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Title: Facts you should know about the classics
Author: Joseph McCabe
Release date: March 15, 2026 [eBook #78215]
Language: English
Original publication: Girard: Haldeman-Julius Publications, 1927
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FACTS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THE CLASSICS ***
LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. 109
Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius
Facts You Should Know
About the Classics
Joseph McCabe
HALDEMAN-JULIUS PUBLICATIONS
GIRARD, KANSAS
Copyright, 1927,
Haldeman-Julius Company
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
Chapter Page
I. Classics of the Ancient World 7
1. Greek Literature 9
2. Roman Works 18
3. Early Christian Classics 25
II. Classics of the Middle Ages 27
1. Arab and Persian Writers 27
2. Dante and the Middle Ages 28
3. Heralds of the Renaissance 30
4. The New Age in Italy and France 32
5. Cervantes and the New Spain 36
6. Shakespeare and the English Re-birth 38
III. Classics of the Modern Period 44
1. Voltaire and French Classics 45
2. Germany, Russia and Scandinavia 49
3. Modern English Writers 53
4. American Classics 59
PREFACE
This Little Blue Book is not for students of literature, but just for
folks who have not time or opportunity to read the works of the great
writers of earlier days. Every thoughtful man or woman would like to
know a little about them. Almost every day you read or hear an allusion
to Homer or Plato, Vergil or Horace, Chaucer or Dante, and so on. You
would like, if it is possible to tell you in a few simple pages, to
know who these men were, in what circumstances and on what themes they
wrote, what special interest or distinction the most famous plays or
poems or books of each of them possesses.
By the classics we mean in literature, not merely the old Greek or
Roman works, but the literary masterpieces of every age which live
forever on account of their supreme art or interest. It is not good to
be entirely ignorant about them: it is easy and pleasant to have a few
intelligent ideas about them. About a hundred writers of the last three
thousand years have earned this kind of immortality, and we will take
them in order. Hence, although this small book cannot be a history of
literature--I may provide one later--it will give a kind of sketch of
that history and the place in it of each of the great writers who is
described.
FACTS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THE CLASSICS
CHAPTER I
CLASSICS OF THE ANCIENT WORLD
Men learned the art of writing, or began to express their ideas to
each other by (at first) drawing little pictures of objects, about six
thousand years ago, but none of the works which we call “classics” goes
back to more than three thousand years ago. We should not expect to
find many writings surviving from a date earlier than that, and as a
matter of fact, except for business purposes writing was chiefly left
to the priests. From ancient Egypt alone we have a few specimens of
small books written by laymen; especially the _Maxims of Ptah-Hotep_,
a very interesting series of counsels and reflections on conduct by a
middle-class Egyptian of four thousand or more years ago.
This, however, is not great literature. For the older civilizations
we have to consider only their religious literature, as certain
collections of ritual and other sacred writings which, on the analogy
of the Hebrew collection, we may call their “bibles.” The oldest is
what we call _The Book of the Dead_ of the Egyptians, parts of which
go back thousands of years before Christ. It is not what we should
describe as fine literature, and, as it is mainly concerned with the
passage of the dead to another world, which to the Egyptians meant a
tiresome story of devils and spells and magic, only scholars or special
students read it today.
There is nothing corresponding to this in Babylonia, where men did
not take an acute religious interest in death, but amongst the mass
of writings (or inscribed clay tablets) that we have found we have
fragments of a remarkable semi-sacred romance, now called _The Story_
(or _Epic_) _of Gilgamesch_, into which are woven the early religious
traditions of a creation, deluge, garden of bliss, etc. In substance
the story goes back five or six thousand years.
The remaining “bibles” were all written after 1000 B. C., and at
least in some of their pages they are really fine literature. The
_Old Testament_, which is certainly a literary classic in its English
translation, and has some notable poetry in the Hebrew, was written, as
we have it, in the fifth century before Christ, but the pieces of which
it was then composed spread over several centuries before that date.
The Persian sacred book, _The Avesta_, is a similar compilation of
religious traditions and writings, covering much the same period. But
it had not, like the _Old Testament_, the advantage of being translated
in an age when men still wrote poetical English, and it is only of
historical and religious interest, as an account of the high ideals and
remarkable beliefs of the ancient Persians.
The oldest Hindu writings, _The Vedas_, mainly a collection of hymns,
belong to the same period; the oldest parts (especially of the _Rig
Veda_) may go back to 1000 B. C. There is some fine poetic writing in
the earlier parts, but in the later this is succeeded by very abstract
and subtle speculation which few would care to read.
The Chinese collection is called the _King_ (which means “books” or
“bible”), and it includes what are known as the Chinese classics. These
are five books written by Kung-fu-tse (Confucius) and his disciples in
the sixth century B. C. They are included, with the Persian and Hindu
books, in the collection of translations known as _The Sacred Books of
the East_. A good deal of early Buddhist literature also is included.
But the chief interest of all these works is historical and religious,
not literary, and we must pass on to Greece for the earliest works
which live because of their splendid literary qualities.
§1. GREEK LITERATURE
The works of ancient Greece which we have are only a tithe of the works
written even by the greater Greek writers, yet almost every surviving
play or poem is treasured as a classic. If you draw up a list of the
fifty greatest writers from the dawn of civilization to the nineteenth
century, you will find that at least ten of them are Greeks. However,
it was only certain parts of Greece which produced these wonderful
artists, and these regions, taken together, never had a population as
large as that of Chicago.
But we cannot here go into the historical reasons for their brilliance.
It is enough for my purpose to say that the _earliest_ Greeks were
semi-barbarians who filtered down into what we call Greece from the
north between 2000 and 1000 B. C. When they reached the Mediterranean
they came into touch with the old civilizations and were refined.
Large numbers of them crossed to Asia Minor, where they mingled with
the polished Cretans and Persians, and it is here that the first great
Greek poets and thinkers wrote.
Homer, their first poet, was regarded by the Greeks themselves in their
most learned days as their greatest poet, a unique classic; and he is
still one of the greatest poets of all time. Whether there ever was
an individual named Homer is disputed. Most modern scholars have held
for a long time that the poems to which his name is attached were slow
growths contributed to by different poets of the tenth century B. C.
But this is not at all settled, and many again think that Homer was
an individual Greek of wonderful poetical power in or about the tenth
century B. C.
His immortal works are the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_. These are two
long “epic” poems; that is to say long poems to be recited, not sung
to music, telling of glorious deeds and romantic adventures. The first
deals with the closing days of the ten-year siege of the city of Troy
(or Ilium) in Asia Minor by the early Greeks. The hero is Achilles, the
Greek prince, who sulks in his tent after a quarrel about a beautiful
girl-captive, and is at last stung into action by the reverses of the
Greeks and leads them on to the final destruction of Troy. Another of
the chief Greek princes was Ulysses, and the _Odyssey_ describes his
wanderings over the ancient world after the fall of Troy.
Exploration in Asia Minor has discovered the remains of the city of
Troy, and there is now no doubt that early Greek princes did bring
their men overseas and destroy it. In the south of Greece we have found
the palaces and graves of these princes, their inlaid bronze swords and
golden death-masks, and we recognize the vivid realism of Homer. This
great victory of the early Greeks would be the chief theme of the bards
at every princes’ court, and all sorts of picturesque legends would be
added to the truth. Homer weaves all these together in two great epics
with masterly skill. You can _see_ the heroes, sharply and vividly
sketched, fighting their great duels, the scenes in camp and court, the
dawn or the blaze of the sun on the blue Mediterranean. Much of this
powerful and beautiful description is lost in translation, though the
old translations by poets like Pope, Cowper and Bryant, are very fine,
and the current translations, chiefly by Andrew Lang and collaborators,
are excellent. Homer is next to Shakespeare, who surpasses him and all
others in beautiful imagery and allegory.
The epic poem remained for two or three centuries the chief writing
of the Greeks. They were then royalists with numbers of small courts
of chiefs or princes where these story-poems were recited. As the
race advanced in civilization, “lyric” poetry (short poems sung to the
accompaniment of the lyre) developed. The most interesting writer of
these is the female poet Sappho, who lived in the island of Lesbos in
the seventh century. Between Sappho and Homer was the great poet Hesiod
(9th century), whose chief poem, _Works and Days_, is full of moral and
religious feeling; and in the sixth and fifth centuries Pindar won a
high position in Greece and wrote great numbers of songs, hymns, odes,
etc. Aesop’s famous _Fables_ also appeared in the sixth century, though
many doubt if there was such a person as Aesop.
But we must confine ourselves here to the greatest names, or this book
would not get beyond Greece. Two other kinds of writers arose as Greek
civilization moved on toward its most brilliant days. On the one hand
was a series of scientists and philosophers, but we have none of the
works of these. On the other hand tragedy was born, and Greece had, in
a very short period, the three greatest tragedians the world has ever
known: Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.
