Kitabı oku: «The Book-lover», sayfa 5
Too great a variety of books or papers placed at the disposal of inexperienced readers offers a premium to desultoriness, and fosters and encourages the habit of devouring every species of literary food that comes to hand. Hence we should beware not only of the bad, but of too great plenty of the good. “The benefit of a right good book,” says Mr. Hudson, “all depends upon this, that its virtue just soak into the mind, and there become a living, generative force. To be running and rambling over a great many books, tasting a little here, a little there, and tying up with none, is good for nothing; nay, worse than nothing. Such a process of unceasing change is also a discipline of perpetual emptiness. The right method in the culture of the mind is to take a few choice books, and weave about them
‘The fixed delights of house and home,
Friendship that will not break, and love that cannot roam.’
CHAPTER VI
Hints on the Formation of School Libraries
What sort of reading are our schools planting an appetite for? Are they really doing anything to instruct and form the mental taste, so that the pupils on leaving them may be safely left to choose their reading for themselves? It is clear in evidence that they are far from educating the young to take pleasure in what is intellectually noble and sweet. The statistics of our public libraries show that some cause is working mightily to prepare them only for delight in what is both morally and intellectually mean and foul. It would not indeed be fair to charge our public schools with positively giving this preparation; but it is their business to forestall and prevent such a result. If, along with the faculty of reading, they cannot also impart some safeguards of taste and habit against such a result, will the system prove a success? – Henry N. Hudson.
MUCH is being said, now-a-days, about the utility of school libraries; and in some instances much ill-directed, if not entirely misdirected, labor is being expended in their formation. Public libraries are not necessarily public benefits; and school libraries, unless carefully selected and judiciously managed, will not prove to be unmixed blessings. There are several questions which teachers and school officers should seriously consider before setting themselves to the task of establishing a library; and no teacher who is not himself a knower of books, and a reader, should presume to regulate and direct the reading of others.
What are the objects of a school library? They are twofold: First, to aid in cultivating a taste for good reading; second, to supply materials for supplementary study and independent research. Now, neither of these objects can be attained unless your library is composed of books selected especially with reference to the capabilities and needs of your pupils. Dealing, as you do, with pupils of various degrees of intellectual strength, warped by every variety of moral influence and home training, the cultivation of a taste for good reading among them is no small matter. To do this, your library must contain none but truly good books. It is a great mistake to suppose that every collection of books placed in a schoolhouse is a library; and yet that is the name which is applied to many very inferior collections. It is no uncommon thing to find these so-called libraries composed altogether of the odds and ends of literature, – of donations, entirely worthless to their donors; of second-hand school-books; of Patent Office Reports and other public documents; and of the dilapidated remains of some older and equally worthless collection of books: and with these you talk about cultivating a taste for good reading! One really good book, a single copy of “St. Nicholas,” is worth more than all this trash. Get it out of sight at once! The value of a library – no matter for what purpose it has been founded – depends not upon the number of its books, but upon their character. And so the first rule to be observed in the formation of a school library is, Buy it at first hand, even though you should begin with a single volume, and shun all kinds of donations, unless they be donations of cash, or books of unquestionable value.
In selecting books for purchase, you will have an eye single to the wants of the students who are to use them. A school library should be in no sense a public circulating library. You cannot cater to the literary tastes of the public, and at the same time serve the best interests of your pupils. Books relating to history, to biography, and to travel will form a very large portion of your library. These should be chosen with reference to the age and mental capacity of those who are to read them. No book should be bought merely because it is a good book, but because we know that it can be made useful in the attainment of certain desired ends. The courses of reading indicated in the following chapters of this work, it is hoped, will assist you largely in making a wise selection as well as in directing to a judicious use of books. For the selection of a book is only half of your duty: the profitable use of it is the other half; and this lesson should be early taught to your pupils.
If, through means of your school library or otherwise, you succeed in enlisting the interest of a young person in profitable methodical reading, you have accomplished a great deal towards the forwarding of his education and the formation of his character. It is a great mistake to suppose that a boy of twelve cannot pursue a course of reading in English history; if properly directed and encouraged, he will enjoy it far better than the perusal of the milk-and-water story-books which, under the guise of “harmless juvenile literature,” have been placed in his hands by well-meaning teachers or parents.
