The World's Best Books : A Key to the Treasures of Literature

by Frank Parsons

Definitions and Divisions.—Literature is life pulsing through life upon life; but only when the middle life imparts new beauty to the first is literature produced in any true and proper sense. The last life is that of the reader; the middle one that of the author; the first that of the person or age he pictures. Literature is the past pouring itself into the present. Every great man consumes and digests his own times. Shakspeare gives us the England of the 16th century, with the added qualities of beauty, ideality, and order. When we read Gibbon's "Rome," it is really the life of all those turbulent times of which he writes that is pouring upon us through the channels of genius. Dante paints with his own sublime skill the portraits of Italy in the 14th century, of his own rich, inner life, and of the universal human soul in one composite masterpiece of art. In one of Munchausen's stories, a bugler on the stage-top in St. Petersburg was surprised to find that the bugle stopped in the middle of the song. Afterward, in Italy, sweet music was heard, and upon investigation it was found that a part of the song had been frozen in the instrument in Russia, and thawed in the warmer air of Italy. So the music of river and breeze, of battle and banquet, was frozen in the verse of Homer nearly three thousand years ago, and is ready at any time, under the heat of our earnest study, to pour its harmony into our lives.

It is the fact that beauty is added by the author which distinguishes Literature from the pictures of life that are given to us by newspaper reporters, tables of statistics, etc. Literature is not merely life,—it is life crystallized in art. This is the first great line dividing the Literary from the Non-Literary. The first class is again divided into Poetry and Prose. In the first the form is measured, and the substance imagery and imagination. In the latter the form is unmeasured, and the substance direct. Imagery is the heart of poetry, and rhythm its body. The thought must be expressed not in words merely, but in words that convey other thoughts through which the first shines. The inner life is pictured in the language of external Nature, and Nature is painted in the colors of the heart. The poet must dip his brush in that eternal paint-pot from which the forests and fields, the mountains, the sky, and the stars were painted. He must throw human life out upon the world, and draw the world into the stream of his own thought. Sometimes we find the substance of the poetic in the dress of prose, as in Emerson's and in Ingersoll's lectures, and then we have the prose poem; and sometimes we find the form of poetry with only the direct expression, which is the substance of prose, or perhaps without even the substance of literary prose, as in parts of Wordsworth, Pope, Longfellow, Homer, Tennyson, and even sometimes in Shakspeare; see, for example, Tennyson's "Dirge."

Tests for the Choice of Books.—In deciding which of those glorious ships that sail the ages, bringing their precious freight of genius to every time and people, we shall invite into our ports, we must consider the nature of the crew, the beauty, strength, and size of the vessel, the depth of our harbor, the character of the cargo, and our own wants. In estimating the value of a book, we have to note (1) the kind of life that forms its material; (2) the qualities of the author,—that is, of the life through which the stream comes to us, and whose spirit is caught by the current, as the breezes that come through the garden bear with them the perfume of flowers that they touch; (3) the form of the book, its music, simplicity, size, and artistic shape; (4) its merits, compared with the rest of the books in its own sphere of thought; (5) its fame; (6) our abilities; and (7) our needs. There result several tests of the claims of any book upon our attention.

I. What effect will it have upon character? Will it make me more careful, earnest, sincere, placid, sympathetic, gay, enthusiastic, loving, generous, pure, and brave by exercising these emotions in me, and more abhorrent of evil by showing me its loathsomeness; or more sorrowful, fretful, cruel, envious, vindictive, cowardly, and false, less reverent of right and more attracted by evil, by picturing good as coming from contemptible sources, and evil as clothed with beauty? Is the author such a man as I would wish to be the companion of my heart, or such as I must study to avoid?

II. What effect will the book produce upon the mind? Will it exercise and strengthen my fancy, imagination, memory, invention, originality, insight, breadth, common-sense, and philosophic power? Will it make me bright, witty, reasonable, and tolerant? Will it give me the quality of intellectual beauty? Will it give me a deeper knowledge of human life, of Nature, and of my business, or open the doorways of any great temple of science where I am as yet a stranger? Will it help to build a standard of taste in literature for the guidance of myself and others? Will it give me a knowledge of what other people are thinking and feeling, thus opening the avenues of communication between my life and theirs?

III. What will be the effect on my skills and accomplishments? Will it store my mind full of beautiful thoughts and images that will make my conversation a delight and profit to my friends? Will it teach me how to write with power, give me the art of thinking clearly and expressing my thought with force and attractiveness? Will it supply a knowledge of the best means of attaining any other desired art or accomplishment?

IV. Is the book simple enough for me? Is it within my grasp? If not, I must wait till I have come upon a level with it.

V. Will the book impart a pleasure in the very reading? This test alone is not reliable; for till our taste is formed, the trouble may not be in it but in ourselves.

VI. Has it been superseded by a later book, or has its truth passed into the every-day life of the race? If so, I do not need to read it. Other things equal, the authors nearest to us in time and space have the greatest claims on our attention. Especially is this true in science, in which each succeeding great book sucks the life out of all its predecessors. In poetry there is a principle that operates in the opposite direction; for what comes last is often but an imitation, that lacks the fire and force of the original. Nature is best painted, not from books, but from her own sweet face.

VII. What is the relation of the book to the completeness of my development? Will it fill a gap in the walls of my building? Other things equal, I had better read about something I know nothing of than about something I am familiar with; for the aim is to get a picture of the universe in my brain, and a full development of my whole nature. It is a good plan to read everything of something and something of everything. A too general reader seems vague and hazy, as if he were fed on fog; and a too special reader is narrow and hard, as if fed on needles.