I have mentioned these advantages of verse for the purposes of an anthology in order to show the difficulties which must be encountered in making a prose selection. Very little prose is in small parcels which can be transferred entire, and therefore with the very important attribute of completeness, to a volume of selections. From most of the great prose writers it is necessary to take extracts, and the chosen passage is broken off from what comes before and after. The fame of a great prose writer as a rule rests on a book, and really to know him the book must be read and not merely passages from it. Extracts give no very satisfactory idea of "Paradise Lost" or "The Divine Comedy," and the same is true of extracts from a history or a novel. It is possible by spreading prose selections through a series of small volumes to overcome the mechanical difficulty and thus make the selections in form what they ought above all things to be—companions and not books of reference or table decorations. But the spiritual or literary problem is not so easily overcome. What prose to take and where to take it are by no means easy questions to solve. Yet they are well worth solving, so far as patient effort can do it, for in this period of easy printing it is desirable to put in convenient form before those who read examples of the masters which will draw us back from the perishing chatter of the moment to the literature which is the highest work of civilization and which is at once noble and lasting.
Upon that theory this collection has been formed. It is an attempt to give examples from all periods and languages of Western civilization of what is best and most memorable in their prose literature. That the result is not a complete exhibition of the time and the literatures covered by the selections no one is better aware than the editors. Inexorable conditions of space make a certain degree of incompleteness inevitable when he who is gathering flowers traverses so vast a garden, and is obliged to confine the results of his labors within such narrow bounds. The editors are also fully conscious that, like all other similar collections, this one too will give rise to the familiar criticism and questionings as to why such a passage was omitted and such another inserted; why this writer was chosen and that other passed by. In literature we all have our favorites, and even the most catholic of us has also his dislikes if not his pet aversions. I will frankly confess that there are authors represented in these volumes whose writings I should avoid, just as there are certain towns and cities of the world to which, having once visited them, I would never willingly return, for the simple reason that I would not voluntarily subject myself to seeing or reading what I dislike or, which is worse, what bores and fatigues me. But no editor of an anthology must seek to impose upon others his own tastes and opinions. He must at the outset remember and never afterward forget that so far as possible his work must be free from the personal equation. He must recognize that some authors who may be mute or dull to him have a place in literature, past or present, sufficiently assured to entitle them to a place among selections which are intended above all things else to be representative.
To those who wonder why some favorite bit of their own was omitted while something else for which they do not care at all has found a place I can only say that the editors, having supprest their own personal preferences, have proceeded on certain general principles which seem to be essential in making any selection either of verse or prose which shall possess broader and more enduring qualities than that of being a mere exhibition of the editor's personal taste. To illustrate my meaning: Emerson's "Parnassus" is extremely interesting as an exposition of the tastes and preferences of a remarkable man of great and original genius. As an anthology it is a failure, for it is of awkward size, is ill arranged and contains selections made without system, and which in many cases baffle all attempts to explain their appearance. On the other hand, Mr. Palgrave, neither a very remarkable man nor a great and original genius, gave us in the first "Golden Treasury" a collection which has no interest whatever as reflecting the tastes of the editor, but which is quite perfect in its kind. Barring the disproportionate amount of Wordsworth which includes some of his worst things—and which, be it said in passing, was due to Mr. Palgrave's giving way at that point to his personal enthusiasm—the "Golden Treasury" in form, in scope, and in arrangement, as well as in almost unerring taste, is the best model of what an anthology should be which is to be found in any language.
Returning now to our questioner who misses some favorite and finds something else which he dislikes, the only answer, as I have just said, is that the collection is formed on certain general principles, as any similar collection of the sort must be. This series is called "The Best of the World's Classics," and "classics" is used not in the narrow and technical sense, but rather in that of Thoreau, who defined classics as "the noblest recorded thoughts of mankind." Therefore, the first principle of guidance in selection is to take examples of the great writings which have moved and influenced the thought of the world, and which have preeminently the quality of "high seriousness" as required by Aristotle. This test alone, however, would limit the selections too closely. Therefore the second principle of choice is to make selections from writers historically important either personally or by their writings. The third rule is to endeavor to give selections which shall be representative of the various literatures and the various periods through which, the collection ranges. Lastly, and this applies, of course, only to passages taken from the writers of England and the United States, the effort has been to give specimens of the masters of English prose, of that prose in its development and at its best, and to show, so far as may be, what can be accomplished with that great instrument, and what a fine style really is as exhibited in the best models. Everything contained in these volumes is there in obedience to one at least of these principles, many in obedience to more than one, some in conformity to all four.