Tragedy, like the epic before it, and the comedy which followed it,
reflects the age in which it was born: just as we get snowdrops in the
spring, roses in the summer, and berries in the autumn. King’s courts
were by this time abolished and the crowd of citizens had to have their
entertainments. At the same time a deeper religious mood passed over
Greece, and in Aeschylus (born 523 B. C.) this came to inspire tragic
poetry which is artistically magnificent. There was an old custom of
having, on the festival of Dionysos, the god of dance and wine, a group
of men quaintly dressed who danced round his altar chanting old verses.
Out of this the poets created the play, and Athens built the first
great theater.
Aeschylus used ancient legends of tragic happenings that seemed to have
a profound and somber moral significance. Only seven of his seventy
tragedies have been preserved, and as Sir Gilbert Murray has in recent
years superbly translated three of the best of these (_Agamemnon_,
_Cheophori_, _Eumenides_) an English reader can get a very good idea
of his tragic grandeur. These three plays form a trilogy, or connected
series, founded on the terrible legend of the curse on the house of
King Agamemnon. Behind it all Aeschylus sees the action of a great
mysterious principle, Fate, greater than the gods, which brings
the punishment of crime. “Eumenides” means the “Avenging Fates.”
_Prometheus Bound_, from which Shelley took the title of his great
“lyrical drama,” _Prometheus Unbound_, is another masterpiece of this
“father of tragedy.”
His rival and successor Sophocles (495-405) is considered even greater:
indeed, the greatest tragic poet of all time. In fact there are
experts who regard some of the masterpieces of Sophocles, such as the
_Antigone_ (which ought to be read in one of the current translations),
_Oedipus the King_, and _Electra_, as the finest works that were ever
written. The theme of them is, as in Aeschylus, that a semi-divine
Fate rules gods and men and avenges crime. Both tragedians take crime
on the grand scale--murder, rape, incest, etc., in the legends of the
old royal families--and the characters they create will live forever.
Sophocles, of whose one hundred and thirteen plays we have only seven,
is a little less somber, more humane, more polished than Aeschylus. He
creates tragic grandeur out of the moral and religious feelings of the
time.
The contrast of the third and latest of the trio, Euripides (480-406),
is interesting. He was a cultivated man and clearly did not believe
the old legends in their religious side. Skepticism was growing in
Greece. But the mass of the people were religious, and Euripides was
not generally popular, though eighteen of his seventy-five plays have
survived. Technically he improves on his predecessors but he has not
the same glow of inspiration. He took similar themes to those of his
predecessors--crimes and tragedies on the royal scale--but he was a
more self-conscious artist and an intellectual. If you want to see how
he wrote Greek tragedy, read a translation of the _Medea_, which is
based upon the appalling crimes and tragic adventures of that legendary
queen; and, incidentally, it is one of the first pleas for a more just
treatment of women. _Alcestis_, _Iphigenia_, _Orestes_, etc., are other
masterpieces of Euripides.
Comedy was the next form invented by the Greek poets, and Aristophanes
(450-380), the greatest of the comedians, was a contemporary and
(being very conservative) a bitter enemy of Euripides and all
innovators. He satirized the growing woman-movement mercilessly in his
_Lysistrate_ and _Ecclesiazusae_, the philosophers in his _Clouds_, the
democrats in his _Knights_, the democratic judges in his _Wasps_, and
so on. But his wit was irresistible, and the stubborn old conservative
was an idol of the Athenian people for forty years. Of his fifty plays,
of which eleven survive, the _Clouds_ (against the intellectuals and
skeptics) is perhaps the best, though most mischievous. Translations
of all these ancient classics can be got in the Bohn, “Everyman,” and
other collections of great books.
Aristophanes was as free of speech in regard to sex as he was zealous
for old creeds. A refinement of comedy came after his time, and the
ablest representative of this “New Comedy,” reflecting the real
domestic life of the Greeks, was “the gentle Menander.” But we have
only fragments of his comedies. Aristophanes, the loosest, is the only
comedian of whom entire plays have been preserved, and we must now take
their tone as typically Greek. The austere moralists Sophocles and
Euripides, remember, lived at the same time and were played before the
same audiences.
History was a third line of development at the time, and two of the
Greek historians, Herodotus (“the Father of History,” 484-425) and
Thucydides (471-400) are classics. The former, who had traveled all
over the civilized world, wrote mainly on the clash of the Greeks
and the Persians, but he brings in the whole world which he has seen.
The plan is imposing, but he is not critical, and not always reliable
even about countries which he visited. Thucydides chiefly describes
the Peloponnesian War (with Sparta) and is terser and more faithful to
facts. His work is history in the modern sense and finely written.
A classic of a different kind is the orator Demosthenes (385-322),
whose _Philippics_ (or orations against King Philip of Macedon) are
perhaps his best written speeches, and are models of oratory for
all time. Philip was insidiously preparing to take over Greece, and
Demosthenes fierily denounced him to the apathetic people. He does not
use florid rhetoric, but a terse, strong, direct, and simple speech.
This and his other speeches are literary masterpieces and are, in their
plain, forcible style, considered “matchless eloquence.”
Before this a long series of philosophers had begun to use the now
perfected Greek language, and the works of some of these are classics.
Socrates wrote nothing--Plato gives us his ideas--and the books of the
great majority of them have not been preserved. Epicurus, who comes
nearest of them all to modern scientific thought, wrote three hundred
works, but not one of them has been preserved. We have, in fact, only
the writings of Plato and Aristotle.
Plato (427-347), a pupil of the famous Socrates, mainly expressed
his ideas by means of dialogues between imaginary or real Athenian
characters. In the Greek some of these dialogues (the _Phaedo_,
_Phaedrus_, _Timaeus_, _Critias_, _Symposium_, etc.) are considered
to belong to the finest prose-literature of the world, and the famous
Greek scholar Dr. Jowett has given us a wonderful translation (in five
volumes) of them all. Plato usually writes about religion and morality,
but he was also the first social idealist, with very advanced views,
and in his _Republic_ he sketches an ideal commonwealth.
While Plato is the finest writer of all philosophers--and by far the
easiest to read--his successor Aristotle (384-322) was the most learned
man (in his time) of all writers and possibly the greatest thinker of
all time. These wonderful Greeks were pioneers in everything. While
some created the epic, the lyric, tragedy, comedy, history, etc.,
Aristotle created philosophy as a system of knowledge. The titles
of his greater works (_Physics_, _Metaphysics_, _Ethics_, _Logic_,
_Poetics_, etc.--he invented these divisions of knowledge) show the
vast range of his learning and thought, but his books are scarce and
are read only by students of philosophy.
After the days of the philosophers Greece degenerated. The only other
Greeks who could be deemed classics are the moralist and philosopher
Plutarch (died 106 A. D.) and the very unmoral and witty satirist
Lucian, whom we treat a little later. Plutarch’s _Lives_ (of famous
Greeks and Romans) are a biographical classic, but he was a very
religious priest of Apollo and wrote much also on morals, and
religion. After these the only great Greek writers were of Alexandria,
but these are better known in mathematics and philosophy than as
literary classics. Euclid’s _Geometry_, certainly a classic of its
kind, also belongs to Alexandria, but was written in the third century
before Christ.
§2. ROMAN LITERATURE
From what we have now seen the reader will understand, and may learn
with amazement, that one of the smallest nations which ever figured
prominently in history produced a remarkable proportion of the world’s
greatest literature, and indeed created nearly every branch of
literature. Remember, too, that the Greek classics which we have are
mere fragments of the whole. Literally thousands of important works of
poets, dramatists, and thinkers have perished. Let us hope that we have
the finest fragments. I have given as informing an account of these as
my space allows, and will only add that if any reader who has access
to a public library with collections of translations wishes to know a
little more, without an extensive course of study, I would advise him
to read a book of Homer’s _Iliad_, then the _Agamemnon_ of Aeschylus,
the _Antigone_ of Sophocles, the _Medea_ of Euripides, the _Clouds_
of Aristophanes, a few chapters of Herodotus, one of the orations
of Demosthenes, and one (the _Timaeus_ or the _Phaedo_) of Plato’s
Dialogues.
The Roman literature is next in time to that of the Greeks and,
in spite of the common misstatement that the Romans were a wholly
practical and not an artistic people, it is next to it in importance.
The Romans learned the fine arts from the Greeks, and at first they
were content with translations of Greek works. Comedy especially
appealed to them, and the first classical Roman writers were the great
comedians Plautus (254-184 B. C.) and Terentius, or Terence (190-159).
