The Book-lover: A Guide to the Best Reading

by James Baldwin

SCHEME VI.
For the Study of Didactic Poetry.
LITERATURE.	REFERENCES.
Dryden’s Religio Laici; andThe Hind and the Panther. Study selected passages fromPope’s Essay on Criticism,and Essay on Man. Young’s Night Thoughts. Johnson’s Vanity of HumanWishes. Akenside’s Pleasures of theImagination. Warton’s Pleasures of Melancholy. Rogers’ Pleasures of Memory. Campbell’s Pleasures ofHope. Grahame’s The Sabbath. Study selected passages fromWordsworth’s Excursion. Select and study some of thebest-known shorter didacticpoems in the language.	Refer to— Hazlitt’s English Poets;Lowell’s Among My Books(essay on Dryden); Macaulay’sEssay on Dryden; andTaine’s English Literature. Johnson’s Lives of the Poets;Stephen’s Hours in a Library;De Quincey’s Literatureof the Eighteenth Century. Macaulay’s Essay on SamuelJohnson; Boswell’s Life ofDr. Johnson; Carlyle’s Essayon Boswell’s Life ofJohnson; Stephen’s Johnson,in “English Men of Letters.” Whipple’s Essay on Wordsworth,in “Literature and Life.” Shairp’s Studies in Poetryand Philosophy; Hazlitt’sSpirit of the Age; CharlesLamb’s Essay on Wordsworth’sExcursion.

SCHEME VII.
For the Study of Lyric Poetry.
LITERATURE.	PARALLEL STUDIES.
I.
The Early Ballads.
Ballads of Robin Hood. Ballads of the Scottish Border. Modern Ballads.	Read histories and stories ofthe mediæval times. Refer to Percy’s Reliques;Aytoun’s Scottish Ballads; Scott’s Minstrelsy of the ScottishBorder.
II.
Songs of Patriotism.
Read and study the best-knownpatriotic poems in thelanguage.	Study the historical events,or other circumstances whichled to the production of thesepoems.
III.
Battle Songs.
The battle scenes in Scott’spoems. Burns: “Scots whahae wi’ Wallace bled.” Macaulay’sBattle of Ivry, Naseby,Horatius at the Bridge.Tennyson’s Charge of theLight Brigade. Drayton’sBattle of Agincourt.	Study the historical eventswhich gave rise to these poems. Write essays on subjects suggestedby these studies.
IV.
Religions Songs and Hymns.
George Herbert’s Temple.Read selections from Crashawand Vaughan. StudyMilton’s Hymn on the Nativity, and selections fromKeble’s Christian Year.Read Pope’s UniversalPrayer, and The DyingChristian; also selectionsfrom Moore’s Sacred Songs,Byron’s Hebrew Melodies,and Milman’s Hymns forChurch Service.	For specimens and extractsof lyric poetry of every class,consult Ward’s English Poets;Appleton’s Library of BritishPoets; The Family Library ofBritish Poets; Emerson’s Parnassus;Chambers’ Cyclopædia ofEnglish Literature;Bryant’s Library of Poetryand Song; and Piatt’s AmericanPoetry and Art.
V.
Love Lyrics.
The Songs of the Troubadours.Wyatt’s Poems.Marlowe’s Passionate Shepherd.Raleigh’s TheNymph’s Reply. RobertHerrick’s Poems. Selectionsfrom the poems of Sir JohnSuckling. The love poemsof Robert Burns. Coleridge’sGenevieve. Selectionsfrom other poets.	Consult Miss Prescott’sTroubadours and Trouvères;Warton’s History of EnglishPoetry. Study the biographiesof Marlowe, Raleigh, Herrick,and Suckling. Read Carlyle’sEssay on Robert Burns; andPrincipal Shairp’s Burns, in“English Men of Letters.”
VI.
Sonnets.
The origin of the sonnet. Selectionsfrom the sonnets ofWyatt, Spenser, Sidney,Shakspeare, Drayton, Drummond,Milton, Wordsworth,Keats, and others. Mrs.Browning’s Sonnets fromthe Portuguese.	See Leigh Hunt’s Book ofthe Sonnet; Dennis’s EnglishSonnets; French’s DublinAfternoon Lectures; Massey’sShakspeare’s Sonnets; HenryBrown’s Sonnets of Shakspeare Solved; Tomlinson’sThe Sonnet: its Origin,Structure, and Place inPoetry.
VII.
Odes.
