THE WORLD BEAUTIFUL IN BOOKS BY LILIAN WHITING Author of " The World Beautiful," in three volumes, First, Second, " " and Third Series ; After Her Death," From Dreamland Sent," " Kate Field, a Record," " Study of Elizabeth Barrett Browning," etc. If the crowns of the world were laid at my feet in exchange for my love of reading, 1 would spurn them all. — F^nblon BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY ^901 PL Copyright, 1901, By Little, Brown, and Company. All rights reserved. I\17^ I S ^ November, 1901 UNIVERSITY PRESS JOHN WILSON AND SON • CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. Lilian SMIjttins'fii glMoriiB The World Beautiful. First Series The World Beautiful. Second Series The World Beautiful. Third Series After her Death. The Story of a Summer From Dreamland Sent, and Other Poems A Studv of Elizabeth Barrett Browning The Spiritual Significance Kate Field: a Record The World Beautiful in Books TO One whose eye may fall upon these pages; whose presence in tlie world of thought and achievement enriches life ; whose genius and greatness of spirit inspire my every day with renewed energy and faith, — this quest for " The World Beautiful" in literature is inscribed by LILIAN WHITING. " The consecration and the poeVs dream" CONTENTS. BOOK I. p,,. As Food for Life 13 BOOK II. Opening Golden Doors 79 BOOK III. The Rose of Morning 137 BOOK IV. The Chariot of the Soul 227 BOOK V. The Witness of the Dawn 289 INDEX 395 ; TO THE READER. " Great the Master And sweet the Magic Moving to melody- Floated the Gleam." |0 the writer whose work has been en- riched by selection and quotation from " the best that is known and thought in* the world," it is a special pleasure to return the grateful acknowledgments due to the publishers of the choice literature over whose Elysian fields he has ranged. " The noble and profound application of ideas to life is the most essential part of poetic greatness," says Matthew Arnold; and he who constantly refreshes and renews his spiritual energy from the great poets realizes the deep significance of these words. To Mr. John Lane of London and New York, the publisher of the work of Stephen Phillips 10 To the Reader. to the Macmillan Company of London and New York, who issue the works of Matthew Arnold, Walter Pater, William Watson, and other authors, from whose writings selections are pre- sented in these pages ; to Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin and Co. of Boston, the publishers for that wonderful New England galaxy including Emer- son, Lowell, Longfellow, Whittier, and Whipple, from whom extracts are made, — to these eminent houses and others, from whose publications some line or passage has been culled, it is a privilege to offer here the grateful appreciation of their generous courtesy as well as of their fine and critical taste that has thus given to the world matter which exalts life as well as literature. L. W. The Brunswick, Boston, October, 1901. BOOK I. AS FOOD FOR LIFE. God be thankedfor books ! They make us heirs of the spir- itual life ofpast ages. They give to all who will faithfully use them the spiritual presence of the best and greatest of our race. No matter how poor I am ; no matter though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling, — if the sacred vir- tues will enter and take up their abode under my roof; if Milton will sing of Paradise ; and Shakespeare open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of the human heart; if Franklin will enrich me with his practical wisdom, — / shall not pine for want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man, though excluded from what is called the best society in the place where I live. — William Bllekt Channing. THE WOELD BEAUTIFUL IN BOOKS. AS FOOD FOR LIFE. The world of books is still the world. Atjkora Leigh. |ITERATURE and life are so absolutely interpenetrated that they can only be regarded in the light of a series of cause and effect, each reacting upon the other in determining influence. By the magic of some spiritual alchemy, reading is transmuted into the qualities that build up character, and these qualities, in turn, determine the further choice of books, so that selection and result perpetuate themselves, forming an unceasing contribution to social influence. If a man's life is but the sum of the expression of his thought, the very power and the degree of this thought depend largely on his range of reading. Books are thus intimately ; 14 The World Beautiful in Books. associated with the very springs of character, and a man's biography is recorded in a library that has grown with his thought and is the expression of his intellectual evolution. The book that he has lived with and associated with certain phases of growth becomes a part of his essential life. " None of us yet know, for none of us have yet been taught in early youth, what fairy palaces we may