Plautus, using Greek and other plots, composed a hundred and thirty
comedies, but only a score have survived the literary massacre of the
early Middle Ages. The type of comedy he wrote may be understood from
Shakespeare’s _Comedy of Errors_, which is, like many plays of the
Renaissance writers, based upon the _Menaechmei_ (a story of twins)
of Plautus. Terentius, of whom we have six plays, writes purer Latin
than Plautus and has more technical skill, but he has a less rich vein
of comedy. He is the author of the much quoted line: “I am a man, and
nothing human is foreign to me.”
Apart from these there was no Roman writer who need be mentioned
here--I wish to restrict the list of names as much as possible--until
the first century before Christ, when what is called the Golden Age
of Roman literature began. The art, as usual, reflects the economic
conditions. Rome’s conquest of the world was almost over, and the
Eternal City was congested with wealth and athirst for every luxury and
refinement. Within two centuries there appeared the great poets Vergil,
Horace, Ovid, Catullus, the historians Caesar, Livy, Sallust, Tacitus,
the satirists Martial and Juvenal, the orator and thinker Cicero, and
the famous moralists Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. These are
all classics, but we must confine ourselves to the chief works of the
greater writers.
Vergil (70-19 B. C.) is one of the six greatest poets of all time.
His chief work is inspired by Homer. It is a long epic poem (a volume
in itself) describing the wanderings of Aeneas of Troy after the
destruction of that city, working up the legend that he eventually
reached Italy and founded Rome and the Romans. It is therefore known
as _The Aeneid_. Vergil was so polished and conscientious a scholar
that at his death he ordered the destruction of the manuscript of the
great poem, as he had wished to give three further years to perfecting
it before publication. The Emperor overruled his will and gave the
masterpiece to the world. Vergil wrote also two series of poems of
pastoral life, the _Eclogues_ and the _Georgics_. He has not the
greatness of Homer, but his work is so impressive that the Catholic
poet Dante, twelve centuries later, took Vergil as his guide through
the underworld.
The next greatest Latin poet, Horace (65-8 B. C.), is the most
difficult to translate, yet in his pure humanity and praise of the
common pleasures of life he comes nearest to modern sentiments. Apart
from a long poem _On the Art of the Poet_, which is now chiefly read
in Latin classes, he wrote a large number of satires, odes and letters
which are exquisite poetical appreciations of a life of refined
pleasure. It is generally said that he is Epicurean, but the phrase
is misleading. Vergil also was a follower of Epicurus--most Roman
gentlemen of that age were--yet he is sternly patriotic and speaks of
the old Roman gods as if he accepted them.
Somewhere about the same time--we are not sure of the date--there lived
a Latin poet of distinction named Lucretius who put into a poem called
_On the Nature of Things_ the serious philosophy of Epicurus about the
world and human life. It is not strictly a literary classic, though
a fine poem, but it is memorable as the only complete Epicurean work
which we have and the nearest to modern thought. Mr. W. H. Mallock some
years ago published a very free but admirable version of it in English
verse.
Returning to the greater poets of the Golden Age, we have still to
consider Catullus (87-54 B. C.) and Ovid (43 B. C.-18 A. D.). We have
116 exquisite lyrical poems of Catullus, a man of leisure and wealth
who largely wrote verse about love for his lady-friends. Catullus is
freer in his sentiments and expressions than Horace, but the fourth
great Latin poet, Ovid, was the most outspoken of them all. In the gay
society of Rome he published _Songs of Love_, _The Art of Love_, and
_Remedies of Love_. But these are so far from reflecting the whole life
of Rome that Ovid was exiled for his licentious poems--the real reason
is said to have been an entanglement with the Emperor’s daughter--and
in exile he wrote his more serious works. His masterpiece is the
_Metamorphoses_, a mixture of history, legend and mythology in rich
and very accomplished verse. Another distinguished poet of the first
century is Lucan, whose _Pharsalia_ (a poem on the civil war) has a
high place in literature.
Of the historians Julius Caesar (100-44 B. C.), a very cultivated
man as well as a great general, has left us _Commentaries_ on his
campaigns, especially in Gaul; plain, straightforward accounts of his
actions in one of the easiest of Latin styles. Sallust (86-34) is more
of a literary man as well as historian, but his chief work is lost
and his _Conspiracy of Catiline_ and _War Against Jugurtha_ are not
masterpieces.
The two most famous historians of Rome are Livy (59-17 B. C.) and
Tacitus (55-117 A. D.). Livy belongs to the older Roman world, and his
immense history of Rome in 142 books (only 35 of which have come down
to us) is more patriotic than critical. Tacitus, on the other hand,
falls in the period when the Stoic emperors raised the tone of the
declining Empire. His _History_ and _Annals_ (of later Roman times) are
both historical and literary classics: severe and very condensed (and
difficult to read) in style, austerely moral in sentiment, and based
on precise documents. In the _Annals_ there is a famous reference to
Christ and Nero’s persecution of the Christians, the genuineness of
which is disputed. It seems to me sound enough in style but too late in
date to be important.
Cicero, the greatest Roman orator, and a statesman and philosopher,
belongs to the earlier period (106-43 B. C.), the close of the
Republic. His style is a standard of Latin, yet it is comparatively
easy to read. His speeches (chiefly delivered in the law-court) are
models of oratory, avoiding florid rhetoric and relying, like those of
Demosthenes, on force of language and skill of construction. He has
left us also the best philosophical essays in the Latin language--the
books _On Duty_ are most interesting from the ethical point of
view--and his many letters are excellent literature and afford valuable
pictures of the time.
The moralist Seneca (4 B. C.-65 A. D.) is famous for the many long
essays or books which he wrote, from the severe Stoic point of view, on
every aspect of virtue and vice. He wrote in the time of Nero, and thus
he reminds us that the corruption of that Emperor and his circle did
not extend to all Rome. A little later was Epictetus, a Greek of the
Roman Empire, whose very austere Stoic sentiments were collected by his
pupils and published as his _Encheiridion_ or _Manual_. Marcus Aurelius
(121-180 A. D.), the most virtuous of the Stoic Emperors, compiled a
little volume of moral _Meditations_, very austere in sentiment, which
is still much read, though it was rather casually written. Another
famous Stoic of the time (died 117 A. D.) was the Greek orator Dion
Chrysostom (“Golden-mouthed”), whose eighty extant orations, mainly
delivered in Rome, are fine literary expressions of the highest ideals
of the time. There was a very considerable output of this severe moral
literature at Rome.
More brilliant from the literary point of view were the satirists
Juvenal (60-140 A. D.), and Martial (40-104). Juvenal’s _Satires_
(five books) are famous in literature, but as pictures of Roman morals
they are not now trusted. He wrote, not only as a poor man flaying the
rich, but he told of the wealthy Romans of the generation before his
own time. Martial has left us fourteen books of _Epigrams_: sprightly
verses, of two or three lines each, hitting off the characters and
manners of his age. He was a wealthy as well as a witty man, and his
mild satires are valuable.
Pliny is the name of two Roman writers who rank as classics. The older
Pliny (23 A. D.-79 A. D.) gives us a summary of the slender scientific
knowledge of the Romans in his _Natural History_. The younger Pliny,
his nephew, was the governor of a province, and his _Letters_ (ten
books) are good literature and valuable documents.
Lucian, of the second century, is rarely read today, but his witty and
pungent _Dialogues_ and his stories and essays put him in the rank of
great writers. Apuleius was another witty story-writer. His _Golden
Ass_ has always been deemed a classic, though modern authorities would
not permit a literal translation of it. The hero imagines himself
turned into an ass by the blunder of a sorcerer and having a series of
most picturesque adventures.
After the middle of the second century Rome was exhausted by war and
literature ceased. There were several writers of some distinction in
the fourth century, but their works are not classics. The great days
of pagan literature were over. The pen passed to the hands of the new
Christian writers.
§3. EARLY CHRISTIAN CLASSICS
This section is very short because since we are dealing with literary
classics, not masterpieces of theological learning, it has to tell only
of two books in a space of a thousand years, from the second century
to the twelfth. These two books are St. Augustine’s _Confessions_ and
_City of God_. You will not find translations of any others in any
modern collection of literary masterpieces. Even Clement of Alexandria,
the most accomplished of the great fathers of the Church, is read only
by theologians. St. Jerome, in my opinion, writes the best Latin, but
his writings have a purely religious interest.
Augustine (354-430) was certainly the most learned, and probably the
ablest, man of his age. His early philosophical essays are not now
read, and the voluminous writings or dictated works--shorthand was
common in his time--of his later years interest only theologians.
But the small volume in which after his conversion to Christianity
he describes and bemoans his earlier years, his _Confessions_, is a
classical autobiography. He had really very little to “confess” beyond
the fact that for a time he had a lady-companion (which was not then
considered immoral), and the fierce light of his new asceticism causes
him to write with a singular art and feeling about his youth.
