In other words, all great authors are artists, makers or shapers of truth and beauty, just as much and in the same measure as are painters and sculptors. Indeed, Literature is the chief of the Fine Arts. Music, with all its grandeur and charm, is but sound, and dies away; Painting, though never so rich in color and striking in form, is passive and for the most part devoid of action, and sad to say, very few of us have wealth enough to own even one canvas by a master; Sculpture, with all its dignity and grace, is cold and cheerless in the main; and Architecture is too bulky and ponderous to stir personal appreciation at a moment's notice.
In fact, Literature, and Literature alone, possesses the power of meeting our every mood and desire, for comfort, for excitement, for exaltation, for pathos, for laughter.
Literature alone can dwell within the walls of the humblest cabin, even in the squatter's camp in Labrador or Borneo. Raphael's glorious paintings may only be visited at the expense of months of time and hundreds of dollars; Beethoven's symphonies can only be presented by the most finished orchestras in a few of our largest cities; the statues wrought by Phidias and Rodin cannot be reproduced by the thousand and spread broadcast over our nation; Rheims Cathedral and her sister marvels must stand where first they rose, nor may they be successfully imitated. But, thank Heaven, Shakespeare, Dickens, Longfellow for a few cents send their messages to every soul on earth that can read English.
All of us are acquainted with some half dozen of the immortal writers of the world, but how many of them have we never met, perhaps have never heard of. If we could only obtain an introduction to them; if we only knew which writers and which of their works to select, all would be well. The most brilliant, the most lovable, the most sincere, the most thoughtful authors would gather round us and talk to us; they would bring their very best to entertain and delight us; they would offer us their guidance and companionship into every field of thought. Emerson's calm reflective tones reveal the answers to many of life's most pressing and significant problems; Swift, in "Gulliver's Travels," jestingly, yet bitterly, strips mankind of its pride and conceit, and lays bare the greed and selfishness that have ruined not individuals alone, but whole nations and empires; Lewis Carroll talks the most laughable, clever nonsense that ever inspired a humorist's pen; Burns, in the simplest of language, voices the pathos and tragedy of every life, even the humblest, and with our own Lincoln proves again and again that true nobility may dwell and flourish in the midst of poverty.
Truly, herein lies one of life's chief joys, in encountering what others have thought and achieved—in meeting the actors in the great world drama, the scenes in which they played their parts, the deeds by which they have won fame and fortune; still more delectable is the pleasure of whiling away leisure hours with those folk who are but products of the fancy, children of the poet's brain, dreams of the teller of tales: Odysseus, who, for the last three thousand years, as Sir Philip Sidney has put it, "held children from play and old men from the chimney corner"; Falstaff, chuckling at the comical ease with which he hoodwinks all about him; Lady Macbeth, who, even in her dreams, may not forget the dread stain upon her little hand; Faust, ever seeking to rid himself of his demon accomplice; the knights of King Arthur's round table, Robin Hood and his merry men, Dickens's troop of immortal grotesques, Bret Harte's rough miners, with their hearts of gold, Irving's droll New Yorkers of the Knickerbocker era, Longfellow's Blacksmith and his Evangeline,—these and a host of other undying notables have made life far richer for us all.
Ours is the fault if we do not avail ourselves of their magic. For here in America the special opportunity to mingle with them lies readier to the hand than in any other nation. Nowhere else, not in England, nor France, nor in Italy can the everyday man find books at his command for the asking. In a few of the largest European cities, and not anywhere else on that continent, there are libraries of size and worth, yet even these are hedged about with a hundred rules and regulations that hamper circulation. But here, through the length and breadth of this glorious land, are thousands and yet more thousands of free libraries, containing all manner of books, of every age and nation, awaiting your demand. They contain all that is splendid in the way of printed matter, but also much, alas, that is not worth any man's time; so that though the best lies open and free to us, it is mingled with a vast amount of wretched trash.
Here lies the chief difficulty for us Americans: How are we to distinguish the chaff from the wheat, the weeds from the harvest? The task is that of seeking the proverbial needle in the haystack. We are deluged with printed matter, tons upon tons of books and magazines are poured daily upon the bookseller's counters. What is our chance of choosing the treasures from out this hodgepodge?
To meet this very problem these volumes have been prepared; it is hardly our place to dwell upon the years of labor and thought in which they have gradually taken shape, but it is perhaps to the point to remark that they represent the patient effort of many judges and critics to supply an introduction and a guide to the best and most inspiring literature of the nations from the beginning of the art to the present day,—a means of recreation, amusement, and lasting profit.
In the past three thousand years, some four hundred authors have achieved such fame and standing as to distinguish them from the endless multitudes of commonplace penmen. To choose and present their very best work in complete, unified selections has constituted the fundamental purpose of these twelve volumes. In them, it is certain, an amazingly large proportion of the finest literature has been brought together; they form a boundless source of entertainment and a wellnigh infinite field for intellectual diversion and development.
By means of brief and suggestive biographical sketches, together with the Index and the Handbook, to serve as a guide to fuller enjoyment and appreciation, the editors have sought to amplify and enhance the value of the selective feature of the work. And through an abundance of illustrations, many of them painstaking reproductions of water color paintings of the homes and favorite haunts of the chief writers, additional understanding and pleasure is afforded.