Comfort Found in Good Old Books

Homer and Virgil give an excellent idea of the ancient way of looking upon life. Everything is clear, brilliant, free from all illusions; there are no moral digressions; the characters live and move as naturally as the beasts of the field and with the same unconscious enjoyment of life and love and the warmth of the sun. The gods decree the fate of men; the prizes of this world fall to him who has the stoutest heart, the strongest arm and the most cunning tongue. Each god and goddess of Olympus has favorites on earth, and when these favorites are in trouble or danger the gods appeal to Jove to intercede for them. None of the characters reveals any except the most primitive emotions.

Helen of Troy sets the whole ancient world aflame, but it is only the modern poets who put any words of remorse or shame into her beautiful mouth. And yet these old stories are among the most attractive that have ever been told. They appeal to young and old alike, and when one sees the bright eyes of children flash over the deeds of the heroes of Homer, he may get some idea of what these tales were to the early Greeks. Told by professional story-tellers about the open fire at night, they had much to do with the development of the Greek mind and character, as seen at its best in the age of Pericles. Virgil took Æneas of Troy as his hero and wrote his great national epic of the founding of Rome.

Only brief space can be given to the other worthies of the classical age. Every one should have some knowledge of Plato, whose great service was to tell the world of the life and teachings of Socrates, the wisest of the ancients. Get Jowett's translation of the Phædo and read the pathetic story of the last days of Socrates. Or get the Republic and learn of Plato's ideal of good government. Jowett was one of the greatest Greek scholars and his translations are simple and strong, a delight to read.

Of the great Greek dramatists read one work of each – say, the Antigone of Sophocles, the Medea of Euripides and the Prometheus of Æschylus. If you like these, it is easy to find the others. Then there is Plutarch, whose lives of famous Greeks and Romans used to be one of the favorite books of our grandfathers. It is little read today, but you can get much out of it that will remain as a permanent possession. The Romans were great letter-writers, perhaps because they had not developed the modern fads of society and sport which consume most of the leisure of today, and in these letters you will get nearer to the writer than in his other works.

Cicero in his most splendid orations never touched me as he does in his familiar letters, while Pliny gives a mass of detail that throws a clear light on Roman life. Pliny would have made an excellent reporter, as he felt the need of detail in giving a picture of any event. There are a score of other famous ancient writers whose work you may get in good English translations, but of all these perhaps you will enjoy most the two philosophers – Epictetus, the Greek stoic, and Marcus Aurelius, who retained a refreshing simplicity of mind when he was absolute master of the Roman world. Most of the Greek and Latin authors may be secured in Bohn's series of translations, which are usually good.

This ancient world of Greece and Rome is full of stimulus to the general reader, although he may have no knowledge either of Latin or Greek. More and more the colleges are abandoning the training in the classics and are substituting German or French or Italian for the old requirements of Greek and Latin. As intellectual training, the modern languages cannot compare with the classical, but in our day the intense competition in business, the struggle for mere existence has become so keen that it looks as though the leisurely methods of education of our forefathers must be abandoned.

The rage for specializing has reached such a point that one often finds an expert mining or electrical engineer graduated from one of our great universities who knows no more of ancient or modern literature than an ignorant ditch-digger, and who cannot write a short letter in correct English. These things were not "required" in his course; hence he did not take them. And it is far more difficult to induce such a man to cultivate the reading habit than it is to persuade the man who has never been to college to devote some time every day to getting culture from the great books of the world.

TheArabian Nights andOther Classics

Oriental Fairy Tales and German Legends – The Ancient Arabian Stories and the Nibelungenlied Among World's Greatest Books

The gap between the ancient writers and the modern is bridged by several great books, which have been translated into all languages. Among these the following are entitled to a place: The Arabian Nights; Don Quixote, by Cervantes; The Divine Comedy, by Dante; The Imitation of Christ; The Rubá'iyát of Omar Khayyám, St. Augustine's Confessions, and The Nibelungenlied.

Other great books could be added to this list, such as Benvenuto Cellini's Autobiography, Boccaccio's Tales, the Analects of Confucius and Mahomet's Koran. But these are not among the books which one must read. Those that I have named first should be read by any one who wishes to get the best in all literature. And another reason is that characters and sayings from these books are so often quoted that to be ignorant of them is to miss much which is significant in the literature of the last hundred years. Whatever forms a part of everyday speech cannot be ignored, and the Arabian Nights, Don Quixote and Dante's Divine Comedy are three books that have made so strong an impression on the world that they have stimulated the imagination of hundreds of writers and have formed the text for many volumes. Dante's great work alone has been commented upon by hundreds of writers, and these commentaries and the various editions make up a library of over five thousand volumes. The Arabian Nights has been translated from the original into all languages, although the primitive tales still serve to amuse Arabs when told by the professional story-tellers of today.