In later years Augustine despised style, as most of the Christian
leaders did, out of religious feeling, but he once more exerted all his
art of learning in writing _The City of God_. The Roman Empire was in
ruins and Augustine set out to prove that it mattered relatively little
what became of the City of Man: that the essential thing was to be a
citizen of the City of God. This idea he expands into a vast plan which
includes a wonderful mass of mythology, history, and philosophy.
The Latin language was already degenerate in Augustine’s time, the
schools were being closed everywhere, zeal for letters and science grew
rarer and rarer. The few Christian laymen who wrote prose or verse
are not mentioned even in larger sketches than this of the history
of literature, and in a few centuries most of the chronicles and
treatises written were of a shocking literary quality, though everybody
still wrote in a sort of Latin. The only noticeable work--by no means
a masterpiece--is _On the Consolation of Philosophy_ by Boethius, a
sixth-century Italian statesman who was put in prison and recommends
all sufferers to find consolation, as he did, in Aristotle.
CHAPTER II
CLASSICS OF THE MIDDLE AGES
The Middle Ages are, roughly, the period from about 500 to 1500,
though we must not take the limits too sharply. Here I propose to make
it cover the writers of the literary Renaissance period, or of the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Europe was so demoralized after
the fall of Rome that art almost perished; and the Greek Empire was
too fossilized to produce great literature. From the second to the
thirteenth century no literary worth of the first, or even second, rank
appeared in Europe. Then art was reborn and the Renaissance in the
broader sense, the re-awakening of Europe, began.
§1. ARAB AND PERSIAN WRITERS
There are, however, two works belonging to that period which will
be known to every reader, at least by name: the _Rubaiyat_ of Omar
Khayyam and the _Arabian Nights_. Omar was a Persian poet-astronomer
of the twelfth century: one of very many gifted poets of the revived
civilization of Persia. The refined Epicurian creed of life in his
well-known poem reminds us that outside of Europe there was a brilliant
and artistic civilization. The _Arabian Nights_ reflects a similarly
brilliant civilization at Cairo and Bagdad and Damascus. This new
Mohammedan, though really very skeptical, culture spread from Persia to
Spain, and had much to do with the re-awakening of Europe.
The _Rubaiyat_, which took the modern world by storm in the nineteenth
century, is a unique case of a translation being superior to the
original. The current version, by the English poet Edward Fitzgerald,
is not, in fact, a translation, but to a very great extent a new poem
based on that of Omar. Sir Richard Burton’s translation (in 16 volumes)
of the _Arabian Nights_ is, on the other hand, so accomplished and
faithful a version of that immortal collection of oriental tales that
it is generally kept behind locked doors in a library. The current
translations are much pruned, and are therefore false. The tales
(by various authors) are generally said to be of the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, but Burton held that many are earlier. The well
known stories of Sinbad and Aladdin come from this classic. It is a
rich reflection of Arab-Persian life.
§2. DANTE AND THE MIDDLE AGES
The immense literary activity and refined life of the Persians and
Arabs was bound, especially as their culture was carried to its
greatest height by the Moors in Spain, to affect Europe, and in the
eleventh and twelfth centuries literature began to reappear. From the
south of France, where there was contact with the Moors, the gay songs
of the troubadours spread. The _Song of Roland_ ran to four thousand
lines. The _Poem of the Cid_ was another long epic or warrior-song
that appeared in the Christian part of Spain. More notable still is
the _Romance of the Rose_, chiefly by Jehan de Meung, a long allegory
on love which appeared in France. In Germany some unknown poet of the
twelfth century gathered together the old pagan legends in the _Lay of
the Nibelungs_: the treasury of legends upon which Wagner has drawn for
his famous dramas about Siegfried, the Valkyries, etc.
A notable work of a very different kind is the _Love Letters of Abelard
and Heloise_. Abelard was the most brilliant writer of the twelfth
century, though his works are on philosophy or theology and do not
concern us here. Heloise was a remarkably gifted young woman of Paris,
who had a child by Abelard. Her uncle, however, had Abelard castrated,
and he became a somber abbot and she, very reluctantly, an abbess.
These Latin letters were written long after the outrage and are wrongly
called love-letters. Sentiment was dead in Abelard and it only peeps
out occasionally from the heart of Heloise. They are, however, known as
“the immortal lovers,” and the letters are included in all collections
of great works.
None of these ought properly to be included in this account of the
greatest writers, but they are now constantly referred to and they help
us to understand the revival of letters. These poets and chroniclers
were gradually beating the new European languages into shape and
preparing the way for the masters.
Dante is the first (1265-1321). His great poem _The Divine Comedy_
might be called an epic of religious thought. He imagines himself
conducted successively through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, and though
the theme repels many of his readers--Goethe, Goldsmith, Landor, and
other distinguished critics speak very disparagingly of him--he is by
common consent numbered amongst the six greatest poets of all time.
There might be some difference of opinion about the sixth place, but
the five greatest are (omitting the Greek tragedians who wrote in
verse) Shakespeare, Homer, Goethe, Vergil, and Dante. I should call
Milton the sixth.
Dante’s “trilogy,” or three-part poem, has several thousand four-line
verses and is usually regarded as, on the literary side, the flower
of the Middle Ages. Longfellow wrote a beautiful poem in appreciation
of it, comparing it to a Gothic cathedral. But it is also interesting
as showing how Europe was at the time being awakened by the Arab
culture. Dante, who lived in Florence, where there was a great deal
of liberality of thought, speaks throughout with great respect of the
Arab and Greek philosophers, and in his ethical ideas he is deeply
influenced by them. He wrote in Italian and thus inaugurated the great
Italian literature of the Renaissance. His minor works, in prose, are
_The New Life_ and _The Banquet_.
§3. HERALDS OF THE RENAISSANCE
Dante died in 1321, and within two decades of that date were born the
great Italian writers Petrarch and Boccaccio, the French chronicler
Froissart, and the gifted English poet Chaucer. Dante himself may in
a sense, as I have said, be called a herald of the Renaissance or
re-birth of letters, but he is mainly medieval while these four are
predominantly characterized by the new spirit of humanity.
Petrarch (1304-74) is the first great figure in the revival of Greek
and Latin literature. He wrote mostly in Latin, but the _Sonnets_ he
composed in Italian are so beautiful that four hundred editions of them
have appeared. His contemporary Boccaccio (1313-75), also of Italy, is
best known as the author of the _Decameron_. The word means “The Ten
Days Work,” and the book consists of a hundred witty and skilful short
stories which are supposed to be told to each other, during ten days,
by a group of ladies and gentlemen. The stories reflect all the gaiety,
sparkle, and license of that early springtime of the new Europe.
In France about the same time Froissart (born 1338) wrote a _Chronicle_
which is regarded as a classic. He traveled very extensively and tells,
with bright coloring, the history of each leading country in Europe in
the fourteenth century.
The Re-Birth soon spread from Italy to the northern lands, as Europe
was now comparatively settled and men traveled and read. Chaucer
(1340-1400), the first great English poet, had met Petrarch and was
deeply influenced by him and Boccaccio. His famous _Canterbury Tales_
is a broad and wonderfully vivid picture of the life and characters of
his age. All the chief types of the time are introduced as pilgrims
on the way to Canterbury, and their tales they tell to each other
depict early English life graphically for us. The old English is rather
difficult to read, but the humor and shrewd observation make it worth
while to try.
§4. THE NEW AGE IN ITALY AND FRANCE
The seed sown by these artists of the fourteenth century led to a rich
crop of writers in the fifteenth and sixteenth and seventeenth; and we
must remember that there was at the same time a splendid development of
painting and a general enrichment of life, as well as a new liberality
of thought and feeling. Italy in particular had a crowd of writers as
well as great painters: writers on philosophy, writers on art (like
Vasari), writers on history (notably Guicciardini) and story-tellers,
poets, comedians, etc. To this period belongs the famous work of
the diplomatist Macchiavelli (1469-1527), _The Prince_, giving such
unscrupulous counsels to princes--a real reflection of the spirit of
the times--that we have ever since called such maxims “Macchiavellian.”
Another classic of the time is the _Autobiography_ of the sculptor and
goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini (1500-71): a most interesting and candid
account of adventurous life in that gay age.
The chief Italian classics of the time are, however, the works of
the greatest Italian poets after Dante, Ariosto (1474-1533) and
Tasso. Both lived at the brilliant court of the Dukes of Ferrara
who patronized them, but they differ entirely in character. Ariosto
wrote comedies and satires and epic verse. He is chiefly known for
his _Orlando Furioso_, a poem of great length on the war against the
Saracens: which, by the way, no one reads today. Tasso had a more sober
and melancholic character. His writings fill forty volumes, but few
now read even his masterpiece, _Jerusalem Delivered_: an epic of the
Crusades, an attempt to adapt the Greek epic to a profoundly religious
theme. This inspired Milton’s _Paradise Lost_.