No one will become a scholar or a master of any of the great literatures here represented by reading this collection. Literature and scholarship are not to be had so cheaply as that. Yet is there much profit to be had from these little volumes. They contain many passages which merit Dr. Johnson's fine saying about books: "That they help us to enjoy life or teach us to endure it." To the man of letters, to the man of wide reading, they will at least serve to recall, when far from libraries and books, those authors who have been the delight and the instructors of a lifetime. They will bring at least the pleasures of memory and that keener pleasure which arises when we meet a poem or a passage of prose which we know as an old and well-loved friend, remote from home, upon some alien page.
To that larger public whose lives are not spent among books and libraries, and for whose delectation such a collection as this is primarily intended, these volumes rightly read at odd times, in idle moments, in out-of-the-way places, on the ship or the train, offer much. They will bring the reader in contact with many of the greatest intellects of all time. They contain some of the noblest thoughts that have passed through the minds of our weak and erring race. There is no man who will not be the better, for the moment at least, by reading what Cicero says about old age, Seneca about death, and Socrates about love, to go no further for examples than to
"The glory that was Greece,
And the grandeur that was Rome."
Moreover, the bowing acquaintance which can be formed here may easily offer attractions which will lead to a close and intimate friendship, with all that the word implies in the case of a great author or a great book. It seems to me, for example, as if no one who read here the too brief extracts from Erasmus or from Cervantes, to take at random two writers widely separated in thought, could fail to pursue the acquaintance thus begun, so potent are the sympathetic charm, the wit, the wisdom and the humor of both these great men. There is, at least, variety in these little volumes, and while many things in them may not appeal to us, they may to our neighbors. That which "is dumb to us may speak to him."
Again, let it be noticed that there is much more than the "high seriousness" which is the test of the greatest prose as of the finest poetry. Humor and pathos, tragedy and comedy, all find their place and glimpses of the pageant of human history flit through the pages. It would seem as if it were impossible to read extracts from Thucydides and Tacitus and Gibbon and not long to go to their histories and learn all that could be said by such men about the life of man upon earth, about Athens and Rome and the rise and fall of empires. Selections are unsatisfying and the better they are the more unsatisfying they become. But this is in reality their great merit. They have much beauty in themselves, they awaken pleasant memories, they revive old delights, but, above all, if rightly read they open the gates to the illimitable gardens whence all the flowers which have here been gathered may be found blooming in radiance, unplucked and unbroken and rooted in their native soil.
The most important part of the collection is that which gives selections from those writers whose native tongue is English. No translation even of prose can ever quite reproduce its original, and as a rule can not hope to equal it. There are many translations, notably the Elizabethan, which are extremely fine in themselves and memorable examples of English prose. Still they are not the original writings. Something escapes in the translation into another tongue, an impalpable something which can not be held or transmitted. The Bible stands alone, a great literary monument of the noblest and most beautiful English, which has formed English speech and become a part of the language as it is of the thought and emotion of the people who read "King James'" version in all parts of the globe. Yet we know that the version which the people, so fortunate in its possession, wisely and absolutely decline to give up in exchange for any revision is neither an accurate nor a faithful reproduction of its original. Therefore, putting aside the English Bible as wholly by itself, it may be safely said that the soul of a language and the beauties of style which it is capable of exhibiting can only be found and studied in the productions of writers who not only think in the language in which they write, but to whom that speech is native, the inalienable birthright and heritage of their race or country. In such writers we get not only the thought, the humor, or the pathos, all that can be transferred in a translation, but also the pleasure to the ear akin to music, the sense of form, the artistic gratification which form brings, all those attributes which are possible in the highest degree to those only to whom the language is native.