In choosing the great books of the world first place must be given to those which have passed into the common language of the people or which have been quoted so frequently that one cannot remain ignorant of them. After the Bible and Shakespeare the third place must be given to The Arabian Nights, a collection of tales of Arabia and Egypt, supposed to have been related by Queen Scheherezade to her royal husband when he was wakeful in the night. The first story was told in order that he might not carry out his determination to have her executed on the following morning; so she halted her tale at a very interesting point and, artfully playing upon the King's interest, every night she stopped her story at a point which piqued curiosity. In this way, so the legend goes, she entertained her spouse for one thousand and one nights, until he decided that so good a story-teller deserved to keep her head.

Today these Arabian tales and many variants of The Thousand and One Nights are told by professional story-tellers who call to their aid all the resources of gesture, facial expression and variety of tone. In fact, these Oriental story-tellers are consummate actors, who play upon the emotions of their excitable audiences until they are able to move them to laughter and tears. This childlike character the Arab has retained until today, despite the fact that he is rapidly becoming expert in the latest finance and that he is a past master in the handling of the thousands of tourists who visit Egypt, Arabia and other Mohammedan countries every year.

The sources of the leading tales of The Arabian Nights cannot be traced. Such stories as Sinbad the Sailor, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and Aladdin or the Wonderful Lamp may be found in the literature of all Oriental countries, but the form in which these Arabian tales have come down to us shows that they were collected and arranged during the reign of the good Caliph Haroun al Raschid of Bagdad, who flourished in the closing years of the eighth century. The book was first made known to European readers by Antoine Galland in 1704. This French writer made a free paraphrase of some of the tales, but, singularly enough, omitted the famous stories of Aladdin and Ali Baba.

The first good English translation was made by E. W. Lane from an Arabic version, condensed from the original text. The only complete translations of the Arabic version were made by Sir Richard Burton for a costly subscription edition and by John Payne for the Villon Society. Burton's notes are very interesting, as he probably knew the Arab better than any other foreigner, but his literal translation is tedious, because of the many repetitions, due to the custom of telling the stories by word of mouth.

The usual editions of The Arabian Nights, contain eight stories. Happy are the children who have had these immortal stories told or read to them in their impressionable early years. Like the great stories of the Bible are these fairy tales of magicians, genii, enchanted carpets and flying horses; of princesses that wed poor boys who have been given the power to summon the wealth of the underworld; of the adventures of Sinbad in many waters, and of his exploits, which were more remarkable than those of Ulysses.

The real democracy of the Orient is brought out in these tales, for the Grand Vizier may have been the poor boy of yesterday and the young adventurer with brains and cunning and courage often wins the princess born to the purple. All the features of Moslem life, which have not changed for fourteen hundred years, are here reproduced and form a very attractive study. For age or childhood The Arabian Nights will always have a perennial charm, because these tales appeal to the imagination that remains forever young.

The great poem of German literature, The Nibelungenlied, may be bracketed with The Arabian Nights, for it expresses perfectly the ideals of the ancient Germans, the historic myths that are common to all Teutonic and Scandinavian races, and the manners and customs that marked the forefathers of the present nation of "blood and iron." The Nibelungenlied has well been called the German Iliad, and it is worthy of this appellation, for it is the story of a great crime and a still greater retribution.

It is really the story of Siegfried, King of the Nibelungs, in lower Germany, favored of the Gods, who fell in love with Kriemhild, Princess of the Burgundians; of Siegfried's help by which King Gunther, brother of Kriemhild, secures as his wife the Princess Brunhilde of Iceland; of the rage and humiliation of Brunhilde when she discovers that she has been subdued by Siegfried instead of by her own overlord; of Brunhilde's revenge, which took the form of the treacherous slaying of Siegfried by Prince Hagen, and of the tremendous revenge of Kriemhild years after, when, as the wife of King Etzel of the Huns, she sees the flower of the Burgundian chivalry put to the sword, and she slays with her own hand both her brother Gunther and Hagen, the murderer of Siegfried.

The whole story is dominated by the tragic hand of fate. Siegfried, the warrior whom none can withstand in the lists, is undone by a woman's tongue. The result of the shame he has put upon Brunhilde Siegfried reveals to his wife, and a quarrel between the two women ends in Kriemhild taunting Brunhilde with the fact that King Gunther gained her love by fraud and that Siegfried was the real knight who overcame and subdued her. Then swiftly follows the plot to kill Siegfried, but Brunhilde, whose wrath could be appeased only by the peerless knight's death, has a change of heart and stabs herself on his funeral pyre. Intertwined with this story of love, revenge and the slaughter of a whole race is the myth of a great treasure buried by the dwarfs in the Rhine, the secret of which goes to the grave with grim old Hagen.