The above dates will show that these writers end at the time of the
change occasioned by the Reformation, and from that time there was no
great literature in Italy until the nineteenth century. The works of
Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), Galileo (1564-1642), etc., belong rather to
philosophy and science.
Meantime the Renaissance or Re-Birth of Letters, had spread over
Europe. Erasmus (1467-1536), a very liberal theologian and humanist
of Holland, wrote brilliant and witty critical works on religion with
an immense circulation, of which the most readable are his _Praise of
Folly_ and his _Colloquies_ (or “Conversations,” his masterpiece).
In France there was in the fifteenth century an adventurous poet,
Francois Villon (born 1431), who has become very popular amongst
literary men in our time. He was a thief, vagabond, even a murderer,
and was often in prison. But he wrote beautiful ballads and rondels
expressing the strange melancholy which his defiant life gave him.
Swinburne calls him the “prince of sweet songs made out of tears and
fire.”
In the sixteenth century the great essayist Montaigne (1533-92)
published his three books of _Essays_: a prose-classic of profound
influence on thought, expressing the most liberal ideas--though he
professed to be a Catholic--about religion and pleading for tolerance
amidst the fierce controversies of the time. Montaigne was a universal
scholar and the whole of life is reflected in his pages.
Very different was Francois Rabelais (1495-1553), one of the greatest
of the Renaissance writers. Though a priest and a monk for thirty
years, his long rambling stories (chiefly _Pantagruel, King of the
Dipsodes_, and _The Heroic Deeds and Sayings of the Good Pantagruel_)
are so free that his name has given us the word “Rabelaisean” for
improper stories. I have a literal translation, in five volumes, by Sir
T. Urquhart (published in London in 1897), but it is rare. Rabelais
is, apart from sex, often filthy, but many critics forget that even in
this he is only expressing his world, the faults of which he sought
to expose by wit and caricature. He wanted frank mirth and laughter
substituted for hypocritical enjoyments.
A French classic of quite the opposite type is the _Discourse on
Method_ of the mathematician and philosopher Descartes (1596-1650).
His works, however, are now chiefly of interest in the evolution of
thought. In the sense in which we take “classics” here we turn rather
to the three great poets who supremely represent the Renaissance in
France: Corneille, Racine, and Molière.
Corneille (1606-84) and Racine (1630-99) are both best known for their
tragedies, which were directly inspired by those of the early Greek
tragedians and were written in a severe classical style. Corneille is
the more austere and dignified of the two, and he is seen at his best
in _Polyeucte_ (based upon the martyrdom of an early Christian) and
_Andromeda_ (a classical tragedy). Racine is, perhaps, a little less
severe and more human than Corneille. He also wrote classical tragedies
after the Greek model (_Iphigenia_, _Phaedra_, etc.), a biblical play
_Esther_, and a number of historical and other plays.
Molière (whose real name was Jean Baptiste Poqelin, 1622-73) is one of
the great comedians of the world. He took the name Molière because he
went on the stage. He is seen at his best in _Les Precieuses Ridicules_
(which pokes fun at pretentious ladies who talk literature), _Tartuffe_
(a satire of religious hypocrites), _The Misanthrope_, and _Don Juan_.
For the freedom of his attacks on the Church he was excommunicated, but
he was protected by the king, to whom his father had been valet.
Boileau, or Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (1636-1711), is added to these
three as the fourth great poet of the time. His masterpiece is _The
Poetic Art_. Like his contemporary Molière he was skeptical (though
he rather insincerely wrote a prose-work _On the Love of God_), while
Racine and Corneille were devout Catholics.
La Fontaine (1621-95), of the same generation, wrote _Stories_ and
_Select Fables_ (on the model of Aesop) in verse which rank as
classics. The familiar children’s stories of Red Ridinghood, Bluebeard,
The Sleeping Beauty, Puss in Boots, Beauty and the Beast, etc., are
from his work. He collected them from popular circulation and expanded
them.
Blaise Pascal (1623-62), a famous mathematician as well as writer on
religion, gave the world two literary classics in his _Thoughts on
Religion_ and _Provincial Letters_ (an attack on the Jesuits, though
the author is a particularly pious Catholic). Montesquieu (1689-1755),
a wealthy noble and eminent lawyer, is chiefly known for his _Spirit
of the Laws_, a profound study of law from a humanitarian standpoint.
Among his many other works his _Persian Letters_, a caustic criticism
of contemporary life, long ranked as classic. Although few read it
today the same must be said of the novel _Gil Blas_, by A. R. Lesage
(1668-1747), a famous dramatist. It appeared in innumerable editions
and was the model for later novelists.
§5. CERVANTES AND THE NEW SPAIN
Spain was retaken by the Spaniards from the Moors (whose whole
immense literature was destroyed) in the Middle Ages, and for a time
it enjoyed its share of the Renaissance. _Don Quixote_, by Cervantes
(1547-1616), belongs to this period. It is a brilliant picture of the
life of the time as well as a masterly satire of the exaggerations and
eccentricities of Spanish romantic feeling. It should be regarded,
like several of the works I have just noticed and others in the next
section, as on the threshold between the Middle Ages and the Modern
Age. The Renaissance is a first breath of Modernism.
Lope de Vega (1562-1635) was a phenomenal Spanish playwright of the
time who is now not much read. He is said to have written eighteen
hundred plays (of which we have three hundred). He often wrote a play
in a day, yet his construction and verse are of such quality that the
Spaniards count him a classic. At the end of a long and very loose life
he became a friar and assisted at the burning of heretics.
Calderon (1601-81), the third great early Spanish writer, a poet and
dramatist, ranks far higher than Vega, though even his best tragedy,
_The Constant Prince_, is rarely read outside Spain. His name is one of
the most honored in Spanish literature. Like Vega he became a priest
in later life. With Calderon the short spell of fine writing in Spain
ended and nothing of great distinction appeared until the latter end of
the nineteenth century.
§6. SHAKESPEARE AND THE ENGLISH REBIRTH
Chaucer, we saw, died in 1400, and his _Canterbury Tales_ brought the
first taste of the new spirit to England. But constant war kept in
check the development of culture and during the next two hundred years
few writers appeared whom one could call classics. An obscure knight,
Sir Thomas Malory, is almost the only one now read. He collected
(chiefly from French literature) the old English legends about King
Arthur and his court, since made more familiar by Tennyson in his
_Idylls_, and wrought them in a poem of distinction called the _Morte
d’Arthur_ (“The Death of Arthur”). In the sixteenth century Sir Thomas
More (beheaded in 1535), at one time Lord Chancellor, wrote his famous
_Utopia_, which is based on Plato’s _Republic_. More was at the time
very liberal in his ideas. The _Utopia_ (a sketch of an ideal state),
however, had to be written in Latin and published abroad. It was not
translated into English until forty years later.
Then, within little more than ten years of each other, were born
Spenser, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Francis Bacon and Ben Jonson, the five
giants of a wonderful literary age. Spenser’s (1552-99) great work
is _The Faery Queene_. It is an allegorical poem of remarkable grace
and beauty, though at times rather obscure in meaning, purporting to
represent the excellences of the English character.
Chris Marlowe (1564-93), “the father of English tragedy,” was, as
these dates show, a great poet who never reached his full development.
He shared the turbulent life of the time and was killed in a tavern
brawl. His chief tragedies, _Tamburlaine_ and _Dr. Faustus_ (a model for
Goethe’s famous work), reveal a poetical and dramatic genius of a high
order.
Born in the same year, Shakespeare (1564-1616) survived his early
robustness and gave the world the series of poems and plays which award
him still the first place in all literature. Alike in light verse,
comedy, tragedy, and moral play--you see his personal moral development
reflected in this order of production--he is the supreme master. It
is, in fact, needless to say much about him here. The little that I
should have space to say must be known to everybody, and even a short
appreciation or analysis of his work would fill a long chapter in this
book. Let me note two things. It is extremely interesting, as I have
already hinted, to take Shakespeare’s plays in chronological order: to
proceed from the loose comedies (suggested by the Italian Renaissance
comedians who imitated Plautus) to the historical plays and tragedies,
in which one may trace a half-conscious and gradually deepening moral
sentiment, to such later plays as _The Winter’s Tale_, _As You Like
It_, etc., in which he uses his genius to make character attractive.
The other point is that recent attempts to make Shakespeare less
titanic than tradition represents him are not soundly critical. Every
reader knows that he is unequal in his inspiration and one can select
lines and passages of no distinction. It is, moreover, a question if
some of the plays which bear his name were really written by him. Take
him as a whole, and in the essential qualities of the poet--which are
the expression of things in beautiful images and exquisite little
allegories and the use of language of a fitting tone--he surpasses
every other poet. I have read at least something of Homer, Hesiod,
Aeschylus, Euripides, Vergil, Horace, Dante, Tasso, Racine, Corneille,
Calderon, Goethe, and Schiller in their own tongues, and that is my
confident judgment. Some modern writers who attack Shakespeare’s
supremacy cannot, apparently, read his rivals in the original.
