CHAPTER VIII.
Child's Library
The idea of a Child's Library is to a great extent modern, and it is not altogether clear that it is a good one, except in the case of those children who have no books of their own. It is far better that each child should have his own good books, which he can read over and over again, thus thoroughly mastering their contents.
It is a rather wide-spread notion that there is some sort of virtue in reading for reading's sake, although really a reading boy may be an idle boy. When a book is read, it should be well thought over before another is begun, for reading without thought generates no ideas.
One advantage of a Child's Library should be that the reader is necessarily forced to be careful, so as to return the books uninjured. This is a very important point, for children should be taught from their earliest years to treat books well, and not to destroy them as they often do. We might go farther than this and say that children should be taught at school how to handle a book. It is really astonishing to see how few persons (not necessarily children) among those who have not grown up among books know how to handle them. It is positive torture to a man who loves books to see the way they are ordinarily treated. Of course it is not necessary to mention the crimes of wetting the fingers to turn over the leaves, or turning down pages to mark the place; but those who ought to know better will turn a book over on its face at the place where they have left off reading, or will turn over pages so carelessly that they give a crease to each which will never come out.
For a healthy education it is probably best that a child should have the run of a library for adults (always provided that dangerous books are carefully excluded). A boy is much more likely to enjoy and find benefit from the books he selects himself than from those selected for him.
The circumstances of the child should be considered in the selection of books; thus it is scarcely fair when children are working hard at school all day that they should be made to read so-called instructive books in the evening. They have earned the right to relaxation and should be allowed good novels. To some boys books of Travels and History are more acceptable than novels, but all children require some Fiction, and, save in a few exceptional cases, their imaginations require to be cultivated.
It will soon be seen whether children have healthy or unhealthy tastes. If healthy, they are best left to themselves; if unhealthy, they must be directed.
It is easy for the seniors to neglect the children they have under them, and it is easy to direct them overmuch, but it is difficult to watch and yet let the children go their own way. We are apt, in arranging for others, to be too instructive; nothing is less acceptable to children or less likely to do them good than to be preached at. Moral reflections in books are usually skipped by children, and unless somewhat out of the common, probably by grown-up persons as well. Instruction should grow naturally out of the theme itself, and form an integral part of it, so that high aims and noble thoughts may naturally present themselves to the readers.
One of the chapters in the United States Libraries' Report is on "School and Asylum Libraries" (pp. 38-59), in which we are informed that New York was the pioneer in founding school libraries. "In 1827 Governor De Witt Clinton, in his message to the legislature, recommended their formation; but it was not till 1835 that the friends of free schools saw their hopes realized in the passage of a law which permitted the voters in any school district to levy a tax of $20 to begin a library, and a tax of $10 each succeeding year to provide for its increase."
Another chapter in the same Report is on "Public Libraries and the Young" (pp. 412-418), in which Mr. Wm. J. Fletcher advocates the use of the library as an addition to the school course. He writes, "It only remains now to say that, as we have before intimated, the public library should be viewed as an adjunct of the public school system, and to suggest that in one or two ways the school may work together with the library in directing the reading of the young. There is the matter of themes for the writing of compositions; by selecting subjects on which information can be had at the library, the teacher can send the pupil to the library as a student, and readily put him in communication with, and excite his interest in, classes of books to which he has been a stranger and indifferent."
A very interesting book on this subject is entitled "Libraries and Schools. Papers selected by Samuel S. Green. New York (F. Leypoldt), 1883." It contains the following subjects: "The Public Library and the Public Schools;" "The Relation of the Public Library to the Public Schools"; "Libraries as Educational Institutions"; "The Public Library as an Auxiliary to the Public Schools"; "The Relation of Libraries to the School System"; and "A Plan of Systematic Training in Reading at School."
"Books for the Young, a Guide for Parents and Children. Compiled by C. M. Hewins. New York (F. Leypoldt), 1882," is an extremely useful little book. It contains a valuable list of books arranged in classes. Certain marks are used to indicate the character of the books, thus the letter (c) indicates that the book is especially suitable for children under ten, (b) that it is especially suitable for boys, and (g) that it is especially suitable for girls.
Prefixed are eight sensible rules as to how to teach the right use of books.
Perkins's "Best Reading" contains a good list of books for children (pp. 299-303).