build of beautiful thought — proof against all adversity," says Ruskin "bright fancies, satisfied memories, noble his- tories, faithful sayings, treasure-houses of pre- cious and restful thoughts, which no one can disturb, nor pain make gloomy, nor poverty take away from us — houses built without hands for our souls to live in." These houses for the soul, built in thought, will be transubstantiated into outer form. " I will make me a highway of gliding and wide-wayed ease, With room in your streets for the soul," sings Stephen Phillips. We are on the thresh- old of the beautiful life. Humanity needs the capacity to enjoy and appreciate culture as well As Food for Life. 15 as the opportunity to acquire it; the love of literature must precede and prepare the way to enjoy the opportunities of great libraries. The appreciation of music is quite as important in the way of enjoying grand opera as is the money that permits the purchase of an opera box. There has always been a nebulous — and a most pernicious — tradition that good books are inevitably somewhat formidable, and that devotion to the best literature is something of a test of mental endurance for which the recom- pense, if not the antidote, must be sought in periods of indulgence in the frivolous and the sensational. Never was there a greater error. It is the inconsequential, the crude, the obtuse, that are dull, in literature as well as in life; and stupidity in books might well be relegated to rank among the seven deadly sins of Dante. Of course, it is conceivable that the dulness might not impossibly lie in the reader rather than in the book, and that the appreciative enjoyment of good literature is a capacity to be infinitely developed along advancing lines. The swift recognition of the beautiful in literature is an achievement as well as a gift. A reader who has 16 The World Beautiful in Books. found entertainment in the flimsiest and cheap- est order of sensational fiction can, in three months, by the exercise of a little enlightened will, grow into even a far higher and more intense en- joyment of the novels of Thackeray, George Eliot, Tolstoi, Sienkiewicz, Turg^nieff, Henry James, and Daudet, and into the simple pleasure as well as the intellectual gain of Balzac, to say nothing of a host of minor novelists and story writers whose fiction is pure and bright and interesting. The world of literature is as wide as the world of humanity, and the object of this little tour is to turn the searchlight on a limited selection of that more vital range of expression that appeals to the spiritual life ; that arouses aspiration and conviction and that liberates energy, — rather than to dally with admiring contemplation or crit- ical analysis of literary beauty. There are authors whose works are a living force in every age, and from whom we may well select matter that in- fuses new ardor and purpose into life. In this especial quest restriction is perhaps more to the purpose than expansion. Able books and able essays have catalogued literary excellences .and invited their readers to fare forth in earnest quest As Food for Life. 17 of Thucydides, Plato, Homer, Calderon, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, — but this little volume aims to concern itself chiefly with that range of reading which has a direct application to the qualities of life. A book may be a perpetual companion. Friends come and go, but the book may beguile all experiences and enchant all hours. Aside, however, from consolation, encourage- ment, or entertainment, there is in good reading, a certain transubstantiation of energy that thus enters into life, exalting and refining its quality, and which enables a man to press on to still higher and nobler achievements, and to more intelligently control the problems of destiny. There is much in even the greatest literature that the child in the nursery may easily learn to appreciate and love. Familiarity with noble thought and beautiful expression influences the sub-conscious nature to a degree of unguessed potency, and irresistibly leads the spirit thus finely touched onward to all fine issues. Num- berless are the passages in Shakespeare, — as the deseription of Cleopatra's barge, the scene of the witches' heath in " Macbeth," the forum in "Julius 2 18 The World Beautiful in Books. Caesar," — which will enthrall the imaginatiou of the child and enlist a far deeper interest than does the silly and meaningless rhyme too often thrust upon juvenile readers. There are cantos of Homer ; there are passages in Virgil, as that, for instance, descriptive of the Cave of the Winds ; there are beautiful lyrics of Longfellow, and Lowell, and Holmes, and Tennyson ; of Louise Chandler Moulton, Aldrich, and Whittier ; and even Emerson has many a stanza that the child- ish mind would appreciate, especially if given to him under the beautiful interpretation made by Charles Malloy.