But Shakespeare requires a volume or nothing, and we will take him for
granted as the first classic. Of Francis Bacon also we must say little.
His chief works (_Novum Organon_, etc.) were written in Latin and
belong to the history of thought, not of letters. His English _Essays_
may be considered a classic. Ben Jonson (1574-1637), finally, though
called “rare Ben Jonson” in his time for his beautiful lyrics, pungent
comedies, and classical tragedies, is now rarely read.
English literature, in fact, now became a ceaseless and ever broadening
stream, and, with all the interests of our modern literature, we have
little time, unless we are special students, to read any but the
supreme writers of the earlier days. The Authorized Version of the
Bible itself is a wonderful monument of the artistic splendor of that
age. Fifty divines, not poets, were set to prepare the translation,
from 1605 to 1610, and, wherever the Hebrew text is itself poetic--the
far greater part of it (Pentateuch, historical books, etc.) is not at
all fine literature--they rendered it in magnificent, sonorous English.
The _Anatomy of Melancholy_ by Robert Burton (1577-1640) and the
_Religio Medici_ of Sir Thomas Browne, a distinguished physician
(1605-82), may be selected as the best classics. After these we get
poets like Vaughan and Herrick, who are scarcely great enough to be
included here, and then John Milton (1608-74), the second greatest poet
of the English tongue as well as a sound and deep thinker and a most
learned man for his age.
Milton’s masterpiece is, of course, _Paradise Lost_. Like Dante,
he would show that the Christian creed could inspire an epic as
effectively as pagan legends, and no doubt on that account he is, like
Dante, less read today than if he had remained purely secular. There
is, however, a further parallel which is often missed. Just as Dante
rationalizes Purgatory and is not orthodox on many points, so Milton
more or less rationalizes Satan and hell. His Prince of Darkness is
by no means the horned devil of ordinary believers, and we know that
he had, in fact, very liberal ideas. In any case, the poetry is as
magnificent as the conception, from the artistic point of view, is
grand. It certainly puts John Milton in the highest circle of the
immortals. One ought to read some of his other great poems to correct
the common idea that he was absorbed entirely in biblical stories, and
I would recommend every one to read, of his superb prose work, at least
the _Areopagitica_, an address to Parliament on the liberty of the
press. Milton was far from medieval in his social ideals.
As I have already said, we are here dealing with writers who are on the
turn from the medieval to the modern age. It is difficult to draw the
line, but for my purpose of giving just an idea of the position and
character of each classic I may take the spread of Deism in Europe as
the beginning of the modern period and carry this section as far as the
poet Pope.
One classic of Milton’s time that ought to be read is the _Hudibras_
of Samuel Butler (1612-80). Butler had the brilliant idea that the
sour Puritan was the Don Quixote of English life and this poem is a
delicious satire of the type. Royalty was by that time restored, and
everybody was prepared to laugh at the men who had made England sober
and dismal for a generation. The humor of _Hudibras_ is so rich that it
is always worth reading.
A very different classic of the age is John Bunyan’s _Pilgrim’s
Progress_, perhaps the most widely read religious book, apart from the
Bible, that was ever written. Bunyan (1628-88) was a pious thinker,
but a literary genius. His allegorical figures will never cease to be
quoted. Izaak Walton’s _Compleat Angler_ is another work of the time
that comes near being a classic, and Milton’s friend, Andrew Marvell,
wrote some superb nature-poetry. More frequently quoted now are the
Diaries of Pepys (1633-1703) and Evelyn (1620-1706). The former was a
superior civil servant, and he most minutely and pleasantly records
nine years of his life in London. Evelyn was a country gentleman and he
reflects the life of his class. They are both valuable and interesting.
Dryden (1631-1700) may be taken as, in the broader sense, the last
classic of the medieval and Renaissance period. His best known poem
is _The Hind and the Panther_, a defense of Roman Catholicism. Not
many years before he had written a defense of the Church of England,
_Religio Laici_. His character is not regarded as very solid, but most
critics would esteem him the third English poet of this period. His
satires and odes are often of a very high quality.
CHAPTER III
CLASSICS OF THE MODERN PERIOD
As we approach our own time it becomes more difficult to choose our
classics. For the earliest period time itself has made the selection
very ruthlessly. Nearly every Greek and Latin work left to us is a
classic. Then there is the long blank of the early Middle Ages ending
in the luxuriant artistic growth of the Renaissance. By the time we
have reached, however, the output of distinguished literature becomes
very great. Not only have the introduction of paper and printing and
the spread of education to a much larger class encouraged writing,
but we must remember that now there are a dozen civilizations, not
one or two as in ancient times. John Drinkwater in his _Outline of
Literature_ devotes one volume to the period from Homer to the middle
of the eighteenth century (nearly 5,000 years) and one volume to the
literature of the last 150 years! It does not mean that we are so very
much richer in classics. The reader must, therefore, not expect to
find here a mention of every poet whom some professor or other calls
“a classic,” but I have gone carefully over Drinkwater’s work and
Richardson and Owen’s _Literature of the World_ (which the reader will
find more useful if he wants a larger sketch), and give here a short
notice of the men about whose high distinction in letters there is a
common agreement.
§1. VOLTAIRE AND FRENCH CLASSICS
After the age of Racine and Molière French literature rarely rose
to the height of great distinction--the chief cause, as elsewhere,
being the bitter sectarian struggle--until Voltaire appeared. Seeing,
however, that Voltaire, was born just before the death of La Fontaine
and Mme. de Sévigné (whose letters are very elegant literature) the
interval was not long.
Francois Marie Arouet (1694-1778), who took the pen-name of Voltaire,
is one of the most remarkable writers of Europe. Competent critics
pronounce him the best poet of his age--an age not rich in great
poets, however--and in history (_The Age of Louis XIV_), tragedy, and
treatment of actual problems (_Letters on the English_, _Philosophical
Dictionary_, etc.) he had no superior. But it is as a prose-writer,
particularly as a caustic critic of the creed of his country, that he
made a reputation which filled the world and has made his name one
of the most familiar even in our own time. Such sparkling wit as he
had when allied with high poetic talent, profound knowledge of human
nature, and rare power of construction formed an ideal equipment for
the work to which he chiefly devoted his life. As in the case of
Shakespeare, it is useless to write a few paragraphs about him. What
little one could write would be known to the reader. Voltaire has to be
read, for you cannot adequately describe the flash and sparkle of his
prose. I have translated a few of his smaller pieces (_Selections from
Voltaire_) so as to give the general reader an idea of his versatility,
and several of his stories (read, especially, _Candide_, a satire on
foolish optimism) can be had in the Big Blue Book series (Nos. B-6 and
B-30). The world will never tire of reading Voltaire.
Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), his contemporary (but not friend),
was a constructive thinker and emotional writer. His _Social Contract_
is a classic of sociological literature, and his _Confessions_ is one
of the most masterly autobiographies ever written, as well as one of
the most candid. His _Émile_ and _The New Heloise_, a treatise on
education, are hardly less distinguished though now little read.
Two such writers at one time would enrich any country, but Count Buffon
(1707-88) must be associated with them as a great writer as well as
the most learned naturalist of his time. His _Natural History_, in
twenty-four volumes, is a literary masterpiece as well as a scientific
encyclopedia. At the same time lived Denis Diderot (1713-84) and a
group of writers associated with him. Though none of these is a classic
in the literary sense, the great _Encyclopedia_ which they jointly
wrote is very notable in the history of letters and thought.
A little later, during the Revolution, were Mme. de Stael, a French
woman married to a Swede, whose novels were long considered to be great
literature, and Chateaubriand, an orthodox Catholic, who (though I
find his name omitted from most literary histories) was a writer of
great power and often of rare beauty. His _Genius of Christianity_ was
certainly esteemed a classic for the next half century.
In the nineteenth century the elder Dumas (1802-70), author of _The
Three Musketeers_, _Twenty Years After_, _The Count of Monte Cristo_,
etc., and Victor Hugo (1802-85) inaugurated the great period of modern
French literature. Hugo was an astounding literary genius, both in
prose and poetry. His formidable novels, _Les Miserables_ (an epic of
the poor), _The Hunchback of Notre Dame_, etc., may contain all the
defects which critics find in them, but they are superb conceptions and
the world still reads them as classics. “George Sand” (1804-76) is not,
perhaps, read outside France today, but her position in letters is very
high. I might recommend her _Consuelo_, but it is of such length that
the modern reader would despair of getting through it. Her real name
was the Baroness Dudevant, though she lived apart from her husband, a
woman of passionate adventures. Her friend Alfred de Musset (1810-57)
wrote lyric poems of the highest quality as well as literary plays and
stories.
