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Title: One Hundred Books Famous in English Literature
With Facsimiles of the Title-Pages
Author: Grolier Club
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ONE HUNDRED BOOKS
FAMOUS IN
ENGLISH LITERATURE
ONE HUNDRED BOOKS
FAMOUS IN
ENGLISH LITERATURE
WITH FACSIMILES OF
THE TITLE-PAGES
AND AN INTRODUCTION BY
GEORGE E. WOODBERRY
THE GROLIER CLUB
OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
M CM II
Copyright, 1902, by
THE GROLIER CLUB OF THE
CITY OF NEW YORK
FACSIMILE TITLES
TITLE AUTHOR DATE PAGE
First Page of the Canterbury Tales Chaucer 1478 3
First Page of the Confessio Amantis Gower 1483 5
First Page of the Morte Arthure Malory 1485 7
The Booke of Common Praier 1549 9
The Vision of Pierce Plowman Langland 1550 11
Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and
Ireland Holinshed 1577 13
A Myrrour for Magistrates 1563 15
Songes and Sonettes Surrey 1567 17
The Tragidie of Ferrex and Porrex Sackville 1570 19
Euphues. The Anatomy of Wit Lylie 1579 21
The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia Sidney 1590 23
The Faerie Queene Spenser 1590 25
Essaies Bacon 1598 27
The Principal Navigations, Voiages,
Traffiques and Discoveries of the
English Nation Hakluyt 1598 29
The Whole Works of Homer Chapman 1611 31
The Holy Bible King James's 1611 33
Version
The Workes of Benjamin Jonson Jonson 1616 35
The Anatomy of Melancholy Burton 1621 37
Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies,
Histories, & Tragedies Shakespeare 1623 39
The Tragedy of the Dutchesse of Malfy Webster 1623 41
A New Way to Pay Old Debts Massinger 1633 43
The Broken Heart Ford 1633 45
The Famous Tragedy of the Rich Jew of
Malta Marlowe 1633 47
The Temple Herbert 1633 49
Poems Donne 1633 51
Religio Medici Browne 1642 53
The Workes of Edmond Waller Esquire 1645 55
Comedies and Tragedies Beaumont 1647 57
and Fletcher
Hesperides Herrick 1648 59
The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living Taylor 1650 61
The Compleat Angler Walton 1653 63
Hudibras Butler 1663 65
Paradise Lost Milton 1667 67
The Pilgrims Progress Bunyan 1678 69
Absalom and Achitophel Dryden 1681 71
An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding Locke 1690 73
The Way of the World Congreve 1700 75
The History of the Rebellion and Civil
Wars in England Clarendon 1702 77
The Lucubrations of Isaac Bickerstaff Steele 1710 79
Esq.
The Spectator Addison 1711 81
The Life and Strange Surprizing
Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Defoe 1719 83
Travels into Several Remote Nations of
the World Swift 1726 85
An Essay on Man Pope 1733 87
The Analogy of Religion Butler 1736 89
Reliques of Ancient English Poetry Percy 1765 91
Odes on Several Descriptive and Allegoric
Subjects Collins 1747 93
Clarissa Richardson 1748 95
The History of Tom Jones Fielding 1749 97
An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard Gray 1751 99
A Dictionary of the English Language Johnson 1755 101
Poor Richard's Almanack Franklin 1758 103
Commentaries on the Laws of England Blackstone 1765 105
The Vicar of Wakefield Goldsmith 1766 107
A Sentimental Journey Sterne 1768 109
The Federalist 1788 111
The Expedition of Humphry Clinker Smollett 16[7]71 113
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of
the Wealth of Nations Smith 1776 115
The History of the Decline and Fall of
the Roman Empire Gibbon 1776 117
The School for Scandal Sheridan 1777 119
The Task Cowper 1785 121
Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect Burns 1786 123
The Natural History and Antiquities of
Selborne White 1789 125
Reflections on the Revolution in France Burke 1790 127
Rights of Man Paine 1791 129
The Life of Samuel Johnson Boswell 1791 131
Lyrical Ballads Wordsworth 1798 133
A History of New York, from the Beginning
of the World to the End of the
Dutch Dynasty Irving 1809 135
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage Byron 1812 137
Pride and Prejudice Austen 1813 139
Christabel Coleridge 1816 141
Ivanhoe Scott 1820 143
Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes,
and Other Poems Keats 1820 145
Adonais Shelley 1821 147
Elia Lamb 1823 149
Memoirs of Samuel Pepys, Esq. F.R.S. Pepys 1825 151
The Last of the Mohicans Cooper 1826 153
Pericles and Aspasia Landor 1836 155
The Pickwick Papers Dickens 1837 157
Sartor Resartus Carlyle 1834 159
Nature Emerson 1836 161
History of the Conquest of Peru Prescott 1847 163
The Raven and Other Poems Poe 1845 165
Jane Eyre Bronte 1847 167
Evangeline Longfellow 1847 169
Sonnets Mrs. Browning 1847 171
The Biglow Papers Lowell 1848 173
Vanity Fair Thackeray 1848 175
The History of England Macaulay 1849 177
In Memoriam Tennyson 1850 179
The Scarlet Letter Hawthorne 1850 181
Uncle Tom's Cabin Mrs. Stowe 1852 183
The Stones of Venice Ruskin 1851 185
Men and Women Browning 1855 187
The Rise of the Dutch Republic Motley 1856 189
Adam Bede George Eliot 1859 191
On the Origin of Species by Means of
Natural Selection Darwin 1859 193
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Fitzgerald 1859 195
Apologia pro Vita Sua Newman 1864 197
Essays in Criticism Arnold 1865 199
Snow-Bound Whittier 1866 201
* * * * *
Except where noted, all facsimiles of title-pages
are of the size of those in the original editions.
[Illustration]
INTRODUCTION
A BOOK is judged by its peers. In the presence of the greater works of
authors there is no room for personal criticism; they constitute in
themselves the perpetual mind of the race, and dispense with any private
view. The eye rests on these hundred titles of books famous in English
literature, as it reads a physical map by peak, river and coast, and
sees in miniature the intellectual conformation of a nation. A different
selection would only mean another point of view; some minor features
might be replaced by others of similar subordination; but the mass of
imagination and learning, the mind-achievement of the English race, is
as unchangeable as a mountain landscape. Perspective thrusts its
unconscious judgment upon the organs of sight, also; if Gower is thin
with distance and the clump of the Elizabethans shows crowded with low
spurs, the eye is not therefore deceived by the large pettiness of the
foreground with its more numerous and distinct details. The mass
governs. Darwin appeals to Milton; Shelley is judged by Pope, and
Hawthorne by Congreve.
These books must of necessity be national books; for fame, which is
essentially the highest gift of which man has the giving, cannot be
conferred except by a public voice. Fame dwells upon the lips of men. It
is not that memorable books must all be people's books, though the
greatest are such--the Book of Common Prayer, the Bible, Shakespeare;
but those which embody some rare intellectual power, or illuminate some
seldom visited tract of the spirit, or merely display some peculiar
taste in learning or pastime, must yet have something racial in them,
something public, to secure their hold against the detaching power of
time; they must be English books, not in tongue only, but body and soul.
They are not less the books of a nation because they are remote,
superfine, uncommon. Such are the books of the poets--the Faerie Queene;
books of the nobles--Arcadia; books of the scholar--the Anatomy of
Melancholy. These books open the national genius as truly, kind by kind,
as books of knowledge exhibit the nation's advancement in learning,
stage by stage, when new sciences are brought to the birth. The Wealth
of Nations, Locke's Essay, Blackstone's Commentaries, are not merely the
product of private minds. They are landmarks of English intellect; and
more, since they pass insensibly into the power of civilization in the
land, feeding the general mind. The limited appeal that many classics
made in their age, and still make, indicates lack of development in
particular persons; but however numerous such individuals may be, in
whatever majorities they may mass, the mind of the race, once having
flowered, has flowered with the vigor of the stock. The Compleat Angler
finds a rustic breast under much staid cloth; Pepys was never at a loss
for a gossip since his seals were broken, and Donne evokes his
fellow-eccentric whose hermitage is the scholar's bosom; but whether the
charm work on few or on many is indifferent, for whom they affect, they
affect through consanguinity. The books of a nation are those which are
appropriate to its genius and embody its variations amid the changes of
time; even its sports, like Euphues, are itself; and the works which
denote the evolution of its civilized life in fructifying progress,
whose increasing diversities are yet held in the higher harmony of one
race, one temperament, one destiny, are without metaphor its Sibylline
books, and true oracles of empire.
It is a sign of race in literature that a book can spare what is private
to its author, and comes at last to forgo his earth-life altogether.
This is obvious of works of knowledge, since positive truth gains
nothing from personality, but feels it as an alloy; and a wise analysis
will affirm the same of all long-lived books. Works of science are
charters of nature, and submit to no human caprice; and, in a similar
way, works of imagination, which are to the inward world of the spirit
what works of science are to the natural universe, are charters of the
soul, and borrow nothing from the hand that wrote them. How deciduous
such books are of the private life needs only to be stated to be
allowed. They cast biography from them like the cloak of the ascending
prophet. An author is not rightly to be reckoned among immortals until
he has been forgotten as a man, and become a shade in human memory, the
myth of his own work. The anecdote lingering in the Mermaid Tavern is
cocoon-stuff, and left for waste; time spiritualizes the soul it
released in Shakespeare, and the speedier the change, so much the purer
is the warrant of a life above death in the minds of men. The loneliness
of antique names is the austerity of fame, and only therewith do Milton,
Spenser, Chaucer, seem nobly clad and among equals; the nude figure of
Shelley at Oxford is symbolical and prophetic of this disencumberment of
mortality, the freed soul of the poet,--like Bion, a divine form. Not to
speak of those greatest works, the Prayer Book, the Bible, which seem so
impersonal in origin as to be the creation of the English tongue itself
and the genius of language adoring God; nor of Hakluyt or Clarendon,
whose books are all men's actions; how little do the most isolated and
seclusive authors, Surrey, Collins, Keats, perpetuate except the pure
poet! In these hundred famous books there are few valued for aught more
than they contain in themselves, or which require any other light to
read them by than what they bring with them; they are rather hampered
than helped by the recollection of their authors' careers. Sidney adds
lustre to the Arcadia; an exception among men, in this as in all other
ways, by virtue of that something supereminent in him which dazzled his
own age. But who else of famous authors is greater in his life than in
his book? It is the book that gives significance to the man, not the man
to the book. These authors would gain by oblivion of themselves, and
that in proportion to their greatness, thereby being at once removed
into the impersonal region of man's permanent spirit and of art. The
exceptions are only seemingly such; it is Johnson's thought and the
style of a great mind that preserve Boswell, not his human grossness;
and in Pepys it is the mundane and every-day immortality of human
nature, this permanently curious and impertinent world, not his own
scandal and peepings, that yield him allowance in libraries. In all
books to which a nation stands heir, it is man that survives,--the
aspect of an epoch, the phase of a religion, the mood of a generation,
the taste, sentiment, thought, pursuit, entertainment, of a historic and
diversified people. There is nothing accidental in the fact that of
these hundred books forty-six bear no author's name upon the title-page;
nor is this due merely to the eldest style of printing, as with Chaucer,
Gower, Malory, Langland; nor to the inclusion of works by several
hands--the Book of Common Prayer, the Mirror for Magistrates, the
Tatler, the Spectator, the Reliques, the Federalist; nor to the use of
initials, as in the case of Donne and Mrs. Browning. The characteristic
is constant. It is interesting to note the names thus self-suppressed:
Sackville, Spenser, Bacon, Burton, Browne, Walton, Butler, Dryden,
Locke, Defoe, Swift, Pope, Richardson, Gray, Franklin, Goldsmith,
Sterne, Smollett, Sheridan, White, Wordsworth, Irving, Austen, Scott,
Lamb, Cooper, Carlyle, Emerson, Bronte, Lowell, Tennyson, George Eliot,
Fitzgerald.
The broad and various nationality of English literature is a condition
precedent to greatness, and underlies its mighty fortune. Its chief
glory is its continuity, by which it exceeds the moderns, and must, with
ages, surpass antiquity. Literary genius has been so unfailing in the
English race that men of this blood live in the error that literature,
like light and air, is a common element in the life of populations.
Literature is really the work of selected nations, and with them is not
a constant product. Many nations have no literature, and in fertile
nations there are barren centuries. The splendid perpetuity of Greek
literature, which covered two thousand years, was yet broken by lean
ages, by periods of desert dearth. In the English, beginning from
Chaucer (as is just, since he is our Homer, whatever ages went before
Troy or Canterbury), there have been reigns without a poet; and Greek
example might prepare the mind for Alexandrian and Byzantine periods in
the future, were it not for the grand combinations of world-colonies and
world-contacts which open new perspectives of time for which the mind,
as part of its faith in life, requires destinies as large. The gaps,
however, were greatest at the beginning, and grow less. One soil, one
government, one evenly unfolded civilization--long life in the settled
and peaceful land--contribute to this continuity of literature in the
English; but its explanation lies in the integrity of English nurture,
and this is essentially the same in all persons of English blood. Homer
was not more truly the school of Greece than the Bible has been the
school of the English. It has overcome all external change in form, rule
and institution, fused conventicle and cathedral, and in dissolving
separate and narrow bonds of union has proved the greatest bond of all,
and become like a tie of blood. English piety is of one stock, and
through every book of holy living where its treasures are laid up, there
blows the breath of one Spirit. Herbert and Bunyan are peers of a faith
undivided in the hearts of their countrymen. It does not change, but is
the same yesterday, to-day and forever. On the secular side, also,
English nurture has been of the like simple strain. The instinct of
adventure, English derring-do, has never failed. Holinshed and Hakluyt
were its chroniclers of old; and from the Morte d'Arthur to Sidney, from
the Red-Cross Knight to Ivanhoe, from Shakespeare's Henry to Tennyson's
Grenville, genius has not ceased to stream upon it, a broad river of
light. The Word of God fed English piety; English daring was fed upon
the deeds of men. Hear Shakespeare's Henry: "Plutarch always delights me
with a fresh novelty. To love him is to love me; for he has been long
time the instructor of my youth. My good mother, to whom I owe all, and
who would not wish, she said, to see her son an illustrious dunce, put
this book into my hands almost when I was a child at the breast. It has
been like my conscience, and has whispered in my ear many good
suggestions and maxims for my conduct and the government of my affairs."
The English Plutarch is written on the earth's face. Its battles have
named the lands and seas of all the world; but, as was said of English
piety, from Harold to Cromwell, from the first Conqueror to Wellington,
from the Black Prince to Gordon, English daring--the strength of the
yeoman, the breath of the noble--is of one stock. Race lasts; those who
are born in the eyrie find eagles' food. This has planted iron
resolution and all-hazarding courage in epic-drama and battle-ode, and,
as in the old riddle, feeds on what it fed. English literature is brave,
martial, and brings forth men-children. It has the clarion strength of
empire; like Taillefer at Hastings, Drayton and Tennyson still lead the
charge at Agincourt and Balaclava. As Shakespeare's Henry was nourished,
so was the English spirit in all ages bred. This integrity of English
nurture, seen in these two great modes of life turned toward God in the
soul and toward the world in action, is as plainly to be discerned in
details as in these generalities; and to state only one other broad
aspect of the facts governing the continuity of literary genius in the
English, but one that goes to the foundations, the condition that both
vivifies and controls that genius in law, metaphysics, science, in all
political writing, whether history, theory, or discussion, as well as in
the creative and artistic modes of its development, is freedom. The
freedom of England, which is the parent of its greatness in all ways, is
as old in the race as fear of God and love of peril; and, through its
manifold and primary operation in English nurture, is the true continuer
of its literature.
