England, Carlyle's French Revolution, Grote's History of Greece, and Green's Short History of the English People. Science is so rapidly progressive that, though to many minds it is the most fruitful and interesting subject of all, I cannot here rest on that agreement which, rather than my own opinion, I take as the basis of my list. I will therefore only mention Bacon's Novum Organum, Mill's Logic, and Darwin's Origin of Species; in Political Economy, which some of our rulers do not now sufficiently value, Mill, and parts of Smith's Wealth of Nations, for probably those who do not intend to make a special study of political economy would scarcely read the whole. Among voyages and travels, perhaps those most frequently suggested are Cook's Voyages, Humboldt's Travels, and Darwin's Naturalist's Journal; though I confess I should like to have added many more. Mr. Bright not long ago specially recommended the less known American poets, but he probably assumed that every one would have read Shakespeare, Milton (Paradise Lost, Lycidas, Comus and minor poems), Chaucer, Dante, Spenser, Dryden, Scott, Wordsworth, Pope, Byron, and others, before embarking on more doubtful adventures. Among other books most frequently recommended are Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, The Arabian Nights, Don Quixote, Boswell's Life of Johnson, White's Natural History of Selborne, Burke's Select Works (Payne), the Essays of Bacon, Addison, Hume, Montaigne, Macaulay, and Emerson, Carlyle's Past and Present, Smiles's Self-Help, and Goethe's Faust and Autobiography. Nor can one go wrong in recommending Berkeley's Human Knowledge, Descartes's Discours sur la Méthode, Locke's Conduct of the Understanding, Lewes's History of Philosophy; while, in order to keep within the number one hundred, I can only mention Molière and Sheridan among dramatists. Macaulay considered Marivaux's La Vie de Marianne the best novel in any language, but my number is so nearly complete that I must content myself with English and will suggest Thackeray (Vanity Fair and Pendennis), Dickens (Pickwick and David Copperfield), G. Eliot (Adam Bede or The Mill on the Floss), Kingsley (Westward Ho!), Lytton (Last Days of Pompeii), and last, not least, those of Scott, which indeed constitute a library in themselves, but which I must ask, in return for my trouble, to be allowed, as a special favour, to count as one. To any lover of books the very mention of these names brings back a crowd of delicious memories, grateful recollections of peaceful home hours, after the labours and anxieties of the day. How thankful we ought to be for these inestimable blessings, for this numberless host of friends who never weary, betray, or forsake us! LIST OF 100 BOOKS Works by Living Authors are omitted The Bible The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius Aristotle's Ethics Analects of Confucius St. Hilaire's "Le Bouddha et sa religion" Wake's Apostolic Fathers Thos. à Kempis's Imitation of Christ Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus Butler's Analogy of Religion Taylor's Holy Living and Dying Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress Keble's Christian Year Plato's Dialogues; at any rate, the Apology, Crito, and Phædo Xenophon's Memorabilia Aristotle's Politics Demosthenes's De Coronâ Cicero's De Officiis, De Amicitiâ, and De Senectute Plutarch's Lives Berkeley's Human Knowledge Descartes's Discours sur la Méthode Locke's On the Conduct of the Understanding Kalidasa's Sakuntala or The Lost Ring Eschylus's Prometheus Trilogy of Orestes Sophocles's Edipus. Euripides's Medea Aristophanes's The Knights and Clouds Horace |