next half century.</p> + +<p>In the nineteenth century the elder Dumas +(1802-70), author of <i>The Three Musketeers</i>, +<i>Twenty Years After</i>, <i>The Count of Monte Cristo</i>, +etc., and Victor Hugo (1802-85) inaugurated +the great period of modern French literature. +Hugo was an astounding literary genius, both +in prose and poetry. His formidable novels, +<i>Les Miserables</i> (an epic of the poor), <i>The +Hunchback of Notre Dame</i>, etc., may contain +all the defects which critics find in them, but +they are superb conceptions and the world still +reads them as classics. “George Sand” (1804-76) +is not, perhaps, read outside France today, +but her position in letters is very high. I +might recommend her <i>Consuelo</i>, but it is of +such length that the modern reader would despair +of getting through it. Her real name was +the Baroness Dudevant, though she lived apart +from her husband, a woman of passionate adventures. +Her friend Alfred de Musset (1810-57) +wrote lyric poems of the highest quality as +well as literary plays and stories.</p> + +<p>With the activity of these we reach the period +of the second Revolution in France, the middle +of the nineteenth century and the list of distinguished +names is long. While it is premature +to say which, if any, of their works will rank +as classics, Alfred de Vigny (1797-1863) wrote, +besides dramas and novels, exquisite poetry of +the Romantic school. “Stendhal” (really Henri +Beyle, 1783-1842) had a very high reputation +as writer of novels (<i>The Chartreuse of Parma</i>,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</span> +etc.) and essays. Baudelaire (1821-67) was the +second best (if not the best) French poet of +the century: his book of verse <i>Flowers of Evil</i> +is certainly a classic. Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) +wrote ninety powerful novels (especially +the series called <i>The Human Comedy</i>, a natural +history of contemporary life) and was a master +of the short story. Gustave Flaubert (1821-80) +was so high and conscientious an artist that +he wrote only four perfect novels. Guy de +Maupassant, Prosper Mérimée, the de Goncourt +brothers (Jules and Edmond), T. Gautier, A. +Daudet, Sainte-Beuve, Verlaine (poet), Zola, +Rostand (dramatist), and the recently deceased +Anatole France, the prince of modern story-writers, +make up—without mentioning living +writers—a group of brilliant writers who will +long be remembered; and to these we ought to +add scholars like Renan, Taine, Thiers, Michelet, +etc., who were little less distinguished in +literature.</p></div> + +<p class="c sp" id="c14"><span class="xlarge">§2</span>. GERMANY, RUSSIA AND SCANDINAVIA</p> + +<div class="large"> +<p>Apart from Luther, we have no German +writer whom we would call a classic until the +second half of the nineteenth century. At the +time when the influence of the Renaissance +might be expected to reach and stimulate it +the country was desolated by a hundred years +of warfare about religion. It recovered in the +years before the French Revolution and immediately +there appeared two poets, Goethe +and Schiller, who belong to the highest company.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</span></p> + +<p>Goethe (1749-1832) takes rank with Shakespeare. +Intellectually—he was an ardent +scientist and deep thinker as well as a great +poet—he surpassed Shakespeare and, perhaps +on that account, is inferior to him in the strictly +poetic faculty of exquisite imagery. No other +poet could have conceived the vast design of +<i>Faust</i>, at which he worked for seventy years, +and at least the opening soliloquy of Faust will +always be read. His earlier or romantic style +is beautifully seen in his story, <i>The Sorrows of +Young Werther</i>, and the long novel (or pair +of novels) of his later years, <i>Wilhelm Meister</i>, +is a masterpiece. With his encyclopedic +knowledge and his profound intellect Goethe +gives the whole epic of humanity, as known in +his day, in his work. In mid-life he came under +the influence of the Greek and Roman classics, +and the result may be read in his stately +and beautiful long poems <i>Tasso</i>, <i>Iphigenia</i>, +<i>Hermann and Dorothea</i>, etc. But he was masterly +in all that he touched, sonnet or tragedy, +story or art-criticism or scientific essay.</p> + +<p>Schiller (1759-1805), his younger friend and +contemporary, is in the stricter sense a poet +and dramatist, not a thinker, though he studied +philosophy and wrote a famous history of +the Thirty Years War. His chief plays (<i>Wallenstein</i>, +<i>Maria Stuart</i>, <i>Don Carlos</i>, etc.,) are classics, +and his lyrics are superb. Goethe befriended +and influenced him, and they composed together +some brilliant satirical verses or epigrams +on contemporary shams. Like Goethe +he began to write in the Romantic vein, but<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</span> +his later and finer work shows the chaste influence +of the Greek and Roman classics.