The children's books of the present day are so beautifully produced that the elders are naturally induced to exclaim, "We never had such books as these," but probably we enjoyed our books as well as our children do theirs. What a thrill of pleasure the middle-aged man feels when a book which amused his childhood comes in his way: this, however, is seldom, for time has laid his decaying hand upon them—
"All, all are gone, the old familiar faces."
The children for whom Miss Kate Greenaway and Mr. Caldecott draw and Mrs. Gatty and Mrs. Ewing wrote are indeed fortunate, but we must not forget that Charles and Mary Lamb wrote delightful books for the young, that Miss Edgeworth's stories are ever fresh, and that one of the most charming children's stories ever written is Mrs. Sherwood's Little Woodman.
A short list of a Child's Library is quoted in the Library Journal (vol. viii. p. 57) from the Woman's Journal. The family for whom it was chosen consisted of children from three to twelve, the two eldest being girls. The books are mostly American, and but little known in this country—
Snow-bound. Illustrated. Whittier.
Life of Longfellow. Kennedy.
A Summer in the Azores. Baker.
Among the Isles of Shoals. Celia Thaxter.
The boys of '76. Coffin.
The boys of '61. Coffin.
Story of our Country. Higginson.
Sir Walter Raleigh. Towle.
Child's History of England. Dickens.
Tales from Shakespear. Lamb.
Tales from Homer. Church.
The Wonder-book. Illustrated. Hawthorne.
Young folks' book of poetry. Campbell.
Poetry for childhood. Eliot.
Bits of talk about home matters. H.H.
The Seven Little Sisters. Andrews.
Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates. Dodge.
Room for one more. Mary T. Higginson.
King Arthur for boys. Lanier.
Doings of the Bodley family. Scudder.
Mother-play and Nursery-rhymes.
Children's Robinson Crusoe.
The four-footed lovers.
Mammy Tittleback and her family. H.H.
The Little Prudy books. Six volumes.
The editor of the Library Journal remarks on the list, "Guest's Lectures on English History is better than Dickens's, and the 'Prudy' children are so mischievous, so full of young Americanisms, and so far from being 'wells of English undefiled,' that they are not always good companions for boys and girls. I have known a child's English spoiled by reading the Prudy books."
Some of the old-fashioned children's books have been reprinted, and these will generally be found very acceptable to healthy-minded children, but some of the old books are not easily met with. No Child's Library should be without a good collection of Fairy Tales, a careful selection of the Arabian Nights, or Robinson Crusoe. Gulliver's Travels is very unsuited for children, although often treated as a child's book. Berquin's Children's Friend, Edgeworth's Parent's Assistant and the Aikins's Evenings at Home, will surely still amuse children, although some may think their teaching too didactic. It is only by practical experience that we can tell what children will like. Sandford and Merton is, I believe, usually considered as hopelessly out of date, but I have found young hearers follow my reading of it with the greatest interest. The Pilgrim's Progress will always have as great a fascination for the young as it must have for their elders; but there is much preaching in it which must be skipped, or the attention of the hearers will flag.
CHAPTER IX.
One Hundred Books
In the Fourth Chapter of this Volume two lists of selected books are given, viz. The Comtist's Library, and a list of one hundred good novels. Since that chapter was written and printed, much public attention has been drawn to this branch of our subject by the publication of Sir John Lubbock's list of books which he recommended to the members of the Working Men's College, when he lectured at that place on "Books." The comments by eminent men, which have appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette, have also attracted attention, and it seems desirable that some note on this list should appear in these pages.
The list issued by the Pall Mall Gazette is as follows:
Non-Christian Moralists
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations.
Epictetus, Encheiridion.
Confucius, Analects.
Aristotle, Ethics.
Mahomet, Koran.
Theology and Devotion
Apostolic Fathers, Wake's Collection.
St. Augustine, Confessions.
Thomas à Kempis, Imitation
Pascal, Pensées.
Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus.
Butler, Analogy.
Jeremy Taylor, Holy Living and Holy Dying.
Keble, Christian Year.
Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress.
Classics
Aristotle, Politics.
Plato, Phædo and Republic.
Æsop, Fables.
Demosthenes, De Coronâ.
Lucretius.
Plutarch.
Horace.
Cicero, De Officiis, De Amicitiâ, and De Senectute.
Epic Poetry
Homer, Iliad and Odyssey.