A second grand trait of English literature that is writ large on these
title-pages, is its enormous assimilative power. So great is this that
he who would know English must be a scholar in all literatures, and that
with no shallow learning. The old figure of the torch handed down from
nation to nation, as the type of man's higher life, gives up its full
meaning only to the student, and to him it may come to seem that the
torch is all and the hand that bears it dust and ashes; often he finds
in its light only the color of his own studies, and names it Greek,
Semitic, Hindu, and looks on English, French and Latin as mere carriers
of the flame. In so old a symbol there must be profound truth, and it
conveys the sense of antiquity in life, of the deathlessness of
civilization, and something also of its superhuman origin--the divine
gift of fire transmitted from above; but civilization is more than an
inheritance, it is a power; and truth is always more than it was; and
wherever the torch is lit, its light is the burning of a living race of
men. The dependence of the present on the past, of a younger on an older
people, of one nation on another, is often misinterpreted and misleads;
life cannot be given, but only knowledge, example, direction--influence,
but not essence; and the impact of one literature upon another, or of an
old historic culture upon a new and ungrown people, is more external
than is commonly represented. The genius of a nation born to greatness
is irresistible, it remains itself, it does not become another. The
Greeks conquered Rome, men say, through the mind; and Rome conquered the
barbarians through the mind; but in Gibbon who finds Greece? and the
mind of Europe does not bear the ruling stamp of either Byzantine or
Italian Rome. In the narrowly temporal and personal view, even under the
overwhelming might of Greece, Virgil remained, what Tennyson calls him,
"Roman Virgil"; and in the other capital instance of apparently
all-conquering literary power, under the truth that went forth from
Judea into all lands, Dante remained Italian and Milton English. Yet in
these three poets, whose names are synonyms of their countries, the
assimilated element is so great that their minds might be said to have
been educated abroad.
What is true of Milton is true of the young English mind, from Chaucer
and earlier. In the beginning English literature was a part of European
literature, and held a position in it analogous to that which the
literature of America occupies in all English speech; it was not so much
colonial as a part of the same world. The first works were European
books written on English soil; Chaucer, Gower and Malory used the matter
of Europe, but they retained the tang of English, as Emerson keeps the
tang of America. The name applied to Gower, "the moral Gower," speaks
him English; and Arthur, "the flower of kings," remains forever Arthur
of Britain; and the Canterbury pilgrimage, whatever the source of the
world-wandering tales, gives the first crowded scene of English life. In
Langland, whose form was mediaeval, lay as in the seed the religious and
social history of a protestant, democratic, and labor-honoring nation.
In the next age, with the intellectual sovereignty of humanism, Surrey,
Sackville, Lyly, Sidney and Spenser put all the new realms of letters
under tribute, and made capture with a royal hand of whatever they would
have for their own of the world's finer wealth; the dramatists gathered
again the tales of all nations; and, period following period, Italy,
Spain and France in turn, and the Hebrew, Greek and Latin unceasingly,
brought their treasures, light or precious, to each generation of
authors, until the last great burst of the age now closing, itself
indebted most universally to all the past and all the world. Yet each
new wave that washed empire to the land retreated, leaving the genius of
English unimpaired and richer only in its own strength. Notwithstanding
the _concettisti_, the heroic drama, the Celtic mist, which passed like
shadows from the kingdom, the instinct of the authors held to the
massive sense of Latin and the pure form of Greek and Italian, and
constituted these the enduring humane culture of English letters and
their academic tradition. The permanence of this tradition in literary
education has been of vast importance, and is to the literary class, in
so far as they are separate by training, what the integrity of English
nurture at large has been to the nation. The poets, especially, have
been learned in this culture; and, so far from being self-sprung from
the soil, were moulded into power by every finer touch of time. Chaucer,
Spenser, Milton, Gray, Shelley, Tennyson are the capital names that
illustrate the toil of the scholar, and approve the mastery of that
classical culture which has ever been the most fruitful in the choicest
minds. As on the broad scale English literature is distinguished by its
general assimilative power, being hospitable to all knowledge, it is
most deeply and intimately, because continuously, indebted to humane
studies, in the strictest sense, and has derived from them not, as in
many other cases, transitory matter and the fashion of an hour, but the
form and discipline of art itself. In assimilating this to English
nature, literary genius incurred its greatest obligation, and in thereby
discovering artistic freedom found its greatest good. This academic
tradition has created English culture, which is perhaps best described
as an instinctive standard of judgment, and is the necessary complement
to that openness of mind that has characterized English literature from
the first. Nor is this last word a paradox, but the simple truth, as is
plain from the assimilative power here dwelt upon. The English genius is
always itself; no element of greatness could inhere in it otherwise;
but, in literature, it has had the most open mind of any nation.
A third trait of high distinction in English literature, of which this
list is a reminder, and one not unconnected with its continuity and
receptivity, is its copiousness. This is not a matter of mere number,
of voluminousness; there is an abundance of kinds. In the literature
of knowledge, what branch is unfruitful, and in the literature of
power, what fountainhead is unstruck by the rod? Only the Italian
genius in its prime shows such supreme equality in diversity. How many
human interests are exemplified, and how many amply illustrated,
exhibiting in a true sense and not by hyperbole myriad-minded man! In
the English genius there seems something correspondent to this
marvellous efficacy of faculty and expression; it has largeness of
power. The trait most commonly thought of in connection with Aristotle
as an individual--"master of those who know"--and in connection with
mediaeval schoolmen as a class, is not less characteristic of the
English, though it appears less. The voracity of Chaucer for all
literary knowledge, which makes him encyclopaedic of a period, is matched
at the end of these centuries by Newman, whose capaciousness of
intellect was inclusive of all he cared to know. Bacon, in saying, "I
take all knowledge to be my province," did not so much make a personal
boast as utter a national motto. The great example is, of course,
Shakespeare, on whose universality later genius has exhausted metaphor;
but for everything that he knew in little, English can show a large
literature, and exceeds his comprehensiveness. The fact is best
illustrated by adverting to what this list spares. English is rich in
translations, and in this sort of exchange the balance of trade is
always in favor of the importer. Homer alone is included here,--to
except the Bible, which has been so inbred in England as to have become
an English book to an eye that clings to the truth through all
appearances; but how rich in great national books is a literature that
can omit so noble a work, though translated, and one so historic in
English, as North's Plutarch! In the literature of knowledge, Greek
could hardly have passed over Euclid; but Newton's Principia is here not
required. Sir Thomas More is one of the noblest English names, and his
Utopia is a memorable book; but it drops from the list. Nor is it names
and books only that disappear; but, as these last instances suggest,
kinds of literature go out with them. Platonism falls into silence with
the pure tones of Vaughan, in whom light seems almost audible; and the
mystic Italian fervor of the passional spirit fades with Crashaw. The
books of politeness, though descended from Castiglione, depart with
Chesterfield, perhaps from some pettiness that had turned courtesy into
etiquette; and parody retires with Buckingham. Latin literature was
almost rewritten in English during the eighteenth century; but the
traces of it here are few. Of inadequate representation, how slight is
burlesque in Butler, and the presence of Chevy Chase hardly compensates
for the absence of the war-ballad in Drayton and Campbell. So it is with
a hundred instances. In another way of illustration, it is to be borne
in mind that each author appears by only one title; and while it may be
true that commonly each finer spirit stores up his immortality in some
one book that is a more perfect vessel of time, yet fecundity is rightly
reckoned as a sign of greatness and measure of it in the most, and the
production of many books makes a name bulk larger. Mass counts, when in
addition to quality; and the greatest have been plentiful writers. No
praise can make Gray seem more than a remnant of genius, and no
qualification of the verdict can deprive Dryden and Jonson of largeness.
It belongs to genius to tire not in creation, thereby imitating the
excess of nature flowing from unhusbanded sources. Yet among these
hundred books, as in scientific classification, one example must stand
for all, except when some folio, like an ark, comes to the rescue of a
Beaumont and Fletcher. This is cutting the diamond with itself. But
within these limits, narrowing circle within circle, what a universe of
man remains! Culture after culture, epoch by epoch, are laid bare as in
geologic strata,--mediaeval tale and history, humanistic form, the
Shakespearian age, Puritan, Cavalier, man scientific, reforming, reborn
into a new natural, political, artistic world, man modern; and in every
layer of imagination and learning lies, whole and entire, a buried
English age. It is by virtue of its copiousness that English literature
is so representative, both of man's individual spirit in its restless
forms of apprehension and embodiment, and of its historic formulation in
English progress as national power.
The realization of this long-lived, far-gathering, abounding English
literature, in these external phases, leaves untouched its original
force. Whence is its germinating power,--what is this genius of the
English? It is the same in literature as in all its other manifold
manifestations, for man is forever unitary and of one piece. Curiosity,
which is the distinction of progressive peoples, is perhaps its initial
and moving source. The trait which has sent the English broadcast over
the world and mingled their history with the annals of all nations is
the same that has so blended their literature with the history of all
tongues. The acquisitive power which has created the empire of the
English, with dominion on dominion, is parallel with the faculty that
assimilates past literatures with the body of their literary speech. But
curiosity is only half the word. It is singular that the first quality
which occurs to the mind in connection with the English is, almost
universally and often exclusively, their practicality. They are really
the most romantic of all nations; romanticism is the other half of their
genius, and supplements that positive element of knowledge-hunting or
truth-seeking which is indicated by their endless curiosity. Possibly
the Elizabethan age is generally thought of as a romantic period, as if
it were exceptional; and the romantic vigor of the late Georgian period,
though everywhere acknowledged, is primarily regarded as more strictly a
literary and not a national characteristic in its time; but, like all
interesting history, English history was continuously romantic. The days
of the crusaders, the Wars of the Roses and the French wars were of the
same strain in action and character, in adventurous travel, in personal
fate, in contacts, as were the times of Shakespeare's world or of the
world of Waterloo. What a reinforcement of character in the English has
India been, how restorative of greatness in the blood! It must be that
romanticism should characterize a great race, and, when appealing to a
positive genius, the greatest race; for in it are all the invitations of
destiny. Futurity broods and brings forth in its nest. Romanticism is
the lift of life in a people that does not merely continue, but grows,
spreads and overcomes. The sphere of the word is not to be too narrowly
confined, as only a bookish phrase of polite letters.
In the world of knowledge the pursuit of truth is romantic. The
scientific inquirer lives in a realm of strangeness and in the presence
of the unknown, in a place so haunted with profound feeling, so electric
with the emotions that feed great minds, that whether awe of the
unsolved or of the solved be the stronger sentiment he cannot tell; and
the appeal made to him--to the explorer in every bodily peril, to the
experimenter in the den of untamed forces, to the thinker in his
solitude--is often a romantic appeal. The moments of great discoveries
are romantic moments, as is seen in Keats's sonnet, lifting Cortez and
the star-gazer on equal heights with the reader of the Iliad. The epic
of science is a Columbiad without end. Nor is this less true of those
branches of knowledge esteemed most dry and prosaic. Locke, Adam Smith,
Darwin were all similarly placed with Pythagoras, Aristotle and
Copernicus; the mind, society and nature, severally, were their
Americas. Even in this age of the mechanical application of forces,
which by virtue of the large part of these inventions in daily and
world-wide life seems superficially, and is called, a materialistic age,
romanticism is paramount and will finally be seen so. Are not these
things in our time what Drake and Spanish gold and Virginia, what Clive
and the Indies, were to other centuries? It is true that the element of
commercial gain blends with other phases of our inventions, and seems a
debasement, an avarice; but so it was in all ages. Nor are the
applications of scientific discovery for the material ends of wealth
other or relatively greater now than the applications of geographical
discovery, for example, to the same ends were in Elizabeth's reign and
later. In the first ages commercial gain was in league with the waves
from which rose the Odyssey,--a part of that early trading, coasting
world, as it was always a part of the artistic world of Athens. Gain in
any of its material forms, whether wealth, power or rank, does not
debase the knowledge, the courage of heart, the skill of hand and brain,
from which it flows, for it is their natural and proper fruit; nor does
it by itself materialize either the man or the nation, else civilization
were doomed from the start, and the pursuit of truth would end in
humiliation and ignominy. It is rather the attitude of mind toward this
new world of knowledge and this spectacle of man now imperializing
through nature's forces, as formerly through discovery of the earth's
lands and seas, that makes the character of our age. Romanticism, being
the enveloping mood in whose atmosphere the spirit of man beholds life,
and, as it were, the light on things, changes its aspect in the process
of the ages with the emergence of each new world of man's era; and as it
once inhered in English loyalty and the piety of Christ's sepulchre, and
in English voyaging over-seas and colonizing of the lands, it now
inheres in the conquest of natural force for the arts of peace. The
present age exceeds its predecessors in marvel in proportion as the
victories of the intellect are in a world of finer secrecy than any
horizon veils, and build an empire of greater breadth and endurance than
any monarch or sovereign people or domineering race selfishly achieves;
its victories are in the unseen of force and thought, and it brings
among men the undecaying empire of knowledge, as inexpugnable as the
mind in man and as inappropriable as light and air. Here, as elsewhere,
it is the sensual eye that sees the sensual thing, but the spiritual eye
spiritually discerns. It is romance that adds this "precious seeing" to
the eye. Openness to the call, capability of the passion, and character,
so sensitized and moulded in individuals and made hereditary in a
civilization and a race and idealized in conscience, constitute the
motor-genius of a nation, which is its finding faculty; and the
appreciation of results and putting them to the use of men make its
conserving and positive power. These two, indistinguishably married and
blended, are the English genius. A positive genius following a romantic
lead, a romantic genius yielding a positive good, equally describe it
from opposed points of view; yet in the finer spirits and in the long
age the romantic temperament is felt to be the fertilizing element, to
be character as opposed to performance. Greatness lies always in the
unaccomplished deed, as in the lonely anecdote of Newton: "I do not know
what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only
like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then
finding a smoother pebble, or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the
great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me." So Tennyson with
his "wages of going on," and Sir John Franklin and Gordon in their
lives. This spiritual breath of the nation in all its activities through
centuries is the breath of its literature, there embodied in its finer
being and applied to the highest uses for the civilization and culture
of the nation by truth and art. In English literary history, and in its
men of genius taken individually, the positive or the romantic may
predominate, each in its own moment; but the conspectus of the whole
assigns to each its true levels. Romanticism condensed in character,
which is the creation of the highest poetic genius, the rarest work of
man, has its illustrative example in Shakespeare, the first of all
writers; he followed it through all its modes, and perhaps its simplest
types are Henry IV for action, Romeo for passion, and Hamlet, which is
the romance of thought. Before Shakespeare, Spenser closed the earliest
age, which had been shaped by a diffused romantic tradition, inherited
from mediaevalism, though in its later career masked under Renaissance
forms; and since Shakespeare, a similar diffused romantic prescience, in
the region of the common life and of revolutionary causes most
significantly, brought in our age that has now passed its first flower,
but has yet long to run. These are the three great ages of English
poetry. In the interval between the second and the third, the
magnificently accomplished school of the eighteenth century gave to
English an age of cultivated repose, in which Pope, its best example,
lived on the incomes of the past, and, together with the younger and the
elder men he knew, exhibited in literature that conserving and positive
power which is the economy of national genius; but even in that great
century, wherever the future woke, there was a budding romanticism, in
Collins, Gray, Walpole, Thomson, Cowper, Blake. Such was the history of
English poetry, and the same general statement will be found applicable
to English prose, though in a lower tone, due to the nature of prose.
Taken in the large, important as the positive element in it is, the
English literary genius is, like the race, temperamentally romantic, to
the nerve and bone.
This view becomes increasingly apparent on examination of the service of
this literature to civilization and the individual soul of man, which is
the great function of literature, and of its place in the world of art.