</p> + +<p>Notable amongst the predecessors or early +contemporaries of Goethe was Lessing (1729-80), +whose works on art (<i>Laocoon, etc.</i>), comedies, +tragedies, and essays gave him a very +high rank. Klopstock, Wieland and others, +took a great part in the revival of letters +in Germany, but I must be content with +only a few of the great names. The works of +the long and impressive line of German philosophers +from Kant to Schopenhauer, cannot +be treated here. They are classics of philosophy, +but Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) was +one of the most brilliant writers of his time. +He was the best German lyric writer after +Goethe (see his <i>Book of Songs</i>), wrote superb +books of travel, and had a fund of delicate +irony and caustic wit that makes his prose +always a delight. Greater still—the greatest +German writer after Goethe—was Friedrich +Nietzsche (1844-1900), whose volcanic and +often beautiful prose-poetry is of a unique +order. His best work is <i>Thus Spake Zarathustra</i>, +a malicious choice of the austere Persian +moralist Zarathustra (or Zoroaster), as the +mouthpiece of his own fiery indictment of +conventional moral ideas.</p> + +<p>Italy in this period produced Count Leopardi +(1798-1837), an exquisite poet of pessimism, +Casanova (or Giovanni Giacomo Casanova de +Seingalt, 1725-1803), a poet and adventurer +whose memoirs (written in French) are a +classic, and Mazzini, the genius of the Italian +rebellion. But reaction kept back Italy until<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</span> +the latter part of the nineteenth century and +it is no part of my plan to notice recent works. +The same must be said of Spain, Portugal and +Austria.</p> + +<p>Switzerland had in H. F. Amiel (1821-81), +a poet and essayist whose diary, or <i>Intimate +Journal</i>, is a classic of its kind: a rare and +beautiful expression of a mystic mind struggling +with modern doubt. In the far north +Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906), brought Norway +into the field of letters by a series of plays +which made him at the time the greatest +dramatist of the world. They are modern +problem-plays, of advanced thought and rather +somber atmosphere. Björnsen (1832-1910), his +compatriot and contemporary, also made a +world-reputation by his novels, dramas and +poems, and won the Nobel Prize. His work +does not live as that of Ibsen does, yet there +were distinguished literary critics who at his +death ranked him with Victor Hugo. In +Denmark, a classic of a kind was produced +by Hans Andersen (1805-75), the great fairytale +writer.</p> + +<p>At the same time Russia opened its literary +age, with a number of brilliant novelists. +Pushkin (1799-1837), Nikolai Gogol (1800-52), +Ivan Turgenieff (1818-83), Feodor Dostoeffsky +(1821-81), and Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), +were a group of realistic novelists, poets and +essayists who commanded the attention of the +world. Tolstoi’s <i>Anna Karenina</i>, at least, is +another Russian work of the classic order, +and Maxim Gorki sustained the brilliant tradition +of story-writing in recent times.</p></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</span></p> + +<p class="c sp" id="c15"><span class="xlarge">§3</span>. MODERN ENGLISH WRITERS</p> + +<div class="large"> +<p>The crowd of writers of distinction in every +country now becomes embarrassing, and I +must either be content with a mere list of +names or omit many whom one or other critic +chooses to regard as classics. The reader must +bear in mind, however, that this is not a +history of literature, even in outline, and for +the modern period we will choose a compromise, +including the names of some who will +certainly not live as Vergil and Horace live +today, yet omitting many quite familiar names.</p> + +<p>I chose to begin the “modern” period with +the poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744), because +in his work modern ideas begin to show a +marked influence. There was at the time a +brilliant group of Deistic writers in England, +but Pope alone (who vaguely embodies their +ideas in his <i>Essay on Man</i>, the source of +countless quotations), can be called a literary +classic. <i>The Rape of the Lock</i> was regarded +by his contemporaries as his masterpiece.