Plato's Dialogues; at any rate, the Apology, Phædo, and Republic 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 Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (perhaps in Morris's edition; or, if expurgated, in C. Clarke's, or Mrs. Haweis's) Shakespeare Milton's Paradise Lost, Lycidas, Comus, and the shorter poems Dante's Divina Commedia Spenser's Fairie Queen Dryden's Poems Scott's Poems Wordsworth (Mr. Arnold's selection) Southey's Thalaba the Destroyer The Curse of Kehama Pope's Essay on Criticism Burns Essay on Man Rape of the Lock Byron's Childe Harold Gray Herodotus Xenophon's Anabasis and Memorabilia Thucydides Tacitus's Germania Livy Gibbon's Decline and Fall Hume's History of England Grote's History of Greece Green's Short History of England Lewes's History of Philosophy Arabian Nights Swift's Gulliver's Travels Defoe's Robinson Crusoe Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield Cervantes's Don Quixote Boswell's Life of Johnson Molière Schiller's William Tell Sheridan's The Critic, School for Scandal, and The Rivals Carlyle's Past and Present Bacon's Novum Organum Smith's Wealth of Nations (part of) Mill's Political Economy Cook's Voyages Humboldt's Travels White's Natural History of Selborne Darwin's Origin of Species Naturalist's Voyage Mill's Logic Bacon's Essays Montaigne's Essays Hume's Essays Macaulay's Essays Addison's Essays Emerson's Essays Burke's Select Works Smiles's Self-Help Voltaire's Zadig and Micromegas Goethe's Faust, and Autobiography Thackeray's Vanity Fair Pendennis Dickens's Pickwick David Copperfield Lytton's Last Days of Pompeii Kingsley's Westward Ho! Scott's Novels CHAPTER V THE BLESSING OF FRIENDS1 "They seem to take away the sun from the world who withdraw friendship from life; for we have received nothing better from the Immortal Gods, nothing more delightful."CICERO. MOST of those who have written in praise of books have thought they could say nothing more conclusive than to compare them to friends. "All men," said Socrates, "have their different objects of ambitionhorses, dogs, money, honour, as the case may be; but for his own part he would rather have a good friend than all these 1 The substance of this was delivered at the London Working Men's College. |