E-text prepared by Ted Garvin, Keith M. Eckrich, and the Project Gutenberg
Online Distributed Proofreaders Team
With Commentary and an Essay on Books and Reading
by
1916
This selection of "One hundred best books" is made after a differentmethod and with a different purpose from the selections already inexistence. Those apparently are designed to stuff the minds of youngpersons with an accumulation of "standard learning" calculated toalarm and discourage the boldest. The following list is franklysubjective in its choice; being indeed the selection of oneindividual, wandering at large and in freedom through these "realms ofgold."
The compiler holds the view that in expressing his own predilection,he is also supplying the need of kindred minds; minds that read purelyfor the pleasure of reading, and have no sinister wish to transformthemselves by that process into what are called "cultivated persons."The compiler feels that any one who succeeds in reading, withreasonable receptivity, the books in this list, must become, at theend, a person with whom it would be a delight to share that mostclassic of all pleasurable arts—the art of intelligent conversation.
There is scarcely any question, the sudden explosion of which out of aclear sky, excites more charming perturbation in the mind of aman—professionally, as they say, "of letters"—than the question, sooften tossed disdainfully off from young and ardent lips, as to "whatone should read," if one has—quite strangely and accidentally—readhitherto absolutely nothing at all.
To secure the privilege of being the purveyor of spiritual germinationto such provocatively virgin soil, is for the moment so entirelyexciting that all the great stiff images from the dusty museum of"standard authors," seem to swim in a sort of blurred mist before oureyes, and even, some of them at least, to nod and beckon and put outtheir tongues. After a while, however, the shock of first excitementdiminishing, that solemn goblin Responsibility lifts up its head, andthough we bang at it and shoo it away, and perhaps lock it up, thepure sweet pleasure of our seductive enterprise, the "native hue," asthe poet says, of our "resolution" is henceforth "sicklied o'er withthe pale cast of thought," and the fine design robbed of its freshestdew.
As a matter of fact, much deeper contemplations and maturerponderings, only tend, in the long run, to bring us back to ouroriginal starting-point. It is just this very bugbear ofResponsibility which in the consciences and mouths of grown-up personssends the bravest of our youth post-haste to confusion—so impingingand inexorable are the thing's portentous horns. It is indeed afterthese maturer considerations that we manage to hit upon the right keyreally capable of impounding the obtrusive animal; the idea, namely,of indicating to our youthful questioner the importance of aestheticausterity in these regions—an austerity not only no less exclusive,but far more exclusive than any mandate drawn from the Decalogue.
The necessary matter, in other words, at the beginning of such atremendous adventure as this blowing wind into the sails of a newlybuilt little schooner, or sometimes even of a poor rain-soakedharbor-rotten brig, bound for the Fortunate Islands, is theinspiration of the right mood, the right tone, the right temper, forthe splendid voyage. It is not enough simply to say "acquire aesthetic