</p> + +<p>Another classic of the period is the immortal +boys’ story <i>Robinson Crusoe</i> by Daniel +Defoe (1659-1730). None of his other stories +has lived, but his <i>Journal of the Plague</i> is +a work of great importance. Later in the +seventeenth century and early in the eighteenth, +Addison and Steele were the leading +English writers, and their periodicals, <i>The +Tatler</i> and <i>The Spectator</i>, are classics of +journalism: a very dignified and stately sort +of journalism in magnificent English. Richardson<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</span> +(1689-1761) was the first great English +novelist, and his <i>Pamela</i>, <i>Clarissa Harlowe</i>, +and <i>Sir Charles Grandison</i>, had a high +reputation. A little later, H. Fielding wrote +<i>Tom Jones</i>, which ranked as a classic until +recent times. L. Sterne (1715-68), whom some +ventured to compare to Cervantes, is equally +distinguished in his chief novel <i>Tristram +Shandy</i>, and his <i>Sentimental Journey</i>.</p> + +<p>Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), one of the most +brilliant satirists, is chiefly remembered by +his <i>Tale of a Tub</i> and <i>Gulliver’s Travels</i>, which +still circulates. He was not, as is commonly +said, an Irish wit but was born in Ireland +of English parents. Coarse as <i>Gulliver</i> is in +many pages, Swift was a Dean of the Church +of England. But the same looser taste is seen +in most of the literature of the time: in Smollett +(whose famous novel <i>Roderick Random</i> is +based on <i>Gil Blas</i>); in the dramatist Sheridan +(<i>The Rivals</i>, <i>School for Scandal</i>, etc.), and +Beaumont and Fletcher. The poet James +Thomson, author of <i>The Seasons</i>, and the +novelist Jane Austen (1775-1817), whose <i>Sense +and Sensibility</i> and <i>Pride and Prejudice</i> still +stand very high, and the poets Oliver Goldsmith +(1728-74), author of the <i>Deserted Village</i>, +and Thomas Gray (1716-71), author of +the <i>Elegy in a Country Churchyard</i>, show the +more refined feeling of the time.</p> + +<p>A unique place must be given to Robert +Burns (1759-96), the Scottish poet and the +finest lyric poet of the time in spite of his +notorious intemperance. Burns is assuredly +an immortal and such pieces as <i>Tam</i> and <i>The</i><span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</span> +<i>Cotter’s Saturday Night</i> are classics. <i>Auld +Lang Syne</i> is also his. And a very different +work of the eighteenth century which is unquestionably +a classic of highest rank is the +great work of the historian Gibbon (1757-94), +<i>The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire</i>, +the product of twenty years of incessant labor.</p> + +<p>The chronicle of English literature now becomes +so congested with distinguished names +that we must notice only the higher peaks. +Classics beyond any question are the two +great poets of rebellion who opened the modern +period in the stricter sense of the word, Byron +and Shelley. Lord George Gordon Byron (1788-1824), +was, as his title indicates, the aristocratic +poet, yet owing to his critical revolt and +his sympathy with rebels like the Greeks, he +was ostracised by his own class (a generally +immoral class, by the way), and his work has +a tinge of melancholy. <i>Childe Harold</i>, <i>The +Prisoner of Chillon</i>, and <i>Manfred</i>, his best +works, are classics. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), +was almost equally aristocratic in origin, +yet he became the prophet of the democratic +and humanitarian movement. His <i>Prometheus +Unbound</i> is not only a magnificent expression +of modern thought, but it is one of the greatest +poems in literature from the purely artistic +standpoint. While Byron remained romantic, +Shelley, like Goethe, felt the spell of +the Greek and Roman classics.</p> + +<p>Next to these, or even above them or next +to Milton, some critics put William Wordsworth +(1770-1850), the leading poet of the +more conservative school (with Cowper and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</span> +Southey). I doubt if many English readers +now read his masterpiece, <i>The Excursion</i>, while +thousands treasure the beautiful work of John +Keats (1795-1821), whose classic, <i>Endymion</i>, +Wordsworth patronizingly called a “pretty +piece of paganism.” Keats never saw Greece, +and had never left London when he wrote +his wonderful poems of Greek legend and life +(<i>Hyperion</i>, <i>Lamia, etc.</i>). Of the British poets of +the early nineteenth century, it is impossible, +even in a list of classics, to ignore the <i>Ancient +Mariner</i>, <i>Kubla Khan</i>, etc., of S. T. Coleridge +(1772-1834), the <i>Lalla Rookh</i> and <i>Irish Melodies</i> +of T. Moore (1779-1852), and the <i>Songs of +Experience</i> of that strange mystic-skeptic William +Blake (1757-1827).