The novel, in its best form, I regard as one of the most powerful engines of civilization ever invented.
Sir John Herschel.
Novels are sweets. All people with healthy literary appetites love them,—almost all women; a vast number of clever, hard-headed men, judges, bishops, chancellors, mathematicians, are notorious novel-readers, as well as young boys and sweet girls, and their kind, tender mothers.
W. M. Thackeray.
Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe. “‘Robinson Crusoe’ contains (not for boys, but for men) more religion, more philosophy, more psychology, more political economy, more anthropology, than are found in many elaborate treatises on these special subjects.”—F. Harrison.
Don Quixote de la Mancha, by Cervantes. “The work of Cervantes is the greatest in the world after Homer’s Iliad, speaking of it, I mean, as a work of entertainment.”—Dr. Johnson.
Gulliver’s Travels, by Dean Swift. “Not so indispensable, but yet the having him is much to be rejoiced in.”—R. Chambers.
The Vicar of Wakefield, by Goldsmith. “The blotting out of the ‘Vicar of Wakefield,’ from most minds, would be more grievous than to know that the island of Borneo had sunk in the sea.”—Ibid.
The Waverley Novels. If not all, at least the following: Ivanhoe; The Talisman; Kenilworth; The Monastery; The Abbot; Old Mortality; The Antiquary; Guy Mannering; The Bride of Lammermoor; The Heart of Midlothian.
Cooper’s Leather-Stocking Tales.
Dickens’s Novels. Not all, but the following: David Copperfield; Dombey and Son; Nicholas Nickleby; Old Curiosity Shop; Oliver Twist; and The Pickwick Papers.
Thackeray’s Novels. Vanity Fair; Pendennis; The Newcomes; The Virginians; Henry Esmond.
George Eliot’s Novels. Adam Bede; The Mill on the Floss; Romola; Middlemarch; Daniel Deronda.
Corinne, by Madame de Staël.
Telemachus, by Fénelon. (Hawkesworth’s translation.)
Tom Jones, by Fielding. “We read his books as we drink a pure, wholesome, and rough wine, which cheers and fortifies us, and which wants nothing but bouquet.”—H. A. Taine.
Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, by Goethe. (Carlyle’s translation.)
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Novels. The Scarlet Letter; The Marble Faun; The Blithedale Romance; The House of Seven Gables.
Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo.
Hypatia and Alton Locke, by Charles Kingsley.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Mrs. Stowe. “We have seen an American woman write a novel of which a million copies were sold in all languages, and which had one merit, of speaking to the universal heart, and was read with equal interest to three audiences, namely, in the parlor, in the kitchen, and in the nursery of every house.”—Emerson.
Innocents Abroad, by Mark Twain.
Bulwer-Lytton’s Novels. The Caxtons; My Novel; Zanoni; The Last of the Barons; Harold; The Last Days of Pompeii.
Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë.
John Halifax, Gentleman, by Mrs. Craik.
This list might be readily extended; but I forbear, resolved rather to omit some meritorious works than to include any that are unworthy of the best companionship.
I close this chapter with Leigh Hunt’s pleasant word-picture descriptive of his own library: “Sitting last winter among my books, and walled round with all the comfort and protection which they and my fireside could afford me,—to wit, a table of high-piled books at my back, my writing-desk on one side of me, some shelves on the other, and the feeling of the warm fire at my feet,—I began to consider how I loved the authors of those books; how I loved them too, not only for the imaginative pleasures they afforded me, but for their making me love the very books themselves, and delight to be in contact with them. I looked sideways at my Spenser, my Theocritus, and my Arabian Nights; then above them at my Italian Poets; then behind me at my Dryden and Pope, my Romances, and my Boccaccio; then on my left side at my Chaucer, who lay on my writing-desk; and thought how natural it was in Charles Lamb to give a kiss to an old folio, as I once saw him do to Chapman’s Homer.... I entrench myself in my books, equally against sorrow and the weather. If the wind comes through a passage, I look about to see how I can fence it off by a better disposition of my movables; if a melancholy thought is importunate, I give another glance at my Spenser. When I speak of being in contact with my books, I mean it literally. I like to be able to lean my head against them.... The very perusal of the backs is a ‘discipline of humanity.’ There Mr. Southey takes his place again with an old Radical friend; there Jeremy Collier is at peace with Dryden; there the lion, Martin Luther, lies down with the Quaker lamb, Sewell; there Guzman d’Alfarache thinks himself fit company for Sir Charles Grandison, and has his claims admitted.... Nothing, while I live and think, can deprive me of my value for such treasures. I can help the appreciation of them while I last, and love them till I die; and perhaps I may chance, some quiet day, to lay my over-beating temples on a book, and so have the death I most envy.”
CHAPTER V.
What Books Shall Young Folks Read?
HE greatest problem presented to the consideration of parents and teachers now-a-days is how properly to regulate and direct the reading of the children. There is no scarcity of reading-matter. The poorest child may have free access to books and papers, more than he can read. The publication of periodicals and cheap books especially designed to meet the tastes of young people has developed into an enterprise of vast proportions. Every day, millions of pages of reading matter designed for children are printed and scattered broadcast over the land. But unlimited opportunities often prove to be a damage and a detriment; and over-abundance, rather than scarcity, is to be deplored. As a general rule, the books read by young people are not such as lead to studious habits, or induce correct ideas of right living. They are intended simply to amuse; there are no elements of strength in them, leading up to a noble manhood. I doubt if in the future it can be said of any great statesman or scholar that his tastes had been formed, and his energies directed and sustained, through the influence of his early reading; but rather that he had attained success, and whatever of true nobility there is in him, in spite of such influence.