Dryden’s Alexander’s Feast. Pope’s Ode on St. Cecilia’sDay. Collins’s Ode on the Passions,and other odes. Gray’s Ode on the Progress ofPoesy, and The Bard. Keats’s Sleep and Poetry. Shelley’s Ode to Liberty, andTo the West Wind. Coleridge’s Ode on France,and To the Departing Year. Wordsworth’s Ode on theIntimations of Immortality.	See Husk’s Account of theMusical Celebrations on St.Cecilia’s Day, in the Sixteenth,Seventeenth, and EighteenthCenturies. Study the construction of theode. Compare the English odewith the Greek and Latinode. Learn something of theodes of Horace. Write essays on subjects suggestedby these studies.
VIII.
Elegies.
Study Milton’s Lycidas.Read selections from Spenser’sAstrophel; Shelley’sAdonais; Tennyson’s InMemoriam; Ode on the Deathof the Duke of Wellington;Pope’s Elegy on an UnfortunateLady. Study Gray’s Elegyin a Country Churchyard;The Dirge in Cymbeline; andCollins’s Dirge in Cymbeline.Read Shenstone’s Elegies;Cowper’s The Castaway;and Bryant’s Thanatopsis.	For references to Milton andSpenser, see other schemes.For Shelley’s Adonais, seeHutton’s Essays. See F. W.Robertson’s Analysis of InMemoriam. See also, for subjectsconnected with thesestudies, Roscoe’s Essays; Hazlitt’sEnglish Poets; Dr. Johnson’sLife of Gray; E. W.Gosse’s Gray, in “EnglishMen of Letters;” Parke Godwin’sLife of William CullenBryant.
IX.
Miscellaneous Lyrics.
Study selections from thepoems of Burns, Ramsay, andFergusson; Whittier, Bryant,and Longfellow; WilliamBlake; Mrs. Browning, Tennyson,and Swinburne; and others,both British and American.	Refer to the manuals elsewherementioned. Write essays on subjects suggestedby these studies. Discuss the distinctive qualitiesof Lyric Poetry, and theplace which it occupies in EnglishLiterature.

SCHEME VIII.
For the Study of Descriptive Poetry, Etc.
LITERATURE.	PARALLEL STUDIES.
Study selections from thepoems of William Cullen Bryant. Study Whittier’s Snow-Bound,and other descriptive poems. Study Milton’s L’Allegroand Il Penseroso. Study selections from Thomson’sSeasons, and Cowper’sTask. Study Goldsmith’s Traveller,and The Deserted Village;also, Shenstone’s Schoolmistress. Find and read characteristicdescriptive passages in thepoems of Scott, Byron, Shelley,Wordsworth, Keats, Browning,and others. CompareScott’s descriptions with thedescriptions in Pope’s WindsorForest and in Denham’sCooper’s Hill. Select and study descriptivepassages from Chaucer’s Poems,and from Spenser’s FaerieQueene. Read selections from Gay’sRural Sports, and from Bloomfield’sFarmer’s Boy.	See Godwin’s Life of WilliamCullen Bryant; andUnderwood’s biography ofJohn G. Whittier. See StopfordBrooke’s Milton; andMark Pattison’s Milton, in“English Men of Letters;”Irving’s Life of Goldsmith;Thackeray’s English Humoristsof the Eighteenth Century;William Black’s Goldsmith, in“English Men of Letters;”Hazlitt’s English Poets; andDe Quincey’s Literature of theEighteenth Century. Read Macaulay’s Essay onMoore’s Life of Byron. Refer to Goldwin Smith’sCowper, in “English Men ofLetters;” also to CharlesCowden Clarke’s Life of Cowper. See references to Chaucerand Spenser elsewhere given.
Pastoral Poetry.
Study Milton’s Arcades, andselections from Pope’s Pastorals;also from Spenser’sShepherd’s Calendar. See Drayton’s Shepherd’sGarland; Browne’s Britannia’sPastorals; Jonson’s SadShepherd; Fletcher’s FaithfulShepherdess; Gay’s Shepherd’sWeek; Ramsay’s GentleShepherd; and Shenstone’sPastoral Ballads.	Read Pope’s Essay on PastoralPoetry. Learn something about Theocritusand his Idyls, andabout the Eclogues of Virgil.A translation of the formermay be found in Bohn’s ClassicalLibrary. The latesttranslation of the Eclogues isthat by Wilstach.

SCHEME IX.
For the Study of Satire, Wit, and Humor.
LITERATURE.	PARALLEL STUDIES.