"How shall the world be served?" was Chaucer's question; and it has
never been absent from any great mind of the English stock. The
literature of a nation, however, including, as here, books of knowledge,
is so nearly synonymous with the mind in all its operations in the
national life, as to be coextensive with civilization, and hardly
separable from it. Civilization is cast in the mould of thought, and
retains the brute necessity of nature only as mass, but not as surface;
it is the flowering of human forces in the formal aspect of life, and of
these literature is one mode, reflecting in its many phases all the rest
in their manifestations, and inwardly feeding them in their vital
principle. The universality of its touch on life is indicated by the
fact that it has made the English a lettered people, the alphabet as
common as numbers, and the ability to read almost as wide-spread in the
race as the ability to count. Its service, therefore, cannot be
summarized any more than the dictionary of its words. It is possible to
bring within the compass of a paragraph only hints and guide-marks of
its work; and naturally these would be gathered from its most
comprehensive influences in the higher spheres of intellect and morals,
in the world of ideas, and in the person of those writers who were
either the founders or restorers of knowledge. Such a cardinal service
was the Baconian method, to take a single great instance, which may
almost be said to have reversed the logical habit of the mind of Europe,
and to have summoned nature to a new bar. It is enough to name this. Of
books powerful in intellectual results, Locke's Essay is, perhaps,
thought of as metaphysical and remote, yet it was of immeasurable
influence at home and abroad, so subtly penetrating as to resemble in
scale and intimacy the silent forces of nature. It was great as a
representative of the spirit of rationalism, which it supported and
spread with incalculable results on the temper of educated Europe; and
great also as a product and embodiment of that cold, intellectual habit,
distinctive of a certain kind of English mind, and usually regarded as
radical in the race. It was great by the variety as well as the range of
its influence, and was felt in all regions of abstract thought and those
practical arts, education, government and the like, then most affected
by such thought; it permanently modified the cast of men's minds. In
opposition to it new philosophical movements found their mainspring. A
similar honor belongs to Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations in another
century. It is customary to eulogize the pioneer, and to credit the
first openers of Californias with the wealth of all the mines worked by
later comers; and, in this sense, the words of Buckle, that have been
placed opposite the title-page, are, perhaps, to be taken: "Adam Smith
contributed more, by the publication of this single work, towards the
happiness of men than has been effected by the united abilities of all
the statesmen and legislators of whom history has preserved an authentic
account." But the excess of the statement is a proof of the largeness of
the truth it contains, and like-minded praise is not from Buckle alone,
but may be found in half a score of thoughtful and temperate authors. In
the last age, Darwin, by his Origin of Species, most arrested the
attention of the scientific mind, and stimulated the highly educated
world with surprise. He was classed with Copernicus, as having brought
man's pretension to be the first of created things, and their lord from
the beginning, under the destroying criticism of scientific time and its
order, in the same way that Copernicus brought the pretension of the
earth to be the centre of the universe under a like criticism of
scientific space and its order; and in these proud statements there is
some measure of truth. The ideas of Darwin compel a readjustment of
man's thoughts with regard to his temporal and natural relation to the
universe in which he finds himself; and the vast generalities of all
evolutionary thought received from Darwin immense stimulus, its method
greater scope, and its results a firmer hold on the general mind, with
an influence still unfathomable upon man's highest beliefs with regard
to his origin and destiny. There are epochs in the intellectual history
of the race as marked as those of the globe; and such works as these, in
the literature of knowledge, show the times of the opening of the seals.
In addition to the service so done in the advancement of civilization by
the discovery of new truth, as great benefaction is accomplished by the
continual agitation and exercise of men's minds in the ideas that are
not new but the ever-living inheritance from the past, whose permanence
through all epochs shows their deep grounding in the race they nourish.
In English such ideas are, especially, in the view of the whole world,
ideas of civil and religious liberty in the widest sense and
particularly as worked out in legal and political history. The common
law of England in Blackstone is a mighty legacy. On the large public
scale, and as involved in the constitutional making of a great nation,
the Federalist is a document invaluable as setting forth essentials of
free government under a particular application; and for comment on
social liberty, Burke, on the conservative, and Paine, on the radical
side, exhibit the scope, the weight and fire of English thought. Of
still greater significance, for the mass and variety of teaching, is
that commentary on man's freedom which is contained in the operation of
liberty and its increase as presented in the long story of England's
greatness recorded in the works of her historians from Holinshed to
Macaulay, with what the last prolific generation has added. They are
exceeded in the dignity of their labors by Gibbon, whose work on Rome,
which Mommsen called the greatest of all histories and is often likened
to a mighty bridge spanning the gulf between the ancient and the modern
world, was a contribution to European learning; but the historians of
English liberty have more profitably served mankind. At yet another
remove, the ideas of liberty--and the mind acquainted with English books
is dazzled by the vast comprehensiveness of such a phrase--are again
poured through the nation's life-blood by all her poets, and well-nigh
all her writers in prose, in one or another mode of the Promethean fire.
These ideas are never silent, never quiescent; they work in the
substance, they shape the form and feature, of English thought; they are
the necessary element of its being; they constitute the race of freemen,
and are known in every language as English ideas. They give sublimity to
the figure of Milton; they are the feeding flame of Shelley's mind; they
alone lift Tennyson to an eagle-flight of song. In the unceasing
celebration of ideal liberty, and its practical life in English
character and events, the literature of England has, perhaps, done a
greater service than in the positive advancement of knowledge, for it is
more fundamental in the national life. Touching the subject almost at
random, such are a few of the points of contact between English books
and the civilization of men.
It is still more difficult to state briefly the action of literature on
the individual for what is more distinctly his private gain, in the
enlargement of his life, the direction of his thoughts, and bringing him
into harmony with the world. As, in regard to civilization, the emphasis
lay rather on the literature of knowledge, here it lies on the
literature of power,--on imaginative and reflective works. Its initial
office is educative; it feeds the imagination and the powers of
sympathy, and trains not only the affections but all feeling; and in
these fields it is the only instrument of education outside of real
experience. It is this that gives it such primacy as to make
acquaintance with humane letters almost synonymous with culture. No
actual world is large enough for a man to live in; at the lowest, there
is some tradition of the past, some expectation of the future; and,
though training in the senses is an important part of early life, yet
the greater part of education consists in putting the young in
possession of an unseen world. The biograph is a marvellous toy of the
time, but literature in its lower forms of information, of history,
travel and description, has been a biograph for the mind's eye from the
beginning; and in its higher forms of art it performs a greater service
by bringing into mental vision what it is above the power of nature to
produce. To expand the mind to the compass of space and time, and to
people these with the thoughts of mankind, to revive the past and
penetrate the reality of the present, is the joint work of all
literature; and as a preparation for individual life, in unfolding the
faculties and the feelings, humane letters achieve their most essential
task. Literature furnishes the gymnasia for all youth, in that part of
their nature in which the highest power of humanity lies. But this is
only, as was said, its initial office. Throughout life it acts in the
same way on old and young alike. The dependence of all men on thought,
and of thought on speech, is a profound matter, though as little
considered as gravitation that keeps the world entire; and the speech on
which such a strain of life lies is the speech of books. How has
Longfellow consoled middle life in its human trials, how has Carlyle
roused manhood, and Emerson illumined life for his readers at every
stage! Scott is a benefactor of millions by virtue of the entertainment
he has given to English homes and the lonely hours of his fellow-men,
now for three generations, to an extent hardly measurable in thought;
and so in hardly a less degree is Dickens, and, though diminishing in
inclusive power, are Thackeray, Austen, Bronte, Cooper, Hawthorne,
George Eliot, to name only novelists. Each century has had its own
story-telling from Chaucer down, though masked in the Elizabethan period
as drama, and in each much hearty and refined pleasure has been afforded
by the spectacle of life in books; but in the last age the benefit so
conferred is to be reckoned among the greater blessings of civilization.
It is singular that humor, so prime and constant a factor in English,
should have so few books altogether its own, and these not of the
greater class; but the spirit which yields burlesque in Butler and
Irving, and comedy in Massinger, Congreve and Sheridan, pervades the
body of English literature and characterizes it among national
literatures. The highest mind is incomplete without humor, for a perfect
idealism includes laughter at the real; and it is natural, for, the
principle of humor being incongruity to the intellect, it is properly
most keen in those in whom the idea of order, which is the mother-idea
of the intellect, is most omnipresent and controlling; but as humor is
thus auxiliary in character, it is found to be subordinate also in
English literature as a whole. The constancy of its presence, however,
is a sign of the general health of the English genius, which has turned
to morbidity far less than that of other nations ancient or modern. It
is a cognate fact, here, that great books are never frivolous; they
leave the reader wiser and better, as well through laughter as through
tears, or they sustain imaginative and sympathetic power already
acquired. They open the world of humanity to the heart, and they open
the heart to itself. In another region, not primarily of entertainment,
the value of literature lies in its function to inspire. In individual
life, each finer spirit of the past touches with an electric force those
of his own kindred as they are born into the world of letters, and often
for life. The later poets have most personal power in this way. Burns,
Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley have been the inspiration of lives, like
Carlyle and Emerson in prose. The most intense example of national
inspiration in a book is Uncle Tom's Cabin; but in quieter ways Scotland
feels the pulse of Burns, and England the many-mingled throbbing of the
poets in her blood.
On the large scale, in the impact of literature on the individual soul
and through that on the national belief, aspiration and resolve, the
great sphere of influence lies necessarily in the religious life,
because that is universal and constant from birth to death and spreads
among the secret springs and sources of man's essential nature. It is a
commonplace, it has sometimes been made a reproach, that English
literature is predominantly moral and religious, and the fact is plainly
so. The strain that began with Piers Plowman flourished more mightily in
the Pilgrim's Progress. The psalm-note that was a tone of character in
Surrey, Wyatt and Sidney gave perfect song in Milton, both poet and man.
From Butler to Newman the intellect, applied to religion, did not fail
in strenuous power. Taylor's Holy Living is a saint's book. If religious
poets, of one pure strain of Sabbath melody, have been rare, yet
Herbert, Vaughan, Cowper, Keble, Whittier are to the memory Christian
names, with the humility and breathing peace of sacred song. The portion
of English literature expressly religious is enlarged by the works of
authors, both in prose and verse, in which religion was an occasional
theme and often greatly dealt with; and the religious and moral
influence of the body of literature as a whole on the English race is
immensely increased by those writers into whom the Christian spirit
entered as a master-light of reason and imagination, such as Spenser in
the Faerie Queene and Wordsworth in his works generally, or Gray in the
solemn thought of the Elegy. To particularize is an endless task; for
the sense of duty toward man and God is of the bone and flesh of English
books in every age, being planted in the English nature. This vast mass
of experience and counsel, of praise and prayer, of insight and leading,
variously responding to every phase of the religious consciousness of
the historic people, has been, like the general harvest, the daily food
of the nation in its spiritual life. If Shakespeare is the greatest of
our writers, the English Bible is the greatest of our books; and the
whole matter is summarized in saying that the Bible, together with the
Book of Common Prayer, is the most widely distributed, the most
universally influential, the most generally valued and best-read book of
the English people, and this has been true since the diffusion of
printing. It may seem only the felicity of time that the English
language best adorns its best book; but it is by a higher blessing that
English character centres in this Book, that English thinkers see by it,
that English poets feel by it, that the English people live by it; for
it has passed into the blood of all English veins.
It is natural to inquire, after dwelling so much on the practical power
of English literature in society and life, what is its value in the
world of art, in that sphere where questions of perfection in the form,
of permanence in the matter, and the like, arise. If the standards of an
academic classicism be applied, English literature will fall below both
Latin and Greek, and the Italian and French, and take a lower place with
German and Spanish, to which it is most akin. But such standards are
pseudo-classical at best, and under modern criticism find less ground in
the ancients. The genius of the English is romantic, and originated
romantic forms proper to itself, and by these it should be judged. The
time is, perhaps, not wholly gone by when the formlessness of
Shakespeare may be found spoken of as a matter of course, as the
formlessness of Shelley is still generally alleged; but if neither of
these has form in the pseudo-classic, the Italian and French, sense of
convention, decorum and limit, they were creators of that romantic form
in which English, together with Spanish, marks the furthest original
modern advance. The subject is too large, and too much a matter of
detail, for this place; but it is the less necessary to expand it, for
it is as superfluous to establish the right of Shakespeare in the realm
of the most perfect art as to examine the title-deeds of Alexander's
conquests. He condensed romanticism in character, as was said above;
and in the power with which he did this, in the wisdom, beauty and
splendor of his achievement, excelled all others, both for substance and
art. The instinct of fame may be safely followed in assigning a like
primacy to Milton. The moment which Milton occupied, in the climax of a
literary movement, is, perhaps, not commonly observed with accuracy. The
drama developed out of allegorical and abstract, and through historical,
into entirely human and ideal forms; and in Shakespeare this process is
completed. The same movement, on the religious as opposed to the secular
line, took place more slowly. Spenser, like Sackville, works by
impersonation of moral qualities, viewed abstractly; the Fletchers, who
carried on his tradition, employ the same method, which gives a remote
and often fantastic character to their work; nor was moral and religious
poetic narrative truly humanized, and given ideal power in character and
event, until Milton carried it to its proper artistic culmination in
Paradise Lost. Milton stands to the evolution of this branch of poetic
literature, springing from the miracle-plays, precisely as Shakespeare
does to the branch of ideal drama; and thus, although he fell outside of
the great age, and was sixty years later than Shakespeare in completing
the work, the singularity of his literary greatness, his loneliness as a
lofty genius in his time, becomes somewhat less inexplicable. The
Paradise Lost occupies this moment of climax, to repeat the phrase, in
literary history, and, like nearly all works in such circumstances, it
has a greatness all its own. But, beyond that, it lies in a region of
art where no other English work companions it, as an epic of the
romantic spirit such as Italy most boasts of, but superior in breadth,
in ethical power, in human interest, to Ariosto or Tasso, and comparing
with them as Pindar with the Alexandrians; it realized Hell and Eden,
and the world of heavenly war and the temptation, to the vision of men,
with tremendous imaginative power, stamping them into the race-mind as
permanent imagery; and the literary kinship which the workmanship bears
to what is most excellent and shining in the great works of Greece, Rome
and Italy, as well as to Hebraic grandeur, helps to place the poem in
that remoter air which is an association of the mind with all art. No
other English poem has a similar brilliancy, aloofness and perfection,
as of something existing in another element, except the Adonais. In it
personal lyricism achieved the most impersonal of elegies, and mingled
the fairest dreams of changeful imaginative grief with the soul's
intellectual passion for immortality full-voiced. It is detached from
time and place; the hunger of the soul for eternity, which is its
substance, human nature can never lay off; its literary kinship is with
what is most lovely in the idyllic melody of the antique; and, owing to
its small scale and the simple unity of its mood, it gives forth the
perpetual charm of literary form in great purity. These two poems stand
alone with Shakespeare's plays, and are for epic and lyric what his work
is for drama, the height of English performance in the cultivation of
romance. Other poets must be judged to have attained excellence in
romantic art in proportion as they reveal the qualities of Shakespeare,
Milton and Shelley; for these three are the masters of romantic form,
which, being the spirit of life proceeding from within outward, is the
vital structure of English poetic genius. This internal power is also a
principle of classic art in its antique examples; but academic criticism
developed from them a hardened formalism to which romantic art is
related as the spirit of life to the death-mask of the past. Such pallor
has from time to time crossed the features of English letters in a man
or an age, and has brought a marble dignity, as to Landor, or the shadow
of an Augustan elegance, as in the era of Pope; but it has faded and
passed away under the flush of new life. Even in prose, in which
so-called classic qualities are still sought by academic taste, the
genius of English has shown a native obstinacy. The novel is so Protean
in form as to seem amorphous, but essentially repeats the drama, and
submits in its masters to Shakespearian parallelism; in substance and
manner it has been overwhelmingly of a romantic cast; and in the other
forms of prose, style, though of all varieties, has, perhaps, proved
most preservative when highly colored, individualized, and touched with
imaginative greatness, as in Browne, Taylor, Milton, Bunyan, Burke,
Carlyle, Macaulay; but the inferiority of their matter, it should be
observed, affects the endurance of the eighteenth-century prose
masters--Steele, Addison, Swift and Johnson, to name the foremost.
Commonly, it must be allowed, English, both prose and poetry,
notwithstanding its triumphs, is valued for substance and not for form,
whether this be due to a natural incapacity, or to a retardation in
development which may hereafter be overcome, or to the fact that the
richness of the substance renders the fineness of the form less eminent.
In conclusion, the thought rises of itself, will this continuity,
assimilative power, and copiousness, this original genius, this
serviceableness to civilization and the private life, this supreme
romantic art, be maintained, now that the English and their speech are
spread through the world, or is the history of the intellectual
expansion of Athens and Rome, the moral expansion of Jerusalem, to be
repeated? The saying of Shelley, "The mind in creation is a fading
coal," seems to be true of nations. Great literatures, or periods in
them, have usually marked the culmination of national power; and if they
"look before and after," as Virgil in the AEneid, they gather their
wisdom, as he too did, by a gaze reverted to the past. The paradox of
progress, in that the _laudator temporis acti_ is always found among the
best and noblest of the elders, while yet the whole world of man ever
moves on to greater knowledge, power and good, continues like the riddle
of the Sphinx; but time seems unalterably in favor of mankind through
all dark prophecies. The mystery of genius is unsolved; and the
Messianic hope that a child may be born unto the people always remains;
but the greatness of a nation dies only with that genius which is not a
form of human greatness in individuals, but is shared by all of the
blood, and constitutes them fellow-countrymen. The genius of the English
shows no sign of decay; age has followed age, each more gloriously, and
whether the period that is now closing be really an end or only the
initial movement of a vaster arc of time, corresponding to the greater
English destiny, world-wide, world-peopling, world-freeing, the arc of
the movement of democracy through the next ages,--is immaterial; so long
as the genius of the people, its piety and daring, its finding faculty
for truth, its creative shaping in art, be still integral and vital, so
long as its spiritual passion be fed from those human and divine ideas
whose abundance is not lessened, and on those heroic tasks which a world
still half discovered and partially subdued opens through the whole
range of action and of the intellectual and moral life,--so long as
these things endure, English speech must still be fruitful in great ages
of literature, as in the past these have been its fountainheads. But if
no more were to be written on the page of English, yet what is written
there, contained and handed down in famous books and made the spiritual
food of the vast multitude whose children's children shall use and read
the English tongue through coming centuries under every sky, will
constitute a moral dominion to which Virgil's line may proudly apply--
His ego nec metas rerum nec tempora pono:
Imperium sine fine dedi.
