Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (perhaps in Morris' edition; or, if expurgated, in C. Clarke's, or Mrs. Haweis') Shakespeare Milton's Paradise Lost, Lycidas, Comus, and the shorter poems Dante's Divina Commedia Spenser's Fairie Queen Dryden's Poems Scott's Poems Wordsworth (Mr. Arnold's selection) Pope's Essay on Criticism Essay on Man Rape of the Lock Burns Byron's Childe Harold Gray * * * * * Herodotus Xenophon's Anabasis and Memorabilia Thucydides Tacitus' Germania Livy Gibbon's Decline and Fall Hume's History of England Grote's History of Greece Carlyle's French Revolution Green's Short History of England Lewes' History of Philosophy * * * * * Arabian Nights Swift's Gulliver's Travels Defoe's Robinson Crusoe Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield Cervantes' Don Quixote Boswell's Life of Johnson Molière Schiller's William Tell Sheridan's The Critic, School for Scandal, and The Rivals Carlyle's Past and Present * * * * * Bacon's Novum Organum Smith's Wealth of Nations (part of) Mill's Political Economy Cook's Voyages Humboldt's Travels White's Natural History of Selborne Darwin's Origin of Species Naturalist's Voyage Mill's Logic * * * * * Bacon's Essays Montaigne's Essays Hume's Essays Macaulay's Essays Addison's Essays Emerson's Essays Burke's Select Works Smiles' Self-Help * * * * * Voltaire's Zadig and Micromegas Goethe's Faust, and Autobiography Thackeray's Vanity Fair Pendennis Dickens' Pickwick David Copperfield Lytton's Last Days of Pompeii George Eliot's Adam Bede Kingsley's Westward Ho! Scott's Novels [1] Several longer lists have been given; for instance, by Comte, _Catechism, of Positive Philosophy_; Pycroft, _Course of English Reading_; Baldwin, _The Book Lover_; Perkins, _The Best Reading_; and by Mr. Ireland, _Books for General Readers_. [2] It is much to be desired that some one would publish a selection from the works of Seneca. CHAPTER V. THE BLESSING OF FRIENDS. "They seem to take away the sun from the world who withdraw friendship from life; for we have received nothing better from the Immortal Gods, nothing more delightful."--CICERO. Most of those who have written in praise of books have thought they could say nothing more conclusive than to compare them to friends.