Dean Swift, the great Englishsatirist. Study his lifeand character. See Forster’sLife of Swift; or LeslieStephen’s Swift, in “EnglishMen of Letters.” Read selections from Gulliver’sTravels, and the Tale ofa Tub. Read, also, his ModestProposal. Daniel Defoe’s SatiricalEssays: The Shortest Waywith Dissenters, etc. See Minto’s Defoe, in “EnglishMen of Letters.”	Rabelais, the great satiristof France. Read Besant’sFrench Humorists; andRabelais, by the same author.Refer also to VanLaun’s History of FrenchLiterature. Voltaire, the third of thegreat modern satirists.Read Parton’s Life of Voltaire;or Voltaire, by JohnMorley; or Colonel Hamley’sVoltaire, in “ForeignClassics for English Readers.”
The origin and growth ofsatirical literature in England.	Satirical literature in Rome.
John Skelton’s Satires. SeeWarton’s History of EnglishPoetry, and Taine’s EnglishLiterature. Barclay’s Shyp of Fooles.See Warton’s History. The Satires of Surrey andWyatt. See Hallam’s Literary History, and Chalmers’Collection of the Poets. Gascoigne’s The Steele Glass. Donne’s Satires. See Pope’sThe Satires of Dr. DonneVersified. Hall’s Virgidemiarum. SeeWarton’s History, and Campbell’sSpecimens of the EnglishPoets. Study selected passages fromButler’s Hudibras. Refer to Hazlitt’s ComicWriters, and Leigh Hunt’sWit and Wisdom. Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel,and the publicationswhich followed it.	The great poetical satirists ofancient times,—Horace andJuvenal. See Lord Lytton’stranslation of the Epodesand Satires of Horace; andDryden’s Imitations of Juvenal.Dr. Johnson’s Londonand The Vanity of Human Wishes are alsoimitations of Juvenal. SeeDryden’s Essay on Satire. To understand the satires ofHall, Butler, Dryden, andPope, it is absolutely necessaryto be well acquainted with thehistory and social condition ofEngland during the seventeenthcentury. Study Green’s History ofthe English People. Study the political agitationsin England just preceding theRevolution of 1688.
Dryden’s MacFlecknoe. Pope’s Dunciad. Byron’s English Bards andScotch Reviewers. Lowell’s Fable for Critics.	Compare these four personalsatires, and write essays on thesubjects suggested by theirstudy.
Pope’s Moral Essays. Swift’s Satirical Poems. The humor of Fielding, Smollett,and Goldsmith, as exhibitedin their writings. Chatterton’s Prophecy. Read Burns’ Holy Willie’sPrayer, and the Holy Fair.	Read Thackeray’s Humoristsof the Eighteenth Century,and Hazlitt’s Comic Writers. Study the social condition ofEngland in the eighteenthcentury.
Sydney Smith. See theWit and Wisdom of SydneySmith (1861). The Fudge Family in Paris,by Thomas Moore. The Humorous Essays ofCharles Lamb. Thomas Carlyle’s SartorResartus, and Latter-DayPamphlets. Study selections.	Study the political agitationsin England during the first halfof the present century. Referto Knight’s History of England,and to Justin McCarthy’sHistory of Our Own Times.Miss Martineau’s History ofthe Thirty Years’ Peace maybe read with profit. Write essays on subjects suggestedby these studies.
Thackeray as a humorist.Read his Irish Sketch-Book,and selections from the Bookof Snobs, but especially observehis power in VanityFair. Read and study Dr. Holmes’Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table.	Study the true distinctionsbetween Wit, Humor, andSatire; and select from whatyou have read a number of illustrativeexamples. Discuss questions which mayarise from these studies; andwrite essays on the same.
Read Lowell’s Biglow Papers. Read selections from MarkTwain and other living Americanhumorists. Compare the humor of thepresent day with that of thelast generation. Read selectionsfrom Irving’s SketchBook, and Knickerbocker’sNew York. Read Burns’ Tam O’Shanter;and selections from Hood,John G. Saxe, and others.	Study the biographies ofIrving, Lowell, Holmes, MarkTwain, Saxe, and other Americanauthors whose works havebeen noticed in this scheme.

SCHEME X.
For the Study of English Prose Fiction.
General Works of Reference.
LITERATURE.	PARALLEL STUDIES.
Dunlop’s History of Fiction. Jeaffreson’s Novels andNovelists. Masson’s British Novelistsand their Styles. Tuckerman’s History ofEnglish Prose Fiction.	The historical works and alsothe literary manuals mentionedin Scheme IV. should be athand for constant reference.
I.
The First Romances.
Sidney’s Arcadia. Lyly’s Euphues. Greene’s Pandosto, or the Triumph of Time. The Novels of Thomas Nash.	Study the conditions of lifeand thought in England underwhich these first attempts atthe writing of prose romancewere made.
