Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 January 1912 — Books tor the Educated [ARTICLE]

Books tor the Educated

There are a number of books which form the foundations of literature and with which everybody must have some acquaintance before he can con sider intelligently the written or spoken words oi the people of later ages Chief among these books are probably the Bible. “Pilgrim’s Progress, “Arabian Nights,’” “Robinson Crusoe, “Gulliver’s Travels,” “Aesop’s Fables, Homer’s "Iliad” and Virgil’s “Aeneid, Plato’s “Republic,” the principal play of Shakespeare, Milton’s “Paradise Lost” and “Rubaiyat of Omar Khay yam.” He should hkve a further ac quaintance with some of the - later au thors. Some of the essays of Addison Bacon, Lamb, Macaulay and Emerson would be valuable. From the poets he should have read such selections as “Elegy in a Country Churchyard,’ from 1 Gray: "Deserted Village,” from Goldsmith; “Rime of the Ancient Mar iner,” from Goleridge: “Lady of tht LAke,” by ScOtt; "Chllde Harold, ”“by" Byron; “Endymion,” by Keats; "For a that and a’ that,”-from Burns; “The Princess,” by Tennyson; "Evangeline, by Longfellow,” and something from Whittier, Lowell, Browning, Poe Whitman, Kipling, Eugene Field ano Whitcomb Riley. Some of the ficiioii which he should have read is “Vanity Fair,” by Thackeray; “David Copperfield/’ by Dickens; “Last Days oi Pompeii,” by Bulwer-Lytton; “Silar Marner,” by George Eliot; “The Vfcai of Wakefield,” by Goldsmith; “Let Miserables,” by Hugo; “Count oi Monte Cristo,” by Dumas; “Sketch Book,” by Irving; “Scarlet Letter,” bj Ffawfhorhe“War and Peace,” iy Tolstoy; “Quo Vadis,” by Sienkiewicz; “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” by Stowe and something from Cooper, Poe, Holmes, Stevenson, Mark Twain, James, Howells. Hardy, Meredith Kipling, Barrie, Ibsen and Shaw. He should, of course, have a fair acquaintance with general with the sciences and with economic writings., One may be highly Intelligent and have read but little, but he could not be considered educated. The list of books known as the Harvard classics as compiled by Dr. Eliot, which was said to contain sufficient information to give a person a liberr. education, that has been announced but which, according to the statemer of Dr. Eliot, does not include th entire number, is “Autobiography c Benjamin Franklin,” “Journal of Joh Woolman,” “Fruits of Solitude,” b. William Penn; Bacon’s “Essays” am. “New Atlantis;” Milton’s “Areopagitica,” and “Tractate on Education: ” Sir Thomas Browne’s “Religio Medicl;” Platons “Apology,” “Crito;” “Golden Sayings” of Epictetus; “Meditations of Marcus Aurelius;’* Emerson’s “Essays;” Beaumont and Fletcher’s “The Maid’s Trapedy;” Webster’s “Dutchess of Maifi;’’ Middleton’s "The Changeling;” Dryden’s “All for Love;” Shelley’s "Cehpi;" Browning’s “Blot on the Scutcheon;’’ Tennyson’s “Becket;” Goethe’s "Faust;” Marlowe’s “Dr. Faustus;” Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nation’s;” “Letters of Cicero and Pliny;” John Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress;" “Burns's "Tam O'Shanter;” Walton’s “Compleat Angler” and “Lives of Donne and Herbert; 7 ’ “Autobiography of St. Augustine;” Plutarch’s "Lives;” Dryden’s “Aeneid;” Chaucer> "Canterbury Tales;” "Imitation of Christ,” by Thomas A. Kempls; Dante’s "Divine Comedy;” Darwin’s "Origin of Species” and "Arabian Nights.”