In a former chapter I have shown you how, with a library of only fifty volumes, you may have in your possession the very best of all that the world’s master-minds have ever written, – food, as I have said, for study, and meditation, and mind growth enough for a lifetime. Such a library is worth more than ten thousand volumes of the ordinary “popular” kind of books. So, also, the reading of a very few books, carefully and methodically, by your pupils – the constant presence of the very best books in our language, and the exclusion of the trashy and the vile – will give them more real enjoyment and infinitely greater profit than the desultory or hasty reading of many volumes. A small library is to be despised only when it contains inferior books.
CHAPTER VII
Courses of Reading in History
History, at least in its state of ideal perfection, is a compound of poetry and philosophy. – Macaulay.
Let us search more and more into the Past; let all men explore it as the true fountain of knowledge, by whose light alone, consciously or unconsciously employed, can the Present and the Future be interpreted or guessed at. – Carlyle.
History is a voice forever sounding across the centuries the laws of right and wrong. Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall; but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity… Justice and truth alone endure and live. Injustice and falsehood may be long-lived, but doomsday comes at last to them in French revolutions and other terrible ways. That is one lesson of history. Another is, that we should draw no horoscopes; that we should expect little, for what we expect will not come to pass. – Froude.
The student is to read history actively and not passively; to esteem his own life the text, and books the commentary. Thus compelled, the Muse of history will utter oracles, as never to those who do not respect themselves. I have no expectation that any man will read history aright who thinks that what was done in a remote age, by men whose names have resounded far, has any deeper sense than what he is doing to-day… The instinct of the mind, the purpose of nature, betrays itself in the use we make of the signal narrations of history. – Emerson.
I venture to propose the following courses of reading in history. Properly modified with reference to individual needs and capabilities, these lists will prove to be safe helps and guides to younger as well as older readers, to classes in high schools and colleges as well as private students and specialists. To read all the works here mentioned, as carefully and critically as the nature of their contents demands, would require no inconsiderable portion of one’s reading lifetime. Such a thing is not expected. The wise teacher or the judicious scholar will select from the list that which is most proper for him, and which best meets his wants, or aids him most in the pursuit of his native aim.
The titles, so far as possible, are given in chronological order. Those printed in italics are of books indispensable for purposes of reference; those printed in small capitals are of works especially adapted to younger readers.
I. GREEK HISTORY
Dictionaries
No reader can well do without a good classical dictionary. The following are recommended as the best —
Anthon: Classical Dictionary.
Smith: Student’s Classical Dictionary.
– Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities.
Ginn & Heath’s Classical Atlas.
Kiepert’s Schulatlas.
General Histories
Cox: General History of Greece.
Smith: Smaller History of Greece.
Felton: Ancient and Modern Greece.
Yonge: Young Folks’ History of Greece.
Grote: History of Greece (12 vols.).
Curtius: History of Greece (5 vols.); translated from the German, by A. W. Ward.
J. A. St. John: Ancient Greece.
Mythology
Dwight: Grecian and Roman Mythology.
Murray: Manual of Mythology.
Keightley: Classical Mythology.
Gladstone: Juventus Mundi.
Ruskin: The Queen of the Air.
Cox: Tales of Ancient Greece.
Kingsley: The Greek Heroes.
Hawthorne: The Wonder Book.
– Tanglewood Tales.
Miscellaneous
Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Chapman’s translation is the best. Of the later versions, that of Lord Derby is preferable.
Church: Stories from Homer.
Butcher and Lang’s prose translation of the Odyssey.
Collins: The Iliad and the Odyssey (two volumes of “Ancient Classics for English Readers”).
Gladstone: Homer.
De Quincey: Homer and the Homeridæ (essay in “Literary Criticism”).
Fénelon: Telemachus (translated by Hawkesworth).
Benjamin: Troy.