One Hundred Books
Famous in English Literature
Dan Chaucer, the first warbler, whose sweet breath
Preluded those melodious bursts that fill
The spacious times of great Elizabeth
With sounds that echo still.
TENNYSON
Whan that Apprill with his shouris sote
And the droughte of marche hath pa'd [.y] rote
And badid euery veyne in suche licour
Of whiche vertu engendrid is the flour
Whanne zepherus eke with his sote breth
Enspirid hath in euery holte and heth
The tendir croppis and the yong sonne
Hath in the ram half his cours y conne
And smale foulis make melodie
That slepyn al nyght with opyn ye
So prikith hem nature in her corage
Than longyng folk to gon on pilgremage
And palmers to seche straunge londis
To serue halowis couthe in sondry londis
And specially fro euery shiris ende
Of yngelond to Cauntirbury thy wende
The holy blisful martir for to seke
That them hath holpyn when they were seke
And fil in that seson on a day
In Suthwerk atte tabard as I lay
Redy to wende on my pilgremage
To Cauntirbury with deuout corage
That nyght was come in to that hosterye
Wel nyne & twenty in a companye
Of sondry folk be auenture y falle
In feleship as pilgrymys were they alle
That toward Cauntirbury wolden ryde
The chambris and the stablis were wyde
And wel were they esid atte beste
Reduced Leaf in original, 7 x 10 inches
O moral Gower
CHAUCER
This book is intituled confessio amantis / that is to saye in
englysshe the confessyon of the louer maad and compyled by Johan
Gower squyer borne in walys in the tyme of kyng richard the
second which book treteth how he was confessyd to Genyus preest
of venus vpon the causes of loue in his fyue wyttes and seuen
dedely synnes / as in thys sayd book al alonge appyereth / and
by cause there been comprysed therin dyuers hystoryes and fables
towchyng euery matere / I haue ordeyned a table here folowyng of
al suche hystoryes and fables where and in what book and leef
they stande in as here after foloweth
¶ Fyrst the prologue how johan gower in the xvi yere of kyng
rychard the second began to make thys book and dyrected to harry
of lancastre thenne erle of derby folio ¶ ii
Of thestate of the royames temporally the sayd yere folio ¶ iii
Of thestate of the clergye the tyme of robert gylbonensis namyng
hym self clemente thenne antipope folio ¶ iv
Of the estate of the comyn people folio ¶ v
How he treteth of the ymage that nabugodonosor sawe in his sleep
hauyng an heed of golde / a breste of syluer / a bely of brasse
/ legges of yron / and feet haffe yron & halfe erthe folio vi
Of thenterpretacion of the dreme / and how the world was fyrst
of golde / & after alwey werse & werse folio vii
¶ Thus endeth the prologue
¶ Here begynneth the book
And fyrst the auctor nameth thys book confessio amantis / that
is to say the shryfte of the louer / wheron alle thys book shal
shewe not onely the loue humayn / but also of alle lyuyng
beestys naturally folio ¶ ix
How cupydo smote Johan Gower with a fyry arowe and wounded hym
so that venus commysed to hym genyus hyr preest for to here hys
confessyon folio ¶ x
How Genyus beyng sette / the louer knelyng tofore hym prayeth
the sayd confessor to appose hym in his confessyon folio ¶ xi
The confessyon of the amant of two of the pryncipallist of his
fyue wyttes folio ¶ xi
How atheon for lokyng vpon Deane was turned in to an herte
folio ¶ xi
Of phorceus and hys thre doughters whiche had but one eye / &
how phorceus slewe them folio ¶ xii
How the serpente that bereth the charbuncle stoppeth his one ere
wyth hys tayle and that other wyth the erthe whan he is
enchaunted folio ¶ xii
How vlyxes escaped fro the marmaydys by stoppyng of hys eerys
folio ¶ xii
Here foloweth that there ben vii dedely synnes / of whome the
fyrste is
Reduced Leaf in original, 8.68 x 12.75 inches.
Flos regum Arthurus
JOHN OF EXETER
After that I had accomplysshed and fynysshed dyuers hystoryes as
wel of contemplacyon as of other hystoryal and worldly actes of
grete conquerours & prynces / And also certeyn bookes of
ensaumples and doctryne / Many noble and dyuers gentylmen of
thys royame of Englond camen and demaunded me many and oftymes /
wherfore that j haue not do made & enprynte the noble hystorye
of the saynt greal / and of the moost renomed crysten kyng /
Fyrst and chyef of the thre best crysten and worthy / kyng
Arthur / whyche ought moost to be remembred emonge vs englysshe
men tofore al other crysten kynges / For it is notoyrly knowen
thorugh the vnyuersal world / that there been ix worthy & the
best that euer were / That is to wete thre paynyms / thre jewes
and thre crysten men / As for the paynyms they were tofore the
jncarnacyon of Cryst / whiche were named / the fyrst Hector of
Troye / of whome thystorye is comen bothe in balade and in prose
/ The second Alysaunder the grete / & the thyrd Julyus Cezar
Emperour of Rome of whome thystoryes ben wel kno and had / And
as for the thre jewes whyche also were tofore thyncarnacyon of
our lord of whome the fyrst was Duc Josue whyche brought the
chyldren of Israhel in to the londe of byheste / The second
Dauyd kyng of Jherusalem / & the thyrd Judas Machabeus of these
thre the byble reherceth al theyr noble hystoryes & actes / And
sythe the sayd jncarnacyon haue ben thre noble crysten men
stalled and admytted thorugh the vnyuersal world in to the
nombre of the ix beste & worthy / of whome was fyrst the noble
Arthur / whos noble actes j purpose to wryte in thys present
book here folowyng / The second was Charlemayn or Charles the
grete / of whome thystorye is had in many places bothe in
frensshe and englysshe / and the thyrd and last was Godefray of
boloyn / of whos actes & lyf j made a book vnto thexcellent
prynce and kyng of noble memorye kyng Edward the fourth / the
sayd noble jentylmen jnstantly requyred me temprynte thystorye
of the sayd noble kyng and conquerour kyng Arthur / and of his
knyghtes wyth thystorye of the saynt greal / and of the deth and
endyng of the sayd Arthur / Affermyng that j ouzt rather
tenprynte his actes and noble feates / than of godefroye of
boloyne / or
Reduced Leaf in original, 7.87 x 11.25 inches.
So judiciously contrived that the wisest may exercise at once
their knowledge and devotion; its ceremonies few and innocent;
its language significant and perspicuous; most of the words and
phrases being taken out of the Holy Scriptures and the rest are
the expressions of the first and purest ages.
COMBER
THE
booke of the common praier
and administracion of the
Sacramentes, and
other rites and
ceremonies
of the
Churche: after the
vse of the Churche of
Englande.
LONDINI, _in officina Richardi Graftoni,
Regij impressoris_.
_Cum priuilegio ad imprimendum solum._
_Anno Domini._ M.D.XLIX.
_Mense Martij._
Reduced Leaf in original 7 x 10.5 inches.
The author of Piers Ploughman, no doubt, embodied in a poetic
dress just what millions felt. His poem as truly expressed the
popular sentiment on the subjects it discussed as did the
American Declaration of Independence the national thought and
feeling on the relations between the Colonies and Great Britain.
Its dialect, its tone and its poetic dress alike conspired to
secure to the Vision a wide circulation among the commonalty of
the realm, and by formulating--to use a favorite word of the
day--sentiments almost universally felt, though but dimly
apprehended, it brought them into distinct consciousness, and
thus prepared the English people for the reception of the seed
which the labors of Wycliffe and his converts were already
sowing among them.
MARSH
THE VISION
of Pierce Plowman, now
fyrste imprynted by Roberte
Crowley, dwellyng in Ely
tentes in Holburne.
Anno Domini.
1550.
Cum priuilegio ad imprimend[=u]
solum.
By far the most important of our historical records, in print,
during the time of Queen Elizabeth.
DIBDIN
1577.
THE
Firste volume of the
_Chronicles of England, Scotlande_,
and Irelande.
CONTEYNING,
The description and Chronicles of England, from the first
inhabiting vnto the conquest
The description and Chronicles of Scotland, from the first
originall of the Scottes nation, till the yeare of our Lorde.
1571.
The description and Chronicles of Yrelande, likewise from the
firste originall of that Nation, vntill the yeare. 1547.
_Faithfully gathered and set forth, by_
Raphaell Holinshed.
AT LONDON,
Imprinted for George Bishop.
God saue the Queene.
Reduced Leaf in original, 7.75 11.12 inches
Our historic plays are allowed to have been founded on the
heroic narratives in the Mirror for Magistrates; to that plan,
and to the boldness of Lord Buckhurst's new scenes, perhaps we
owe Shakespeare.
WALPOLE
¶_A MYRROVR FOR_
Magistrates.
Wherein maye be seen by
example of other, with howe greuous
plages vices are punished: and
howe frayle and vnstable werldly
prosperity is founde, even of
those whom Fortune seemeth
most highly
to fauour.
_Faelix quem faciunt aliena pericula cautum._
_Anno._ 1563.
¶_Imprinted at London in Fletestrete
nere to Saynct Dunstans Churche
by Thomas Marshe._
Two chieftaines who having travailed into Italie, and there
tasted the sweete and stately measures and stile of Italian
Poesie, as novices newly crept out of the schooles of Dante,
Arioste, and Petrarch, they greatly pollished our rude and
homely maner of vulgar Poesie, from that it had bene before, and
for that cause may justly be sayd the first reformers of our
English meetre and stile.
PUTTENHAM
¶_SONGES AND SONETTES
Written by the right honorable
Lord Henry Haward late
Earle of Surrey, and
others._
_Apud Richardum Tottell._
1567.
_Cumpriuilegio._
It is full of stately speeches, and well-sounding phrases,
clyming to the height of Seneca his stile, and as full of
notable moralitie, which it doth most delightfully teach, and so
obtayne the very end of Poesie.
SIDNEY
¶The Tragidie of Ferrex
and Porrex,
set forth without addition or alteration
but altogether as the same was shewed
on stage before the Queenes Maiestie,
about nine yeares past, _vz._ the
xviij. day of Ianuarie. 1561.
by the gentlemen of the
Inner Temple.
=Seen and allowed, &c.=
Imprinted at London by
Iohn Daye, dwelling ouer
Aldersgate.
These papers of his lay like dead lawrels in a churchyard; but I
have gathered the scattered branches up, and by a charme, gotten
from Apollo, made them greene againe and set them up as
epitaphes to his memory. A sinne it were to suffer these rare
monuments of wit to lye covered in dust and a shame such
conceipted comedies should be acted by none but wormes. Oblivion
shall not so trample on a sonne of the Muses; and such a sonne
as they called their darling. Our nation are in his debt for a
new English which he taught them. "Euphues and his England"
began first that language: all our ladyes were then his
scollers; and that beautie in court, which could not parley
Eupheueisme was as little regarded as shee which now there
speakes not French.
BLOUNT
EVPHVES.
THE ANATOMY
_of Wit_.
Verie pleasant for all
_Gentlemen to reade_,
and most necessary to
remember.
_Wherein are contayned the_
delightes that wit followeth in
_his youth, by the pleasantnesse of loue_,
and the happinesse he reapeth
in age, by the perfectnes
of wisedome.
_By_ Iohn Lylie, _Maister of Art_.
Corrected and augmented.
_AT LONDON_
Printed for Gabriell Cawood,
dwelling in Paules Church-yard.
The noble and vertuous gentleman most worthy of all titles both
of learning and chevalrie M. Philip Sidney.
SPENSER
THE
COVNTESSE
OF PEMBROKES
ARCADIA,
WRITTEN BY SIR PHILIPPE
SIDNEI.
LONDON
Printed for William Ponsonbie.
_Anno Domini_, 1590.
Our sage and serious poet Spenser (whom I dare be known to think
a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas).
MILTON
THE FAERIE
QVEENE.
Disposed into twelue books,
_Fashioning_
XII. Morall vertues.
VBIQUE FLORET (in printer's mark)
LONDON
Printed for William Ponsonbie.
1590.
Who is there that upon hearing the name of Lord Bacon does not
instantly recognize everything of literature the most extensive,
everything of discovery the most penetrating, everything of
observation of human life the most distinguished and refined?
BURKE
Essaies.
Religious Meditations.
Places of perswasion
and disswasion.
Seene and allowed.
LONDON
Printed for Humfrey Hooper
and are to bee solde at the
blacke Beare in Chauncery
lane. 1598.
They contain the heroic tales of the exploits of the great men
in whom the new era was inaugurated; not mythic like the Iliads
and the Eddas, but plain, broad narratives of substantial facts,
which rival legend in interest and grandeur. What the old epics
were to the royally or nobly born, this modern epic is to the
common people. We have no longer kings or princes for chief
actors to whom the heroism, like the dominion of the world, had
in time past been confined. But, as it was in the days of the
Apostles, when a few poor fishermen from an obscure lake in
Palestine assumed, under the Divine Mission, the spiritual
authority over mankind, so, in the days of our own Elizabeth,
the seamen from the banks of the Thames and the Avon, the Plym
and the Dart, self-taught and self-directed, with no impulse but
what was beating in their own royal hearts, went out across the
unknown seas, fighting, discovering, colonizing, and graved out
the channels, paving them at last with their bones, through
which the commerce and enterprise of England has flowed out over
all the world.
FROUDE
THE
PRINCIPAL NAVIGATIONS, VOIAGES, TRAFFIQVES AND DISCOUERIES
of the English Nation, made by Sea or ouer-land, to the
remote and farthest distant quarters of the Earth,
at any time within the compasse of these 1500.
yeeres: Deuided into three seuerall Volumes,
according to the positions of the
Regions, whereonto they were
directed.
This first Volume containing the woorthy Discoueries,
&c. of the English toward the North and Northeast by
Sea, as of _Lapland_, _Scriksinia_, _Corelia_, the
Baie of S. _Nicholas_, the Isles of _Colgoieue_,
_Vaigatz_, and _Noua Zembla_, toward the great
riuer _Ob_, with the mighty Empire of _Russia_,
the _Caspian_ sea, _Georgia_, _Armenia_,
_Media_, _Persia_, _Boghar_ in _Bactria_,
and diuers kingdoms of _Tartaria_:
Together with many notable monuments and testimonies
of the ancient forren trades, and of the warrelike
and other shipping of this realme of _England_
in former ages.
_Whereunto is annexed also a briefe Commentarie of
the true_ state of _Island_, and of the Northren
Seas and lands situate that way.
_And lastly, the memorable defeate of the
Spanish huge Armada, Anno_ 1588. and
the famous victorie atchieued
at the citie of _Cadiz_,
1596. are described.
_By_ RICHARD HACKLVYT _Master of_
Artes, and sometime Student of
Christ-Church in Oxford.
[Illustration]
Imprinted at London by GEORGE
BISHOP, RALPH NEWBERIE
and ROBERT BARKER.
1598.
Reduced Leaf in original, 7 x 10.87 inches.
Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific--and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise--
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
KEATS
_Mulciber in Troiam, pro Troia stabat Apollo._
HOMER
THE
WHOLE WORKS
OF
HOMER;
PRINCE OF POETTS
In his Iliads, and
Odysses.
_Translated according to the Greeke,
By
Geo: Chapman._
De Ili: et Odiss:
_Omnia ab his: et in his sunt omnia: siue beati_
_Te decor eloquij, seu rer[=u] pondera tangunt. Angel Pol:_
* * * * *
_At London printed for Nathaniell Butter.
