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).