Goethe: Iphigenia in Tauris (drama, Swanwick’s translation).
The student of this period is referred also to Dr. Schliemann’s works: Ilios, Troja, and Mykenai.
Church: Stories from Herodotus.
Swayne: Herodotus (Ancient Classics).
Brugsch Bey: History of Egypt.
Freeman: Historical Essays (2d series).
Ebers: Uarda (romance, descriptive of Egyptian life and manners fourteen centuries before Christ).
– The Daughter of an Egyptian King (five centuries before Christ).
Smith: Student’s History of the East.
Cox: The Greeks and the Persians.
Abbott: The History of Darius the Great.
– The History of Xerxes the Great.
Sankey: The Spartan Supremacy.
Bulwer: Pausanias the Spartan (romance, 475 B.C.).
Glover: Leonidas (epic poem).
Croly: The Death of Leonidas (poem).
Robert Browning: Pheidippides (poem in “Dramatic Idyls”).
Lloyd: The Age of Pericles (fifth century before Christ).
Cox: The Athenian Empire.
Landor: Pericles and Aspasia (in “Imaginary Conversations”).
Mrs. L. M. Child: Philothea (romance of the time of Pericles).
Curteis: The Macedonian Empire.
Abbott: The History of Alexander the Great.
Butcher: Demosthenes (Classical Writers).
Greenough: Apelles and his Contemporaries (a romance of the time of Alexander).
Dryden: Alexander’s Feast (poem).
Bickersteth: Caubul (poem).
Literature
Mahaffy: History of Greek Literature.
Schlegel: History of Dramatic Literature (first fourteen chapters).
Church: Stories from the Greek Tragedians.
Copleston: Æschylus (Ancient Classics).
Mrs. Browning: Prometheus Bound (an English version of the great tragedy).
Bishop Milman: Agamemnon.
Collins: Sophocles (Ancient Classics).
De Quincey: The Antigone of Sophocles (essay in “Literary Criticism”).
Donne: Euripides (Ancient Classics).
Froude: Sea Studies (essay in “Short Studies on Great Subjects”). Collins: Aristophanes (Ancient Classics).
Mitchell: The Clouds of Aristophanes.
De Quincey: Theory of Greek Tragedy (essay in “Literary Criticism”).
Brodribb: Demosthenes (Ancient Classics).
Collins: Plato (Ancient Classics).
Jowett: The Dialogues of Plato (4 vols.).
The Phædo of Plato (Wisdom Series).
Plato: The Apology of Socrates.
A Day in Athens with Socrates.
Plutarch: On the Dæmon of Socrates (essay in the “Morals”).
Grant: Xenophon (Ancient Classics).
Collins: Thucydides (Ancient Classics).
Life and Manners
For a study of social life and manners in Greece, read or refer to the following —
Becker: Charicles (romance, with copious notes and excursuses).
Mahaffy: Social Life in Greece.
– Old Greek Life.
Guhl and Koner: Life of the Greeks and Romans.
Special Reference
Draper: History of the Intellectual Development of Europe (vol. i.).
Clough: Plutarch’s Lives.
Kaufman: The Young Folks’ Plutarch.
White: Plutarch for Boys and Girls.
It is good exercise, good medicine, the reading of Plutarch’s books, – good for to-day as it was in times preceding ours, salutary for all times. – A. Bronson Alcott.
II. ROMAN HISTORY
For purposes of reference the following books, already mentioned in the course of Greek History, are indispensable —
Anthon: Classical Dictionary.
Smith: Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities.
Ginn & Heath: Classical Atlas.
Murray: Manual of Mythology.
General Histories
Smith: Smaller History of Rome.
Merivale: Students’ History of Rome.
Yonge: Young Folks’ History of Rome.
Creighton: History of Rome.
For the period preceding the Empire —
Mommsen: History of Rome (4 vols.).
Abbott: The History of Romulus.
Church: Stories from Virgil.
– Stories from Livy.
Macaulay: Horatius (poem in “Lays of Ancient Rome”).
Arnold: History of Rome.
Ihne: Early Rome.