Hesiod.
Virgil.
Niebelungenlied.
Malory, Morte d'Arthur.
Eastern Poetry
Mahabharata and Ramayana (epitomised by Talboys Wheeler).
Firdausi, Shah-nameh (translated by Atkinson).
She-king (Chinese Odes).
Greek Dramatists
Æschylus, Prometheus, The House of Atreus, Trilogy, or Persæ.
Sophocles, Œdipus, Trilogy.
Euripides, Medea.
Aristophanes, The Knights.
History
Herodotus.
Thucydides.
Xenophon, Anabasis.
Tacitus, Germania.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall.
Voltaire, Charles XII. or Louis XIV.
Hume, England.
Grote, Greece.
Philosophy
Bacon, Novum Organum.
Mill, Logic and Political Economy.
Darwin, Origin of Species.
Smith, Wealth of Nations (selection).
Berkeley, Human Knowledge.
Descartes, Discourse sur la Méthode.
Locke, Conduct of the Understanding.
Lewes, History of Philosophy.
Travels
Cook, Voyages.
Darwin, Naturalist in the Beagle.
Poetry and General Literature
Shakspeare.
Milton.
Dante.
Spenser.
Scott.
Wordsworth.
Pope.
Southey.
Longfellow.
Goldsmith, Vicar of Wakefield.
Swift, Gulliver's Travels.
Defoe, Robinson Crusoe.
The Arabian Nights.
Don Quixote.
Boswell, Johnson.
Burke, Select Works.
Essayists—Addison, Hume, Montaigne, Macaulay, Emerson.
Molière.
Sheridan.
Carlyle, Past and Present and French Revolution.
Goethe, Faust and Wilhelm Meister.
Marivaux, La Vie de Marianne.
Modern Fiction
Selections from—Thackeray, Dickens, George Eliot, Kingsley, Scott, Bulwer-Lytton.
It must be borne in mind by the reader that this list, although the one sent round for criticism by the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, is not really Sir John Lubbock's. This will be found on p. 240. Sir John Lubbock's address was not given in full, and the list drawn up by the Pall Mall, from the reports in the daily papers, contained in fact only about 85 books.
It seems necessary to allude particularly to this imperfect list, because it is the only one upon which the critics were asked to give an opinion, and their criticisms are peculiarly interesting, as they give us an important insight into the tastes and opinions of our teachers. In itself it is almost impossible to make a list that will be practically useful, because tastes and needs differ so widely, that a course of reading suitable for one man may be quite unsuitable for another. It is also very doubtful whether a conscientious passage through a "cut-and-dried" list of books will feed the mind as a more original selection by each reader himself would do. It is probably best to start the student well on his way and then leave him to pursue it according to his own tastes. Each book will help him to another, and consultation with some of the many manuals of English literature will guide him towards a good choice. This is in effect what Mr. Bond, Principal Librarian of the British Museum, says in his reply, to the circular of the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette. He writes "The result of several persons putting down the titles of books they considered 'best reading' would be an interesting but very imperfect bibliography of as many sections of literature;" and, again, "The beginner should be advised to read histories of the literature of his own and other countries—as Hallam's 'Introduction to the Literature of Europe,' Joseph Warton's 'History of English Poetry,' Craik's 'History of English Literature,' Paine's History, and others of the same class. These would give him a survey of the field, and would quicken his taste for what was naturally most congenial to him."
There probably is no better course of reading than that which will naturally occur to one who makes an honest attempt to master our own noble literature. This is sufficient for the lifetime of most men without incursions into foreign literature. All cultivated persons will wish to become acquainted with the masterpieces of other nations, but this diversion will not be advisable if it takes the reader away from the study of the masterpieces of his own literature.
Turning to the comments on the Pall Mall Gazette's list, we may note one or two of the most important criticisms. The Prince of Wales very justly suggested that Dryden should not be omitted from such a list. Mr. Chamberlain asked whether the Bible was excluded by accident or design, and Mr. Irving suggested that the Bible and Shakespeare form together a very comprehensive library.
