| 23 | Anglo-Saxon lyrical pieces (like the Ruin and the Exile) | Mediæval poetry. I am sorry to say that I can only read even old German with great difficulty and labour; so I miss much good mediæval poetry—Hans Sachs, for instance. |
| 24 | Dante | |
| 25 | Chaucer | |
| 26 | Piers Plowman | |
| 27* | Nibelungennot | |
| 28* | The Danish and Scotch English Border ballads | |
| 29 | ||
| 30 | Omar Khayyám (though I don't know how much of the charm of this lovely poem is due to Fitzgerald, the translator) | |
| 31 | Other Arab and Persion poetry | |
| 32 | Renard the Fox | |
| 33 | A few of the best rhymed romances | |
| 34* | The Morte d'Arthur (Malory's). I know this is an ill digested collection of fragments, but some of the best of the books it is made from (Lancelot is the best of them) are so long and so cumbered with unnecessary matter that one is thankful to Mallory after all.) | Mediæval story-books. |
| 35 | The Thousand and One Nights. | |
| 36 | Boccaccio's Decameron. | |
| 37 | The Mabinogion. | |
| 38 | Shakespeare | Modern poets. I omit those of this generation whether dead or alive. Goethe and Heine I cannot read, since I don't know German and they cannot be translated. I hope I shall escape Boycotting at the hands of my countrymen for leaving out Milton; but the union in his works of cold classicalism with Puritanism (the two things which I hate most in the world) repels me so that I cannot read him. |
| 39 | Blake (the part of him which a mortal can understand) | |
| 40 | Coleridge | |
| 41 | Shelley | |
| 42 | Keats | |
| 43 | Byron | |
| 44 | Bunyan's Pilgrim Progress | Modern fiction. I should like to say here that I yield to no one, not even Ruskin, in my love and admiration for Scott; also that to my mind of the novelists of our generation Dickens is immeasurably ahead, |
| 45 | Defoe: Crusoe, Moll Flanders, Colonel Jack, Captain Singleton, Voyage round the World | |
| 46 | Scott's novels (except the one or two which he wrote when he was hardly alive) | |
| 47 | Dumas the elder (his good novels) | |
| 48 | Victor Hugo (his novels) | |
| 49 | Dickens | |
| 50 | George Borrow (Lavengro and Romany Rye) | |
| 51 | Sir Thomas More's Utopia | I don't know how to class these works. |
| 52 | Ruskin's Works (especially the ethical and politico-economical parts of them | |
| 53 | Thomas Carlyle's Works | |
| 54 | Grimm's Teutonic Mythology |
Though this last book is of the nature of the "tools" above-mentioned, it is so crammed with the material for imagination, and has in itself such a flavour of imagination, that I feel bound to put it down.
I should note that I have by no means intended to put down these books in their order of merit or importance, even in their own divisions.
Our circle of literary authorities would not have been complete without the opinion of some eminent woman of letters. Here, then, is the answer we received from one of the most learned and accomplished women of the time:—
LADY DILKE (MRS. MARK PATTISON).
Sir,—You ask me to send you a list of books on the lines indicated by Sir John Lubbock in his recent lecture at the Working Men's College, but allow me to say that in printing make some very excellent criticisms on the wisdom of "placing before working men, or any men whatever, such a vast and heterogeneous course of study," and with these criticisms I entirely agree. To be in a position to properly understand and appreciate the works on Sir John's list, I undertake to say that one must have spent at least thirty years in preparatory study, and have had the command of, say, something more than a thousand other volumes. And I would ask, further, is this list to be considered simply as a list of literary masterpieces, or is it to present us with a general scheme of knowledge? Any list of books constructed with a view to the realization of such an ideal as the latter would be a very complicated affair, to be rewritten, too, with each succeeding year. If, on the other hand, we are only citing masterpieces of literature and making fancy libraries which may illustrate the extent and catholicity of our own tastes, our task is easier, and on the rough lines laid down by my friend Sir John Lubbock, we may put together a very pretty one.
In order to spare your space, I will not, however, proceed to recapitulate the great names, such as Homer,
