"
Montaigne says, "Books are a languid pleasure"; but I find certain
books vital and spermatic, not leaving the reader what he was; he
shuts the book a richer man. I would never willingly read any others
than such. And I will venture, at the risk of inditing a list of old
primers and grammars, to count the few books which a superficial
reader must thankfully use.
Of the old Greek books, I think there are five which we cannot spare:--
1. Homer, who, in spite of Pope, and all the learned uproar of
centuries, has really the true fire, and is good for simple minds,
is the true and adequate germ of Greece, and occupies that place as
history, which nothing can supply. It holds through all literature,
that our best history is still poetry. It is so in Hebrew, in
Sanscrit, and in Greek. English history is best known through
Shakspeare; how much through Merlin, Robin Hood, and the Scottish
ballads! the German, through the Nibelungen Lied; the Spanish,
through the Cid. Of Homer, George Chapman's is the heroic translation,
though the most literal prose version is the best of all.--2.
Herodotus, whose history contains inestimable anecdotes, which
brought it with the learned into a sort of disesteem; but in these
days, when it is found that what is most memorable of history is a
few anecdotes, and that we need not be alarmed, though we should
find it not dull, it is regaining credit.
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