Mr. Ruskin's reply is particularly interesting, for he adds but little, contenting himself with the work of destruction. He writes, "Putting my pen lightly through the needless—and blottesquely through the rubbish and poison of Sir John's list—I leave enough for a life's liberal reading—and choice for any true worker's loyal reading. I have added one quite vital and essential book—Livy (the two first books), and three plays of Aristophanes (Clouds, Birds, and Plutus). Of travels, I read myself all old ones I can get hold of; of modern, Humboldt is the central model. Forbes (James Forbes in Alps) is essential to the modern Swiss tourist—of sense." Mr. Ruskin puts the word all to Plato, everything to Carlyle, and every word to Scott. Pindar's name he adds in the list of the classics, and after Bacon's name he writes "chiefly the New Atlantis."
The work of destruction is marked by the striking out of all the Non-Christian Moralists, of all the Theology and Devotion, with the exception of Jeremy Taylor and the Pilgrim's Progress. The Nibelungenlied and Malory's Morte d'Arthur (which, by the way, is in prose) go out, as do Sophocles and Euripides among the Greek Dramatists. The Knights is struck out to make way for the three plays of Aristophanes mentioned above. Gibbon, Voltaire, Hume, and Grote all go, as do all the philosophers but Bacon. Cook's Voyages and Darwin's Naturalist in the Beagle share a similar fate. Southey, Longfellow, Swift, Hume, Macaulay, and Emerson, Goethe and Marivaux, all are so unfortunate as to have Mr. Ruskin's pen driven through their names. Among the novelists Dickens and Scott only are left. The names of Thackeray, George Eliot, Kingsley, and Bulwer-Lytton are all erased.
Mr. Ruskin sent a second letter full of wisdom till he came to his reasons for striking out Grote's "History of Greece," "Confessions of St. Augustine," John Stuart Mill, Charles Kingsley, Darwin, Gibbon, and Voltaire. With these reasons it is to be hoped that few readers will agree.
Mr. Swinburne makes a new list of his own which is very characteristic. No. 3 consists of "Selections from the Bible: comprising Job, the Psalms, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Solomon, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Joel; the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke, the Gospel and the First Epistle of St. John and Epistle of St. James." No. 12 is Villon, and Nos. 45 to 49 consist of the plays of Ford, Dekker, Tourneur, Marston, and Middleton; names very dear to the lover of our old Drama, but I venture to think names somewhat inappropriate in a list of books for a reader who does not make the drama a speciality. Lamb's Selections would be sufficient for most readers.
Mr. William Morris supplies a full list with explanations, which are of considerable interest as coming from that distinguished poet.
Archdeacon Farrar gives, perhaps, the best test for a favourite author, that is, the selection of his works in the event of all others being destroyed. He writes, "But if all the books in the world were in a blaze, the first twelve which I should snatch out of the flames would be the Bible, Imitatio Christi, Homer, Æschylus, Thucydides, Tacitus, Virgil, Marcus Aurelius, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth. Of living authors I would save first the works of Tennyson, Browning and Ruskin."
Another excellent test is that set up by travellers and soldiers. A book must be good when one of either of these classes decides to place it among his restricted baggage. Mr. H.M. Stanley writes, "You ask me what books I carried with me to take across Africa. I carried a great many—three loads, or about 180 lbs. weight; but as my men lessened in numbers, stricken by famine, fighting and sickness, they were one by one reluctantly thrown away, until finally, when less than 300 miles from the Atlantic, I possessed only the Bible, Shakespeare, Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, Norie's Navigation, and Nautical Almanac for 1877. Poor Shakspeare was afterwards burned by demand of the foolish people of Zinga. At Bonea, Carlyle and Norie and Nautical Almanac were pitched away, and I had only the old Bible left." He then proceeds to give a list of books which he allowed himself when "setting out with a tidy battalion of men."
Lord Wolseley writes, "During the mutiny and China war I carried a Testament, two volumes of Shakespeare that contained his best plays, and since then, when in the field, I have always carried: Book of Common Prayer, Thomas à Kempis, Soldier's Pocket Book.... The book that I like reading at odd moments is 'The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.'" He then adds, for any distant expedition, a few books of History (Creasy's "Decisive Battles," Plutarch's "Lives," Voltaire's "Charles XII.," "Cæsar," by Froude, and Hume's "England"). His Fiction is confined to Macaulay's "History of England" and the "Essays."