These tales that are told in The Nibelungenlied have been made real to readers of today by Wagner, who uses them as the libretto of some of his finest operas. With variations, he has told in the greatest dramatic operas the world has yet seen the stories of Siegfried and Brunhilde, the labors of the Valkyrie, and the wrath of the gods of the old Norse mythology. To understand aright these operas, which have come to be performed by all the great companies, one should be familiar with the epic that first recorded these tales of chivalry.

Many variants there are of this epic in the literature of Norway, Sweden and Iceland, but The Nibelungenlied remains as the model of these tales of the heroism of men and the quarrels of the gods. Wagner has used these materials with surpassing skill, and no one can hear such operas as Siegfried, The Valkyrie, and Gotterdammerung without receiving a profound impression of the reality and the power of these old myths and legends.

Perhaps for most readers Carlyle's essay on The Nibelungenlied will suffice, for in this the great English essayist and historian has told the story of the German epic and has translated many of the most striking passages. In verse the finest rendering of this story is found in Sigurd the Volsung by William Morris, told in sonorous measure that never becomes monotonous. A good prose translation has been made by Professor Shumway of the University of Pennsylvania. The volume was brought out by Houghton Mifflin Company of Boston in 1909. His version is occasionally marred by archaic turns of expression, but it comes far nearer to reproducing the spirit of the original than any of the metrical translations.

TheConfessions ofSt. Augustine

An Eloquent Book of Religious Meditation – The Ablest of Early Christian Fathers Tells of His Youth, His Friends and His Conversion

In reading the great books of the world one must be guided largely by his own taste. If a book is recommended to you and you cannot enjoy it after conscientious effort, then it is plain that the book does not appeal to you or that you are not ready for it. The classic that you may not be able to read this year may become the greatest book in the world to you in another year, when you have passed through some hard experience that has matured your mind or awakened some dormant faculties that call out for employment.

Great success or great failure, a crushing grief or a disappointment that seems to take all the light out of your world – these are some of the things that mature and change the mind. So, if you cannot feel interest in some of the books that are recommended in these articles put the volumes aside and wait for a better day. It will be sure to come, unless you drop into the habit of limiting your reading to the newspapers and the magazines. If you fall into this common practice then there is little hope for you, as real literature will lose all its attractions. Better to read nothing than to devote your time entirely to what is ephemeral and simply for the day it is printed.

The Confessions of St. Augustine is a book which will appeal to one reader, while another can make little of it. For fifteen hundred years it has been a favorite book among priests and theologians and those who are given to pious meditation. Up to the middle of the last century it probably had a more vital influence in weaning people from the world and in turning their thoughts to religious things than any other single book except the Bible. And this influence is not hard to seek, for into this book the stalwart old African Bishop of the fourth century put his whole heart, with its passionate love of God and its equally passionate desire for greater perfection. As an old commentator said, "it is most filled with the fire of the love of God and most calculated to kindle it in the heart."

This is the vital point and the one which it seems to me explains why the Confessions is very hard reading for most people of today. The praise of God, the constant quotation of passages from the Bible and the fear that his feelings may relapse into his former neglect of religion – these were common in the writers who followed Augustine for more than a thousand years. In fact, they remained the staple of all religious works up to the close of the Georgian age in England. Then came a radical change, induced perhaps by the rapid spread of scientific thought. The old religious books were neglected and the new works showed a directness of statement, an absence of Biblical verbiage and a closer bearing on everyday life and thought. This trend has been increased in devotional books, as well as in sermons, until it would be impossible to induce a church congregation of today to accept a sermon of the type that was preached up to the middle of the last century.

For this reason it seems to me that any one who wishes to cultivate St. Augustine should begin by reading a chapter of the Confessions. If you enjoy this, then it will be well to take up the complete Confessions, one of the best editions of which will be found in Everyman's Library, translated by Dr. E. B. Pusey, the leader of the great Tractarian movement in England. Pusey frowns on the use of any book of extracts from St. Augustine, but this English churchman, with his severe views, cannot be taken as a guide in these days. Doubtless he thought Pamela and Cœlebs in Search of a Wife entertaining books of fiction; but the reader of today pronounces them too dull and too sentimental to read.

Many there are in these days who preserve something of the old Covenanter spirit in regard to the Bible and other devotional books. One of these is Dr. Wilfred T. Grenfell, superintendent of the Labrador Medical Mission, an Oxford man, who cast aside a brilliant career in England to throw in his life with the poor fishermen along the stormy coast which he has made his home. Dr. Grenfell has come to have the same influence over these uneducated men that General Gordon of Khartoum gained over alien races like the Chinese and the Soudanese, or that Stanley secured over savage African tribes. It is the intense earnestness, the simple-minded sincerity of the man who lives as Christ would live on earth which impresses these people of Labrador and gains their love and confidence. Grenfell in a little essay, What the Bible Means to Me, develops his feeling for the Scriptures, which is much the same feeling that inspired Augustine, as well as John Bunyan. Grenfell even goes to the length of saying that he prefers the Bible as a suggester of thought to any other book, and he regrets that it is not bound as secular books are bound, so that he might read it without attracting undue attention on railroad trains or in public places while waiting to be served with meals.