</p> + +<p>Classics of the first order are the novels +(if not some of the poems) of Sir Walter +Scott (1771-1832), of the romantic school, and +Charles Dickens of early date, one of the +greatest of all masters of fiction. The novels +of Thackeray (1811-63), would be put by many +as classics of a secondary rank, and at least +the autobiographical <i>Confessions of an English +Opium-Eater</i> of DeQuincey (1785-1859), is a +classic: a unique expression of drug-inspired +dreams and reveries.</p> + +<p>We now, however, reach the Victorian Age +of letters in England, and it is difficult to +select. Whether Tennyson’s smooth and careful +verse and Robert Browning’s rugged and +intellectual poems ought to be included here +may be disputed, but much of the poetry of +Algernon Charles Swinburne (1857-1909), especially +his <i>Poems and Ballads</i> and <i>Songs Before<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</span> +Sunrise</i>, has a glow of passion and a +beauty of language that puts it in the highest +category. The <i>Essays</i> of Lord Macaulay (1800-59), +the <i>Sartor Resartus</i> (a unique philosophical +diatribe), and <i>The History of the French +Revolution</i> of Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), +the noble prose of the <i>Seven Lamps</i>, <i>Stones of +Venice</i> and <i>Modern Painters</i> of John Ruskin +(1819-1900), the <i>Marius the Epicurean</i> of +Walter Pater (1839-94), some of the novels +of George Eliot (or Mary Ann Cross, 1819-1850), +of George Meredith (1828-1909), the +<i>Way of All Flesh</i> and <i>Erewhon</i> of Samuel +Butler (1835-1902), Huxley’s <i>Essays</i> (on +science and religion), and Froude’s <i>History +of England</i>, and Darwin’s <i>Origin of Species</i> +(1859), may be selected out of the mass of +fine or notable works. I again refrain from +noticing living writers, but one wonders if +any living British author will be read fifty +years from now. Possibly, in fact, half or +two-thirds of the works I have noticed in this +section will gradually pass out of that select +circle which contains the world’s classics. +Already some whom contemporaries considered +as likely to live—Trollope, Southey, Lamb, +Hazlitt, Cobbett, the Bronté sisters, etc.—are +mere names in the history of English literature.</p></div> + +<p class="c sp" id="c16"><span class="xlarge">§4</span>. AMERICAN CLASSICS</p> + +<div class="large"> +<p>This difficulty of selection presses particularly +upon one when we turn to American literature. +Few great American writers are old +enough to have endured and passed the test of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</span> +time, and American literature as a whole appears +under peculiar circumstances. The reader +will have noticed throughout this sketch how +great poetry, especially, belongs to definite +periods. We talk of the Golden Age of Greek +and Latin letters, the art of the Renaissance, +the Elizabethan Age, the Storm and Stress +Period in Germany, and so on. These artistic +periods mark a point where a new civilization +has reached its full development yet has not +yet become fully intellectualized, or a time +when a revolution of some kind or other has +entered its blood. All this was over when the +United States was born. Its vast population +in the nineteenth century was made up from +European nations which had long since passed +through their feverish periods.</p> + +<p>The Revolution itself might be expected to +inspire poetry, but a close consideration of the +conditions of the time would explain why it +did not. The only notable writers of the latter +part of the eighteenth century are Franklin +(1706-90) and Thomas Paine (1737-1809). Paine +remained an Englishman and is not included +in chronicles of American literature, but his +spirited and superb first work, <i>Common Sense</i>, +is essentially an expression of the American +sentiment, and I prefer to include it here. His +<i>Rights of Man</i> and <i>Age of Reason</i> count rather +as English classics, but Paine was a cosmopolitan +and would doubtless prefer to be numbered +amongst American writers.</p> + +<p>Washington Irving (1783-1859) really opens +the period of distinguished American literature. +His <i>Knickerbocker History of New York</i>, <i>Sketch</i><span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</span> +<i>Book</i>, and <i>Alhambra</i> take rank in world literature. +J. Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) was +for decades read throughout the English-speaking +world, and even beyond it, for his stories +of the war with the Indians, though one would +hardly call them classics of fiction. William +Cullen Bryant (1794-1878) is the first poet of +distinction, and his <i>Thanatopsis</i>, though early, +has every mark of great poetry.