With the activity of these we reach the period of the second Revolution
in France, the middle of the nineteenth century and the list of
distinguished names is long. While it is premature to say which, if
any, of their works will rank as classics, Alfred de Vigny (1797-1863)
wrote, besides dramas and novels, exquisite poetry of the Romantic
school. “Stendhal” (really Henri Beyle, 1783-1842) had a very high
reputation as writer of novels (_The Chartreuse of Parma_, etc.) and
essays. Baudelaire (1821-67) was the second best (if not the best)
French poet of the century: his book of verse _Flowers of Evil_ is
certainly a classic. Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) wrote ninety powerful
novels (especially the series called _The Human Comedy_, a natural
history of contemporary life) and was a master of the short story.
Gustave Flaubert (1821-80) was so high and conscientious an artist that
he wrote only four perfect novels. Guy de Maupassant, Prosper Mérimée,
the de Goncourt brothers (Jules and Edmond), T. Gautier, A. Daudet,
Sainte-Beuve, Verlaine (poet), Zola, Rostand (dramatist), and the
recently deceased Anatole France, the prince of modern story-writers,
make up--without mentioning living writers--a group of brilliant
writers who will long be remembered; and to these we ought to add
scholars like Renan, Taine, Thiers, Michelet, etc., who were little
less distinguished in literature.
§2. GERMANY, RUSSIA AND SCANDINAVIA
Apart from Luther, we have no German writer whom we would call a
classic until the second half of the nineteenth century. At the time
when the influence of the Renaissance might be expected to reach and
stimulate it the country was desolated by a hundred years of warfare
about religion. It recovered in the years before the French Revolution
and immediately there appeared two poets, Goethe and Schiller, who
belong to the highest company.
Goethe (1749-1832) takes rank with Shakespeare. Intellectually--he
was an ardent scientist and deep thinker as well as a great poet--he
surpassed Shakespeare and, perhaps on that account, is inferior to him
in the strictly poetic faculty of exquisite imagery. No other poet
could have conceived the vast design of _Faust_, at which he worked
for seventy years, and at least the opening soliloquy of Faust will
always be read. His earlier or romantic style is beautifully seen in
his story, _The Sorrows of Young Werther_, and the long novel (or pair
of novels) of his later years, _Wilhelm Meister_, is a masterpiece.
With his encyclopedic knowledge and his profound intellect Goethe
gives the whole epic of humanity, as known in his day, in his work. In
mid-life he came under the influence of the Greek and Roman classics,
and the result may be read in his stately and beautiful long poems
_Tasso_, _Iphigenia_, _Hermann and Dorothea_, etc. But he was masterly
in all that he touched, sonnet or tragedy, story or art-criticism or
scientific essay.
Schiller (1759-1805), his younger friend and contemporary, is in the
stricter sense a poet and dramatist, not a thinker, though he studied
philosophy and wrote a famous history of the Thirty Years War. His
chief plays (_Wallenstein_, _Maria Stuart_, _Don Carlos_, etc.,) are
classics, and his lyrics are superb. Goethe befriended and influenced
him, and they composed together some brilliant satirical verses or
epigrams on contemporary shams. Like Goethe he began to write in the
Romantic vein, but his later and finer work shows the chaste influence
of the Greek and Roman classics.
Notable amongst the predecessors or early contemporaries of Goethe was
Lessing (1729-80), whose works on art (_Laocoon, etc._), comedies,
tragedies, and essays gave him a very high rank. Klopstock, Wieland
and others, took a great part in the revival of letters in Germany,
but I must be content with only a few of the great names. The works
of the long and impressive line of German philosophers from Kant to
Schopenhauer, cannot be treated here. They are classics of philosophy,
but Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) was one of the most brilliant writers
of his time. He was the best German lyric writer after Goethe (see
his _Book of Songs_), wrote superb books of travel, and had a fund of
delicate irony and caustic wit that makes his prose always a delight.
Greater still--the greatest German writer after Goethe--was Friedrich
Nietzsche (1844-1900), whose volcanic and often beautiful prose-poetry
is of a unique order. His best work is _Thus Spake Zarathustra_,
a malicious choice of the austere Persian moralist Zarathustra
(or Zoroaster), as the mouthpiece of his own fiery indictment of
conventional moral ideas.
Italy in this period produced Count Leopardi (1798-1837), an exquisite
poet of pessimism, Casanova (or Giovanni Giacomo Casanova de Seingalt,
1725-1803), a poet and adventurer whose memoirs (written in French)
are a classic, and Mazzini, the genius of the Italian rebellion. But
reaction kept back Italy until the latter part of the nineteenth
century and it is no part of my plan to notice recent works. The same
must be said of Spain, Portugal and Austria.
Switzerland had in H. F. Amiel (1821-81), a poet and essayist whose
diary, or _Intimate Journal_, is a classic of its kind: a rare and
beautiful expression of a mystic mind struggling with modern doubt.
In the far north Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906), brought Norway into the
field of letters by a series of plays which made him at the time the
greatest dramatist of the world. They are modern problem-plays, of
advanced thought and rather somber atmosphere. Björnsen (1832-1910),
his compatriot and contemporary, also made a world-reputation by his
novels, dramas and poems, and won the Nobel Prize. His work does not
live as that of Ibsen does, yet there were distinguished literary
critics who at his death ranked him with Victor Hugo. In Denmark, a
classic of a kind was produced by Hans Andersen (1805-75), the great
fairytale writer.
At the same time Russia opened its literary age, with a number of
brilliant novelists. Pushkin (1799-1837), Nikolai Gogol (1800-52), Ivan
Turgenieff (1818-83), Feodor Dostoeffsky (1821-81), and Anton Chekhov
(1860-1904), were a group of realistic novelists, poets and essayists
who commanded the attention of the world. Tolstoi’s _Anna Karenina_, at
least, is another Russian work of the classic order, and Maxim Gorki
sustained the brilliant tradition of story-writing in recent times.
§3. MODERN ENGLISH WRITERS
The crowd of writers of distinction in every country now becomes
embarrassing, and I must either be content with a mere list of names
or omit many whom one or other critic chooses to regard as classics.
The reader must bear in mind, however, that this is not a history of
literature, even in outline, and for the modern period we will choose a
compromise, including the names of some who will certainly not live as
Vergil and Horace live today, yet omitting many quite familiar names.
I chose to begin the “modern” period with the poet Alexander Pope
(1688-1744), because in his work modern ideas begin to show a marked
influence. There was at the time a brilliant group of Deistic writers
in England, but Pope alone (who vaguely embodies their ideas in his
_Essay on Man_, the source of countless quotations), can be called
a literary classic. _The Rape of the Lock_ was regarded by his
contemporaries as his masterpiece.
Another classic of the period is the immortal boys’ story _Robinson
Crusoe_ by Daniel Defoe (1659-1730). None of his other stories has
lived, but his _Journal of the Plague_ is a work of great importance.
Later in the seventeenth century and early in the eighteenth, Addison
and Steele were the leading English writers, and their periodicals,
_The Tatler_ and _The Spectator_, are classics of journalism: a very
dignified and stately sort of journalism in magnificent English.
Richardson (1689-1761) was the first great English novelist, and
his _Pamela_, _Clarissa Harlowe_, and _Sir Charles Grandison_, had a
high reputation. A little later, H. Fielding wrote _Tom Jones_, which
ranked as a classic until recent times. L. Sterne (1715-68), whom some
ventured to compare to Cervantes, is equally distinguished in his chief
novel _Tristram Shandy_, and his _Sentimental Journey_.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), one of the most brilliant satirists, is
chiefly remembered by his _Tale of a Tub_ and _Gulliver’s Travels_,
which still circulates. He was not, as is commonly said, an Irish wit
but was born in Ireland of English parents. Coarse as _Gulliver_ is in
many pages, Swift was a Dean of the Church of England. But the same
looser taste is seen in most of the literature of the time: in Smollett
(whose famous novel _Roderick Random_ is based on _Gil Blas_); in the
dramatist Sheridan (_The Rivals_, _School for Scandal_, etc.), and
Beaumont and Fletcher. The poet James Thomson, author of _The Seasons_,
and the novelist Jane Austen (1775-1817), whose _Sense and Sensibility_
and _Pride and Prejudice_ still stand very high, and the poets Oliver
Goldsmith (1728-74), author of the _Deserted Village_, and Thomas Gray
(1716-71), author of the _Elegy in a Country Churchyard_, show the more
refined feeling of the time.
A unique place must be given to Robert Burns (1759-96), the Scottish
poet and the finest lyric poet of the time in spite of his notorious
intemperance. Burns is assuredly an immortal and such pieces as _Tam_
and _The_ _Cotter’s Saturday Night_ are classics. _Auld Lang Syne_ is
also his. And a very different work of the eighteenth century which
is unquestionably a classic of highest rank is the great work of the
historian Gibbon (1757-94), _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_,
the product of twenty years of incessant labor.