William Hole Sculp:_
Qui Nil molitur
Inepte
ACHILLES HECTOR
Reduced Leaf in original, 7.06 x 10.93 inches.
Within that awful volume lies
The mystery of mysteries!
Happiest they of human race,
To whom God has granted grace
To read, to fear, to hope, to pray,
To lift the latch, and force the way;
And better had they ne'er been born
Who read to doubt, or read to scorn.
SCOTT
THE
HOLY
BIBLE,
Conteyning the Old Testament,
and the New:
¶_Newly translated out of_
the Originall Tongues: and with
the former Translations diligently
compared and reuised by his
Maiesties speciall Commandement,
¶_Appointed to be read in Churches._
* * * * *
¶IMPRINTED
at London by _Robert
Barker_, Printer to the
Kings most excellent
Maiestie.
* * * * *
ANNO DOM. 1611.
Reduced Leaf in original 9.37 x 13.25 inches
O rare Ben Jonson
EPITAPH
THEATRVM
GVL LOCVM TENEANT S CEN
THE
WORKES
of
_Beniamin Jonson_
--_neque, me vt miretur turba
laboro:
Contentus paucis lectoribus._
_Imprinted at
London, by
Will Stansby_
PLAVSTRVM VISORIVM
_An. D._ 1616. Guhel _Hole fecit_
Reduced Leaf in original, 5 x 7.62 inches.
Scarce any book of philology in our
land hath in so short a time passed
so many impressions.
FULLER
_THE_
ANATOMY OF
MELANCHOLY,
_WHAT IT IS_.
WITH ALL THE KINDES,
CAVSES, SYMPTOMES, PROG_NOSTICKES,
AND SEVERALL
CVRES OF IT_.
IN THREE MAINE PARTITIONS
with their seuerall SECTIONS, MEMBERS,
and SVBSECTIONS.
_PHILOSOPHICALLY, MEDICINALLY,
HISTORICALLY, OPENED
AND CVT VP._
BY
DEMOCRITVS _Iunior_.
With a Satyricall PREFACE, conducing to
_the following Discourse_.
MACROB.
Omne meum, Nihil meum.
_AT OXFORD_,
Printed by IOHN LICHFIELD and IAMES
SHORT, for HENRY CRIPPS.
_Anno Dom._ 1621.
He was not of an age, but for all time!
JONSON
M^R. WILLIAM
SHAKESPEARES
COMEDIES,
HISTORIES, &
TRAGEDIES.
Published according to the True Originall Copies.
[Illustration]
_Martin Droahout sculpsit London_
LONDON
Printed by Isaac Jaggard, and Ed. Blount. 1623.
Reduced Leaf in original 8.56 x 13.25 inches
This most tragic of all tragedies
save King Lear.
SWINBURNE
THE
TRAGEDY
OF THE DUTCHESSE
OF Malfy.
_As it was Presented priuatly, at the Black-Friers;
and publiquely at the Globe, By the_
Kings Maiesties Seruants.
The perfect and exact Coppy, with diuerse
_things Printed, that the length of the Play would_
not beare in the Presentment.
Written by _John Webster._
Hora.----_Si quid----
----Candidus Imperti si non bis vtere mecum._
* * * * *
_LONDON:_
Printed by NICHOLAS OKES, for IOHN
WATERSON, and are to be sold at the
signe of the Crowne, in _Paules_
Church-yard, 1623.
To me Massinger is one of the most
interesting as well as one of the most
delightful of the old dramatists, not so
much for his passion or power, though at
times he reaches both, as for the love
he shows for those things that are
lovely and of good report in human
nature, for his sympathy with what is
generous and high-minded and honorable
and for his equable flow of a good
every-day kind of poetry, with few
rapids or cataracts, but singularly
soothing and companionable.
LOWELL
A NEW WAY TO PAY
OLD DEBTS
A COMOEDIE
_As it hath beene often acted at the Phoenix
in Drury-Lane, by the Queenes
Maiesties seruants._
The Author.
PHILIP MASSINGER.
NOLI ALTVM SAPERE (in printer's mark)
LONDON,
Printed by _E. P._ for _Henry Seyle_, dwelling in _S.
Pauls_ Church-yard, at the signe of the
Tygers head. Anno. M. DC.
XXXIII.
Ford was of the first order of poets. He
sought for sublimity, not by parcels in
metaphors or visible images, but
directly where she has her full
residence in the heart of man; in the
actions and sufferings of the greatest
minds. There is a grandeur of the soul
above mountains, seas, and the elements.
Even in the poor perverted reason of
Giovanni and Annabella we discover
traces of that fiery particle, which in
the irregular starting from out of the
road of beaten action, discovers
something of a right line even in
obliquity, and shows hints of an
improvable greatness in the lowest
descents and degradation of our nature.
LAMB
THE
BROKEN
HEART.
A Tragedy.
_ACTED_
By the KINGS Majesties Seruants
at the priuate House in the
BLACK-FRIERS.
_Fide Honor._
[Illustration]
_LONDON:_
Printed by _I. B._ for HVGH BEESTON, and are to
be sold at his Shop, neere the _Castle_ in
_Corne-hill_. 1 6 3 3.
Next Marlow, bathed in the Thespian springs,
Had in him those brave sublunary things
That the first poets had; his raptures were
All air and fire which made his verses clear;
For that fine madness still he did retain,
Which rightly should possess a poet's brain.
DRAYTON
_The Famous_
TRAGEDY
OF
THE RICH JEW
OF _MALTA_.
AS IT WAS PLAYD
BEFORE THE KING AND
QVEENE, IN HIS MAJESTIES
Theatre at _White-Hall_, by her Majesties
Servants at the _Cock-pit_.
_Written by_ CHRISTOPHER MARLO.
[Illustration]
_LONDON_,
Printed by _I. B._ for _Nicholas Vavasour_, and are to be sold
at his Shop in the Inner-Temple, neere the
Church. 1 6 3 3.
Sir, I pray deliver this little book to
my dear brother Farrar, and tell him he
shall find in it a picture of the many
spiritual conflicts that have passed
betwixt God and my soul, before I would
subject mine to the will of Jesus, my
Master, in Whose service I have now
found perfect freedom. Desire him to
read it; and then, if he can think it
may turn to the advantage of any
dejected poor soul, let it be made
public; if not, let him burn it; for I
and it are less than the least of God's
mercies.
HERBERT
THE
TEMPLE.
SACRED POEMS
AND
PRIVATE EJACULATIONS.
By M^r. GEORGE HERBERT.
PSAL. 29.
_In his Temple doth every
man speak of his honour._
[Illustration]
CAMBRIDGE
Printed by _Thom._ _Buck_,
and _Roger Daniel_, printers
to the Universitie.
1 6 3 3.
Did his youth scatter poetry wherein
Lay Love's philosophy? Was every sin
Pictured in his sharp satires, made so foul,
That some have fear'd sin's shapes, and kept their soul
Safer by reading verse: did he give days,
Past marble monuments, to those whose praise
He would perpetuate? Did he--I fear
Envy will doubt--these at his twentieth year?
But, more matured, did his rich soul conceive
And in harmonious holy numbers weave
A crown of sacred sonnets, fit to adorn
A dying martyr's brow, or to be worn
On that blest head of Mary Magdalen,
After she wiped Christ's feet, but not till then;
Did he--fit for such penitents as she
And he to use--leave us a Litany
Which all devout men love, and doubtless shall,
As times grow better, grow more classical?
Did he write hymns, for piety and wit,
Equal to those great grave Prudentius writ?
WALTON
POEMS,
_by_ J. D.
WITH
ELEGIES
ON THE AUTHORS
DEATH.
LONDON.
Printed by _M. F._ for IOHN MARRIOT,
and are to be sold at his shop in S^t _Dunstans_
Church-yard in _Fleet-street_. 1633.
It is not on the praises of others, but
on his own writings that he is to depend
for the esteem of posterity; of which he
will not easily be deprived while
learning shall have any reverence among
men; for there is no science in which he
does not discover some skill; and scarce
any kind of knowledge, profane or
sacred, abstruse or elegant, which he
does not appear to have cultivated with
success.
JOHNSON
a coelo salus
Religio,
Medici.
_Printed for Andrew Crooke. 1642. Will Marshatt. scu._
Waller was smooth.
POPE
THE
WORKES
OF
EDMOND WALLER
Esquire,
Lately a Member of the Honourable
HOUSE of
COMMONS,
In this present Parliament.
_Imprimatur_
NA. BRENT. _Decem. 30. 1644._
LONDON,
Printed for _Thomas Walkley_.
1645.
O volume, worthy, leaf by leaf and cover,
To be with juice of cedar washed all over!
Here's words with lines, and lines with scenes consent
To raise an act to full astonishment;
Here melting numbers, words of power to move
Young men to swoon, and maids to die for love:
_Love lies a-bleeding_ here; Evadne there
Swells with brave rage, yet comely everywhere;
Here's _A Mad Lover_; there that high design
Of _King and No King_, and the rare plot thine.
So that where'er we circumvolve our eyes,
Such rich, such fresh, such sweet varieties
Ravish our spirits, that entranc'd we see,
None writes love's passion in the world like thee.
HERRICK
COMEDIES
AND
TRAGEDIES
{FRANCIS BEAVMONT}
Written by { AND } Gentlemen.
{IOHN FLETCHER }
Never printed before,
And now published by the Authours
Originall Copies.
* * * * *
_Si quid habent veri Vatum praesagia, vivam._
* * * * *
_LONDON_,
Printed for _Humphrey Robinson_, at the three _Pidgeons_, and for
_Humphrey Moseley_ at the _Princes Armes_ in _S^t Pauls
Church-yard_. 1647.
Reduced Leaf in original, 8.37 x 13.12 inches
What mighty epics have been wrecked by time
Since Herrick launched his cockle-shell of rhyme!
ALDRICH
_HESPERIDES_:
OR,
THE WORKS
BOTH
HUMANE & DIVINE
OF
ROBERT HERRICK _Esq._
* * * * *
OVID.
_Effugient avidos Carmina nostra Rogos._
* * * * *
[Illustration]
* * * * *
_LONDON_
Printed for _John Williams_, and _Francis Eglesfield_,
and are to be sold at the Crown and Marygold
in Saint _Pauls_ Church-yard. 1648.
Taylor, the Shakespeare of divines.
EMERSON
_THE
RULE AND
EXERCISES
OF HOLY
LIVING_
_By Jer. Taylor D:D._
_Non magna loquimur
sed vivimus_
_LONDON printed for R. Royston
in Ivye Lane. 1650._
_Ro: Vaughan sculp._
That is a book you should read: such
sweet religion in it, next to Woolman's,
though the subject be bait, and hooks,
and worms, and fishes.
LAMB
_The
Compleat Angler
or the
Contemplative man's
Recreation_
Being a Discourse of
FISH and FISHING,
Not unworthy the perusal of most _Anglers_.
* * * * *
Simon Peter said, _I go a_ fishing: _and they said, We
also wil go with thee_. John 21. 3.
* * * * *
_London_, Printed by _T. Maxey_ for RICH. MARRIOT, in
S. _Dunstans_ Church-yard Fleetstreet, 1653.
Yet he, consummate master, knew
When to recede and when pursue.
His noble negligences teach
What others' toils despair to reach.
He, perfect dancer, climbs the rope,
And balances your fear and hope;
If, after some distinguished leap,
He drops his pole, and seems to slip,
Straight gathering all his active strength,
He rises higher half his length.
With wonder you approve his slight,
And owe your pleasure to your fright.
PRIOR
HUDIBRAS
* * * * *
THE FIRST PART.
* * * * *
_Written in the time of the late Wars._
* * * * *
_LONDON._
Printed by _J. G._ for _Richard Marriot_, under Saint
_Dunstan_'s Church in _Fleetstreet_. 1663.
The third among the sons of light.
SHELLEY
Paradise lost.
A
POEM
Written in
TEN BOOKS
By _JOHN MILTON._
* * * * *
Licensed and Entred according
to Order.
* * * * *
_L O N D O N_
Printed, and are to be sold by _Peter Parker_
under _Creed_ Church neer _Aldgate_; And by
_Robert Boulter_ at the _Turks Head_ in _Bishopsgate-street_;
And _Matthias Walker_, under St. _Dunstons_ Church
in _Fleet-street_, 1667.
Ingenious dreamer! in whose well-told tale
Sweet fiction and sweet truth alike prevail;
Whose humorous vein, strong sense, and simple style,
May teach the gayest, make the gravest smile;
Witty and well-employed, and, like thy Lord,
Speaking in parables his slighted word:--
I name thee not, lest so despised a name
Should move a sneer at thy deserved fame.
COWPER
THE
Pilgrim's Progress
FROM
THIS WORLD,
TO
That which is to come:
Delivered under the Similitude of a
DREAM
Wherein is Discovered,
The manner of his setting out,
His Dangerous Journey; And safe
Arrival at the Desired Countrey.
* * * * *
_I have used Similitudes_, _Hos._ 12. 10.
* * * * *
By _John Bunyan._
* * * * *
Licensed and Entred according to Order.
* * * * *
L O N D O N,
Printed for _Nath. Ponder_ at the _Peacock_
in the _Poultrey_ near _Cornhil_, 1678.
Behold where Dryden's less presumptuous car
Wide o'er the fields of glory bear
Two coursers of ethereal race,
With necks in thunder clothed, and long-resounding pace.
GRAY
ABSALOM
AND
ACHITOPHEL.
* * * * *
A
POEM.
* * * * *
----_Si Propius stes
Te Capiet Magis_----
* * * * *
L O N D O N,
Printed for _J. T._ and are to be Sold by _W. Davis_ in
_Amen-Corner_, 1681.
Reduced Leaf in original, 7.75 x 12.56 inches.
Few books in the literature of
philosophy have so widely represented
the spirit of the age and country in
which they appeared, or have so
influenced opinion afterwards as Locke's
_Essay concerning Human Understanding_.
The art of education, political thought,
theology and philosophy, especially in
Britain, France and America, long bore
the stamp of the _Essay_, or of reaction
against it.
FRASER
AN
E S S A Y
CONCERNING
=Humane Understanding=.
* * * * *
In Four BOOKS.
* * * * *
_Quam bellum est velle confiteri potius nescire quod nescias,
quam ista effutientem nauseare, atque ipsum sibi
displicere!_ =Cic. de Natur. Deor.= _l._ 1.
* * * * *
_L O N D O N:_
Printed by _Eliz. Holt_, for =Thomas Basset=, at the
_George_ in _Fleetstreet_, near St. _Dunstan_'s
Church. MDCXC.
Reduced Leaf in original, 7.18 x 12.62 inches
Oh! that your brows my laurel had sustained,
Well had I been deposed if you had reigned!
The father had descended for the son;
For only you are lineal to the throne.
* * * * *
Yet I this prophesy: thou shalt be seen,
(Though with some short parenthesis between,)
High on the throne of wit; and, seated there,
Not mine (that's little) but thy laurel wear.
Thy first attempt an early promise made,
That early promise this has more than paid;
So bold, yet so judiciously you dare,
That your least praise is to be regular.
* * * * *
Already I am worn with cares and age,
And just abandoning the ungrateful stage;
Unprofitably kept at heaven's expense,
I live a rent-charge on his providence.
But you, whom every Muse and Grace adorn,
Whom I foresee to better fortune born,
Be kind to my remains; and, oh defend,
Against your judgment, your departed friend!
Let not the insulting foe my fame pursue,
But shield those laurels which descend to you:
And take for tribute what these lines express:
You merit more, but could my love do less.
DRYDEN
THE
Way of the World,
A
COMEDY.
As it is ACTED
AT THE
Theatre in _Lincoln's-Inn-Fields_,
BY
His Majesty's Servants.
* * * * *
Written by Mr. _CONGREVE_.
* * * * *
_Audire est Operae pretium, procedere recte
Qui maechis non vultis----_ Hor. Sat. 2. l. 1.
_----Metuat doti deprensa.----_ Ibid.
* * * * *
L O N D O N:
Printed for _Jacob Tonson_, within _Gray's-Inn-Gate_ next
_Gray's-Inn-Lane_. 1700.
Reduced Leaf in original, 6.5 x 8.5 inches.
For an Englishman there is no single
historical work with which it can be so
necessary for him to be well and
thoroughly acquainted as with Clarendon.