II.
Fabulous Voyages and Travels.
Godwin’s Man in the Moon. Hall’s Mundus Alter et Idem. Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels;—readselections. Study Robinson Crusoe. The Adventures of PeterWilkins. Edgar A. Poe’s Narrative ofArthur Gordon Pym.	See Collins’ Lucian, in “AncientClassics for EnglishReaders,” for an account ofLucian’s Veracious History. Read the voyage of Gargantuaby Rabelais; or, better,consult Besant’s Rabelais. Read Minto’s Defoe, in“English Men of Letters.” See Forster’s Life of DeanSwift; Scott’s Memoir ofDean Swift; and Minto’sManual of English Prose.
III.
Romances of the Supernatural.
Walpole’s The Castle ofOtranto. Mrs. Radcliffe’s Romances. Godwin’s St. Leon. Bulwer’s Zanoni. Mrs. Shelley’s Frankenstein. Lewis’s The Monk.	See Tuckerman’s Literatureof Fiction (an essay); C. KeganPaul’s Life of WilliamGodwin; Macaulay’s Essay onHorace Walpole; Miss Kavanagh’sEnglish Women ofLetters.
IV.
Oriental Romances
Beckford’s Vathek. Hope’s Anastasius. The Adventures of HajjiBaba.
V.
Historical Romances.
Miss Porter’s ScottishChiefs. Scott’s Waverley Novels. The Novels of G. P. R.James. Bulwer’s Last Days of Pompeii;Rienzi; Harold; TheLast of the Barons. Lockhart’s Valerius. Kingsley’s Hypatia. George Eliot’s Romola.	See Lockhart’s Life ofScott; Stephen’s Hours in aLibrary; Carlyle’s Essay onSir Walter Scott; Shaw’sManual of English Literature;Hutton’s Scott, in “EnglishMen of Letters;” NassauSenior’s Essays on Fiction;The Life of Edward Bulwer-Lytton,by his son, the presentLord Lytton.
VI.
Novels of Social Life, etc.
Richardson’s Novels. Fielding’s Tom Jones. Smollett’s Novels. Sterne’s Tristram Shandy. Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield. Miss Burney’s Novels. Godwin’s Caleb Williams. Miss Edgeworth’s Novels. Scott’s Guy Mannering; The Heart of Mid-Lothian; The Bride of Lammermoor; The Antiquary; etc. Miss Austen’s Works. Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. Dickens’s Pickwick Papers. Other Novels of Dickens andThackeray. Charlotte Brontë’s JaneEyre. Bulwer’s Novels. Disraeli’s Vivian; and Lothair. Charles Kingsley’s Novels. George Eliot’s Works.	See Stephen’s Hours in aLibrary; Hazlitt’s EnglishNovelists; Thackeray’s EnglishHumorists of the EighteenthCentury; Irving’s Lifeof Goldsmith; Macaulay’s Essayon Madame d’Arblay;Miss Kavanagh’s English Womenof Letters; James T.Fields’ Yesterdays with Authors;Horne’s New Spirit ofthe Age; John Forster’s Lifeof Charles Dickens; Hannay’sStudies on Thackeray; Hannay’sCharacters and Sketches;Anthony Trollope’s Thackeray,in “English Men ofLetters;” Taine’s EnglishLiterature, vol. iv.; Mrs.Gaskell’s Life of CharlotteBrontë; Miss Martineau’s BiographicalSketches; Thackeray’sRoundabout Papers;Life of Charles BrockdenBrown, in Sparks’ “AmericanBiography;” Griswold’s Prose
American Fiction— Charles Brockden Brown’sWieland, and other Novels. Cooper’s Novels. James Kirke Paulding. John P. Kennedy. William Gilmore Simms. Hawthorne’s Works. The later and living novelists.	Writers of America; Prescott’sMiscellaneous Essays;J. T. Fields’ Hawthorne; H.A. Page’s Life of Hawthorne;Lathrop’s Study of Hawthorne;Roscoe’s Essays;Hawthorne, by Henry James,in “English Men of Letters;”Cooke’s George Eliot: a CriticalStudy of her Life, Writings,and Philosophy; (Round-TableSeries) George Eliot,Moralist and Thinker.
VII.
Didactic Fiction.
More’s Utopia. Harrington’s Oceana. Disraeli’s Coningsby. Bulwer-Lytton’s The ComingRace. Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. Hannah More’s Novels. Johnson’s Rasselas. The modern didactic novel.	See Hallam’s Literary History;and references given inthe preceding schemes.