Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1902-06-28

she may do or say.-GraystOne.
Tears and laughter well compounded
make the sweetest joy; grief and joy
the truest happiness; happiness and
pain the grandest soul.--Dorothy Ver-
non of Haddon Hall.
If man admires girl at all, he will
want to marry her--as long as she
treats him badly.-Myra of the Pines.
People are seldom man and wife half
their lives without wishing to impart
their sufeerings as we'll as their plea
sures to each other-The Kentons.
To ask a question that can't be an
swered is merely feminine.-Chimmie
Fadden and Mr.. Paul.
Love is never found;-it comes
Graystone.
The time for repentance is in advance
of the crime.-Abroadw with the Jimmies.
Mr.. Edmund Gosse, one of the fore
most of living critics, has been giving
advice to readers bewildered by the
conflicting lists of best books" with
which we have been flooded during re-
cent years. He is certainly well quail
fled to speak on this subject, for as he
himself confesses, he was the first to
draw up a catalogue of "best books"
many years ago. Mr.. Gosse says:
what the list of books which I
enumerated as Indispensable exactly
was I have forgotten. But I am sure
that il included Boswells Life of DR..
Johnson and Goldsmith's Vicar of
Wakefield Among Shakespeare's
r1Io ito1x 7
named The Pilgrims Progress Don
Quixote' and Goethe's Faust in list
that included Tom Jones' I am GER
tain. because some moralist ex-
postulated with me afterward. AS I
am easy-going, l will put The
Arabian Nights instead of Tom
Jones' What of Dickens? Surely
'Pickwick. l am inclined to say
Lockhart's Life of Sir Walter Scott
and to finish with Robinson Crusoe.
Here. then, are ten Indispensable
books, by familiarity with which
man may certainly hope to escape from
the charge of being wholly unlettered.
If he is ignorant of these ten, he can
not escape from it. OF course, all of
these throw out side-branches and
oIitI DdTdItI IL f1dHlItl,
we may say, why not 'Othello'? and if
Faust why not 'Tartuffe'? Quite so;
and the ten thus leads to twenty. and
the twenty to as many as you will. 1t
will be observed that my little rudi-
mentary list contains no non-dramatic
poetry, no theology, no history, no
MISUNDERSTANDING that in any degree
requires or presupposes previous tech
nil. ctn lxr fria
down to the very bone of literary read
ing that is in an equal degree enter
tanning and instructive"
The scope and purport of lists of
best books have considerably
changed, observes Mr.. Gosse since he
drew up this first and most tentative of
them. and in many of the most widely
circulated lists "a display of the
erudition Of the list makers seems TO
of the people for whose use the listi is
made" lie continues:
What names are wanted in a handy
list of obvious books are neither those
of obscure Indian erudition nor of
ephemeral romance nor of pure every
day utility. Pliny says that it is well
to read much but not many things;
our modern vice is to read many
things. and vet not much. After We
have read much-that is to say, after
we have grounded ourselves on the
sOundest culture-we are free, if we
like, to read many things, such as
folklore and entomology, and even
the Mahahharata. 1t is not necessary
or wholesome that the average man
should read all books. If he tries to
do so. he is instantly invaded by men,
tai beWilderment. But there are GER
tain books which, if he has not read,
he is at a constant disadvantage in
moving among educated persons.
He fails to perceive the line of
thought. he does not understand the
humour of his friends. He misses the
extreme pleasure of following the con-
tinuity of the intellect of mankind
We have knoWn such people; at the
play they ask their neighbors why
POlonius is lurking behind the curtain,
and at church they wonder who the
preacher can have meant by Christian
and Hopeful They interrupt con-
versation to exclaim: 1.-The cynosure
Of neighboring eyes" What an odd
expresson,' These are the people, l
take it, for whom lists of the best
books are requisite.
IF So we ought, surely, to beware
of weighing down these lists with
pedantry on the enc hand or with
triviality on the other. Such a man as
| have just described does not want to
be recommended to read Ben Hur,' he
probably knows it from cover to
cover. He does not want to be urged
10 plunge into the 'Bhagavadgita,' for
he certainly would be drowned in it at
once. But he does want to be led gent
ly to Walter Scott and to Dickens, to
Milton and to Shakespeare. He who
should carefully read these four writ
ers alone, even if ne should look at
nothing else, might become a man of
nigh and distinguished cultivation. He
who has not read these four, no mat
ter what else he may have read, is i'm
perfectly equipped as a student in the
rudiments of English. 1t is not a ques-
ton of whether these are or are not
the best English authors, but these are
unquestionably the writers in whom
the genius of the nation has expressed
itself with the most lasting popularity,
those who have stored the national
memory fullest with figures and say
ingS and those without whose conn