</p> + +<p>By the middle of the century America had a +group of writers to compare with those of any +country. Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49) even in +his prematurely closed career achieved poetry +of a very high order, especially <i>The Raven and +Other Poems</i>. A prose-poem, <i>Eureka</i>, which he +wrote shortly before his death should be read +for the interest of his opinions. Bayard Taylor +(1825-78) also wrote fine poetry (<i>Poems of the +Orient</i>, etc.) and gave us one of the most satisfactory +versions of Goethe’s <i>Faust</i>, a most difficult +achievement.</p> + +<p>Two early historians also must be included +here: William Hickling Prescott (1796-1859), +whose <i>Ferdinand and Isabella</i>, <i>Conquest of +Mexico</i>, and <i>Conquest of Peru</i> would distinguish +any writer, and are remarkable when we reflect +that the author was blind, and John +Lothrop Motley (1814-77), whose <i>History of the +Rise of the Dutch Republic</i> and <i>History of the +United Netherlands</i> are finely written works.</p> + +<p>Of the great crowd of American writers of +the next generation I would select Ralph Waldo +Emerson (1803-82) and Walt Whitman +(1819-92) as the greatest from the literary +point of view. Emerson’s <i>Essays</i> are written<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</span> +generally in a noble English which no English +writer of the nineteenth century has surpassed. +Whitman’s <i>Leaves of Grass</i>, on the other hand, +is indisputably an American classic. Even +Emerson, whose moral dignity must have been +shocked by many of Whitman’s sentiments, +pronounced the book “the most extraordinary +piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet +contributed.” After these, as great and distinctive +writing I would give Bret Harte’s +stories, Mark Twain’s works, Lowell’s <i>Bigelow +Papers</i>, and Thoreau’s <i>Walden</i> and <i>In the +Maine Woods</i>.</p> + +<p>Amongst the poets the highest place is usually +awarded to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow +(1807-82), though the simplicity of his work +which charms one critic causes others to hesitate +to put him in the company of the greater +poets. There is, naturally, more fire in the +verse of J. G. Whittier (1807-92) who became +a passionate prophet of the Abolitionist party +(especially in <i>Voices of Freedom</i>). I prefer +some of the short poems—one might almost +say hymns—of Whittier and of James Russell +Lowell (1818-91) to anything of Longfellow’s; +though Lowell is very unequal as a poet and +is, perhaps (after his historic <i>Bigelow Papers</i>), +best known as a literary essayist.</p> + +<p>Of the novelists of the time Nathaniel Hawthorne +(1804-1864) and W. D. Howells (1837-1920) +are confessedly the greatest. Hawthorne’s +<i>Scarlet Letter</i> is a classic of American fiction. +Dr. O. W. Holmes (1809-94) was not a brilliant +success as a novelist, but the general thought +and excellent writing of his <i>Autocrat</i>, <i>Poet</i> and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</span> +<i>Professor at the Breakfast Table</i> keep his work +on the shelves of every book-lover. Of the +great orators, from Webster to Ingersoll, and +the scientific and philosophical writers, we cannot +give any account here.</p> + +<p>And into the merits of more recent and living +writers I, as in other sections, decline to +enter. Taste changes so rapidly in our time +that already our critics seem to believe that +no classic was written before the twentieth +century. H. G. Wells once in a conversation +with me ridiculed the idea that the style of +the historian Gibbon was superior to the English +we write today. There is much to be said +for the directness and flexibility of the modern +style, when a master writes it, but on those +tests few of the great works I have recorded +would maintain their high positions. There +are, however, objective standards of art and +I have given some idea of the world’s masterpieces +in all ages which rank highest by those +standards. +</p></div> + +<hr class="full"> + +<div class="transnote"> + +<p class="c">Transcriber’s Notes:</p> + +<p>Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.</p> + +<p>Perceived typographical errors have been changed.</p> + +</div> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78215 ***</div> +</body> +</html> diff --git a/78215-h/images/cover.jpg b/78215-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..6f27eef --- /dev/null +++ b/78215-h/images/cover.jpg diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6c72794 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This book, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. 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