Mr. Quaritch remarks that "Sir John's 'working man' is an ideal creature. I have known many working men, but none of them could have suggested such a feast as he has prepared for them." He adds, "In my younger days I had no books whatever beyond my school books. Arrived in London in 1842, I joined a literary institution, and read all their historical works. To read fiction I had no time. A friend of mine read novels all night long, and was one morning found dead in his bed." If Mr. Quaritch intends this as a warning, he should present the fact for the consideration of those readers who swell the numbers of novels in the statistics of the Free Libraries.
Looking at the Pall Mall Gazette's list, it naturally occurs to us that it would be a great error for an Englishman to arrange his reading so that he excluded Chaucer while he included Confucius. Among the names of modern novelists it is strange that Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë should have been omitted. In Sir John Lubbock's own list it will be seen that the names of Chaucer and Miss Austen occur. Among Essayists one would like to have seen at least the names of Charles Lamb, De Quincey, and Landor, and many will regret to find such delightful writers as Walton and Thomas Fuller omitted. We ought, however, to be grateful to Sir John Lubbock for raising a valuable discussion which is likely to draw the attention of many readers to books which might otherwise have been most unjustly neglected by them.69
The following is Sir John Lubbock's list. It will be seen that several of the books, whose absence is remarked on, do really form part of the list, and that the objections of the critics are so far met.
The Bible.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations.
Epictetus.
Confucius, Analects.
Le Bouddha et sa Religion (St.-Hilaire).
Aristotle, Ethics.
Mahomet, Koran (parts of).
Apostolic Fathers, Wake's collection.
St. Augustine, Confessions.
Thomas à Kempis, Imitation.
Pascal, Pensées.
Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus.
Comte, Cat. of Positive Philosophy (Congreve).
Butler, Analogy.
Jeremy Taylor, Holy Living and Holy Dying.
Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress.
Keble, Christian Year.
Aristotle, Politics.
Plato's Dialogues—at any rate the Phædo and Republic.
Demosthenes, De Coronâ.
Lucretius.
Plutarch.
Horace.
Cicero, De Officiis, De Amicitiâ, De Senectute.
Homer, Iliad and Odyssey.
Hesiod.
Virgil.
Niebelungenlied.
Malory, Morte d'Arthur.
Maha-Bharata, Ramayana, epitomized by Talboys
Wheeler in the first two vols. of his History of India.
Firdusi, Shah-nameh. Translated by Atkinson.
She-king (Chinese Odes).
Æschylus, Prometheus, House of Atreus, Trilogy, or Persæ.
Sophocles, Œdipus, Trilogy.
Euripides, Medea,
Aristophanes, The Knights.
Herodotus.
Xenophon, Anabasis.
Thucydides.
Tacitus, Germania.
Livy.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall.
Hume, England.
Grote, Greece.
Carlyle, French Revolution.
Green, Short History of England.
Bacon, Novum Organum.
Mill, Logic and Political Economy.
Darwin, Origin of Species.
Smith, Wealth of Nations (part of).
Berkeley, Human Knowledge.
Descartes, Discours sur la Méthode.
Locke, Conduct of the Understanding.
Lewes, History of Philosophy.
Cook, Voyages.
Humboldt, Travels.
Darwin, Naturalist in the Beagle.
Shakespeare.
Milton, Paradise Lost, and the shorter poems.
Dante, Divina Commedia.
Spenser, Faerie Queen.
Dryden's Poems.
Chaucer, Morris's (or, if expurgated, Clarke's or Mrs. Haweis's) edition.
Gray.
Burns.
Scott's Poems.
Wordsworth, Mr. Arnold's selection.
Heine.
Pope.
Southey.
Goldsmith, Vicar of Wakefield.
Swift, Gulliver's Travels.
Defoe, Robinson Crusoe.
The Arabian Nights.
Cervantes, Don Quixote.
Boswell, Johnson.
Burke, Select Works (Payne).
Essayists:—Bacon, Addison, Hume, Montaigne, Macaulay, Emerson.
Molière.
Sheridan.
Voltaire, Zadig.
Carlyle, Past and Present.
Goethe, Faust, Wilhelm Meister.
White, Natural History of Selborne.
Smiles, Self Help.
Miss Austen, either Emma or Pride and Prejudice.
Thackeray, Vanity Fair and Pendennis.
Dickens, Pickwick and David Copperfield.
George Eliot, Adam Bede.
Kingsley, Westward Ho!
Bulwer-Lytton, Last Days of Pompeii.
Scott's Novels.