The Best Hundred Books/Travellers' Libraries
IX.—Travellers' Libraries.
WHAT is the real test of a man's fondness for a book? Most of the lists which we have hitherto published have been furnished by scholars, who, sitting no doubt in well-stocked libraries, where they can sip first here and first there, have told off their favourites at their ease. But with how many, and with which, of their fifty or hundred books, as the case may be, would affection stand the strain, say, of carriage in a knapsack? The real test, it might well be urged, of a man's fondness for his books is the selection he would make for his travelling library. There can be no question, therefore, about the sincerity of the following lists.
MR. H. M. STANLEY.
Dear Sir,—If the list of books which you have sent me are really the favourite books of Sir John Lubbock, I should be inclined, without further knowledge of him, to set him down as being partial to classics, philosophy, and theology. Out of his list of non-Christian moralists we might, for the use of busy men, altogether exclude Confucius and Mohammed. They would be necessary for the public library, but I am now considering what the private library of even the clerk and mechanic should contain. In his list of books treating of theology and devotion I do not find the Bible or even the New Testament. The "Apostolic Fathers" is of doubtful value Spinoza, to the ordinary man, is caviare. The Bible, Matthew Henry's or Barnes's Commentaries on it, and the "Imitation of Christ," by Thomas à Kempis, are all-sufficient for a healthy and simple theology. From Sir John's classics I would expunge Aristotle's "Politics;" we have too many modern essays on the same subject more appropriate and far more applicable to the needs of the present generation. Æsop and his childish fables, which veil his misanthropy, can serve no practical purpose. Instead of these I would recommend Epictetus or Seneca's "Morals " and Tully's "Offices," which convey sound advice on moral uprightness and just dealings suitable for all time.
Not many exceptions can be taken to Sir John's choice of epic poetry, nor yet to his Eastern samples, though they might well be supplemented with Saadi. To his ancient historians I would by all means add Cæsar, Livy, and Josephus. His moderns are incomplete without the names of Hallam, Macaulay, Robertson, Buckle, Milman, Motley, and Prescott. His philosophical authors, most people will admit, are sufficient for a limited private library. His works of travel are extremely poor and scant. Only Cook and Darwin? Where are Burckhardt and Niebuhr on Arabia and Egypt, Ouseley on Persia, Boteler on the West Coast of Africa, Livingstone on South Africa, Bruce on Abyssinia, Mungo Park on Upper Niger, Humboldt on South America, and Waterton on South America? Where are Tucker's Congo, Lander's Niger, Barth's Central Africa, Warburton's Nile, Heber's India, Irby and Mangle's Holy Land, Marco Polo, Father Rifa's Peking, &c.? Then again, among poets, why not possess Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Thomson, Young, Byron, Burns, Dryden, Camoens, Tasso, and Macaulay? And among essayists, why not mention grand old Johnson, and exquisite De Quincey; and among novelists, why omit Marryat and Cooper; and among those devoted to general literature, why not have Washington Irving? I observe also that science, astronomy, chemistry, geology, geography, natural history, manners and customs of people are wholly omitted by Sir John Lubbock, as well as arts, manufactures, industries, biographies, antiquities, &c. If a man knows nothing of these, he had far better throw every book on Sir John's list into the wastebasket, except the Bible. For supposing that he knows all about philosophy and history and the classics, if he has no ideas beyond what he has gathered from these he is only fit to be a soldier or a mechanical copyist.
MR. H. M. STANLEY'S AFRICAN LIBRARY.
You ask me what books I carried with me to take across Africa. I carried a great many—three loads or about 180 lb. weight; but as my men lessened in numbers, stricken by famine, fighting, and sickness, one by one they were reluctantly thrown away, until finally, when less than 300 miles from the Atlantic, I possessed only the Bible, Shakspeare, Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus," Norie's Navigation, and the Nautical Almanac for 1877. Poor Shakspeare was afterwards burned by demand of the foolish people of Zinga. At Bonea Carlyle and Norie and Nautical Almanac were pitched away, and I had only the old Bible left. But the following was my list of books on setting out with a tidy battalion of men:—
The Bible.
Norie's Navigation.
Inman's Navigation and Tables.
Nautical Almanacs, 1874, '75, '76, '77.
Manual of Scientific Inquiry.
What to Observe.
Darwin's Origin of Species.
Lyell's Principles of Geology.
Hugh Miller's Old Red Sandstone.
Dictionary of Biography.
Dictionary of Geography.
Dictionary of Dates.
Dictionary of the Bible.
Dictionary of Natural History.
Dictionary of Science and Literature.
Cesar's Commentaries.
Herodotus.
Horace.
Juvenal.
Thucydides.
Xenophon.
Plutarch.
Evelyn's Diary.
Pepys's Diary.
Gibbon's Decline and Fall.
The Koran.
The Talmud.
Johnson's Lives of Poets.
Gil Blas.
Don Quixote.
Arabian Nights.
Hudibras.
Homer's Iliad.
Homer's Odyssey.
Virgil's Æneid.
Shakspear.
Milton.
Byron.
Scott.
Moore.
Pope.
Thomson.
Longfellow.
Tennyson.
Cowper.
Faery Queen.
Selections Old English Dramatists.
Dicks's English Plays.
Boswell's Johnson.
Selections from Ruskin.
Roscoe's German, Italian, and Spanish Novelists.
Scott's Ivanhoe, Talisman, Guy Mannering, Quentin Durward.
Bronté's Jane Eyre.
Dickens's Mutual Friend.
Dickens's David Copperfield.
Thackeray's Esmond.
Hawthorne's Transformation.
George Eliot's Middlemarch.
Irving's Columbus.
Irving's Conquest of Granada.
Prescott's Conquest of Mexico.
John Halifax, Gentleman.
Whyte Melville's Gladiator.
Lytton's Rienzi.
Lytton's Last of the Barons.
Lytton's Harold.
Lytton's Caxtons.
Sterne's Tristram Shandy.
Kingsley's Hypatia.
Kingsley's Hereward the Wake.
After the march, unless there was any fighting, or observations for position to take, one of these books was sure to be taken up and occupied the afternoon and then evening until 9 P.M., when what with fatigue, reading, and a necessity to be up at 5 A.M., I would soon be asleep. Many of these books are still in Africa, along the line of march, and will be kept as fetishes until some African antiquarian will pick some of them up a century hence, and wonder how on earth "Jane Eyre," printed in 1870, came to be in Iturn, or Thackeray's "Esmond," Dickens, and Scott came to be preserved among the Iubari of Gambaragara.
VISCOUNT GENERAL WOLSELEY.
Dear Sir,—Press of work must be my excuse for having failed to answer your letter before. I have very great pleasure in sending you the enclosed list. A General has but very little time for reading—at least I never can find time when in the field. During the Mutiny and China war I carried a Testament, two volumes of Shakspeare that contained his best plays; and since then, when in the field, I have always carried—
Book of Common Prayer, Thomas à Kempis, Soldier's Pocket Book—
depending on a well-organized postal service to supply e weekly with plenty of newspapers.
The book that I like reading at odd moments is "The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius."
When I am going on any distant expedition for a lengthened time, I should add to those I have mentioned above the following books:—
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History. Creasy's "Decisive Battles." |
Fiction. Macaulay's "History of England" and his Essays. |