Shakspeare: The Tragedy of Coriolanus (490 B.C.).
Macaulay: Virginia (poem in “Lays of Ancient Rome,” 459 B.C.).
Abbott: The History of Hannibal.
Smith: Rome and Carthage.
Dale: Regulus before the Senate (poem, 256 B.C.).
Beesly: The Gracchi, Marius, and Sulla.
Mrs. Mitchell: Spartacus to the Gladiators (poem, 73 B.C.).
For the period of the Cæsars and the early Empire —
Merivale: History of the Romans (4 vols.).
– The Roman Triumvirates.
Abbott: The History of Julius Cæsar.
Addison: The Tragedy of Cato (drama).
Froude: Cæsar; a Sketch.
Trollope: Life of Cicero.
Ben Jonson: Catiline (drama).
Beaumont and Fletcher: The False One (drama).
Abbott: The History of Cleopatra.
Shakspeare: The Tragedy of Julius Cæsar.
– Antony and Cleopatra.
Capes: The Early Empire.
De Quincey: The Cæsars.
Ben Jonson: The Poetaster (drama, time of Augustus).
Wallace: Ben Hur (romance, time of Tiberius).
Longfellow: The Divine Tragedy (poem).
Ben Jonson: Sejanus, his Fall (drama, time of Tiberius).
Becker: Gallus (romance, with notes, time of Tiberius).
Schele De Vere: The Great Empress (romance, time of Nero).
Abbott: The History of Nero.
W. W. Story: Nero (drama).
Hoffman: The Greek Maid at the Court of Nero (romance).
Farrar: Seekers after God (Seneca, Epictetus).
Wiseman: The Church of the Catacombs (romance, time of the Persecutions).
Mrs. Charles: The Victory of the Vanquished (romance).
Church and Brodribb: Pliny’s Letters (Ancient Classics).
Bulwer: The Last Days of Pompeii (romance, time of Vespasian).
Massinger: The Roman Actor (drama, time of Domitian).
– The Virgin Martyr (drama).
Dickinson: The Seed of the Church.
De Mille: Helena’s Household.
Lockhart: Valerius.
The last three works are romances, depicting life and manners in the time of Trajan.
For the period of the later Empire and the decline of the Roman power —
Curteis: History of the Roman Empire (395-800).
Gibbon: Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Ebers: The Emperor (romance, time of Hadrian).
Capes: The Age of the Antonines.
Watson: Marcus Aurelius Antoninus.
Hodgkin: Italy and her Invaders.
William Ware: Zenobia (romance, A.D. 266).
– Aurelian (romance, A.D. 275).
Ebers: Homo Sum (romance, A.D. 330).
Kouns: Arius the Libyan (romance, A.D. 336).
Aubrey De Vere: Julian the Apostate (drama, A.D. 363).
Beaumont and Fletcher: Valentinian (drama, A.D. 375).
Edward Everett: Alaric the Visigoth; and Mrs. Hemans: Alaric in Italy (poems, A.D. 410).
Kingsley: Hypatia (romance, A.D. 415).
Mrs. Charles: Conquering and to Conquer (romance, A.D. 418).
Mrs. Charles: Maid and Cleon (romance of Alexandria, A.D. 425).
Kingsley: Roman and Teuton.
Church: The Beginning of the Middle Ages.
Literature
Simcox: History of Roman Literature.
Schlegel: History of Dramatic Literature.
Collins: Livy (Ancient Classics).
Mallock: Lucretius (Ancient Classics).
Trollope: Cæsar (Ancient Classics).
Collins: Cicero (Ancient Classics).
Morris: The Æneid of Virgil.
Collins: Virgil, Ovid, Lucian (three volumes of Ancient Classics).
Epictetus: Selections from Epictetus.
Jackson: Apostolic Fathers (Early Christian Literature Primers).
Special Reference
Clough: Plutarch’s Lives.
White: Plutarch for Boys and Girls.
Kaufman: The Young Folks’ Plutarch.
Coulange: The Ancient City.
Draper: History of the Intellectual Development of Europe.
Lecky: History of European Morals.