SOUTHEY
THE
HISTORY
OF THE
REBELLION and CIVIL WARS
IN
ENGLAND,
Begun in the Year 1641.
With the precedent Passages, and Actions, that contributed
thereunto, and the happy End, and Conclusion thereof by
the KING's blessed RESTORATION, and RETURN upon the
29^{th} of _May_, in the Year 1660.
Written by the Right Honourable
EDWARD Earl of CLARENDON,
Late Lord High Chancellour of _England_, Privy Counsellour
in the Reigns of King CHARLES the First and the Second.
* * * * *
[Greek: Ktema es aei.] Thucyd.
_Ne quid Falsi dicere audeat, ne quid Veri non audeat._ Cicero.
* * * * *
VOLUME THE FIRST.
* * * * *
[Illustration]
_O X F O R D_,
Printed at the THEATER, _An. Dom._ MDCCII.
Reduced Leaf in original, 11 x 17.5 inches.
It is incredible to conceive the effect his writings have had
upon the Town; how many thousand follies they have either quite
banished or given a very great check to! how much countenance
they have added to Virtue and Religion! how many people they
have rendered happy, by showing them it was their own fault if
they were not so! and lastly how entirely they have convinced
our young fops and young fellows of the value and advantages of
Learning! He has indeed rescued it out of the hands of pedants,
and fools, and discovered the true method of making it amiable
and lovely to all mankind. In the dress he gives it, it is a
most welcome guest at tea-tables and assemblies, and is relished
and caressed by the merchants on the Change. Accordingly, there
is not a Lady at Court, nor a Broker in Lombard Street, who is
not easily persuaded that Captain _Steele_ is the greatest
Scholar and Casuist of any man in England.
GAY
THE
LUCUBRATIONS
OF
Isaac Bickerstaff Esq;
* * * * *
VOL. I.
* * * * *
[Greek: ou chre pannychion heudein boulephoron andra.] Homer.
* * * * *
[Illustration]
* * * * *
_L O N D O N_,
Printed: And sold by _John Morphew_, near _Stationers-Hall_. MDCCX.
_Note_, The Bookbinder is desired to place the INDEX after
[_Tosler, N^o. 114_] which ends the _First Volume_ in Folio.
Reduced Leaf in original, 9.50 x 14.37 inches
Whoever wishes to attain an English
style, familiar but not coarse, and
elegant but not ostentatious, must give
his days and nights to the volumes of
Addison.
JOHNSON
NUMB. 1
The SPECTATOR.
* * * * *
_Non fumum ex fulgore, sed ex fumo dare lucem
Cogitat; ut speciosa dehinc miracula promat._ Hor.
* * * * *
To be Continued every Day.
* * * * *
_Thursday, March 1. 1711._
I Have observed, that a Reader seldom peruses a Book with
Pleasure 'till he knows whether the Writer of it be a black or a
fair Man, of a mild or cholerick Disposition, Married or a
Batchelor, with other Particulars of the like nature, that
conduce very much to the right Understanding of an Author. To
gratify this Curiosity, which is so natural to a Reader, I
design this Paper, and my next, as Prefatory Discourses to my
following Writings, and shall give some Account in them of the
several Persons that are engaged in this Work. As the chief
Trouble of Compiling, Digesting and Correcting will fall to my
Share, I must do my self the Justice to open the Work with my
own History.
I was born to a small Hereditary Estate, which I find, by the
Writings of the Family, was bounded by the same Hedges and
Ditches in _William_ the Conqueror's Time that it is at present,
and has been delivered down from Father to Son whole and entire,
without the Loss or Acquisition of a single Field or Meadow,
during the Space of six hundred Years. There goes a Story in the
Family, that when my Mother was gone with Child of me about
three Months, she dreamt that she was brought to Bed of a Judge:
Whether this might proceed from a Law-Suit which was then
depending in the Family, or my Father's being a Justice of the
Peace, I cannot determine; for I am not so vain as to think it
presaged any Dignity that I should arrive at in my future Life,
though that was the Interpretation which the Neighbourhood put
upon it. The Gravity of my Behaviour at my very first Appearance
in the World, and all the Time that I sucked, seemed to favour
my Mother's Dream: For, as she has often told me, I threw away
my Rattle before I was two Months old, and would not make use of
my Coral 'till they had taken away the Bells from it.
As for the rest of my Infancy, there being nothing in it
remarkable, I shall pass it over in Silence. I find that, during
my Nonage, I had the Reputation of a very sullen Youth, but was
always a Favourite of my School-Master, who used to say, _that
my Parts were solid and would wear well_. I had not been long at
the University, before I distinguished my self by a most
profound Silence: For, during the Space of eight Years,
excepting in the publick Exercises of the College, I scarce
uttered the Quantity of an hundred Words; and indeed do not
remember that I ever spoke three Sentences together in my whole
Life. Whilst I was in this Learned Body I applied my self with
so much Diligence to my Studies, that there are very few
celebrated Books, either in the Learned or the Modern Tongues,
which I am not acquainted with.
Upon the Death of my Father I was resolved to travel into
Foreign Countries, and therefore left the University, with the
Character of an odd unaccountable Fellow, that had a great deal
of Learning, if I would but show it. An insatiable Thirst after
Knowledge carried me into all the Countries of _Europe_, where
there was any thing new or strange to be seen; nay, to such a
Degree was my Curiosity raised, that having read the
Controversies of some great Men concerning the Antiquities of
_Egypt_, I made a Voyage to _Grand Cairo_, on purpose to take
the Measure of a Pyramid; and as soon as I had set my self right
in that Particular, returned to my Native Country with great
Satisfaction.
I have passed my latter Years in this City, where I am
frequently seen in most publick Places, tho' there are not above
half a dozen of my select Friends that know me; of whom my next
Paper shall give a more particular Account. There is no Place of
publick Resort, wherein I do not often make my Appearance;
sometimes I am seen thrusting my Head into a Round of
Politicians at _Will_'s, and listning with great Attention to
the Narratives that are made in those little Circular Audiences.
Sometimes I smoak a Pipe at _Child_'s; and whilst I seem
attentive to nothing but the _Post-Man_, over-hear the
Conversation of every Table in the Room. I appear on _Sunday
Nights_ at _St. James's Coffee_-House, and sometimes join the
little Committee of Politicks in the Inner-Room, as one who
comes there to hear and improve. My Face is likewise very well
known at the _Grecian_, the _Cocoa-Tree_, and in the Theaters
both of _Drury-Lane_, and the _Hay-Market_. I have been taken
for a Merchant
Reduced Leaf in original, 8.12 x 13.12 inches.
It breathes throughout a spirit of piety
and benevolence; it sets in a very
striking light the importance of the
mechanic arts, which they who know not
what it is to be without them are apt to
undervalue. It fixes in the mind a
lively idea of the horrors of solitude,
and, consequently, of the sweets of
social life, and of the blessings we
derive from conversation and mutual aid;
and it shows how by labouring with one's
own hands, one may secure independence,
and open for one's self many sources of
health and amusement. I agree,
therefore, with Rousseau, that this is
one of the best books that can be put
into the hands of children.
BEATTIE
THE
LIFE
AND
STRANGE SURPRIZING
ADVENTURES
OF
_ROBINSON CRUSOE_,
Of _YORK_, MARINER:
Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all
alone in an un-inhabited Island on the
Coast of AMERICA, near the Mouth of the
Great River of OROONOQUE;
Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck,
wherein all the Men perished but himself.
WITH
An Account how he was at last as
strangely deliver'd by PYRATES.
* * * * *
_Written by Himself._
* * * * *
_L O N D O N:_
Printed for W. TAYLOR at the _Ship_ in _Pater-Noster-Row_.
MDCCXIX.
Anima Rabelasii habitans in sicco
COLERIDGE
TRAVELS
INTO SEVERAL
Remote NATIONS
OF THE
WORLD.
* * * * *
In FOUR PARTS.
* * * * *
By _LEMUEL GULLIVER_,
First a SURGEON, and then a CAPTAIN
of several SHIPS.
* * * * *
VOL. I.
* * * * *
_L O N D O N:_
_Printed for_ BENJ. MOTTE, _at the
Middle_ Temple-Gate _in_ Fleet-street.
MDCCXXVI.
I think no English poet ever brought so
much sense into the same number of lines
with equal smoothness, ease, and
poetical beauty. Let him who doubts of
this peruse the _Essay on Man_ with
attention.
SHENSTONE
AN
ESSAY
ON
MAN
Address'd to a FRIEND.
* * * * *
PART I.
* * * * *
[Illustration]
* * * * *
_L O N D O N:_
Printed for _J. Wilford_, at the _Three Flower-de-luces_, behind
the _Chapter-house_, St. _Pauls_.
[Price One Shilling.]
_1733_
Reduced Leaf in original, 8.5 x 12.62 inches.
It was about this date, I suppose, that
I read Bishop Butler's _Analogy_; the
study of which has been to so many, as
it was to me, an era in their religious
opinions. Its inculcation of a visible
church, the oracle of truth and a
pattern of sanctity, of the duties of
external religion, and of the historical
character of Revelation, are
characteristics of this great work which
strike the reader at once; for myself,
if I may attempt to determine what I
most gained from it, it lay in two
points which I shall have an opportunity
of dwelling on in the sequel: they are
the underlying principles of a great
portion of my teaching.
NEWMAN
THE
ANALOGY
OF
RELIGION,
Natural and Revealed,
TO THE
Constitution and Course of NATURE.
To which are added
Two brief DISSERTATIONS:
I. Of PERSONAL IDENTITY.
II. Of the NATURE of VIRTUE.
BY
JOSEPH BUTLER, L L. D. Rector of
Stanhope, in the Bishoprick of Durham.
_Ejus_ (Analogiae) _haec vis est, ut id quod dubium est, ad
aliquid simile de quo non quaeritur, referat; ut incerta certis
probet._
Quint. Inst. Orat. L. I. c. vi.
L O N D O N:
Printed for JAMES, JOHN and PAUL KNAPTON, at the
Crown in Ludgate Street. MDCCXXXVI.
Reduced Leaf in original, 7.87 x 10.18 inches.
I never heard the olde song of Percy and
Duglas that I found not my heart mooved
more than with a Trumpet.
SIDNEY
RELIQUES
OF
ANCIENT ENGLISH POETRY:
CONSISTING OF
Old Heroic BALLADS, SONGS, and other
PIECES of our earlier POETS,
(Chiefly of the LYRIC kind.)
Together with some few of later Date.
VOLUME THE FIRST.
[Illustration: DURAT OPUS VATUM]
L O N D O N:
Printed for J. DODSLEY in Pall-Mall.
M DCC LXV.
From dewy pastures, uplands sweet with thyme,
A virgin breeze freshened the jaded day.
It wafted Collins' lonely vesper chime,
It breathed abroad the frugal note of Gray.
WATSON
ODES
ON SEVERAL
_Descriptive_ and _Allegoric_
SUBJECTS.
* * * * *
By WILLIAM COLLINS.
* * * * *
----[Greek: Eien
Heuresiepes, anageisthai
Prosphoros en Moisan Diphro;
Tolma de kai amphilaphes Dynamis
Espoito,---- Pindar. Olymp. Th.]
[Illustration]
_L O N D O N:_
Printed for A. MILLAR, in the _Strand_.
M.DCC.XLVII.
(Price One Shilling.)
The first book in the world for the
knowledge it displays of the human heart.
JOHNSON
CLARISSA.
OR, THE
HISTORY
OF A
YOUNG LADY:
Comprehending
_The most_ Important Concerns _of_ Private LIFE.
And particularly shewing,
The DISTRESSES that may attend the Misconduct
Both of PARENTS and CHILDREN,
In Relation to MARRIAGE.
* * * * *
_Published by the_ EDITOR _of_ PAMELA.
* * * * *
VOL. I.
* * * * *
[Illustration]
* * * * *
_L O N D O N:_
Printed for S. Richardson:
And Sold by A. MILLAR, over-against _Catharine-street_ in the _Strand_:
J. and JA. RIVINGTON, in _St. Paul's Church-yard_:
JOHN OSBORN, in _Pater-noster Row_;
And by J. LEAKE, at _Bath_.
M.DCC.XLVIII.
Upon my word I think the _oedipus
Tyrannus_, the _Alchymist_, and _Tom
Jones_ the three most perfect plots ever
planned.
COLERIDGE
THE
HISTORY
OF
_TOM JONES_,
A
FOUNDLING.
* * * * *
In SIX VOLUMES.
* * * * *
By HENRY FIELDING, Esq.
* * * * *
----_Mores hominum multorum vidit_----
* * * * *
_L O N D O N:_
Printed for A. MILLAR, over-against
_Catharine-street_ in the _Strand_.
MDCCXLIX.
Now, gentlemen, I would rather be the
author of that poem than take Quebec.
WOLFE
AN
ELEGY
WROTE IN A
Country Church Yard.
* * * * *
_LONDON:_
Printed for R. DODSLEY in _Pall-mall_;
And sold by M. COOPER in _Pater-noster-Row_. 1751.
[Price Six-pence.]
Reduced Leaf in original, 7.37 x 9.81 inches
I have devoted this book, the labour of
years, to the honour of my country, that
we may no longer yield the palm of
philology without a contest to the
nations of the Continent.
JOHNSON
A
DICTIONARY
OF THE
ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
IN WHICH
The WORDS are deduced from their ORIGINALS,
AND
ILLUSTRATED in their DIFFERENT SIGNIFICATIONS
BY
EXAMPLES from the best WRITERS.
TO WHICH ARE PREFIXED,
A HISTORY of the LANGUAGE,
AND
AN ENGLISH GRAMMAR.
BY SAMUEL JOHNSON, A. M.
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I.
Cum tabulis animum censoris sumet honesti:
Audebit quaecunque parum splendoris habebunt,
Et sine pondere erunt, et honore indigna serentur.
Verba movere loco; quamvis invita recedant,
Et versentur adhuc intra penetralia Vestae:
Obscurata diu populo bonus eruet, atque
Proferet in lucem speciosa vocabula rerum,
Quae priscis memorata Catonibus atque Cethegis,
Nunc situs informis premit et deserta vetustas. HOR.
L O N D O N,
Printed by W. STRAHAN,
For J. and P. KNAPTON; T. and T. LONGMAN; C. HITCH and L. HAWES;
A. MILLAR; and R. and J. DODSLEY.
MDCCLV.
Reduced Leaf in original, 10 x 16.18 inches.
Eripuit coelo fulmen sceptrumque tyrannis
TURGOT
Poor RICHARD improved:
* * * * *
BEING AN
ALMANACK
AND
_EPHEMERIS_
OF THE
MOTIONS of the SUN and MOON;
THE TRUE
PLACES and ASPECTS of the PLANETS;
THE
_RISING_ and _SETTING_ of the _SUN_;
AND THE
Rising, Setting _and_ Southing _of the_ Moon,
FOR THE
YEAR of our LORD 1758:
Being the Second after LEAP-YEAR.
Containing also,
The Lunations, Conjunctions, Eclipses,
Judgment of the Weather, Rising and
Setting of the Planets, Length of Days
and Nights, Fairs, Courts, Roads, &c.
Together with useful Tables,
chronological Observations, and
entertaining Remarks.
* * * * *
Fitted to the Latitude of Forty Degrees,
and a Meridian of near five Hours West
from _London_; but may, without feasible
Error, serve all the NORTHERN COLONIES.
* * * * *
By _RICHARD SAUNDERS_, Philom.
* * * * *
_PHILADELPEIA:_
Printed and Sold by B. FRANKLIN, and D. HALL.
There your son will find analytical
reasoning diffused in a pleasing and
perspicuous style. There he may imbibe,
imperceptibly, the first principles on
which our excellent laws are founded;
and there he may become acquainted with
an uncouth crabbed author, Coke upon
Lytleton, who has disappointed and
disheartened many a tyro, but who cannot
fail to please in a modern dress.
MANSFIELD
COMMENTARIES
ON THE
LAWS
OF
ENGLAND.
BOOK THE FIRST.
BY
WILLIAM BLACKSTONE, ESQ.
VINERIAN PROFESSOR OF LAW,
AND
SOLICITOR GENERAL TO HER MAJESTY.
O X F O R D,
PRINTED AT THE CLARENDON PRESS.
M. DCC. LXV.
Reduced Leaf in original, 8.37 x 13.37 inches.
