Comfort Found in Good Old Books

by George Hamlin Fitch

A Dublin edition of 1735 contained many corrections and it also included a "Letter from Gulliver to his cousin Simpson," a device of Swift to mystify the public and make it believe in the genuineness of Gulliver.

The best life of Swift is in two volumes, by Henry Craik (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1894). The best short life is by Leslie Stephen in the English Men of Letters Series.

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Index

• Addison, Joseph, suggestion of the Spectator given by Defoe, [126].
• Agamemnon, The, FitzGerald's version, [79].
• Æneid, The, features of great Latin epic, [33], [34].
• Æschylus, [36].
• Alcott, A. Bronson, introduced Emerson to German philosophy, [30].
• Analects of Confucius, [39].
• Antigone, the greatest of Sophocles' tragedies, [36].
• Antony and Cleopatra, [24].
• Apollyon, his famous fight with Christian, [115].
• Arabian Nights, [39]-[43].
• Arnold, Matthew, his imitation of Greek lyrics, [32];
  • his fondness for The Imitation of Christ, [71].
• Areopagitica, The, one of Milton's finest prose works, [102].

• Baconian Theory, its absurdity, [14], [15].
• Balzac, Le Pere Goriot, a study of a father's unselfish sacrifices, [23].
• Bible, The, [xx]: [9]-[13].
  • Comfort in time of sorrow, [11], [12].
  • Culture from study of it, [12], [13].
  • Greatness compared with other books, [10].
  • Men who formed their style on it, [12], [13].
  • Soul of the Bible, The, a fine condensation of the Scriptures, [11].
  • Zophar's words to Job, [12].
• Boccaccio's Tales, [39].
• Bohn's Translations, [37].
• Booth, Edwin, his magnificent interpretation of Hamlet, [24], [25].[160]
• Boswell, James, his Life of Dr. Johnson, [117].
• Brobdingnag, the land of giants in Swift's Gulliver's Travels, [131].
• Brunhilde, one of the heroines of The Nibelungenlied, [45].
• Bryant, William Cullen, his metrical version of the Iliad and the Odyssey, [34].
• Bunyan, John, [100], [109].
  • Biography, [109]-[111].
  • Comparison between Bunyan and Milton, [108], [109].
  • Holy War, The, a good allegory, [112].
  • Life in Bedford jail, [111].
  • Saturated with the Bible, [114].
• Burton, Sir Richard, his unexpurgated edition of the Arabian Nights, [42].
• Byron, Lord, epigram on Cervantes, [57].

• Calderon, FitzGerald's version of several plays of, [79].
• Captain Singleton, one of Defoe's romances dealing with African adventure, [126], [127].
• Carlyle, Thomas, Essay on the Nibelungenlied, [46].
  • Essay on Boswell's Johnson, [127].
  • Tribute to Dante, [89], [90].
• Cervantes, his adventurous career, [58]-[60].
  • Life at Rome, [59].
  • Wounded at Lepanto, [59].
  • Wrote Don Quixote at age of fifty-eight, [60].
• Chesterfield, Lord, Dr. Johnson dedicated his Dictionary to him, [120].
  • Johnson's bitter satirical letter to him as patron, [121], [122].
• Childe Harold, [57].
• Cicero, eloquence in his letters, [37].
• Cleopatra, pictured by Shakespeare as the greatest siren of history, [24].
• Colonel Jack, an entertaining picaresque romance by Defoe, [127].
• Comedies of Shakespeare, [19].
• Comte, Auguste, made the Imitation part of his Positivist ritual, [72].[161]
• Confessions of St. Augustine, The, [48]-[55].
  • Influence on Churchmen, [49].
  • Reveals marvelous faith in God, [53].
• Corson, Professor Hiram, a great interpreter of Shakespeare, [25].
• Cranch, Christopher P., author of one of the best metrical versions of the Æneid, [34].
• Culture, not confined to college graduates, [xix].
  • An old sea captain's self culture, [5], [6].

• Dante, biography, [86], [87].
  • His Divine Comedy one of the world's great books, [39].
  • Love of Beatrice his chief inspiration, [86].
• Defoe, Daniel, biography, [125], [126].
  • Robinson Crusoe his greatest work, [128].
  • Colonel Jack, Moll Flanders, Roxana, Captain Singleton, Memoirs of a Cavalier, Duncan Campbell and Journal of the Plague Year, his other best known works, [126], [127].
  • One of the greatest of pamphleteers, [126].
  • Secrecy about life puzzle to biographers, [126].
  • Style formed on study of the Bible, [13].
• De Morgan, William, took up authorship at sixty, [61].
• De Quincey, Thomas, his distinction between the literature of power and the literature of knowledge, [x].
  • His style full of Biblical phrases, [13].
• Derby, Earl of, blank verse translation of the Iliad, [34].
• Dickens, Charles, novelist who gained fame in youth, [61].
• Divine Comedy, influence on great poets and prose writers, [89], [90].
  • Inspiration of Mazzini and New Italy, [84].
  • Mirrors the Italy of Dante's day, [88].
  • One of the greatest of the world's poems, [83], [84].[162]
  • Tributes by Carlyle, Lowell and Longfellow, [89], [90], [91].
• Don John of Austria, leader under whom Cervantes fought against Moslems, [59].
• Don Quixote, character of hero, [58].
  • Greatest book in Spanish literature, [57].
  • Mirrors Spanish life and character, [62].
  • Written in prison, [61].
• Dryden, John, his verse, [106].
• Duncan Campbell, a story of second sight, by Defoe, [126].
• Dumas, Alexandre, the elder, his remarkable literary development, [17].

• Eliot, Dr. Charles W., his "five-foot shelf of books," [xix].
• Eliot, George, her tribute to Thomas à Kempis, [72].
• Elizabethan Age, its richness in great writers, [17].
• Emerson, Ralph Waldo, Essays mosaic of quotations, [30].
  • How he wrote his essays, [66].
  • Influenced by Oriental poets, [30].
  • Recommends translations of classic and modern foreign authors, [85].
• Epictetus, the Greek stoic, [37].
• Empedocles on Etna, one of Matthew Arnold's finest poems, [32].
• Euripides, [36].