III. From Sir Walter Scott to the last deceased author who is recognised as a classic, or roughly, the nineteenth century. Period III. will bulk the largest and cost the most; not necessarily because it contains more absolutely great books than the other periods (though in my opinion it _does_), but because it is nearest to us, and therefore fullest of interest for us. I have not confined my choice to books of purely literary interest--that is to say, to works which are primarily works of literary art. Literature is the vehicle of philosophy, science, morals, religion, and history; and a library which aspires to be complete must comprise, in addition to imaginative works, all these branches of intellectual activity. Comprising all these branches, it cannot avoid comprising works of which the purely literary interest is almost nil. On the other hand, I have excluded from consideration:-- i. Works whose sole importance is that they form a link in the chain of development. For example, nearly all the productions of authors between Chaucer and the beginning of the Elizabethan period, such as Gower, Hoccleve, and Skelton, whose works, for sufficient reason, are read only by professors and students who mean to be professors. ii. Works not originally written in English, such as the works of that very great philosopher Roger Bacon, of whom this isle ought to be prouder than it is. To this rule, however, I have been constrained to make a few exceptions. Sir Thomas More's _Utopia_ was written in Latin, but one does not easily conceive a library to be complete without it. And could one exclude Sir Isaac Newton's _Principia_, the masterpiece of the greatest physicist that the world has ever seen? The law of gravity ought to have, and does have, a powerful sentimental interest for us. iii. Translations from foreign literature into English. Here, then, are the lists for the first period: PROSE WRITERS £ s. d. Bede, _Ecclesiastical History_: Temple Classics. 0 1 6 Sir Thomas Malory, _Morte d'Arthur_: Everyman's Library (4 vols.) 0 4 0 Sir Thomas More, _Utopia_: Scott Library 0 1 0 George Cavendish, _Life of Cardinal Wolsey_: New Universal Library. 0 1 0 Richard Hakluyt, _Voyages_: Everyman's Library (8 vols.) 0 8 0 Richard Hooker, _Ecclesiastical Polity_: Everyman's Library (2 vols.) 0 2 0 Francis Bacon, _Works_: Newnes's Thinpaper Classics. 0 2 0 Thomas Dekker, _Gull's Horn-Book_: King's Classics. 0 1 6 Lord Herbert of Cherbury, _Autobiography_: Scott Library. 0 1 0 John Selden, _Table-Talk_: New Universal Library. 0 1 0