The chronicle of English literature now becomes so congested with
distinguished names that we must notice only the higher peaks. Classics
beyond any question are the two great poets of rebellion who opened the
modern period in the stricter sense of the word, Byron and Shelley.
Lord George Gordon Byron (1788-1824), was, as his title indicates, the
aristocratic poet, yet owing to his critical revolt and his sympathy
with rebels like the Greeks, he was ostracised by his own class (a
generally immoral class, by the way), and his work has a tinge of
melancholy. _Childe Harold_, _The Prisoner of Chillon_, and _Manfred_,
his best works, are classics. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), was
almost equally aristocratic in origin, yet he became the prophet of the
democratic and humanitarian movement. His _Prometheus Unbound_ is not
only a magnificent expression of modern thought, but it is one of the
greatest poems in literature from the purely artistic standpoint. While
Byron remained romantic, Shelley, like Goethe, felt the spell of the
Greek and Roman classics.
Next to these, or even above them or next to Milton, some critics
put William Wordsworth (1770-1850), the leading poet of the more
conservative school (with Cowper and Southey). I doubt if many
English readers now read his masterpiece, _The Excursion_, while
thousands treasure the beautiful work of John Keats (1795-1821), whose
classic, _Endymion_, Wordsworth patronizingly called a “pretty piece
of paganism.” Keats never saw Greece, and had never left London when
he wrote his wonderful poems of Greek legend and life (_Hyperion_,
_Lamia, etc._). Of the British poets of the early nineteenth century,
it is impossible, even in a list of classics, to ignore the _Ancient
Mariner_, _Kubla Khan_, etc., of S. T. Coleridge (1772-1834), the
_Lalla Rookh_ and _Irish Melodies_ of T. Moore (1779-1852), and the
_Songs of Experience_ of that strange mystic-skeptic William Blake
(1757-1827).
Classics of the first order are the novels (if not some of the poems)
of Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), of the romantic school, and Charles
Dickens of early date, one of the greatest of all masters of fiction.
The novels of Thackeray (1811-63), would be put by many as classics of
a secondary rank, and at least the autobiographical _Confessions of an
English Opium-Eater_ of DeQuincey (1785-1859), is a classic: a unique
expression of drug-inspired dreams and reveries.
We now, however, reach the Victorian Age of letters in England, and
it is difficult to select. Whether Tennyson’s smooth and careful
verse and Robert Browning’s rugged and intellectual poems ought to
be included here may be disputed, but much of the poetry of Algernon
Charles Swinburne (1857-1909), especially his _Poems and Ballads_ and
_Songs Before Sunrise_, has a glow of passion and a beauty of language
that puts it in the highest category. The _Essays_ of Lord Macaulay
(1800-59), the _Sartor Resartus_ (a unique philosophical diatribe), and
_The History of the French Revolution_ of Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881),
the noble prose of the _Seven Lamps_, _Stones of Venice_ and _Modern
Painters_ of John Ruskin (1819-1900), the _Marius the Epicurean_ of
Walter Pater (1839-94), some of the novels of George Eliot (or Mary
Ann Cross, 1819-1850), of George Meredith (1828-1909), the _Way of All
Flesh_ and _Erewhon_ of Samuel Butler (1835-1902), Huxley’s _Essays_
(on science and religion), and Froude’s _History of England_, and
Darwin’s _Origin of Species_ (1859), may be selected out of the mass of
fine or notable works. I again refrain from noticing living writers,
but one wonders if any living British author will be read fifty years
from now. Possibly, in fact, half or two-thirds of the works I have
noticed in this section will gradually pass out of that select circle
which contains the world’s classics. Already some whom contemporaries
considered as likely to live--Trollope, Southey, Lamb, Hazlitt,
Cobbett, the Bronté sisters, etc.--are mere names in the history of
English literature.
§4. AMERICAN CLASSICS
This difficulty of selection presses particularly upon one when we
turn to American literature. Few great American writers are old enough
to have endured and passed the test of time, and American literature
as a whole appears under peculiar circumstances. The reader will have
noticed throughout this sketch how great poetry, especially, belongs to
definite periods. We talk of the Golden Age of Greek and Latin letters,
the art of the Renaissance, the Elizabethan Age, the Storm and Stress
Period in Germany, and so on. These artistic periods mark a point where
a new civilization has reached its full development yet has not yet
become fully intellectualized, or a time when a revolution of some
kind or other has entered its blood. All this was over when the United
States was born. Its vast population in the nineteenth century was made
up from European nations which had long since passed through their
feverish periods.
The Revolution itself might be expected to inspire poetry, but a close
consideration of the conditions of the time would explain why it did
not. The only notable writers of the latter part of the eighteenth
century are Franklin (1706-90) and Thomas Paine (1737-1809). Paine
remained an Englishman and is not included in chronicles of American
literature, but his spirited and superb first work, _Common Sense_, is
essentially an expression of the American sentiment, and I prefer to
include it here. His _Rights of Man_ and _Age of Reason_ count rather
as English classics, but Paine was a cosmopolitan and would doubtless
prefer to be numbered amongst American writers.
Washington Irving (1783-1859) really opens the period of distinguished
American literature. His _Knickerbocker History of New York_, _Sketch_
_Book_, and _Alhambra_ take rank in world literature. J. Fenimore
Cooper (1789-1851) was for decades read throughout the English-speaking
world, and even beyond it, for his stories of the war with the Indians,
though one would hardly call them classics of fiction. William
Cullen Bryant (1794-1878) is the first poet of distinction, and his
_Thanatopsis_, though early, has every mark of great poetry.
By the middle of the century America had a group of writers to
compare with those of any country. Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49) even in
his prematurely closed career achieved poetry of a very high order,
especially _The Raven and Other Poems_. A prose-poem, _Eureka_, which
he wrote shortly before his death should be read for the interest of
his opinions. Bayard Taylor (1825-78) also wrote fine poetry (_Poems of
the Orient_, etc.) and gave us one of the most satisfactory versions of
Goethe’s _Faust_, a most difficult achievement.
Two early historians also must be included here: William Hickling
Prescott (1796-1859), whose _Ferdinand and Isabella_, _Conquest of
Mexico_, and _Conquest of Peru_ would distinguish any writer, and are
remarkable when we reflect that the author was blind, and John Lothrop
Motley (1814-77), whose _History of the Rise of the Dutch Republic_ and
_History of the United Netherlands_ are finely written works.
Of the great crowd of American writers of the next generation I would
select Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82) and Walt Whitman (1819-92) as
the greatest from the literary point of view. Emerson’s _Essays_ are
written generally in a noble English which no English writer of the
nineteenth century has surpassed. Whitman’s _Leaves of Grass_, on
the other hand, is indisputably an American classic. Even Emerson,
whose moral dignity must have been shocked by many of Whitman’s
sentiments, pronounced the book “the most extraordinary piece of wit
and wisdom that America has yet contributed.” After these, as great and
distinctive writing I would give Bret Harte’s stories, Mark Twain’s
works, Lowell’s _Bigelow Papers_, and Thoreau’s _Walden_ and _In the
Maine Woods_.
Amongst the poets the highest place is usually awarded to Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-82), though the simplicity of his work
which charms one critic causes others to hesitate to put him in the
company of the greater poets. There is, naturally, more fire in the
verse of J. G. Whittier (1807-92) who became a passionate prophet of
the Abolitionist party (especially in _Voices of Freedom_). I prefer
some of the short poems--one might almost say hymns--of Whittier and
of James Russell Lowell (1818-91) to anything of Longfellow’s; though
Lowell is very unequal as a poet and is, perhaps (after his historic
_Bigelow Papers_), best known as a literary essayist.
Of the novelists of the time Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) and W. D.
Howells (1837-1920) are confessedly the greatest. Hawthorne’s _Scarlet
Letter_ is a classic of American fiction. Dr. O. W. Holmes (1809-94)
was not a brilliant success as a novelist, but the general thought and
excellent writing of his _Autocrat_, _Poet_ and _Professor at the
Breakfast Table_ keep his work on the shelves of every book-lover. Of
the great orators, from Webster to Ingersoll, and the scientific and
philosophical writers, we cannot give any account here.
And into the merits of more recent and living writers I, as in other
sections, decline to enter. Taste changes so rapidly in our time that
already our critics seem to believe that no classic was written before
the twentieth century. H. G. Wells once in a conversation with me
ridiculed the idea that the style of the historian Gibbon was superior
to the English we write today. There is much to be said for the
directness and flexibility of the modern style, when a master writes
it, but on those tests few of the great works I have recorded would
maintain their high positions. There are, however, objective standards
of art and I have given some idea of the world’s masterpieces in all
ages which rank highest by those standards.
Transcriber's Notes:
Italics are shown thus: _sloping_.
Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.
Perceived typographical errors have been changed.
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