Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 239, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 October 1917 — One Might While Away Idle Hours Reading One of These. [ARTICLE]

One Might While Away Idle Hours Reading One of These.

Which is the longest poem in the world? One generally regards “Paradise Lost” as pretty lengthy, and Thomson’s “Seasons” and Cowper’s ‘‘Task.” But these are short compared with Spenser’s “Faerie Queene,”'which •’is easily the longest poem in existence, even as it stands, and had he attained his object and reached the twentyfourth book, no other poem would have been “in It.” It Is only a quarter of the original plan, yet It is as long as the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid put together, twice as long as Dante’s “Dlvina Commedia,” and three times as long as “Paradise Lost” and “Paradise Regained” in one. The longest novel in the world belongs to Japan. Its author is Klong Te Bakin. It was commenced in 1852, and published volume by volume as it came out over a period of fifty years. There are 106 volumes, 106,000 pages, 3,180,000 lines, and about 38,000,000 wordsu. ’•.A complete copy weighs 130 pounds.