Milman: History of Christianity.
Stanley: History of the Eastern Church.
Fisher: Beginnings of Christianity.
Döllinger: The First Age of Christianity.
Montalembert: The Monks of the West.
Reber: History of Ancient Art.
Hadley: Lectures on Roman Law.
Maine: Ancient Law.
III. MEDIÆVAL AND MODERN HISTORY
This course has been prepared with special reference to English history. The right-hand column, headed Collateral Reading, will assist students desiring to extend their reading so as to embrace the history of Continental Europe. The figures affixed to some of the titles indicate, as nearly as is thought necessary, the time covered or treated of by the work mentioned. Historical romances and other prose works of fiction are designated thus (*); dramas thus (†; other poems thus (‡).
IV. AMERICAN HISTORY
General Histories
Bancroft: History of the United States (12 vols., from the discovery of America to the adoption of the Constitution).
Hildreth: History of the United States (6 vols., from the discovery of America to 1820).
Bryant and Gay: History of the United States (from the discovery to 1880).
Ridpath: History of the United States.
Higginson: Young People’s History of the United States.
Aboriginal America
Baldwin: Ancient America.
Donnelly: Atlantis.
Foster: Prehistoric Races of the United States.
Short: North Americans of Antiquity.
Ellis: The Red Man and the White Man.
H. H. Bancroft: Native Races of the Pacific States.
Bourke: The Snake Dance of the Moquis of Arizona.
The Period of the Discovery
Irving: Columbus and his Companions.
Abbott: Christopher Columbus.
– Discovery of America.
Towle: Vasco da Gama.
Helps: The Spanish Conquest of America (4 vols.).
Prescott: The Conquest of Mexico (3 vols.).
Abbott: Hernando Cortez.
Helps: Hernando Cortez.
Eggleston: Montezuma.
Wallace: *The Fair God, or the Last of the ’Tzins.
Prescott: The Conquest of Peru (2 vols.).
Towle: Pizarro.
– Magellan.
Irving: The Conquest of Florida by De Soto.
Abbott: De Soto.
Simms: *Vasconselos (1538).
Towle: Drake, the Sea-King of Devon.
– Sir Walter Ralegh.
Hale: Stories of Discovery.
Simms: *The Lily and the Totem (the story of the Huguenots at St. Augustine).
The Colonial Period
Coffin: Old Times in the Colonies.
Simms: Life of John Smith.
Kingston: *The Settlers (1607).
Eggleston: Pocahontas.
Abbott: The Northern Colonies.
– Miles Standish.
Longfellow: ‡The Courtship of Miles Standish.
Mrs. Child: *The First Settlers of New England.
– *Hobomok.
Cheney: *A Peep at the Pilgrims.
Clay: Annals of the Swedes on the Delaware.
Banvard: Pioneers of the New World.
J. G. Holland: *The Bay Path (1638).
Paulding: *Koningsmarke (a tale of the Swedes on the Delaware).
Arthur: Cabinet History of New York.
Abbott: Peter Stuyvesant.
Irving: *Knickerbocker’s History of New York.
Abbott: King Philip.
Markham: King Philip’s War.
Cooper: *The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish (1675).
Palfrey: History of New England (4 vols.).
Hawthorne: *The Scarlet Letter.
Spofford: New England Legends.
Longfellow: ‡New England Tragedies.
Whittier: ‡Ballads of New England.
Hale: Stories of Adventure.
Abbott: Captain Kidd.
Banvard: Southern Explorers.
Abbott: The Southern Colonies.
Arthur: Cabinet History of Virginia.
Simms: *The Cassique of Kiawah (a story of the early settlement of South Carolina, 1684).
De Vere: Romance of American History.
Abbott: Chevalier de la Salle.
Parkman: Discovery of the Great West.
– The Jesuits in North America.
Sparks: Life of Father Marquette.
Shea: Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi.
Parkman: Frontenac, and New France under Louis XIV.
Simms: *The Yemassee (1715).
Longfellow: ‡Evangeline.
Ladd: The Old French War.
Parkman: Wolfe and Montcalm.