Gordon carried with him to the place where he met his death pieces of what he firmly believed was wood of the real cross of Calvary, and on the last day of his life, when he looked out over the Nile for the help that never came, he read his Bible with simple confidence in the God of Battles. Stanley believed that the Lord was with him in all his desperate adventures in savage Africa, and this belief warded off fever and discouragement and gave him the tremendous energy to overcome obstacles that would have proved fatal to any one not keyed up to his high tension by implicit faith in the Lord.

If you wish to know what personal faith in God means and what it can accomplish in this world of devotion to mammon, read Stanley's Autobiography, edited by his wife, that Dorothy Tennant who is one of the most brilliant of living English women. It is one of the most stimulating books in the world, and no young man can read it without having his ambition powerfully excited and his better nature stirred by the spectacle of the rise of this poor abused boy slave in a Welsh foundlings' home to a place of high honor and great usefulness – a seat beside kings, and a name that will live forever as the greatest of African explorers.

It is this marvelous faith in God, which is as real as the breath in his nostrils, that makes St. Augustine's Confessions a vital and enduring book. It is this faith that charges it with the potency of living words, although the man who wrote this book has been dead over fifteen hundred years. Augustine was born in Numidia and brought up amid pagan surroundings, although his mother, Monica, was an ardent Christian and prayed that he might become a convert to her faith. He was trained as a rhetorician and spent some time at Carthage. When his thoughts were directed to religion the main impediment in the way of his acceptance of Christianity was the fact that he lived with a concubine and had had a child by her. Finally came the death of his bosom friend, which called out one of the great laments of all time, and then his gradual conversion to the Christian church, largely due to careful study of St. Paul.

Following hard upon his conversion came the death of his mother, who had been his constant companion for many years. Rarely eloquent is his tribute to this unselfish mother, whose virtues were those of the good women of all ages and whose love for her son was the flower of her life. In all literature there is nothing finer than the old churchman's tender memorial to his dear mother and his pathetic record of the heavy grief, that finally was eased by a flood of tears. Here are some of the simple words of this lament over the dead:

"I closed her eyes; and there flowed withal a mighty sorrow into my heart, which was overflowing into tears; mine eyes at the same time, by the violent command of my mind, drank up their fountain wholly dry; and woe was me in such strife! * * * What then was it which did grievously pain me within, but a fresh wound wrought through the sudden wrench of that most sweet and dear custom of living together? I joyed indeed in her testimony, when, in her last sickness, mingling her endearments with my acts of duty, she called me 'dutiful,' and mentioned with great affection of love that she never heard any harsh or reproachful sound uttered by my mouth against her. But yet, O my Lord, who madest us, what comparison is there betwixt that honor that I paid her and her slavery for me?"

Augustine was the ablest of the early Christian fathers and he did yeoman's service in laying broad and deep the foundations of the Christian church and in defending it against the heretics. But of all his many works the Confessions will remain the most popular, because it voices the cry of a human heart and shows the human side of a great churchman.

Don QuixoteOne of the World'sGreat Books

Cervantes' Masterpiece a Book for All Time – Intensely Spanish, it Still Appeals to All Nations by its Deep Human Interest

Among the great books of the world no contrast could be greater than that between St. Augustine's Confessions and Don Quixote by Cervantes, yet each in its way has influenced unnumbered thousands and will continue to influence other thousands so long as this world shall endure. Few great books have been so widely quoted as this masterpiece of the great Spaniard; few have contributed so many apt stories and pungent epigrams. Of the great imaginary characters of fiction none is more strongly or clearly defined than the sad-faced Knight of La Mancha and his squire, Sancho Panza. The grammar school pupil in his reading finds constant allusions to Don Quixote and his adventures, and the world's greatest writers have drawn upon this romance by Cervantes for material to point their own remarks.

In this respect the only great author Spain has produced resembles Shakespeare. His appeal is universal because the man behind the romance had tasted to the bitter dregs all that life can offer, yet his nature had remained sweet and wholesome. Byron in Childe Harold, with his cunning trick of epigram, said that Cervantes "smiled Spain's chivalry away," but chivalry was as dead in the days of Cervantes as it is now. What the creator of Don Quixote did was to ridicule the high-flown talk, the absurd sentimentality that marked chivalry, while at the same time he brought out, as no one else has ever done, the splendid qualities that made chivalry immortal.