The World's Best Books : A Key to the Treasures of Literature Part 4

Nasby[256]

Ward[257]

Jerrold[258]

Voltaire[259]

Byron[259]

Butler[260]

Swift[260]

Rabelais[261]

Sterne[261]

Juvenal[262]

Lucian[262]

11. Fables & Fairy Tales.

Andersen[263] Bulfinch[268]

La Fontaine[264] Saxe[269]

aesop[265] Florian[270]

Grimm[266] Kipling[270]

Goethe[267] Babrius[271]

Hawthorne[267] Hauff[272]

Ovid[273]

Curtin[273]

Fiske[273]

12. Travel.

Cook[274] Marco Polo[277]

Humboldt[275] Kane[278]

Darwin[276] Livingstone[279]

Stanley[280]

Du Chaillu[281]

Niebuhr[282]

Bruce[283]

Heber[284]

Lander[285]

Waterton[286]

Mungo Park[287]

Ouseley[288]

Barth[289]

Boteler[290]

Maundeville[291]

Warburton[292]

13. Guides.

Foster[293] Brook[303]

Pall Mall[294] Leypoldt[304]

Morley[295] Richardson[305]

Welsh[296] Harrison[306]

Taine[297] Ruskin[307]

Botta[298] Bright[308]

Allibone[299] Dunlop[309]

Bartlett[300] Baldwin[309]

Ballou[301] Adams[309]

Bryant[302]

Palgrave[302]

Roget's Thesaurus Dictionaries Encyclopaedias

14. Miscellaneous.

Smiles' Self-Help[310] Sheking[324]

Irving's Sketch Book[311] a.n.a.lects of Confucius[325]

Bacon's New Atlantis[312] Mesnevi[326]

Bellamy[313] Buddhism[327]

Arabian Nights[314] Mahabharata[328]

Munchausen[315] Ramayana[329]

Beowulf[316] Vedas[330]

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle[317] Koran[331]

Froissart[318] Talmud[332]

Nibelungenlied[319] Hooker[333]

Icelandic Sagas[320] Swedenborg[333]

Elder Edda[321] Newton[333]

The Cid[322] Kepler[333]

Morte D'Arthur[323] Copernicus[333]

Laplace[333]

REMARKS ON TABLE I.

RELIGION AND MORALS.

Religion and Morals, though not identical, are so closely related that they are grouped together. The books in Column 1 by no means exhaust these subjects, for they run like threads of gold through the whole warp and woof of poetry. Philosophy, fiction, and fable, biography, history, and essays, oratory and humor, seem rather satellites that attend upon moral feelings than independent orbs, and even science is not dumb upon these all-absorbing topics. If we are to be as broad-minded in our religious views as we seek to be in other matters, we must become somewhat acquainted with the wors.h.i.+p of races other than our own. This may be done through Homer, Hesiod, Ovid, Confucius, Buddha, the Vedas, Koran, Talmud, Edda, Sagas, Beowulf, Nibelungenlied, Shah Nameh, etc.

(which are all in some sense "Bibles," or books that have grown out of the hearts of the people), and through general works, such as Clarke's "Ten Great Religions."

[1] Especially Job, and Psalms 19, 103, 104, 107, in the Old Testament; and in the New the four Gospels, the Acts, and the Epistles. (m. R. D.

C. G.)

[2] Next to the Bible, probably no book is so much read by the English peoples as Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," a simple, vivid, helpful story of Christian life and its obstacles. No writer has so well portrayed the central truths of Christianity as this great, untrained, imaginative genius, pouring his life upon the deathless pages of his poetic allegory during the twelve long years in the latter part of the 17th century, when he was imprisoned, under the Restoration, merely because of his religious principles. (e. R. D.)

[3] Taylor's "Holy Living and Dying" is a wise, frank talk about the care of our time, purity of intention, practice of the presence of G.o.d, temperance, justice, modesty, humility, envy, contentedness, etc. Some portions of the first hundred and fifty pages are of the utmost practical value. Even Ruskin admits that Taylor and Bunyan are rightly placed among the world's best. (Eng., 17th cent.--m. R. D.)

[4] "Imitation of Christ" is a sister book to the last, written in the 15th century by Thomas a Kempis, a German monk, of pure and beautiful life and thought. It is a world-famous book, having been translated into every civilized language, and having pa.s.sed through more than five hundred editions in the present century. (m. R. D.)

[5] Spencer's "Data of Ethics" is one of the most important books in literature, having to the science of ethics much the same relation as Newton's "Principia" to astronomy, or Darwin's "Origin of Species" to biology. Note especially the parts concerning altruistic selfishness, the morality of health, and the development of moral feeling in general.