The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1897-07-04
A LIBRARY IN ITSELF.


An undertaking unlike any other in
| the literary world is the preparation
of a library Of standard literature, of
which Mr.. Charles Dudley Warner is
the editor. The great mass of people,
| who love good reading and who find
books except within narrow limits, be-
yond their personal reach, have an OPP
portunity through this to enjoy all the
advantages of a library that would
cost thousands of dollars and be beyond
the ability of the average man to
properly house. It has the further ad-
vantage of the looping away of vast
! mass of matter intrinsically unimpor-
tant, the presentation of the best that
produced, and a scholarly arrangement
and explanation of literary history and
literary production. We have little use
for the ordinary book of Selections
1t represents, as { rule, merely the per-
sonal choice Of some individual, which,
! no matter how eminent he may be, can
never take the place of access to the
original. One mans choice and judg-
ment rarely meets another's. This great
work, however, comprising forty-five
almost all that is best worth knowing
in the worlds literature down to the
present time.
The multiplication of books is the de-
spair Of the student and the lover Of
literature. A really great library, like
that of Paris, contains 100000 vol
umes. Our own congressional library
building has nearly 1000, 900 waiting to
be placed on it's shelves. 1t is a wilder
ness in which the plain man, ambitious
of getting into contact with the best
thought of the race, Is lost. This COM
pilation is the work Of years of the best
literary ability of this country under
careful direction Eminent literary men
and the professors of English literature
in all the great universities have been
engaged in the selection of what is
most enduring from the monuments Of
literary genius. Specialists have sought
for the secret Of each masters thought,
| have sketched the coherent plan of his
lifes work and have brought together
the literary productions upon which his
fame is founded and by which he will
| be remembered as a contributor to the
world of thought
1t seems to US that this scheme and
its realization are so far out of the
in hot
Of educated people, There is no man
ambitious of intellectual DEVELOPMENT
to whom such a collection VIII not be
a treasure. Most of us have our liter
airy favorites, for whose complete
works, ready to our hand, nothing
could be substituted. Anything less
than the complete works of Emerson
or Of Browning would be too little But
just beyond the lines of genius which
these men occupy there is an army of
lesser lights, concerning whom the stu
dent and the reader wants to have
something on which he can lay his
hand, but who Sc complete works are a
useless burden. For example a man
with any pretension to literary acquire
ments would be ashamed to confess en-
tire ignorance of the works of William
Cowper or Of John Dryden, or of a
hundred others whom we could name
Yet no one but a man making the study
or the teaching of literature life work
would today wade through all that
these poets wrote. He needs to know
only the few masterpieces, in which
they rose to their highest level, left
their mark upon their time and enrolled
their names in the list Of those who
may not be neglected or forgotten.
For such mental furnishing a selec
ton by competent authorities of the
best that a whole host of literary
| workers have achieved is necessary.
and is all that is necessary Within
| the compass Of these volumes is com
pressed the essential extracts of hun
dreds of thousands. Within them
is garnered the ripe golden grain
Of human thought, and outside of
| what they contain there Is little or
nothing of value to any but the spe-
cialist. 1t seems to us that the Gre
alton of such a work by the ablest