One Hundred Best Books | Page 6

He hated mystical balderdash, clumsy barbarity, and
stupid hypocrisy. Candide is not only a complete refutation of
optimism; it is a book full of that mischievous humor, which has the
power, more than anything else, of reconciling us to the business of
enduring life.
9. SHAKESPEARE. In the Temple edition.
It is time Shakespeare was read for the beauty of his poetry, and
enjoyed without pedantry and with some imagination. The less usual
and more cynical of his plays, such as Troilus, and Cressida, Measure
for Measure and Timon of Athens, will be found to contain some very
interesting commentaries upon life.
The Shakespearean attitude of mind is quite a definite and articulate
one, and one that can be, by slow degrees, acquired, even by persons
who are not cultivated or clever. It is an attitude "compounded of many
simples," and, like the melancholy of Jaques, it wraps us about "in a
most humorous sadness." But the essential secret of Shakespeare's
genius is best apprehended in the felicity of certain isolated passionate
speeches, and in the magic of his songs.

10. MILTON. Any edition.
No epicurean lover of the subtler delicacies in poetic rhythm or of the
more exalted and translunar harmonies in the imaginative
suggestiveness of words, can afford to leave Milton untouched. In sheer
felicity of beauty--the beauty of suggestive words, each one carrying "a
perfume in the mention," and together, by their arrangement in relation
to one another, conveying a thrill of absolute and final satisfaction--no
poem in our language surpasses Lycidas, and only the fine great odes of
John Keats approach or equal it.
There are passages, too, in Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained and
Samson Agonistes, which, for calm, flowing, and immortal loveliness,
are not surpassed in any poetry in the world.
Milton's work witnesses to the value in art of what is ancient and
traditional, but while he willingly uses every tradition of antiquity, he
stamps all he writes with his own formidable image and superscription.
11. SIR THOMAS BROWNE. RELIGIO MEDICI AND URN
BURIAL. _In the "Scott Library" Series_.
The very spirit of ancient Norwich, the mellowest and most historic of
all English cities, breathes in these sumptuous and aromatic pages.
After Lamb and Pater, both of whom loved him well, Browne is the
subtlest adept in the recondite mysteries of rhythmic prose who can be
enjoyed in our language. Not to catch the cadences of his peculiar
music is to confess oneself deaf to the finer harmonies of words.
12. GOETHE. FAUST, translated in English Poetry by Bayard Taylor.
WILHELM MEISTER, _in Carlyle's translation_. GOETHE'S
CONVERSATIONS WITH ECKERMAN, _translation in Bohn's
Library_.
No other human name, except Da Vinci's, carries the high associations
of oracular and occult wisdom as far as Goethe's does. He hears the
voices of "the Mothers" more clearly than other men and in heathen
loneliness he "builds up the pyramid of his existence."
The deep authority of his formidable insight can be best enjoyed, not
without little side-lights of a laconic irony, in the "Conversations";
while in Wilhelm Meister we learn to become adepts in the art of living
in the Beautiful and True, in Faust that abysmal doubt as to the whole
mad business of life is undermined with a craft equal to his own in the
delineation and defeat of "the queer son of Chaos."

15. NIETZSCHE. ZARATHUSTRA, THE JOYFUL WISDOM, AND
ECCE HOMO _are all translated in the English edition of Foulis and
published in America by Macmillan. Lichtenberger's exposition of his
doctrines is in the same series. The most artistic life of him is by Daniel
Halêvy, translated from the French_.
Nietzsche's writings when they fall into the hands of Philistines are
more misunderstood than any others. To appreciate his noble and tragic
distinction with the due pinch of Attic salt it is necessary to be
possessed of more imagination than most persons are able to summon
up. The dramatic grandeur of Nietzsche's extraordinary intellect
overtops all the flashes of his psychological insight; and his terrific
conclusions remain as mere foot-prints of his progress from height to
height.
18. HEINE. HEINE'S PROSE WORKS WITH THE
"CONFESSIONS," _translated in the "Scott Library." A good short life
of Heine in the "Great Writers" Series_.
Heine's genius remains unique. Full of dreamy attachment to Germany
he lived and died in Paris, but his heart was always with the exiles of
Israel. Mocker and ribald, he touches depths of sentimental tenderness
sounded by none other. He fooled the philosophers, provoked the pious,
and confused the minds of his free-thinking friends by outbursts of
wilful reaction. He sticks the horns of satyrish "diablerie" on the lovely
forehead of the most delicate romance; and he flings into his magical
poems of love and the sea the naughty mud-pellets of an outrageous
capriciousness.