I received one morning a message from
poor Goldsmith that he was in great
distress, and, as it was not in his
power to come to me, begging that I
would come to him as soon as possible. I
sent him a guinea, and promised to come
to him directly. I accordingly went as
soon as I was dressed, and found that
his landlady had arrested him for his
rent, at which he was in a violent
passion. I perceived that he had already
changed my guinea, and had got a bottle
of madeira and a glass before him. I put
the cork into the bottle, desired he
would be calm, and began to talk to him
of the means by which he might be
extricated. He then told me he had a
novel (_The Vicar of Wakefield_) ready
for the press, which he produced to me.
I looked into it, and saw its merit;
told the landlady I should soon return;
and, having gone to a bookseller, sold
it for sixty pounds. I brought Goldsmith
the money, and he discharged his rent,
not without rating his landlady in a
high tone for having used him so ill.
JOHNSON
THE
V I C A R
OF
WAKEFIELD:
A T A L E.
Supposed to be written by HIMSELF.
* * * * *
_Sperate miseri, cavete faelices._
* * * * *
VOL. I.
* * * * *
SALISBURY:
Printed by B. COLLINS,
For F. NEWBERY, in Pater-Noster-Row, London.
MDCCLXVI.
His exquisite sensibility is ever
counteracted by his perception of the
ludicrous and his ambition after the
strange.
TALFOURD
A
SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY
THROUGH
FRANCE AND ITALY.
BY
MR. YORICK.
* * * * *
VOL. I.
* * * * *
L O N D O N:
Printed for T. BECKET and P. A. DE HONDT,
in the Strand. MDCCLXVIII.
I know not indeed of any work on the
principles of free government that is to
be compared, in instruction, and
intrinsic value, to this small and
unpretending volume of _The Federalist_,
not even if we resort to Aristotle,
Cicero, Machiavel, Montesquieu, Milton,
Locke, or Burke. It is equally admirable
in the depth of its wisdom, the
comprehensiveness of its views, the
sagacity of its reflections, and the
fearlessness, patriotism, candor,
simplicity, and elegance with which its
truths are uttered and recommended.
CHANCELLOR KENT
T H E
FEDERALIST:
A COLLECTION
OF
E S S A Y S,
WRITTEN IN FAVOUR OF THE
NEW CONSTITUTION,
AS AGREED UPON BY THE FEDERAL CONVENTION,
SEPTEMBER 17, 1787.
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I.
NEW-YORK:
PRINTED AND SOLD BY J. AND A. M'LEAN,
No. 41, HANOVER-SQUARE,
M,DCC,LXXXVIII.
The novel of _Humphrey Clinker_ is, I do
think, the most laughable story that has
ever been written since the goodly art
of novel-writing began. Winifred Jenkins
and Tabitha Bramble must keep Englishmen
on the grin for ages to come; and in
their letters and the story of their
loves there is a perpetual fount of
sparkling laughter, as inexhaustible as
Bladud's well.
THACKERAY
THE
EXPEDITION
OF
HUMPHRY CLINKER.
By the AUTHOR of
RODERICK RANDOM.
* * * * *
IN THREE VOLUMES.
V O L. I.
* * * * *
----Quorsum haec tam putida tendunt,
Furcifer? ad te, inquam---- HOR.
* * * * *
L O N D O N,
Printed for W. JOHNSTON, in Ludgate-Street;
and B. COLLINS, in Salisbury.
MDCLXXI.
Adam Smith contributed more by the
publication of this single work towards
the happiness of men than has been
effected by the united abilities of all
the statesmen and legislators of whom
history has preserved an authentic
account.
BUCKLE
AN
I N Q U I R Y
INTO THE
Nature and Causes
OF THE
WEALTH of NATIONS.
By ADAM SMITH, LL. D. and F. R. S.
Formerly Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Glasgow.
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I.
* * * * *
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR W. STRAHAN; AND T. CADELL, IN THE STRAND.
MDCCLXXVI.
Reduced Leaf in original, 8.62 x 10.87 inches.
Sapping a solemn creed with solemn sneer;
The lord of irony--
BYRON
THE
HISTORY
OF THE
DECLINE AND FALL
OF THE
ROMAN EMPIRE,
By EDWARD GIBBON, Esq;
VOLUME THE FIRST.
Jam provideo animo, velut qui, proximis littori vadis inducti,
mare pedibus ingrediuntur, quicquid progredior, in vastiorem me
altitudinem, ac velut profundum invehi; et crescere pene opus,
quod prima quaeque perficiendo minui videbatur.
* * * * *
L O N D O N:
PRINTED FOR W. STRAHAN; AND T. CADELL, IN THE STRAND.
MDCCLXXVI.
Reduced Leaf in original, 8.25-10.31 inches
Whatever Sheridan has done, or chosen to
do, has been _par excellence_ always the
best of its kind. He has written the
best comedy (_School for Scandal_), the
best drama (in my mind far beyond that
St. Giles lampoon, the _Beggar's
Opera_), the best farce (the
_Critic_,--and it is only too good for a
farce), and the best address (_Monologue
on Garrick_), and, to crown all,
delivered the very best oration (the
famous Begum speech) ever conceived or
heard in this country.
BYRON
THE
_SCHOOL_
FOR
_SCANDAL._
A
COMEDY.
* * * * *
Satire has always shone among the rest,
And is the boldest way, if not the best,
To tell men freely of their foulest faults,
To laugh at their vain deeds, and vainer thoughts.
In satire, too, the wise took diff'rent ways,
To each deserving its peculiar praise.
DRYDEN.
* * * * *
_DUBLIN:_
Printed for J. EWLING.
Of all the verses that have been ever
devoted to the subject of domestic
happiness, those in his Winter Evening,
at the opening of the fourth book of the
_Task_, are perhaps the most beautiful.
CAMPBELL
THE
TASK,
A
POEM,
IN SIX BOOKS.
BY WILLIAM COWPER,
OF THE INNER TEMPLE, ESQ.
Fit surculus arbor.
ANONYM.
To which are added,
BY THE SAME AUTHOR,
AN EPISTLE TO JOSEPH HILL, Esq. TIROCINIUM, or a
REVIEW OF SCHOOLS, and the HISTORY OF JOHN GILPIN.
* * * * *
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR J. JOHNSON, N^o 72, ST. PAUL'S
CHURCH-YARD.
1785.
Through busiest street and loneliest glen
Are felt the flashes of his pen:
He rules 'mid winter snows, and when
Bees fill their hives:
Deep in the general heart of men
His power survives.
WORDSWORTH
P O E M S,
CHIEFLY IN THE
SCOTTISH DIALECT,
BY
ROBERT BURNS.
* * * * *
THE Simple Bard, unbroke by rules of Art,
He pours the wild effusions of the heart:
And if inspir'd, 'tis Nature's pow'rs Inspire;
Her's all the melting thrill, and her's the kindling fire.
ANONYMOUS.
* * * * *
KILMARNOCK:
PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON.
M,DCC,LXXXVI.
Open the book where you will, it takes
you out-of-doors. In simplicity of taste
and natural refinement he reminds you of
Walton; in tenderness toward what he
would have called the brute creation, of
Cowper. He seems to have lived before
the Fall. His volumes are the journal of
Adam in Paradise.
LOWELL
THE
NATURAL HISTORY
AND
ANTIQUITIES
OF
SELBORNE,
IN THE
COUNTY OF SOUTHAMPTON:
WITH
ENGRAVINGS, AND AN APPENDIX.
* * * * *
-- -- -- "ego Apis Matinae
"More modoque
Grata carpentis -- -- -- per laborem
Plurimum," -- -- -- -- -- HOR.
"Omnia bene describere, quae in hoc mundo, a Deo facta, aut
Naturae creatae viribus elaborata fuerunt, opus est non unius
hominis, nec unius aevi. Hinc _Faunae & Florae_ utilissimae; hine
_Monographi_ praestantissimi."
SCOPOLI ANN. HIST. NAT.
* * * * *
L O N D O N:
PRINTED BY T. BENSLEY;
FOR B. WHITE AND SON, AT HORACE'S HEAD, FLEET STREET.
M,DCC,LXXXIX,
Reduced Leaf in original, 7.43 x 9.5 inches.
He is without parallel in any age or
country, except perhaps Lord Bacon or
Cicero; and his works contain an ampler
store of political and moral wisdom than
can be found in any other writer
whatever.
MACKINTOSH
REFLECTIONS
ON THE
REVOLUTION IN FRANCE,
AND ON THE
PROCEEDINGS IN CERTAIN SOCIETIES
IN LONDON
RELATIVE TO THAT EVENT.
IN A
LETTER
INTENDED TO HAVE BEEN SENT TO A GENTLEMAN
_IN PARIS._
BY THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
_EDMUND BURKE._
* * * * *
L O N D O N:
PRINTED FOR J. DODSLEY, IN PALL-MALL.
M.DCC.XC.
The great Commoner of mankind
CONWAY
_RIGHTS OF MAN:_
BEING AN
ANSWER TO MR. BURKE'S ATTACK
ON THE
_FRENCH REVOLUTION._
BY
THOMAS PAINE,
SECRETARY FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS TO CONGRESS IN THE
AMERICAN WAR, AND
AUTHOR OF THE WORK INTITLED _COMMON SENSE_.
* * * * *
L O N D O N:
PRINTED FOR J. JOHNSON, ST PAUL'S CHURCH-YARD.
MDCCXCI.
Homer is not more decidedly the first of
heroic poets, Shakespeare is not more
decidedly the first of the dramatists,
Demosthenes is not more sensibly the
first of orators, than Boswell is the
first of biographers.
MACAULAY
THE
LIFE
OF
SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.
COMPREHENDING
AN ACCOUNT OF HIS STUDIES
AND NUMEROUS WORKS,
IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER;
A SERIES OF HIS EPISTOLARY CORRESPONDENCE
AND CONVERSATIONS WITH MANY EMINENT PERSONS;
AND
VARIOUS ORIGINAL PIECES OF HIS COMPOSITION,
NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED.
THE WHOLE EXHIBITING A VIEW OF LITERATURE AND LITERARY MEN
IN GREAT-BRITAIN, FOR NEAR HALF A CENTURY,
DURING WHICH HE FLOURISHED.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
BY JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ.
----_Quo fit ut_ OMNIS
_Votiva pateat veluti descripta tabella_
VITA SENIS.---- HORAT.
* * * * *
VOLUME THE FIRST.
* * * * *
_L O N D O N:_
PRINTED BY HENRY BALDWIN,
FOR CHARLES DILLY, IN THE POULTRY.
M DCC XCI.
Reduced Leaf in original, 8.18 x 10.68 inches.
He laid us as we lay at birth
On the cool flowery lap of earth;
Smiles broke from us and we had ease,
The hills were round us, and the breeze
Went o'er the sun-lit fields again;
Our foreheads felt the wind and rain.
Our youth return'd; for there was shed
On spirits that had long been dead,
Spirits dried up and closely furl'd,
The freshness of the early world.
ARNOLD
LYRICAL BALLADS,
WITH
_A FEW OTHER POEMS_.
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR J. & A. ARCH, GRACECHURCH-STREET.
1798.
The history was hailed with delight as
the most witty and original production
from any American pen. The first foreign
critic was Scott, who read it aloud in
his family till their sides were sore
with laughing.
WARNER
A HISTORY
OF
NEW YORK,
FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE WORLD TO THE
END OF THE DUTCH DYNASTY.
CONTAINING
Among many Surprising and Curious Matters, the Unutterable
Ponderings of WALTER THE DOUBTER, the Disastrous Projects of
WILLIAM THE TESTY, and the Chivalric Achievments of PETER THE
HEADSTRONG, the three Dutch Governors of NEW AMSTERDAM; being
the only Authentic History of the Times that ever hath been, or
ever will be Published.
* * * * *
BY DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER.
* * * * *
=De waarheid die in duister lag,
Die komt met klaarheid aan den dag.=
* * * * *
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY INSKEEP & BRADFORD, NEW YORK;
BRADFORD & INSKEEP, PHILADELPHIA; WM. M'ILHENNEY,
BOSTON; COALE & THOMAS, BALTIMORE;
AND MORFORD, WILLINGTON, & CO. CHARLESTON.
* * * * *
1809.
The Pilgrim of Eternity whose fame
Over his living head like heaven is bent.
SHELLEY
=Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.=
ROMAUNT.
BY
LORD BYRON.
* * * * *
L'univers est une espece de livre, dont on n'a lu que la
premiere page quand on n'a vu que son pays. J'en ai feuillete un
assez grand nombre, que j'ai trouve egalement mauvaises. Cet
examen ne m'a point ete infructueux. Je haissais ma patrie.
Toutes les impertinences des peuples divers, parmi lesquels j'ai
vecu, m'ont reconcilie avec elle. Quand je n'aurais tire d'autre
benefice de mes voyages que celui-la, je n'en regretterais ni
les frais, ni les fatigues.
LE COSMOPOLITE.
* * * * *
_LONDON:_
PRINTED FOR JOHN MURRAY, 32, FLEET-STREET;
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD, EDINBURGH; AND JOHN CUMMING, DUBLIN.
_By Thomas Davison, White-Friars._
1812.
Reduced Leaf in original, 7.93 x 10.18 inches.
I read again, and for the third time,
Miss Austen's very finely written novel
of _Pride and Prejudice_. That young
lady had a talent for describing the
involvements, feelings, and characters
of ordinary life, which is to me the
most wonderful I have ever met with. The
big bow-wow I can do myself like any one
going; but the exquisite touch, which
renders commonplace things and
characters interesting from the truth of
the description and the sentiment, is
denied me. What a pity so gifted a
creature died so early!
SCOTT
PRIDE
AND
PREJUDICE:
A NOVEL.
_IN THREE VOLUMES._
* * * * *
BY THE
AUTHOR OF "SENSE AND SENSIBILITY."
* * * * *
VOL. I.
* * * * *
=London:=
PRINTED FOR T. EGERTON,
MILITARY LIBRARY, WHITEHALL.
1813.
A subtle-souled psychologist
SHELLEY
CHRISTABEL:
* * * * *
KUBLA KHAN,
A VISION;
* * * * *
THE PAINS OF SLEEP.
* * * * *
BY
S. T. COLERIDGE, ESQ.
* * * * *
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE-STREET,
BY WILLIAM BULMER AND CO. CLEVELAND-ROW,
ST. JAMES'S.
1816.
O great and gallant Scott,
True gentleman, heart, blood, and bone,
I would it had been my lot
To have seen thee, and heard thee, and known.
TENNYSON
IVANHOE;
A ROMANCE.
BY "THE AUTHOR OF WAVERLEY," &c.
* * * * *
Now fitted the halter, now traversed the cart,
And often took leave,--but seem'd loth to depart!
PRIOR.
* * * * *
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
* * * * *
EDINBURGH:
PRINTED FOR ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE AND CO. EDINBURGH.
AND HURST, ROBINSON, AND CO. 90, CHEAPSIDE, LONDON.
1820.
He is made one with Nature: there is heard
His voice in all her music, from the moan
Of thunder to the song of night's sweet bird;
He is a presence to be felt and known
In darkness and in light, from herb and stone,
Spreading itself where'er that Power may move
Which has withdrawn his being to its own;
Which wields the world with never-wearied love,
Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above.
SHELLEY
LAMIA,
ISABELLA,
THE EVE OF ST. AGNES,
AND
OTHER POEMS.
* * * * *
BY JOHN KEATS,
AUTHOR OF ENDYMION.
* * * * *
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR TAYLOR AND HESSEY,
FLEET-STREET.
1820.
Cor cordium
EPITAPH
ADONAIS
* * * * *
AN ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF JOHN KEATS,
AUTHOR OF ENDYMION, HYPERION ETC.
BY
PERCY. B. SHELLEY
[Greek: Aster prin men elampes eni zooisin heoos.
Nun de thanon, lampeis hesperos en phthimenois.]
PLATO.
PISA
WITH THE TYPES OF DIDOT
MDCCCXXI.
Reduced Leaf in original, 7.43 x 10.06 inches.
And the more we walk around his image,
and the closer we look, the more nearly
we arrive at this conclusion, that the
_Elia_ on our shelves is all but the
same being as the pleasant Charles who
was so loved by his friends, who
ransomed from the stalls, to use old
Richard of Bury's phrase, his Thomas
Browne and the "dear silly old angel"
Fuller, and who stammered out such
quaint jests and puns--"Saint Charles,"
as Thackeray once called him, while
looking at one of his half-mad letters,
and remembering his devotion to that
quite mad sister.