– The Conspiracy of Pontiac.
Paulding: *The Dutchman’s Fireside.
Cooper: *The Pathfinder.
– *The Last of the Mohicans.
Kennedy: *Swallow Barn.
Mrs. Stowe: *The Minister’s Wooing.
Thackeray: *The Virginians.
The Period of the Revolution
Abbott: The War of the Revolution.
– George Washington.
Irving: Life of George Washington (5 vols.).
Headley: Washington and his Generals.
Longfellow: ‡Paul Revere’s Ride.
Lowell: ‡Grandmother’s Story of the Battle of Bunker Hill.
Coffin: The Boys of ’76.
Cooper: *The Spy.
– *The Pilot.
Neal: *Seventy-Six.
Greene: Life of Nathanael Greene.
Abbott: Life of Benjamin Franklin.
Parton: Life of Benjamin Franklin.
Sparks: The Works of Benjamin Franklin.
– Treason of Benedict Arnold.
Arnold: Life of Benedict Arnold.
Campbell: ‡Gertrude of Wyoming.
Mrs. Child: *The Rebels.
Paulding: *The Old Continentals.
– *The Bulls and the Jonathans.
Simms: *Eutaw.
Kennedy: *Horse-Shoe Robinson.
Grace Greenwood: *The Forest Tragedy.
Lossing: Field Book of the Revolution.
Carrington: Battles of the Revolution.
Wirt: The Life of Patrick Henry.
Dwight: Lives of the Signers.
Magoon: Orators of the American Revolution.
Greene: Historical View of the American Revolution.
From the Close of the Revolution
McMaster: History of the People of the United States from the Revolution to the Civil War.
Frothingham: Rise of the Republic in the United States.
Curtis: History of the Constitution.
Von Holst: Constitutional History of the United States.
Nordhoff: Politics for Young Americans.
Coffin: Building of the Nation.
Lodge: Life of Alexander Hamilton.
Parton: Life of John Adams.
– Life of Jefferson.
Abbott: Life of Daniel Boone.
John Esten Cooke: *Leatherstocking and Silk (1800).
Cable: *The Grandissimes.
Cooper: *The Prairie.
Simms: *Beauchampe, or the Kentucky Tragedy.
Parton: Life of Aaron Burr.
Hale: *Philip Nolan’s Friends.
– *The Man without a Country.
Pioneer Life in the West.
Lewis and Clarke’s Journey across the Rocky Mountains.
Irving: Astoria.
– Adventures of Captain Bonneville.
Eggleston: Brant and Red Jacket.
Johnson: The War of 1812.
Lossing: Field Book of the War of 1812.
Iron: *The Double Hero.
Gleig: *The Subaltern.
Cooper: History of the American Navy.
Rives: Life of James Madison.
Gilman: Life of James Monroe.
Morse: Life of J. Q. Adams.
Parton: Life of Andrew Jackson.
Curtis: Life of Daniel Webster.
Whipple: Webster’s Best Speeches.
Schmucker: Life and Times of Henry Clay.
Ripley: The War with Mexico.
Kendall: The Santa Fé Expedition.
Wilson: History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America.
King: The Great South.
Olmsted: The Sea-Board Slave States.
Mrs. Stowe: *Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
Hildreth: *The White Slave.
Whittier: ‡Voices of Freedom.
Greeley: The American Conflict.
Lossing: The Civil War in the United States.
Draper: History of the American Civil War.
Stephens: Constitutional History of the War between the States (Southern view).
Harper’s Pictorial History of the Great Rebellion.
Young Folks’ History of the Rebellion.
Coffin: The Boys of ’61.
– *Winning His Way.
Hale: Stories of War.
Richardson: Field, Dungeon, and Escape.
Swinton: Twelve Decisive Battles of the War.
Cooke: Life of General Lee.
Whittier: ‡In War Time.
Lester: Our First Hundred Years.
Lossing: The American Centenary.
Tourgee: *A Fool’s Errand.
– *Bricks without Straw.
Headley: Heroes of the Rebellion (6 vols.).
