Chapter VI. How to Study Shakspere 65 Chapter VII. The Best English Essays 73 Chapter VIII. Old Novels that Are Good 81 Chapter IX. The Romantic Novelists--Scott, Hugo, Dumas 88 Chapter X. The Realistic Novelists--Dickens, Thackeray, Balzac 102 Chapter XI. The Short Story--Poe, Hawthorne, Maupassant 117 Chapter XII. Classic Stories for Young People 122 PREFACE There are plenty of books telling what we should read if we were wise and judicious scholars, with all the time in the world; and there are lists of the Hundred Best Books, as if there were some magic in the figures 100. This little book is for the average man who reads the newspaper more than he ought, and would like to know the really interesting books in standard literature which he might take pleasure in reading and which might be of some practical benefit to him. I have begun by leaving out nearly all the ancient classics. Demosthenes’s For the Crown is a great oration, but it is utterly dry and uninteresting to the ordinary modern. Even the great Goethe, while he may be the best of reading for a German, is not precisely adapted to the needs of the average American or Englishman. His novels are too sentimental; and his great poem Faust, like all poems, loses too much in the translation. And then to come down to our own literature, I must admit that I know that all the conservative professors of English will be shocked at the omission of Chaucer (but his language is too antiquated to be easily understood), Pope (who is more quoted than any other English poet except Shakspere, but ought to be read only in a book of quotations), Samuel Richardson (who is important historically, but whose novels are as dead as a door-nail), and some others. Literature is not great absolutely, but it is useful and inspiring to those who read it. What has been inspiring once may have served its purpose, and when it is no longer inspiring it ought to be put away on the library shelves. But of the good and interesting books there are a great many more than any one person can ever hope to read. We have but a little time in this life, and in reading we ought to make the best of it. So what shall we choose? First of all a book must be interesting if it is going to help us; but at the same time if it is a great book and can inspire us, our time is spent to double or treble the advantage that it would be if it were only a good book. If we can read the _best_ books and not merely good books, we have actually added some years to our life, measuring life by what we crowd into it.