A CHILD’S GUIDE TO READING [Illustration: _Engraved by T. Westneth._ MILTON] A CHILD’S GUIDE TO READING BY JOHN MACY The greatest pleasure in life is that of reading while we are young.--WILLIAM HAZLITT. Though in all great and combined facts there is much which childhood cannot thoroughly imagine, there is also in very many a great deal which can only be truly apprehended for the first time at that age.--WALTER BAGEHOT. NEW YORK THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY 1909 COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY Published, November, 1909 THE TROW PRESS, NEW YORK PREFACE This is a Child’s Guide to Literature and not a Guide to Juvenile Books. The larger part of the books discussed in the various chapters and included in the supplementary lists were written for adult readers, and nearly all of them are at least as interesting to the reader of forty as to the reader of fourteen. The great writers are the goal and the child is the traveler. That is why in a Child’s Guide appear the names of Browning, Carlyle, Tolstoi, Meredith, Gibbon, Darwin, Plato, Æschylus. A normal child will not be reading those masters, certainly not all of them, but he will be reading toward them; and between the greatest names will be found lesser writers who make easy upward slopes for young feet that are climbing to the highest. In the supplementary lists will be found very little of what is admittedly ephemeral, and still less of that kind of “Juvenile” which has not sufficient literary quality to outlast the most childish interests and tastes. On the other hand, if we have any feeling for the abundant human nature of children, we cannot invite them to fly, nor pretend that we have ourselves flown, to the severe heights of Frederic Harrison’s position when he advises that we read only authors of the first rank in every subject and every nation. That ideal, which, to be sure, in his excellent essay on the “Choice of Books” is tempered by his humanity and good sense, is at too chilly an altitude for a Child’s Guide, or, I should think, for any other guide written with appreciation of what kind of advice ordinary humanity can or will benefit by.