CHAPTER XXI. GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS LITERATURE. IN the realm of general literature there are a few great authors which at once suggest themselves to the English reader. To begin with our own time, we have Carlyle, who is a littérateur as well as an historian. His pungent and penetrating sarcasm, his uncouth humour, his turbulent sentences, are embalmed in "Sartor Resartus" more securely than in his "History of Frederick the Great." The "History of the French Revolution" is a philosophy, a dream, a "prose poem," much more than, and as well as, an account of facts. But Carlyle is not one of the great names in universal literature. It is at present difficult to assign him his true place, for he is too near our own eyes to enable us to keep him in the proper line of perspective. You will read him without servility and without mistaking his mannerisms for his genius. Let not any modern reputation cloud your vision of the truly great names: Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth. These are the planets of the first magnitude. Not far from them are Chaucer, who is too gross to be read by indiscriminate minds; Spenser, whose quaintness, charming to scholars, is an obstacle to others. Burns and Byron are men of genius, but you would have to pick your way most carefully to find a clean path through some of their verses. Postpone them for the present. Even Shakespeare, alas! is not free from grossness. There is not a line in Milton or Wordsworth from which the most pure mind need turn away. If you should be ready to vote Wordsworth dull, read Matthew Arnold's essay, and the selections which he has made with so much care and poetic tact. Take his little volume for your text-book for a few weeks, and work yourself into a Wordsworthian enthusiasm. You will not suffer from reaction. Take one of these three, with all the aids at your command, and, since they are veritably the three greatest writers of our country, your taste will inevitably be raised and your mind enriched. Confining ourselves for the moment, however, to writers of our own time, Ruskin stands out with a style as artistic as the subjects of which he treats. Sometimes limpid as a trout stream, as in the "Seven Lamps;" sometimes incisive as an etching, as in a few critical passages on Sir Walter Scott in his "Fors Clavigera;" sometimes majestic and splendid as the clouds, as in "Modern Painters; " at other times as didactic as a sermon and dogmatic as a preacher, as in the "Crown of Wild Olive;" and then, again, as minute and special as a scientific lecturer, as in his "Ethics of the Dust"he presents a majestic and almost prophetic appearance in the domains of literature. It is not necessary to follow all his reasonings and to admit all his conclusions in order to be one of his admirers. One of the best modern biographies is Dr. Arnold's Life, edited by Dean Stanley. Of biographies and of sermons there is no end. Boswell's "Life of Johnson" is said to be the best biography ever written. That the popularity of published sermons does not depend upon theological bias is sufficiently indicated when I mention the three very different names of Newman, Robertson, and Spurgeon. Poetry should for the most part be kept as a side dish; yet it is not always easy of digestion. With Longfellow and Tennyson you will, of course, make a close and pleasant friendship. Will you ever brace yourself to master the half-philosophical, half-ethical, and wholly poetical work of Robert Browning? He does not write to please, as perhaps, |