FITZGERALD
ELIA.
ESSAYS WHICH HAVE APPEARED UNDER THAT SIGNATURE
IN THE
LONDON MAGAZINE.
* * * * *
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR TAYLOR AND HESSEY,
FLEET-STREET.
1823.
The most confiding of diarists, the most
harmless of turncoats, the most
wondering of _quidnuncs_, the fondest
and most penitential of faithless
husbands, the most admiring, yet
grieving, of the beholders of the ladies
of Charles II, the Sancho Panza of the
most insipid of Quixotes, James II, who
did bestow on him (in naval matters) the
government of a certain "island," which,
to say the truth, he administered to the
surprise and edification of all who
bantered him. Many official patriots
have, doubtless, existed since his time,
and thousands, nay millions of
respectable men of all sorts gone to
their long account, more or less grave
in public, and frail to their
consciences; but when shall we meet with
such another as he was?
HUNT
MEMOIRS
OF
SAMUEL PEPYS, ESQ. F.R.S.
SECRETARY TO THE ADMIRALTY
IN THE REIGNS OF CHARLES II. AND JAMES II.
COMPRISING
H I S D I A R Y
FROM 1659 TO 1669,
DECIPHERED BY THE REV. JOHN SMITH, A. B. OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE,
CAMBRIDGE, FROM THE ORIGINAL SHORT-HAND MS. IN THE
PEPYSIAN LIBRARY, AND A SELECTION FROM HIS
P R I V A T E C O R R E S P O N D E N C E.
[Illustration]
EDITED BY
RICHARD, LORD BRAYBROOKE.
* * * * *
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
* * * * *
LONDON:
HENRY COLBURN, NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
MDCCCXXV.
Reduced Leaf in original, 9.25 x 11.87 inches.
While the love of country continues to
prevail, his memory will exist in the
hearts of the people.
WEBSTER
THE LAST
OF
THE MOHICANS;
A NARRATIVE OF
1757.
BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE PIONEERS."
* * * * *
"Mislike me not, for my complexion,
The shadowed livery of the burnished sun."
* * * * *
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
* * * * *
PHILADELPHIA:
H. C. CAREY & I. LEA--CHESNUT-STREET.
* * * * *
1826.
And through the trumpet of a child of Rome
Rang the pure music of the flutes of Greece.
SWINBURNE
PERICLES AND ASPASIA
BY
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR, ESQ.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON
SAUNDERS AND OTLEY, CONDUIT STREET.
1836.
Thankfully I take my share of love and
kindness which this generous and gentle
and charitable soul has contributed to
the world. I take and enjoy my share and
say a benediction for the meal.
THACKERAY
THE
PICKWICK PAPERS.
BY
CHARLES DICKENS.
[Illustration: PHIZ. feat.]
LONDON
CHAPMAN AND HALL 186 STRAND
MDCCCXXXVII.
Carlyle alone with his wide humanity
has, since Coleridge, kept to us the
promises of England. His provokes rather
than informs. He blows down narrow
walls, and struggles, in a lurid light,
like the Jotuns, to throw the old woman
Time; in his work there is too much of
the anvil and the forge, not enough
hay-making under the sun. He makes us
act rather than think; he does not say,
know thyself, which is impossible, but
know thy work. He has no pillars of
Hercules, no clear goal, but an endless
Atlantis horizon. He exaggerates. Yes:
but he makes the hour great, the future
bright, the reverence and admiration
strong: while mere precise fact is a
coil of lead.
THOREAU
SARTOR RESARTUS.
IN THREE BOOKS.
* * * * *
=Reprinted for Friends from Fraser's Magazine.=
* * * * *
_Mein Vermaechtniss, wie herrlich weit und breit!_
_Die Zeit ist mein Vermaechtniss, mein Acker ist die Zeit._
* * * * *
LONDON:
JAMES FRASER, 215 REGENT STREET.
* * * * *
M.DCCC.XXXIV.
It was good to meet him in the
wood-paths with that pure intellectual
gleam diffused about his presence, like
the garment of a shining one; and he so
quiet, so simple, so without pretension,
encountering each man as if expecting to
receive more than he could impart.
HAWTHORNE
NATURE.
* * * * *
"Nature is but an image or imitation of
wisdom, the last thing of the soul;
nature being a thing which doth only do,
but not know."
PLOTINUS.
* * * * *
BOSTON:
JAMES MUNROE AND COMPANY.
M DCCC XXXVI.
The result of all his labors of
research, thought and composition was a
history possessing the unity, variety
and interest of a magnificent poem.
WHIPPLE
HISTORY
OF THE
CONQUEST OF PERU,
WITH A PRELIMINARY VIEW
OF THE
CIVILIZATION OF THE INCAS.
* * * * *
BY
WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT,
CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE FRENCH INSTITUTE; OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY
OF HISTORY AT MADRID, ETC.
* * * * *
"Congestae cumulantur opes, orbisque rapinas
Accipit."
CLAUDIAN, In Ruf., lib. i., v. 194.
"So color de religion
Van a buscar plata y oro
Del encubierto tesoro."
LOPE DE VEGA, El Nuevo Mundo, Jorn. 1.
* * * * *
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOLUME I.
* * * * *
NEW YORK:
HARPER AND BROTHERS, 82 CLIFF STREET.
M DCCC XLVII.
When all is said, Poe remains a master
of fantastic and melancholy sound. Some
foolish old legend tells of a musician
who surpassed all his rivals. His
strains were unearthly sad, and ravished
the ears of those who listened with a
strange melancholy. Yet his viol had but
a single string, and the framework was
fashioned out of a dead woman's
breast-bone. Poe's verse--the parallel
is much in his own taste--resembles that
player's minstrelsy.
LANG
THE RAVEN
AND
OTHER POEMS
BY
EDGAR A. POE.
* * * * *
NEW YORK:
WILEY AND PUTNAM, 161 BROADWAY.
1845.
Strew with laurel the grave
Of the early-dying! Alas,
Early she goes on the path
To the silent country, and leaves
Half her laurels unwon,
Dying too soon!--yet green
Laurels she had, and a course
Short, but redoubled by fame.
ARNOLD
JANE EYRE.
=An Autobiography.=
EDITED BY
CURRER BELL.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
SMITH, ELDER, AND CO., CORNHILL.
1847.
The poem already is a little classic,
and will remain one, just as surely as
_The Vicar of Wakefield_, _The Deserted
Village_, or any other sweet and pious
idyl of our English tongue.
STEDMAN
EVANGELINE,
A
TALE OF ACADIE.
BY
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.
* * * * *
BOSTON:
WILLIAM D. TICKNOR & COMPANY.
1847.
The most exquisite poetry hitherto
written by a woman.
STEDMAN
SONNETS.
BY
E. B. B.
READING:
[NOT FOR PUBLICATION.]
1847.
What racy talks of Yankee-land he had!
Up-country girl, up-country farmer-lad;
The regnant clergy of the time of old
In wig and gown:--tales not to be retold.
CLOUGH
_MELIBOEUS-HIPPONAX._
* * * * *
THE
=Biglow Papers=,
EDITED,
WITH AN INTRODUCTION, NOTES, GLOSSARY,
AND COPIOUS INDEX,
BY
HOMER WILBUR, A. M.,
PASTOR OF THIS FIRST CHURCH IN JAALAM, AND (PROSPECTIVE) MEMBER
OF MANY LITERARY, LEARNED AND SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES,
(_for which see page v._)
The ploughman's whistle, or the trivial flute,
Finds more respect than great Apollo's lute.
_Quarles's Emblems_, B. II. E. 8.
Margaritas, munde porcine, calcasti: en, siliquas accipe.
_Jac. Car. Fil. ad Pub. Leg._ Sec.1.
CAMBRIDGE:
PUBLISHED BY GEORGE NICHOLS.
1848.
There is a man in our own days whose
words are not framed to tickle delicate
ears; who, to my thinking, comes before
the great ones of society much as the
son of Imlah came before the throned
Kings of Judah and Israel; and who
speaks truth as deep, with a power as
prophet-like and as vital--a mien as
dauntless and as daring. Is the satirist
of _Vanity Fair_ admired in high
places?--They say he is like Fielding;
they talk of his wit, humour, comic
powers. He resembles Fielding as an
eagle does a vulture: Fielding could
stoop on carrion, but Thackeray never
does. His wit is bright, his humour
attractive, but both bear the same
relation to his serious genius that the
mere lambent sheet-lightning, playing
under the edge of the summer cloud, does
to the electric death-spark hid in its
womb.
BRONTE
VANITY FAIR
=A Novel without a Hero.=
_BY_
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY.
_LONDON_
BRADBURY & EVANS, BOUVERIE STREET,
_1848_
The cleverest and most
fascinating of narrators.
FREEMAN
THE
HISTORY OF ENGLAND
FROM
THE ACCESSION OF JAMES II.
BY
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.
VOLUME I.
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR
LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS,
PATERNOSTER-ROW.
1849.
Shakespeare and Milton--what third blazoned name
Shall lips of after-ages link to these?
His who, beside the wild encircling seas,
Was England's voice, her voice with one acclaim,
For threescore years; whose word of praise was fame,
Whose scorn gave pause to man's iniquities.
What strain was his in that Crimean war?
A bugle call in battle, a low breath,
Plaintive and sweet above the fields of death!
So year by year the music rolled afar,
From Euxine wastes to flowery Kandahar,
Bearing the laurel or the cypress wreath.
Others shall have their little space of time,
Their proper niche and bust, then fade away
Into the darkness, poets of a day;
But thou, O builder of enduring rhyme,
Thou shalt not pass! Thy fame in every clime
On earth shall live where Saxon speech has sway.
ALDRICH
IN MEMORIAM.
LONDON.
EDWARD MOXON, DOVER STREET.
1850.
New England's poet, soul reserved and deep,
November nature with a name of May.
LOWELL
THE
SCARLET LETTER,
A ROMANCE.
BY
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
BOSTON:
TICKNOR, REED, AND FIELDS
M DCCC L.
Works of imagination written with an aim
to immediate impression are commonly
ephemeral; but the creative faculty of
Mrs. Stowe, like that of Cervantes in
_Don Quixote_ and of Fielding in _Joseph
Andrews_, overpowered the narrow
specialty of her design, and expanded a
local and temporary theme with the
cosmopolitanism of genius.
LOWELL
UNCLE TOM'S CABIN;
OR,
LIFE AMONG THE LOWLY.
BY
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.
[Illustration]
VOL. I.
BOSTON:
JOHN P. JEWETT & COMPANY.
CLEVELAND, OHIO:
JEWETT, PROCTOR & WORTHINGTON.
1852.
A strange, unexpected and, I believe,
most true and excellent _sermon_ in
Stones--as well as the best piece of
school-mastery in architectonics.
CARLYLE
THE
=Stones of Venice.=
VOLUME THE FIRST.
=The Foundations.=
BY JOHN RUSKIN,
AUTHOR OF "THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE," "MODERN PAINTERS,"
ETC. ETC.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS DRAWN BY THE AUTHOR.
LONDON:
SMITH, ELDER, AND CO., 65. CORNHILL.
1851.
Reduced Leaf in orignal 7 x 10 inches.
There is delight in singing, tho' none hear
Besides the singer; and there is delight
In praising, tho' the praiser sit alone
And see the prais'd far off him, far above.
Shakespeare is not our poet, but the world's;
Therefore on him no speech! and brief for thee,
Browning! Since Chaucer was alive and hale,
No man hath walkt along our roads with step
So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue
So varied in discovery. But warmer climes
Give brighter plumage, stronger wing: the breeze
Of Alpine hights thou playest with, borne on
Beyond Sorrento and Amalfi, where
The Siren waits thee, singing song for song.
LANDOR
MEN AND WOMEN.
BY
ROBERT BROWNING.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY.
1855.
Far from making his book a mere register
of events, he has penetrated deep below
the surface and explored the causes of
these events. He has carefully studied
the physiognomy of the times and given
finished portraits of the great men who
conducted the march of the revolution.
PRESCOTT
THE RISE
OF THE
DUTCH REPUBLIC.
=A History.=
BY JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL I.
NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS,
329 & 331 PEARL STREET.
1856.
The sphere which she has made specially
her own is that quiet English country
life which she knew in early youth. She
has done for it what Scott did for the
Scotch peasantry, or Fielding for the
eighteenth century Englishman, or
Thackeray for the higher social stratum
of his time.
STEPHEN
ADAM BEDE
BY
GEORGE ELIOT
AUTHOR OF
"SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE"
"So that ye may have
Clear images before your gladden'd eyes
Of nature's unambitious underwood
And flowers that prosper in the shade. And when
I speak of such among the flock as swerved
Or fell, those only shall be singled out
Upon whose lapse, or error, something more
Than brotherly forgiveness may attend."
WORDSWORTH.
IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL. I.
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MDCCCLIX
_The Right of Translation is reserved._
The most potent instrument for the
extension of the realm of natural
knowledge which has come into men's
hands since the publication of Newton's
_Principia_ is Darwin's _Origin of
Species_.
HUXLEY
ON
THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
BY MEANS OF NATURAL SELECTION,
OR THE
PRESERVATION OF FAVOURED RACES IN THE STRUGGLE
FOR LIFE.
BY CHARLES DARWIN, M.A.,
FELLOW OF THE ROYAL, GEOLOGICAL, LINNAEAN, ETC., SOCIETIES;
AUTHOR OF 'JOURNAL OF RESEARCHES DURING H.M.S. BEAGLE'S VOYAGE
ROUND THE WORLD.'
LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
1859.
_The right of Translation is reserved._
A planet equal to the sun
Which cast it, that large infidel
Your Omar.
TENNYSON
RUBAIYAT
OF
OMAR KHAYYAM,
THE ASTRONOMER-POET OF PERSIA.
=Translated into English Verse.=
* * * * *
LONDON:
BERNARD QUARITCH,
CASTLE STREET, LEICESTER SQUARE.
1859.
I know of no writings which combine, as
Cardinal Newman's do, so penetrating an
insight into the realities of the human
world around us in all its details, with
so unwavering an inwardness of standard
in estimating and judging that world; so
steady a knowledge of the true vanity of
human life with so steady a love for
that which is not vanity or vexation of
spirit.
HUTTON
APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA:
BEING
=A Reply to a Pamphlet=
ENTITLED
"WHAT, THEN, DOES DR. NEWMAN MEAN?"
"Commit thy way to the Lord, and trust in Him, and He will do it.
And He will bring forth thy justice as the light, and thy judgment
as the noon-day."
BY JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, D.D.
LONDON:
LONGMAN, GREEN, LONGMAN, ROBERTS, AND GREEN.
1864.
In his prose writings there was
discernible an intellectual _hauteur_
which contrasted with the uneasiness and
moral incertitude of his versified
moods, and which implied that a
dogmatist stood erect under the shifting
sensitiveness of the poet. A
dogmatist--for Mr. Arnold is not merely
a critic who interprets the minds of
other men through his sensitiveness and
his sympathies; he delivers with
authority the conclusions of his
intellect; he formulates ideas.
DOWDEN
ESSAYS IN CRITICISM.
BY
MATTHEW ARNOLD,
PROFESSOR OF POETRY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.
=London and Cambridge:=
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1865.
The most faithful picture of our
northern winter that has yet been put
into poetry.
BURROUGHS
SNOW-BOUND.
A WINTER IDYL.
BY
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.
BOSTON:
TICKNOR AND FIELDS.
1866.
Transcriber Notes:
Passages in italics are indicated by _underscores_.
Passages in bold are indicated by =equal signs=.
Small caps were replaced with ALL CAPS.
OE ligatures are indicated by "oe".
"o" with a macron are indicated by "[=o]".
"u" with a macron are indicated by "[=u]".
A single superscripted letter is represented by that single letter
preceded by a caret.
More than one superscripted letters are represented by the letters
enclosed by curly brackets.
Throughout the document there were many instances where there was no
hyphens where one would expect hyphens to be.
The text below images is an attempt to capture what was written in the
images. In some cases, this was difficult because the nature of the
alphabet has changed dramatically since the book was printed, and
because some characters are somewhat illegible.
In the text below images, text within printer marks are identified by
"(in printer's mark)". Such text is often illegible, but the best
efforts are made to read that text.
Errors in punctuation and inconsistent hyphenation were not corrected.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of One Hundred Books Famous in English
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